I recently read an interesting article at http://www.ultranovator.com/robotics/new-adaptive-robot/ about a self-correcting robot that can compensate for damage to itself. This is not too far a stretch from the kind of work I'm doing with self-awareness and action learning, as techniques for raising performance levels for business leaders.

What the engineers discovered was that a robot, in order to interact intelligently with its environment, needs to have an internal model of itself. It tests the model by seeing if predictive behavior (move arm forward) results in expected results (arm moves forward). So that's step one: this internal image that's constantly updated with sensor readings, or fact-based data.

Step two is how it adapts to change, both in itself and its environment. When something goes awry, the robot deals with the fallout with a series of built-in guidelines that lay out the options: to limp, repair itself, move to another environment, and so on.

While the complexity of a manager in business is, of course, staggering, the robot example does provide a useful way to think about adaptive performance in businesses environments where change is the norm.

What I do everyday is work with business managers at all levels to develop their leadership skills. This often leads to high-functioning teams that collaborate well and have excellent outcomes - whether that's a better product or service for customers, or a strategy that delivers value to the entire organization. To develop those skills, we use two tools: self-awareness and action learning.

There are a lot of ways to gather information about yourself, to augment your "model of what you're like. We do personality testing, behavioral interviewing, assessment centers, etc. to measure attributes like leadership capability, ambition, and innovation. From that we get a fairly detailed picture of what motivates managers to succeed.

We also look at derailers of personality, which are non-constructive behaviors that can impair your work, by moving against, toward, or away from others in the work team. What are your triggers? What are your default behaviors? This might be similar to an equipment failure in a robot - the leg joint that jams in high heat. The point is, you need to know about the behavior, have some idea when it will emerge, and have a plan in place for compensating for it.

To really get a handle on derailers, we do stress tests. First you get to look at yourself in a calm, controlled classroom environment. Then you get to test your knowledge and see how it applies to real-world situations. It's the same idea those Cornell researchers had about their robot: take it out of the lab and make it perform in a foreign environment, maybe even another planet, and see how it copes with injury.

Action learning comes to life for our clients when we're focusing on an initiative or strategic challenge they're facing. The instructors challenge them to solve the problem, and identify ways they could do things differently or better. It's putting the participant on the hot seat. Why did they make those choices? What worked? What didn't? It's a version of role-playing that's focused and almost surgical, looking for a tiny bit of behavior, so we can impact the choices in the moment.

So that's your feedback loop. It's putting what you know in action, using situations and challenges your already face. That makes the learning "stickier. You learned a coping strategy, you used it, and you saw the outcome. Now it's in your behavioral repertoire.

There's a saying, two minds are better than one. That's the case, with good people. Now give those minds a methodology for self-awareness, applied learning, and adapting to change, and there's not much you can't do. If you do hit something, let us know. You can always come in for a tune-up.