Questioning unquestioned habits of mind how executives learn new approaches to familiar situations through transformative learning

Yonsei University This study explores how affective and cognitive experiences in an executive MBA (EMBA) course facilitate executives' transformative learning. Using data collected from in-depth interviews with 35 executive learners who took a transformative learning -oriented course, we found four affective experiences-feeling respected, safe, excited, and energized-interacting with two cognitive processes-self-learning and peer learning- culminating in transformation-inducing momentum. This momentum involved cognitively realizing the limits of their habit of mind and feeling ashamed by its limits yet feeling courageous about transforming it. The theoretical model derived from this inductive study demonstrates how executives can resolve the dilemma of transforming their habits of mind when an educator provides an arena in which they can learn about others' varying habits of mind, critically reflect on their own habit of mind, and develop the shame and courage to challenge it. Executives who reached this transformation-inducing momentum interpreted familiar situations with a different habit of mind or enacted a new habit of mind. The findings on the interplay of cognitive and affective experiences leading to these accomplishments of transformative learning contribute to management learning and education literature by illuminating the role of affect in the transformative-learning building process.