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We are creatures of habit, yet we are not usually aware of this characteristic. There is a sense of comfort in choosing what is familiar to us even if it is not exactly what we want or need. Our habits are deeply ingrained and have taken time to perfect. They create the horizons we have before us. We should congratulate ourselves on being able to develop them so well. At the same time, we should not rest on our laurels of success because what works in one situation does not always carry over to others. What we need is agility to be able to change direction if a different approach will serve us better than our old tried and true approaches. In order to feel better prepared to do this it would be helpful to have a procedure to follow to walk us through these changes. We need agility to be able to shift our horizons as needed.
One way of developing these skills of “horizon shifting” is to practice taking different perspectives on a particular topic. There are two approaches that come to mind that may be helpful in developing this agility.
1. Constructive Controversy, developed by Johnson and Johnson, takes the concept and practice of debate two steps further. In addition to developing an argument to be pro or con on a particular subject, you then switch sides to argue the opposite of what you initially supported. After both sides argue pro and con, they come together to see what they can both agree on and this requires flexibility of thinking. The collaborative outcomes are more suitable than one of the sides, especially in addressing dilemmas where too much of one side will create more problems.
2. Lateral Thinking, developed by Edward de Bono, involves taking on six different hats to identify facts, benefits, judgment, intuition, creativity and the overall thinking process. Investing yourself completely into one hat perspective at-a-time allows for a deeper dive into that point of view. After going through all six hats, we have a much richer take on a subject than we would have if we limited ourselves to our horizon of habit.
The broader our perspective taking, the more points of view we can entertain and the more likely we are to select one that is more suitable to us. It is almost like there is more precision in how we are choosing what to believe or how to act. If as the old adage says, “If the only tool you have is a hammer then..." everything gets taken care of with that hammer. Instead, if we had other tools then we could decide if it is a wrench or perhaps a screwdriver that is more suited to the task at hand. Barnett Pearce writes that “Horizons are ratios or relationships between what we can and cannot see...horizons are relationships that shift depending on the perspective from which one looks and the context in which one sees.”
Maybe if we take a step back today, we will be able to see the limitations of our horizons and work on expanding them.
References
De Bono, E. (2010). Lateral thinking: Creativity step by step. New York, NY: Harper Collins.
Johnson, D. W. and Johnson, R. T. (2014). Constructive controversy: The value of intellectual opposition. In P. T. Coleman, M. Deutsch and E. C. Marcus (Eds.). The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice, 3rd edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Pearce. W. B. (2014). At home in the universe with miracles and horizons: Reflections on personal and social evolution. In S. W. Littlejohn and S. McNamee (Eds.). The coordinated management of meaning: A festschrift in honor of W. Barnett Pearce. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
