Behavioural Change: What Corporate Training Desires and What Experience Transfer Inspires
Investment in Critical Thinking Practice Leads to Behaviour Change

Stories Over Fear
- Critical Thinking Practice Leads to Behavioural Change
- Stories Over Fear
- Ideas for Behavioural Change
- Experience Transfer Can Trigger a Desire to Change
- The Haunting Power of Loss
- Workplace Belief Systems Can Save Lives
- Experience Transfer Can Help People Gain Insight
- Case Study: Peter’s Story
- Shifting People’s Paradigms
- An Experience Transfer Solution
- Conclusion
- Author: Hayley Silberg, M.Sc, P.Eng, P.Geo
Case Study:
A young geologist causes an explosion, nearly ending his own life. How can we transfer his experience and lesson learned to others in a way that inspires behavioural change and prevents similar incidents?
- Critical Thinking Practice Leads to Behavioural Change
- Stories Over Fear
- Ideas for Behavioural Change
- Experience Transfer Can Trigger a Desire to Change
- The Haunting Power of Loss
- Workplace Belief Systems Can Save Lives
- Experience Transfer Can Help People Gain Insight
- Case Study: Peter’s Story
- Shifting People’s Paradigms
- An Experience Transfer Solution
- Conclusion
- Author: Hayley Silberg, M.Sc, P.Eng, P.Geo
Case Study:
A young geologist causes an explosion, nearly ending his own life. How can we transfer his experience and lesson learned to others in a way that inspires behavioural change and prevents similar incidents?
Ideas for Behavioural Change
- Make people want to change, according to psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz,
- Help people gain insight, with research from psychologist Dr. Gary Klein, and
- Shift a paradigm, according to philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn.

Experience Transfer Can Trigger a Desire to Change

The Haunting Power of Loss
A haunting experience contradicts the beliefs that our brains have carefully created to protect ourselves from loss.
Workplace Belief Systems Can Save Lives
Experience Transfer Can Help People Gain Insight

- Connections are the difference between knowledge and experience. Every new experience allows us to connect the dots further to other situations in our lives.
- Coincidences train us to become detectives, hunting for clues to predict the outcome. Our brains operate by recognizing patterns from prior experiences.
- Curiosities lead us to question what we know. They encourage us to have an open mind, but also a cynical mind.
- Nothing makes us more curious than contradictions. Contradictions help learners make our own discoveries, instead of telling us how to think. Letting us see the contradictions associated with our mistaken beliefs allows us to test out a new belief system.
- Finally, creative desperation from a total impasse leads to unique insights. When you sit in a classroom or click through an online course, you are learning.
But the information does not become real insight unless you were exposed to the strategies described above. If you needed to learn about natural gas safety, a voice talking over a slide deck would not change your behaviour. But story-based experience transfer just might…
Experience Transfer Can Help People Gain Insight

- Connections are the difference between knowledge and experience. Every new experience allows us to connect the dots further to other situations in our lives.
- Coincidences train us to become detectives, hunting for clues to predict the outcome. Our brains operate by recognizing patterns from prior experiences.
- Curiosities lead us to question what we know. They encourage us to have an open mind, but also a cynical mind.
- Nothing makes us more curious than contradictions. Contradictions help learners make our own discoveries, instead of telling us how to think. Letting us see the contradictions associated with our mistaken beliefs allows us to test out a new belief system.
- Finally, creative desperation from a total impasse leads to unique insights. When you sit in a classroom or click through an online course, you are learning.
But the information does not become real insight unless you were exposed to the strategies described above. If you needed to learn about natural gas safety, a voice talking over a slide deck would not change your behaviour. But story-based experience transfer just might…
Case Study: Peter’s Story
What would you do in that situation? Make a connection to Peter by picturing your best friend or spouse or sibling. What if it was their birthday?
Are you curious about what happens next? Would you go if you got that phone call? Or would you let a colleague go? What if the client asked for you specifically, and you wanted to selfishly protect the relationship?
What creative solution does he land on, arising from desperation and overconfidence? What do you predict?
What insight have you gained from that story? How does it make you feel about igniting a spark around your furnace or your gas fireplace? If participating in that story has shifted your personal worldview, then it has also changed your future behaviour.
Shifting People’s Paradigms
The opportunity for change happens after a crisis – it happens the first time a cyclist tries to go straight alongside your passenger door and you turn into their path and knock them to the ground. After that experience, your new turning-right paradigm includes a right-side shoulder check for cyclists. Kuhn says that when a crisis happens, people begin to see that their current paradigm isn’t working. They open their minds and slowly begin to gather new observations, which, in turn, help to shape a new paradigm. After a truck driver tips sidewards into a ditch, the other drives are more careful for a few days. But without any reinforcement, they revert to their old paradigm. After an engineer makes a terrible mistake, there is an improvement in quality control for a while. But if the reviews are not catching errors frequently, people forget how important these checks are.
An Experience Transfer Solution
- People need to feel haunted by loss in order to change.
- People need connection, curiosity and/or contradiction to gain insight.
- Paradigms can be shifted by frequent crises that contradict previous paradigms.

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