One of the barriers to improvement is jumping to judgment too quickly.
Improvement implies innovation and action …
doing something different …
and getting a better outcome.
Before an action is a decision. Before a decision is a judgment.
And we make most judgments quickly, intuitively and unconsciously. Our judgments are a reflection of our individual, inner view of the world. Our mental model.
So when we judge intuitively and quickly then we will actually just reinforce our current worldview … and in so doing we create a very effective barrier to learning and improvement.
We guarantee the status quo.
So how do we get around this barrier?
In essence we must train ourselves to become more consciously aware of the judgment step in our thinking process. And one way to flush it up to the surface is to ask the deceptively powerful question … And?
When someone is thinking through a problem then an effective contribution that we can offer is to listen, reflect, summarize, clarify and to encourage by asking “And?”
This process has a name. It is called a coaching conversation.
And anyone can learn to how do it. Anyone.