4E Cognition as the Cutting Edge of Leadership
Check out the video I created on 4E Cognition and Leadership here: https://www.jessekaten.com/videos/v/jesse-katen-4e-cognition-part-1-what-is-4e-cognition
It may be a daring statement to claim I know where the future of leadership is headed, but I would venture that the more you consider the questions raised by 4E cognition theory, the more you’ll see that this way of thinking will indeed grow in prominence. After all, it offers us mind-blowing new ways to think about thinking. It offers us novel possibilities for understanding how humans, human systems, non-human systems, and human/non-human systems create and grow themselves. It points out all the instances in which Western culture has for centuries got it wrong, neglecting all the ways in which nature itself can teach us about evolution, innovation, and limitless growth. It’s no exaggeration to say that we have so much to gain by becoming better students of how nature creates its own systems and prompts all its facets toward expansive complexity. Indeed, all of our fields, industries, and workplaces seem committed to growth, improvement, and expansion. Why not learn from the true expert—the very nature of reality?
“In many ways, all of the four E’s that I summarized bear directly relevance to leadership. With more comprehensive understandings of how both humans and systems function in and with and through their environment(s), we can create better and more brilliant workplaces. Or, rather, we can allow them to brilliantly create themselves. ”
4E cognition is not one set theory. Rather, it is a vast and dynamic terrain of ideas and questions that all, in their own unique and diverse ways, center around rather ground-breaking ways of thinking that challenge the long-held notion that cognition is a process limited to the human brain. Drawing on conversations within and between fields such as cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, biological systems theory, cybernetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind, 4E cognition theories challenge what we have assumed was common sensical about how we—put simply—figure things out.
Since leaders are always in the process of figuring things out (for themselves, for others, and for their organizations), I feel that those who study and develop leaders haven’t adequately explored the exciting new possibilities opened by this brilliant new line of inquiry. Insights emerging from 4E conversations threaten to revolutionize how we envision many aspects of our society, with relevant impacts affecting education, healthcare, human services, industry, science, technology, business, and hopefully, even government. As we watch these impacts transpire, leaders need to embrace the radical and fundamental shifts we will see in how we think about and within the environments in which humans and their systems need to not only function, but to grow themselves.
Make it stand out
4E cognition theories challenge what we have assumed was common sensical about how we—put simply—figure things out.
Allow me to briefly and inadequately summarize the four E’s. A 4E approach sees cognition as a process that is:
Embodied
A brain needs a body. None of us knows what it’s like to have a brain without a body. What gets lost if we consider a brain as separate and apart from the body in which it functions and with which it interacts? How do bodily states affect brain states and vice versa?
Embedded
We are always existing within, and interacting with, an environment. We don’t know what it’s like to live outside of an environment. We are constantly reacting to, and also shaping, our context. What are the ways in which environment and context affect our cognition and behaviors? Are we really ever unaffecting or unaffected by whatever is around us?
Extended
The environments in which we find ourselves include things and others with which we interact as part of our processes of figuring things out and getting our needs met. We find tools and instruments like calculators, calendars, computers, watches, phones (especially our phones!), etc. indispensable to our functioning. What are the ways in which we offload our cognition to external “things?” Is “mind” really limited to the brain when we need to use things outside the body?
Enactive
This one is my favorite to think about. We do not make sense of our world by sitting back—both unaffectED and unaffectING—and passively taking it in. Rather, we actively move about, explore, engage with, and change our environments in order to understand both them and ourselves.
Some theorists have argued for the inclusion of additional E’s. For example, “ecological” would make a lot of sense since cognition is something that happens within and through the interactions of facets within a given environment. I also think that “emergent” is an important concept in the sense that in the interactions between facets, discrete new systems are brought about (to the extent that any system is discrete).
In many ways, all of the four E’s that I summarized bear direct relevance to leadership. With more comprehensive understandings of how both humans and systems function in and with and through their environment(s), we can create better and more brilliant workplaces. Or, rather, we can allow them to brilliantly create themselves.
Next, I will address specifically how traditional (non-4E, or, as I like to say “Zero E”) understandings of cognition pervade our workplaces and preclude the positive development of individual humans, work environments, and industrial improvement and innovation.
Although these ideas may be seem difficult to apprehend at first, the insights that they enable can radically and positively transform how we work. Consequently, leaders who can navigate their environments with 4E awareness position themselves to be brilliantly more effective and transformative.