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Chris Argyris, a professor of education and organizational behavior at Harvard, and the late Donald Schon, a professor at MIT, pioneered the idea of double-loop learning.
Single Loop Learning
Drawing on earlier work by John Dewey, Kurt Lewin and others, Argyris and Schon use the term single-loop learning to describe how people learn to adjust their actions in response to natural feedback on the success of those actions in achieving a desired result. They liken this style of learning to a thermostat that adjusts the degree of heating or cooling depending on the temperature of the room.
Single Loop Learning
The Way We Represent Reality
To understand double-loop learning, you first need to understand a little about how the human mind represents reality. We all carry within us beliefs about the world around us. These beliefs are like maps because they approximate reality without ever being a completely accurate and comprehensive picture of reality itself. Within the workplace, we hold generalized beliefs about “what is valued in this organization” and “how things get done around here”. We also hold more specific beliefs about events and people. These beliefs are important because they influence and constrain what we do and don’t do in the workplace.
Double-Loop Learning
Double-loop learning requires not only adjusting one’s actions, but also surfacing, challenging and adjusting the governing variables that are usually taken for granted—i.e., our beliefs or “mental maps of reality”. For example, in the thermostat example above, responses are limited to adjusting the frequency and length of time that your heater or air conditioner work to maintain the desired temperature. However, within the double-loop learning model you may also explore:
- Passive heating and cooling strategies such as insulation
- Dress codes to better suit the natural temperature
To engage in double-loop learning, you must look beyond the familiar methods of approaching the challenge at hand to embrace novel and creative solutions. Furthermore, you must be willing to let go of assumptions about “what and how things should be done”.
Double-loop learning adds a powerful dimension to previous experiential learning cycles. In previous models, learning was achieved through reflection on the success (or failure) of your actions. However, in the double-loop model, learning is realized through reflection on the validity and usefulness of your beliefs.
Double-Loop Learning
Implications For Leadership Development
For HR and L&D professionals interested in the practical implications of this model, you need to incorporate strategies such as those listed below into your learning interventions:
- Discern what leaders currently believe about leadership and the organization. Note that there is often a large gap between what leaders publicly “espouse” and the real beliefs that guide their actions. Identifying real beliefs requires observing how leaders act and then deducing why they acted that way.
- Involve leaders in co-analyzing their own behaviours and co-constructing a map of beliefs that they are willing to own. You can use both inquiry and confrontation to help leaders build and own their true maps of belief.
- Engage leaders in testing the accuracy and usefulness of their beliefs. Inquiry and confrontation work together.
- Help leaders to monitor the effect that their newly framed beliefs have on their actions, and in turn the impact these actions have on the results that they produce.
