Cognitive Flexibility: When Experience Becomes a Barrier to Better Thinking
A manager walks into a discussion with a view already formed.
They listen to the team. They ask questions. They hear different perspectives. They may even encourage people to challenge them.
But somewhere underneath the conversation, the decision has already been made.
Not necessarily because the manager is unwilling to listen.
Perhaps because experience has taught them what usually works.
Perhaps because they have encountered similar situations before.
Or perhaps because, like most of us, once we form a reasonably convincing explanation of something, it becomes increasingly difficult to see the same situation differently.
This is an interesting leadership problem.
We often talk about whether managers listen, communicate, involve people in decisions or remain open to feedback. But underneath many of these behaviours sits a more fundamental capability:
Can I genuinely reconsider the way I am thinking about something?
Not merely listen to another perspective.
Not politely acknowledge it.
But allow it to alter how I understand the problem.
That ability is cognitive flexibility.
Cognitive flexibility is the ability to examine a situation from different perspectives, question our assumptions and update our thinking when new information or evidence demands it.
It does not mean constantly changing our minds.
It does not mean agreeing with everyone.
And it certainly does not mean being indecisive.
It means being able to hold a strong view without becoming so attached to it that we can no longer see another possibility.
And for managers today, that distinction is becoming increasingly important.
Experience can strengthen judgment. It can also harden it.
Experience gives managers something enormously valuable: pattern recognition.
They have seen similar problems before. They know what worked. They recognise warning signs faster than someone encountering a situation for the first time.
But there is a thin line between:
“I have seen this before.”
and
“I already know the answer.”
Cross that line often enough, and experience, one of a manager's greatest strengths, can quietly become a constraint.
Consider a manager reviewing a new approach proposed by a younger team member.
The manager has handled similar situations for fifteen years. The proposed approach contradicts what experience has taught them.
The immediate response might be:
“We've tried something similar before. It doesn't work.”
That may be true.
But cognitive flexibility introduces another possibility:
What if the environment in which it failed no longer exists?
Technology may have changed. Customers may have changed. The workforce may have changed. The available tools may have changed.
Sometimes experience gives us the answer.
Sometimes it gives us an old answer to a new problem.
The challenge is knowing which one we are dealing with.
A cognitively flexible manager therefore asks:
What am I assuming here?
What has changed since I formed this opinion?
What might this person be seeing that I am not?
And perhaps the most important question:
What evidence would make me update my position?
That question is powerful because good judgment isn't only about finding evidence that supports what we believe.
It is also about knowing what would convince us that our current belief is no longer the best one.
AI makes cognitive flexibility more important
AI has made it remarkably easy to research an argument, analyse information and generate evidence supporting a position.
That can improve thinking.
But it can also make us considerably better at defending what we already believe.
If I believe an approach will work, I can ask AI to find arguments supporting it. Someone who believes the opposite can do exactly the same. Both of us can arrive at the meeting armed with research, examples, reasoning and impressive-looking evidence.
The availability of information therefore doesn't automatically improve judgment.
Sometimes it simply makes our existing biases more sophisticated.
This is where AI presents leaders with an interesting choice.
We can use it to validate our thinking, or we can use it to challenge our thinking.
Instead of asking:
“Give me reasons why this approach will work.”
we can also ask:
“What assumptions am I making?”
“Build the strongest argument against my position.”
“Under what circumstances would this decision fail?”
“What perspective might I be overlooking?”
The same technology that can reinforce cognitive rigidity can also become a powerful tool for cognitive flexibility.
The difference lies in how we use it.
Updating your thinking is not the same as being wrong
Perhaps this is where cognitive flexibility becomes difficult for leaders.
Changing a position can feel like admitting that the earlier position was wrong.
So we defend decisions.
We rationalise them.
We search for supporting evidence.
We become increasingly invested in being consistent.
But there is another way to look at it.
A decision can be reasonable based on the information available at one point and still deserve to change when better information becomes available.
That isn't inconsistency.
It is updating.
A manager might say:
“Based on what I knew then, that decision made sense. Based on what we know now, I think we should reconsider it.”
There is considerable strength in being able to say that.
Because leadership credibility should not come from never changing your mind.
It should come from demonstrating that your decisions can withstand evidence.
Cognitive flexibility doesn't weaken decisiveness
There is also a danger of taking cognitive flexibility too far.
Managers cannot endlessly explore perspectives.
Eventually, someone has to decide.
Cognitive flexibility therefore isn't the opposite of decisiveness.
It improves what happens before the decision.
A cognitively rigid manager may hear different perspectives while primarily searching for reasons to defend the original position.
A cognitively flexible manager actively tests it.
They can say:
“This is what I currently believe. Now show me where it might fail.”
They listen.
They examine the evidence.
They update their position if necessary.
And then they decide.
That combination matters:
Open enough to reconsider. Clear enough to decide.
Perhaps expertise itself is changing
For a long time, expertise has been associated with knowing.
The expert knows the answer.
The experienced manager knows what works.
The leader provides direction.
Those things still matter.
But in environments where technology, information and ways of working change quickly, expertise may increasingly require another capability:
knowing when what we already know is no longer enough.
The strongest managers may therefore not be those who change their minds frequently.
Nor will they be those who stubbornly stand by every decision.
They will be the ones who know when to hold their position and when to update it.
Before an important decision, three questions may be worth asking:
What am I assuming?
What evidence would make me update my position?
Am I rejecting this because the evidence doesn't support it, or because it challenges what I already believe?
Cognitive flexibility ultimately asks something uncomfortable of every leader: Can I separate what I know from my need to be right?
In a world where knowledge is becoming easier to access, that may become one of the harder leadership capabilities to develop.
And one of the most valuable.
A question worth reflecting on:
When was the last time a conversation, a piece of evidence, or someone else's perspective genuinely changed your mind about something you were certain about?
And as a manager, what makes it easier, or harder, for you to reconsider what you already believe?
I’d love to hear how you’ve experienced this in your own leadership journey.
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