Schema Interaction 

An individual’s schema might be viewed as the mental map that guides their thoughts and behaviours. It acts like a window frame, letting some things through and screening others out. It helps to bring certain elements of the world into focus, whilst making others blurred and fuzzy so that they can be ignored or overlooked. The schema has a hard and soft element. The hard side emerges when it helps people to make decisions that are critical and potentially difficult to make. From the soft angle, they help people to take something that is abstract and vague, and make it a thing of pleasure or beauty for the individual.

Imagine a piece of music, be it jazz, rock, classical or blues. For the young musician, rock music will be regarded with great reverence, and seen as a piece of art. However, to someone who has been schooled in the classics, this same piece of music might seem to be abhorrent, and to have no discernible quality or taste. This contrasting view is routed in the individual’s schemata that has been formed by the exposure to different experiences.

However, this disparity can result in more than separate tastes, in can act as blockage to the flow of words, ideas and emotions. 

Consider two people who live in the country and work in the city. One has always traveled to work by train and the other has always traveled by car. Their start and destination points are exactly the same, but their routes are totally different.

Imagine each of the these people describing the best way to get from the county to city. The answers will be different and potentially confusing to anyone who is listening. They will be using different words, patterns and experiences to describe the journey. Although the end result is the same, the way in which they view the experience is totality different. Imagine then the confusion when these two people try to agree on the best route. Their mental maps will be different, their language will be contrary, and it is unlikely that they will find it easy to reach a collaborative conclusion.

Until each can understand the other’s  view, they will find it difficult to learn or create knowledge that improves upon their personal schema.  It may be that the only way that each of the commuters will be able to appreciate the other person’s map is by experiencing the same journey. The question that organisations face is how can people in the same company get the sense of another's journey without experiencing it?

The experience of life helps people to build the lenses that they use to construct their map of the world. However, this lens will distort their view of the world, such that one shared experience can appear contrary to different people. Consider the last time went to see a film with a friend. Although you have the same experience you might come out with totally different views of what happened in the film. This is becase you have filtered it through your schematic maps. You have used personal blueprints, experiences and histories to draw a conclusion as to its purpose. 

It is this restricted viewpoint that can hinder the possible for a productive conversation. Consider the issue of middle-aged, white-collar redundancy. To lose a career half way through one's life is a devastating and potentially destructive process. People can, and do, end up destroying themselves and those around them in their attempt to reconcile and understand why it has happened and why in particular to them. In many cases people will think themselves into a schema of ‘I have had my time and am no longer required by the business world’. This is a limiting and bounded schema that creates a fatalistic sense of doubt. The way that this person views the world might well contribute to their inability to get a new job or start a new life. An alternative view is offered by someone who has an unbounded schema. There are cases of individuals who have become so frustrated at being unable to get a job, that they have stood next to the motorway with a sign saying they are looking for work. They have driven a shift in their own schema, to think of ways to get a job rather than reasons why they cannot get one. They have in effect created the world they wish to see. Therefore, the language people use is driven directly by the schematic maps they have of the world. So when looking at the conversations taking place in a group you should look beyond the language being deployed and try to see and understand the mental models that drives each persons conversation.

The first step towards achieving this level of comprehension is to understand the different types of schematic frames that people construct and how they might interrelate and work with each other.

Schema Shift

The point of any conversation is to generate a new thought, feeling or behavior. Therefore a productive conversation is often one where you have learnt something new. At the root of all learning is the idea of schema shift, where an individual has to be prepared to discard or throw away the current world view and accept an alternative frame of reference. This shift in process can be at a number of levels in the organisation. For the individual, it might be simply learning an improved way of operating a particular tool - for the team, it may be a series of processes that have been introduced to support the development of a new project. In the case of an organisational shift, there are examples of major change programmes like Total Quality, or Business Re-engineering modifying how entire businesses view their customers and suppliers.

In making this schema shift, the first thing is for the self-sustaining loop to be broken. This loop is a common process followed by everyone. People see the world in a particular way, and so expect it to behave according to the rules and criteria set out in their individual mental map. One example might be the self-imposed beliefs that people apply to themselves. Typically, ‘ I am a loser’, ‘I can’t drive’ or ‘I can become the head of the company’. Each of these schemata is imprinted in the brain, and so will influence how people see the world. For the ‘loser’ to change, the map should be realigned to see the world through the eyes of a successful person or for the person who cannot drive to actually visualise themselves driving.

Once the world is seen in a new way, so the shift can be used to reinforce this new world position. However, this can soon drift into a negative position. If people decide to stop at that point, and do not use the change experience to energise further schema shifts, then the change or learning is only of limited value. Once the individual has created the personal ability to break with the past, then the idea of life-long learning can start to emerge. They have the chance to develop an iterative process in life, that they undertake as naturally as sleeping or drinking tea. Once this schema shift is locked in, so the action can become habitual. It is at the stage of habitual shift, that the idea of schemata becomes really powerful. 

Schema Interaction

For any conversation to be productive there should be a flow between the different players in the exchange. In going through this exchange process, single schema will become public, and shared schemata might develop into team visions. In many cases this will continue to iterate until a level of mutual understanding exists as to the how the world is perceived by each individual.

The potential released from the sharing of personal schemata is dependent upon the extent to which exposure and feedback takes place. Exposure in the sense of people being prepared to share their personal maps with others in the group, and feedback as people share their perceptions  of others mental map. In the cases where this process occurs, the organisation is able to take on a generative stance, where the sharing of schemata creates enhanced learning and new knowledge.

Although this sounds simple enough, when looking at how people interact and share ideas, there are at least five different characteristics:

In the first three each individual has their own view of the world, there is no real conversational sharing between the people, and no collaboration in the development of a communal view. The next two additive and compound indicate that a similar schema is being shared or developed by two or more people, and this is commonly referred to as a paradigm. This proposition was offered by Thomas Kuhn, where he suggests that a paradigm is a constellation of concepts, values, perceptions and practices shared by a community that forms a particular vision of reality which is the basis of the way in which a community organises itself. Examples might be the original view that Earth was the centre of the universe, or that man could never fly.

Clearly there are no right or best options for these five interaction types. The key message is that people should be aware of their schema, what style of conversation is taking place, and what style of interaction is common for the organisation. Most importantly, people should be encouraged to develop the ability to diagnose, and accept other people’s schemata by listening to their unspoken conversation.

Conclusion

In essence, the following aspects form important drivers that impact in the way that conversations are lead and managed

• Schemata are the lenses that people use to make sense of the world and as such directly drive the pattenrs and languge use when in conversation with other people. 

• People's schema and conversation preferences reflect their history, thoughts and experiences accumulated over their life, and cannot be brushed aside as something that can be changed at a whim AS such the leader must be pressed to shift first and change their conversational patterns.

• Schemas can be formed and changed without the person being aware of any modification. As such, it pays to ensure that people have the necessary time to reflect and understand what current schematic drivers influence their language patterns..

• The use of language is key to understanding people’s schematic models. Although the words people use cannot always directly offer a view of their schematic maps, it may be a possible indicator as to how they cognitively map the world.

• Schemata can sometimes be more effectively understood through the use of metaphor and analogy. Asking an individual to describe how they feel can be difficult but asking them to relate it to an anecdotal story can make it somewhat easier.

• The key to creating a generative conversation might require someone to break with their current schemata.

• Accept that no matter how much one disagrees with another person’s schema, to them it is the absolute truth and will be that way until they reorientate to an alternative viewpoint.

• Don’t always strive for additive or compound interaction. The use of locked interaction can help to create the dissonance that is necessary to unlock rigid schematic structures.

Productive conversations are founded on the nee to share schemata through the process of collaborative and challenging interactions. Hence, the process of converstions is potentially most valuable tool in the creation of  intellectual capital for a business. The resulting synthesis that emerges following an interaction between two people, or groups, is where the real fruits of the future are embedded. In accepting this, the organisation must in turn accept the need for people to understand the importance of schemata at both an individual and organisational level.

People who are only able to see the world from their own perspective are effectively imprisoning themselves in a jail of their own making. People who have broken free from this cell and are able to draw on the schemata that have been influenced by others, are better equipped to understand and manage the complex everyday world of organisations.[ii]

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(c) Mick Cope