How to turn experience into real growth through metacognition
Reflecting on one’s own way of thinking and acting is the key to moving beyond mere experience and fostering continuous improvement, both at an individual and organisational level
We tend to think that experience is the main driver of personal growth: the more we do, the more we learn; the more situations we face, the more competent we become.
Let’s stop for a moment. We probably all know someone who has been doing the same job for many years but who, despite the experience they have gained, does not seem to have changed their way of working significantly.
This leads us to reflect on the fact that experience, on its own, does not always guarantee improvement. One can accumulate experience without changing one’s way of thinking and acting, to the point of running the risk of turning years of work into a mere repetition of established patterns.
So what can give our development a boost? One of the most important cognitive soft skills – yet one that is often overlooked – is metacognition, or ‘thinking about thinking’.
Metacognition, a concept developed in psychology following John Flavell’s studies in the 1970s, consists of the ability to observe and understand one’s own cognitive processes, to monitor them and to modify them intentionally. It allows a degree of distance to be created between an action and an automatic response, creating a space for reflection in which it becomes possible to question one’s own thinking.
