Do we learn helplessness or assume it?

Do you ever come across a theory that just doesn’t quite sit with your personal experience? How do you respond?

I’ve had my experience challenged recently about a principle of human psychology I’ve based some of my work on for a while and I’m not sure if it’s important or not.

Learned Helplessness

Many years ago I was introduced to a term and immediately I recognised it in some of the people around me. I was working in a large organisation where trying to implement change was described as “like turning an oil tanker”…it’s so slow you often feel like nothing is actually happening.

And many people assume it isn’t happening and, sometimes, worse than that, there’s no chance of it happening…so why bother?

I was introduced to the term "Learned Helplessness" which referred to the feeling of despondency that comes after trying a few times and being beaten by the system.

The term itself came from the 1960’s where psychologist Martin Seligman ran some experiments, notably with dogs, where he and his colleagues demonstrated that repeated exposure to unavoidable adverse events could lead animals to believe that they have no control over their situation. 

In these experiments, one group of dogs experienced inescapable shocks and subsequently failed to attempt escaping from shocks in a new context, even when escape was possible. This behaviour contrasted sharply with other dogs that had either controlled the shocks or not experienced them at all. The "helpless" dogs essentially just led down, whimpered and “gave up”.

They had learned that they were helpless.

Zombie Agilists

This “learned helplessness” is something I have come across in lots of places and definitely with a lot of agile teams, Scrum Masters and Product Owners. They effectively just give up on making any real change and just go through the motions of their work…

Given that I’ve just started watching the new series of The Walking Dead, the term Zombie Agilists pops in to my head.

If you've felt that no matter what you do, there's little chance of success because of the wider organisational constraints getting in the way, then there's a chance this has been creeping in to your world.

Am I assuming we learn it?

I said at the start of my post that my view has been challenged recently. Well, I was recently told that there was research to suggest that helplessness isn’t something we learn but rather our default starting point when faced with something challenging.

The theory of “assumed helplessness” posits that we start off in a state of helplessness and need proof that we are capable before we can shake off that state.

This challenge to my view of things was naturally met with a subconscious defensiveness - without thinking about it I thought “that’s not right”. But having just given a keynote talk at the Regional Scrum Gathering in Ghent about being more mindful and mitigating our cognitive biases, I challenged myself to explore this with a more open mind.

I did some research and from what I can gather both theories are true depending on our beliefs about ourselves. If we have limiting beliefs about our ability, or our confidence is low, then assumed helplessness is likely to be more of a factor.

Whereas if we are more confident or have managed to adopt a more positive or balanced view of our ability then we start off assuming we are capable until proven otherwise.

It made me think that our natural starting point is one of “I can do this”…the fact I have a five-year-old who thinks they can do almost anything leads me to believe that.

Yet after enough “failures” or situations where no matter what we do things turn out negative, it is easy to fall into a “I can’t do anything” mentality. My conclusion is that enough “learned helplessness” can lead to “assumed helplessness“.

Does it matter?

Well, regardless of whether we have learned that we are helpless or are starting from a position of assuming we are helpless, this isn’t a good place to be.

If we feel helpless then we won’t try, and if we do then we will give up easily and both optimism and pessimism are highly contagious so we will likely spread this feeling throughout our professional networks.

So either way we may find ourselves needing to rediscover our resilience.

Rediscovering our resilience

If you are feeling a little downtrodden by the system, there is good news. We have the ability to retrain our brains to be more resilient. Here are a few tips.

1. Recognise the signs

Look out for signs your resilience and enthusiasm is dropping. Notice your language...have you started using words like "things NEVER change" or "we ALWAYS get over-ruled"? Looking for the exceptions to the norm rather than focusing on the trends can make a big change.

2. Reframe your interpretation

If you find yourself noticing the gap between where you want things to be and where you are, try shifting to the focus to how far you've come. If you were to score your situation out of 10 where zero is absolutely no hope and 10 is things are perfect, would you score zero or perhaps a 2?

While a 2 is still a low score, it’s not zero and that can sometimes be worth reminding ourselves of.

Also, if you find yourself judging the situation as either good or bad, try my favourite mantra "it's not good; it's not bad...it's interesting".

3. Reclaim control

Instead of focusing on the inevitable factors that we cannot control, bring your focus back to what you can control and challenge your limiting assumptions about what might be possible.

3. Set realistic goals

Expecting wholesale changes in the organisational policies, processes and culture is a sure-fire way to disappointment. We only need to make things better in small increments; it's amazing how quickly these things can add up.

4. Check your network

Surround yourself with more positive people either inside of work or outside. Set aside time to reset, re-energise and go again. Make sure you create the conditions to restore your resilience.

5. Reward the small wins

Make sure you take time out to internalise and externalise the examples where progress has been made.

If you would like some help with this then let me know. I can help with 1-2-1 coaching, a talk, a workshop or some coaching for your team or you can just drop me an email to vent about your situation…

Have a great week

P.S. I’ve going to be starting a brand new 12-month cohort in the Autumn where you will have 26 sessions with me over the course of a year. It doesn’t matter whether you are a Scrum Master, Product Owner, Agile Coach, Agile Delivery Manager or whatever…

Not only will you get some great skills development but you can get a set personalised 1-2-1 sessions with me to go through whatever is going on for you.

Places will be limited so let me know if you’re interested.