âThere are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?”
And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes: “What the hell is water?
As David Foster Wallace beautifully elucidated in his 2005 commencement speech, our understanding of the world is limited by the mental frameworks we use to process it. We donât question them because we donât even recognise that they exist.
So if youâve ever wondered why, despite many conversations, a high-performing team member
- âŠexecutes tasks perfectly but never takes initiative
- âŠis great at problem-solving but canât seem to recognise patterns that would prevent issues in the first place
- âŠwaits to be told what to do next rather than stepping back to assess what needs to be done
âŠitâs because youâre talking to them about the fish bowl and they canât even see the water.
Letâs tease out this distinction a bit using a common example from work.
A junior team member ticks tasks off a list and waits for instruction. They see executing tasks on the list as the end in and of itself. Theyâre about doing things right.
A senior leader understands why those tasks are on the list, they are a means to an end, and can identify new or better tasks that achieve the end goal. Theyâre about doing the right things.
Helping a fish âsee the waterâ is what I believe is at the heart of most, if not all, significant development challenges.
However, most people assume that the gap between junior and senior thinking is a skills gap. Itâs not.
If it were just about knowledge or skill, it would be easy to fix – you could explain the missing piece, and theyâd get it.
But theyâre not struggling because they lack information – and itâs not because they arenât capable – theyâre struggling because theyâre operating with a different mental framework.
To coach someone from following to leading, from execution to strategy, from problem-solving to problem-framing; youâre not teaching them new behaviours.
You have to help them see reality differently.
You have to facilitate what we callâŠ
MINDSET SHIFTS
Letâs break down what we mean by mindset shifts and mental frameworks.
Imagine trying to explain a 3D object to someone who has only ever seen in 2D.
You ask them to draw a cube but they can only draw a square. You show them a sphere, but they can only see a circle.
This is exactly what happens when you ask someone to âthink more strategicallyâ or âtake ownership.â
The difference between a junior and senior thinker isn’t about intelligence or effort – it’s about their mental model. We need to help them move from 2D to 3D.
We find it useful to divide thinking into two types:
- Lower Order Thinking (LOT) â Thinking in terms of execution, certainty, and immediacy.
- Higher Order Thinking (HOT) â Thinking in terms of strategy, ambiguity, and systems.
Someone operating in LOT sees the surface level – just like the fish that doesn’t recognise the water.
Someone operating in HOT sees the underlying structures, trade-offs, and patterns that shape decisions – they can see the whole fish bowl.
Both levels can be valuable so the language of ‘lower’ isn’t lesser – it simply draws a distinction between the levels of thinking.
Let’s look at a few ways this can show up in team members.
COACHING MINDSET SHIFTS
So we’ve identified the challenge. It’s not a skills gap and it’s not a knowledge gap. We need to help people move from 2D to 3D, to develop new mental models.
But how do we do that?
In our work we use two approaches in tandem to coach Mindset Shifts, helping people move from LOT to HOT.
The Translation Technique
As we explored earlier, you cannot simply ask someone to think strategically if they haven’t developed the appropriate mental model.
This technique helps by embedding new thinking into their existing framework. Through structured prompts and repetition, eventually they start to shift and develop a new mental model.
Here’s how it works:
- Identify their current way of thinking
- Translate the new concept into their existing language
- Reinforce until it becomes habitual
Let’s take the example from earlier: a junior team member is great at ticking things off a list but doesn’t take the initiative.
We want them to think strategically and take the lead but we’ve identified that their current framework is more executional and following.
We know they’re great with lists so we’ll translate higher order thinking into lower order tasks.
On every to-do list they create we will ask them to:
- Add a task before everything else that says “Identify how each task below will achieve the goal” to encourage strategic thinking.
- And a final task after everything that says “Identify what else I could do or who I could help” to encourage taking the initiative.
We don’t overwhelm them with abstraction, but instead integrate new thinking into familiar structures, building habits that eventually shift mindsets.
The Mental Mirror
Another effective way to train a mindset shift is through coaching questions that help people see the limits of their current model. People need to arrive at the realisation themselves and this technique helps expose gaps, create tension and guide them to a new mental model.
Here’s how it works:
- Reveal gaps through coaching questions
- Create a tension point
- Guide them to a new frame
During a 121 you might ask that same team member some carefully selected questions that require them to reflect on their work through a HOT frame.
We use the new language to encourage them to think in this way. e.g.
âWhy do you think these tasks were chosen?â or âWhat were they meant to achieve?â
Instead of telling them what’s missing, ask questions that reveal complexity, creating some tension with their current framework.
âIf you had to design this from scratch, would you have chosen the same tasks?â âIf the goal had changed, how would you have adjusted your approach?â âIf we removed one of these tasks, what impact would that have?
Now that they see the gap, help them embed this shift into their future work. Ask them to reflect on the process: can they see the distinction? What would they do differently next time? How will they know when they’re in this type of situation again?
Liz Danvers played by Jodie Foster does a great job of this in True Detective, constantly encouraging her junior officer to keep asking the right questions. (Other than this she is a pretty shit boss so don’t take this as our endorsement of her as a role modelâŠ)
For most of the important developmental challenges your teams will face, it’s not skills gap and it’s not a knowledge gap that is holding them back.
It’s about developing new mental models.
And once they do, they’ll never see their work or the world the same way again.