What did training dolphins teach me?

 I used to train dolphins in college. I learned a lot through that experience. What were the main things I learned and carry with me? What I learned about humans by watching humans learn how to train dolphins. 

1) watching how people learn new information. Specifically, how people learn how to train dolphins and the stages they go through.  

The first phase: Some people when they first learn, watch and listen and don't act on it - are very hesitant. These become really great trainers.  Others are very hands on and dive in right away. These folks generally become good trainers but not excellent trainers.  When I am doing an onboarding, I pay attention to the people paying attention as these are the people who usually turn into my best employees.  It is easy to dismiss them and pay attention to the ones that dive in, but they aren't necessarily learning as precisely as the ones who observe first do. 

The 2nd phase is when people have learned enough to know mistakes when they see it and they start pointing out the mistakes of others. This is actually them learning and reminding themselves to not make those mistakes - even though it's annoying for the people being reminded to not do something. And a part of it is bolstering their own self esteem by reminding themselves how much they have accomplished/learned. 

The third phase of learning is enlightenment where the trainer is really good and also really calm and patient with new learners. They are confident in what they know and don't need to bolster themselves or remind themselves of things and so don't harp on the newbies.  People in phase 2 might be annoying, but if they are coached compassionately, they will eventually make it to phase 3. 

2) The 2nd important thing I learned what has to create unlearning through a behavioral technique called extinguishing a behavior. This is what I teach in my anti-bullying and anti-harassment training. How to untrain unwanted behavior - like bullying.  If you want to learn more visit: https://humanistlearning.com/category/bullyingharassment/

De-Conditioning Racial Bias

One of the reasons we still have problems with race isn't necessarily because people are racist, though, there are out and proud racists. It's more that well intentioned people are unaware that many of their impulses and thoughts are conditioned responses, meaning, we don't think about them, we just feel them and it makes us uncomfortable.

Deconditioning unwanted behaviors is something I specialize in. I have a background in behavioral conditioning. I know the science of how to make unwanted behaviors (including thoughts), stop and I also have the practical experience to know why exactly it is so hard to change, even when we want to.  And yes, I have a course/book on that (Why is Change so Hard?) 

First, I want you to read this thread by Claire Willet on Twitter. https://twitter.com/clairewillett/status/1266894029498675200 

This thread is super important for white people to read. It's about the history of our conditioned responses to black protests.  Specifically, how we have been conditioned, intentionally, to feel uncomfortable with black people protesting.  And yes, we were and are being conditioned to respond to protests by people seeking to not be shot for no reason, with discomfort. And there is a super long history in the USA of this happening. And yes, it was done intentionally. And yes, our government did it intentionally. Read the twitter thread! 

That uncomfortable feeling you have been having about how black people are protesting? It's there for a reason. You have been conditioned to feel that discomfort. And that was done intentionally to help people in power, stay in power by denying social justice movements support by other moral people, by making them, uncomfortable and afraid. 

I have a background in behavioral conditioning. I can attest that what Ms. Willet describes in her thread, is true. What she is saying, about how even when we find out we've been lied to,  we still believe things that aren't true, because it feels true even when it isn't - is absolutely spot on. 

That is the power of conditioned responses. Conditioned responses bypass your normal thinking. It's your gut reaction. You don't know why you have this gut reaction, you just do. And yes, your thoughts can be conditioned and ARE conditioned. All the time.  

If I start a commercial jingle, chances are you will sing the rest and would have a really hard time, stopping yourself.  Let's give it a try ... "plop, plop, fizz, fizz." 

There are people who want the rest of us to be afraid of black people asking for help. And they have spent, literally centuries convincing people to be afraid and uncomfortable around black people and about discussing discrimination against black people and minorities. And all this discomfort and our inability to deal with it, is preventing us from finally, creating a society where everyone is given the same opportunity and where people can actually be judged on their character and not on the color of their skin.

Deconditioning Ourselves

But in order to get there, we have to start deconditioning ourselves of these habits of thoughts that cause us to have negative thoughts when confronted by race. We have to decondition the habits that cause us to look away or deflect. 

The good news is that these various deflection responses, are a normal part of the deconditioning process. The bad news is that, unless you force yourself to challenge your own brain, you won't get past them, which is why collectively, we haven't gotten past it.

The other good news is that once you understand your own resistance response, you can help yourself decondition the uncomfortable responses you have whenever the subject of race comes up.  

So if you want to support black people but keep finding reasons why you don't actually support black people, then I have a few suggestions for you. And yes, I mean even well meaning liberal people who think they are beyond this but are afraid to go to the 'black' part of town because they are worried about crime - you too. Especially you.

What I want you to learn is first, why change is so hard (https://humanistlearning.com/book-and-program-why-is-change-so-hard/)  I want you to understand the resistance ideas that pop into your head for what they are, resistance to change. Then, you can calmly encourage your brain to calm down and think explicitly about whether the assumptions you have about a given situation are true.

Think Humanistically

The next thing I want you to do is think humanistically about yourself and about the situation you are concerned about.  Think explicitly about the values you think are most important. Then, apply those values to the situation at hand. Keeping in mind that what you think, may be incorrect because of your implicit conditioned biases to think negatively about black people doing anything other than being subservient to white people.  Try to understand why black people are upset and think, if this happened to you, would you be upset? Yes, then the black community is protesting for good reason and you should support them. 

Finally, you will make mistakes. That is ok. You will stumble. That is ok too. If you are worried about black people judging you because you are not a perfect ally, well yeah, that will happen. But how you handle learning that you made a mistake is key. Accept you made a mistake and learn from it, and your efforts will be appreciated.

The problem with centering yourself. 

If you have started to become aware you may have had someone say, stop centering yourself. Here is what that means and why you should NOT center yourself. First. you don't need anyone's approval or acknowledgement to do the right thing. The right thing is to say plainly that an injustice is in fact, an injustice. For instance, cops killing unarmed people who have broken no laws, is an injustice. 

Second: If your willingness to support people who are being abused is based on whether you get credit and props for doing the bare minimum of what a moral person should do, which is to say, what happened is wrong, then something is wrong with you. And you should check yourself. Because when an injustice is occurring, the focus should be on the injustice. Not on whether or not your allyship is being appreciated by people who are literally fighting for their lives. 

If someone tells you, you are centering yourself, you are. Don't argue. Focus on the person who needs help. Not on your need for approval. 

Stick with it

Undoing and unlearning conditioned thoughts is a time consuming process. Every time you manage to identify one of your triggered conditioned responses, don't get upset you thought the thought.  You were conditioned to think it. The goal is to recognize WHEN you've had a conditioned thought and to consciously and explicitly challenge that thought. 

And you can do this for anything. My son is convinced math is hard and he has some fairly extreme deflection responses anytime he is asked to do math. I won't go into the details of why he has these responses except to say that he came by his aversion to math the hard way.  As I am working with him to get past his aversion, which is a conditioned response, I have been encouraging him to challenge his negative thoughts and replace them with other thoughts. Even if they are sarcastically positive, it is still a better response than the extremely negative thoughts he has when math is presented to him.  As we practice turning the negatives into positive, it gets harder for a bit. Crying has been involved in it. But, the resistance eventually gets less hard and his ability to pivot improves. 

Positively reward success:

Every time you successfully challenge one of your conditioned responses, reward yourself. Recognize how hard that was to do for yourself and congratulate yourself. Treat yourself to something. 

The only real way to get rid of a learned response/thought is to replace it with a different learned response/thought. And whenever you succeed in doing that, reward yourself. Positively reward the behavior you want. Don't beat yourself up for continuing to have the thoughts/responses you want to decondition. Just focus on converting them to something positive and eventually, you will get through this. 

For a full list of my programs and books check out this list. https://humanistlearning.com/jennifer-hancock/  Pretty much everything on it, includes some of this behavioral learning. And the best part is, the more you learn how to do this, the easier it becomes and the less you resist it.  

Even if you start small, with just one identified response, like, the discomfort you feel about black people protesting the wrong way, start there and work through it and past it. Your response, that discomfort was conditioned by people with an agenda. Don't let them control you. 

PS - we need to do the same thing for sexism. 

The Hows and Whys of Unlearning

Not a lot of time is spent on unlearning. Most of us are focused on what we want to learn, not what we need to unlearn.

The problem is, if we want to grow and change, we usually need to unlearn old habits first.  The good news is there is a science to that. No really, it’s called behavioral psychology and it’s the study of how we learn and unlearn behaviors. Researchers have been studying this topic of about 70 years now.

The good news is that we do know how to create unlearning, or to put it in simpler language, we know what it takes to break a bad habit.  The bad news is that it isn’t easy to do. Which is why so many people who try to change, fail.  The good news is that if you have failed before, it’s not really your fault. It really has very little to do with willpower and strength. It has to do with how you are conditioned and rewarded (both for the old unwanted behavior and the new behavior).

I teach several courses that integrate the science of how and why unlearning happens into the course content. It’s relevant to how to stop bullying, harassment and retaliation. It’s relevant to change management processes. It’s relevant to helping teams adopt new behaviors despite all their fussing and whining about it (which is predicted to occur).

The simplest way to describe this process is this: if you want to stop a behavior, you have to stop rewarding it. And yes, I realize that that statement is incredibly unhelpful. How exactly you do that is the challenge. And unfortunately, each behavior is different because how it is being rewarded is different.

What you really need to learn is the science. There are 3 types of responses, positive (reward), negative (punishment) and neutral (which is when nothing happens).  Most people think if you want to stop a behavior you need to punish it. But actually that just reinforces it. Negative reinforcement is still – reinforcement. Not rewarding it at all is what actually works AND you have to do that consistently to get the behavior to stop.

If this is knowledge you think would be helpful get my book, take one of my online courses and learn it.

The Bully Vaccine

Why is Change so Hard?

How to End Harassment & Retaliation in the Workplace

Unlearning and Extinction Bursts

Learning new things is easy. Adopting new behaviors as a result of that knowledge is harder.

I was asked to write an article for Chief Learning Officer Magazine on behavioral extinction’s role in the learning process. You can read it over at: http://www.clomedia.com/articles/6525-unlearn-before-you-can-change . It’s about how we need to unlearn old behaviors before we can learn new behaviors.

This “rule” – unlearning has to happen before new learning can occur - applies to everyone whether it is an individual trying to create a new exercise habit or a company initiating a new work process.

If you are in a position of leadership, at some point, you are going to be tasked with teaching people new skills. Knowing what you want to teach is only part of what makes a good teacher. Teaching is an art and the best teachers are compassionate. They give us space to make mistakes. They nudge us along as we struggle to learn the new way of doing things.

They are compassionate because they understand – we will struggle. We have to unlearn old habits before we can fully master new ones. And they give us the space and encouragement we need, consistently over time in the form of compassionate pressure and encouragement, to make those changes.

Learning how unlearning will save you a LOT of frustration the next time you are tasked with teaching someone, including yourself, new tricks. When you understand how learning and unlearning occur, you find there is no need to get frustrated. You just have to create the conditions in which learning and unlearning can occur.

If you want to learn more about the science of learning and unlearning and behavioral conditioning  - check out this course: Why is Change so Hard? https://humanistlearning.com/change1/