The environment around us is teaching us all the time | The people around us are constantly providing patterns for us to absorb | Global TV
NV Paulose, Chairman, Global TV +91 98441 82044
When we think about learning, we usually imagine a classroom. A teacher stands in front of students, explains something, and the students consciously listen, understand, and remember. We imagine learning as something deliberate. Someone teaches, someone learns, and at the end of the process, both know what has happened. But some of the most powerful learning in our lives does not happen this way. We learn from what people say, but also from how they behave. We learn from the stories our parents tell us, the decisions our teachers make, the way our leaders respond to difficult situations, and the values they demonstrate when nobody is watching. We may not understand the lesson at the time. We may not even remember the conversation. Yet something may remain inside us. Years later, we may discover that a sentence, a gesture, or a story from our childhood has quietly influenced the way we make decisions.
This is why I often think about my mentor. He was my mentor when I was in the seventh standard. At that age, I did not fully understand many of the things he told me about the establishment, management, conflicts, and values. But he repeatedly told me something that stayed with me: “I will never compromise on my values.” I did not know then that I was learning something that would influence my entire life. My conscious mind may not have understood the lesson, but something deeper was absorbing it. Years later, when my mentor complained that my progress was slower than it should have been, I told him, “If my progress is low, you are responsible.” He asked why. I reminded him that he had planted those values in me when I was a seventh-standard student. He had influenced me without asking my permission. And I was happy that he had.
There is a beautiful traditional story from the Mahabharata that gives us an extraordinary metaphor for this idea. Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna and Subhadra, is traditionally said to have heard his father explaining the Chakravyuha, the complex military formation used in the Kurukshetra war, while he was still in his mother’s womb. In the popular telling of the story, Arjuna explains how to enter the formation while Subhadra is listening. She eventually falls asleep before Arjuna explains how to come out, and therefore Abhimanyu is said to have learned how to enter but not how to exit. The story later becomes tragic when Abhimanyu enters the Chakravyuha during the war and becomes trapped inside it. The story is often repeated as an illustration of learning before birth. It should be treated as a traditional account rather than a settled historical or scientific claim, and versions of the story differ.
Yet whether we approach it as mythology, cultural wisdom or metaphor, there is a profound idea inside it: the environment around us is teaching us all the time. The people around us are constantly providing patterns for us to absorb. A child watches how a parent responds to failure and learns something about failure. A young employee watches how a manager treats a junior colleague and learns something about power. A student observes how a teacher responds when a student makes a mistake and learns whether mistakes are dangerous or whether they are opportunities to learn. Nobody may have delivered a formal lesson. Yet learning has taken place. The story of Abhimanyu reminds us to think beyond the classroom. Perhaps the question is not only, “What are we teaching?” Perhaps the more important question is, “What are people learning from being around us?”
This is where ideas associated with Neuro Linguistic Programming, or NLP, can provide an interesting conceptual lens, provided we are careful about what we claim. NLP is often described as an approach that pays attention to language, patterns of behaviour, perception and the way people construct their experience. Its presuppositions are not established scientific laws, but some of them can be useful as practical questions about communication and learning. One particularly useful way to think about this is through modelling. People often learn not only from instructions but from observing patterns. If a child repeatedly watches a parent respond to difficulty by saying, “This is impossible,” that child may begin to associate difficulty with helplessness. If the child instead hears, “This is difficult, but let us see what we can do,” a different possibility is being modelled. The same applies in organizations. If leaders respond to mistakes by searching for someone to blame, people learn to hide problems. If leaders respond by asking, “What can we learn from this?” people learn that speaking about problems is safer and more useful. Language matters because language frames experience.
The questions we repeatedly ask can influence what people notice. The labels we repeatedly use can influence how people see themselves. If we keep telling a young person, “You are careless,” we may gradually make carelessness part of the identity they carry. If we instead say, “You are capable of being responsible, and I want you to take ownership of this,” we are communicating a different expectation. This does not mean that words magically reprogram the brain, and we should be cautious about the stronger claims sometimes made in the name of NLP. The scientific evidence for NLP as a therapeutic intervention is limited. But the broader and much more defensible lesson remains important: the language and behaviour surrounding people can shape what they notice, what they expect and what they believe is possible.
This connects naturally with Appreciative Inquiry, which begins from a very different question from the one we often ask when something goes wrong. Instead of beginning with, “What is wrong with this person?” or “Why are these young people irresponsible?” Appreciative Inquiry encourages us to look for what is already working, what gives life to people and organizations, and what possibilities can be created from those strengths. This way of thinking is particularly powerful when working with young people. Consider the difference between telling a young person, “You are irresponsible,” and asking, “Tell me about a time when you took responsibility for something important.” The first statement gives the person an identity. The second invites them to remember evidence of their own capability.
The first closes the conversation. The second opens it. This is one reason I find the story of my daughters so meaningful. I could have continued to see them as the children who did not want to wake up early. But when they began working, they were ready at seven in the morning. They were waking up at five thirty or six because something had become meaningful and responsible to them. The question was not whether they were capable of discipline. They had demonstrated that they were. The question was whether the environment and responsibility had called that capability forward. Appreciative Inquiry asks us to notice these moments of strength and build from them. It shifts our attention from deficiency to possibility. It does not mean ignoring problems. It means refusing to define a person entirely by the problem. When we appreciate what is already working, we create a foundation on which something better can be built.
This is perhaps the responsibility of every parent, teacher, mentor and leader: to become conscious of the learning environment we create around other people. We are teaching even when we are not teaching. Our children are watching how we speak to people who cannot help us. Our employees are watching how we behave when something goes wrong. Our students are watching whether we respect questions. Young people are watching whether we practice the values we speak about. People learn from our reactions more powerfully than from our instructions. That is why my mentor’s words from seventh standard remained with me for so many years. He did not know exactly what would happen to those words. He simply lived by a principle and spoke about it. Somewhere along the way, that principle became part of me. Perhaps that is the deeper lesson behind the story of Abhimanyu too.
Whether or not we interpret the traditional account literally, it gives us a powerful image of learning beginning before conscious understanding. We may never know which of our words will remain in another person’s mind for twenty, thirty or forty years. We may never know which small gesture will become a turning point in someone’s life. We may never know which question will change the way a young person sees themselves. Therefore, we should be careful about what we repeatedly communicate. More importantly, we should deliberately communicate possibility. Instead of asking only, “What is wrong with you?” ask, “When have you done this well?” Instead of saying, “You cannot do this,” ask, “What would make this possible?” Instead of defining people by their weaknesses, help them discover their strengths. We are all leaving messages in the minds of people around us. Some will be forgotten. Some will remain. And some may become part of the person they eventually become. The unconscious mind may not announce that it is learning, but it is always listening. So the question is not whether we are teaching. The question is what we are teaching without realizing it.
