The Protege Effect

Fast Company's Drake Baer has a new column titled, "Why Teaching Makes You Smarter."   In the article, he draws upon a terrific blog post by Annie Murphy Paul about how people learn.  Paul writes about the so-called "protege effect" that has been discovered by teaching and learning researchers:

Students enlisted to tutor others, these researchers have found, work harder to understand the material, recall it more accurately and apply it more effectively. In a phenomenon that scientists have dubbed “the protégé effect,” student teachers score higher on tests than pupils who are learning only for their own sake. But how can children, still learning themselves, teach others? One answer: They can tutor younger kids. The benefits of this practice were indicated by a pair of articles published in 2007 in the journals Science and Intelligence. The studies concluded that first-born children are more intelligent than their later-born brothers and sisters and suggested that their higher IQs result from the time they spend showing their younger siblings the ropes.

Are there lessons here for business leaders?  Absolutely!   Mentoring, apprenticeship, and succession processes all involve the transmission of knowledge from expert to protege.  Most of the attention often focuses on the benefits to the recipient of this new knowledge.  This research demonstrates that a great deal of benefit exists for the expert as well.  They develop a better understanding of how to do their work by showing others the ropes.  I would argue that they can even become better leaders by reflecting on how they do their work, and helping to groom young future leaders of their organizations. 

The Protege Effect: Lessons for Leadership Development?

You often hear the adage, "The best way to learn something is to teach someone else... If you can teach someone about a subject, you really have to understand the material."  New research, described by Annie Murphy Paul in Time magazine, reinforces the accuracy of this nugget of wisdom.  Scholars have used a "teachable agent" - a computerized animated figure named "Betty's Brain" to examine what they call the "protege effect."   Betty's Brain behaves like a real-world student.  Children are encouraged to "tutor" Betty's Brain.  The studies find that, "Student teachers are motivated to help Betty master the material, so they study it more conscientiously. As they prepare to teach, they organize their knowledge, improving their own understanding and recall. And as they explain the information to her, they identify knots and gaps in their own thinking."  Moreover, scholars have found that, "The agent’s questions compel users to think and explain the material in different ways, and watching the agent solve problems allows users to see their knowledge put into action." 

Is there a lesson here for leadership development?  I believe so.   Leadership development professionals, professors, and consultants always struggle with how to get managers to actually change their behavior based on what they might learn in a classroom-type environment.   We might think about putting high-potentials in the role of teacher, not just the role of student.  If we put high-potentials in the role of mentoring and teaching new hires and other junior employees, then perhaps the high-potentials will learn new skills and capabilities more effectively.  Perhaps behavior will change more significantly and more quickly.