The Art of Making Distinctions: The Navigator’s Lens

Jonathan Reams

The “Big Idea” Summary

Big leadership concepts are often taken in by the brain as fuzzy abstractions that hide the path forward; by making more granular distinctions, we clear the fog and create a map detailed enough for our “will” to navigate.

In the last essay, we talked about finding the “will”—that shifts from a socialized “I should” to an intentional, energized “I will.” We established a compass heading. We know where we want to go.

Imagine a captain, setting out to sea, with a willful determination to cross the Atlantic. They have passion and the vessel, but when they look at the night sky, they see ‘stars’ but don’t have knowledge of constellations to tell the North Star from the Andromeda galaxy or a wandering planet.

During the day, they can see the sun (hopefully) and the horizon. To find direction, just eyeballing it will be hit and miss. They need a sextant—a tool that allows them to take that big, abstract chunk of light and turn it into a granular, mathematical point of orientation. A captain navigating across the open ocean is a type of bricoleur, learning to use whatever tools are at hand to make their way through the challenges the open sea brings.

Without knowledge of constellations or a sextant, their will to cross the Atlantic is hampered, as they are sailing blind. Without these distinctions, the brain’s prediction engine is starved of data. It cannot detect a prediction error because the ‘map’ for taking action is too low-resolution to ever be proven wrong. We aren’t just looking for stars; we are looking for the leverage that comes from high-fidelity sight.

This is the problem we face with most leadership development. The ‘conduit model’ we discussed earlier implicitly encourages us to set goals that are big “chunks.” Chunking is a brilliant efficiency mechanism of the brain. To save energy, the brain groups complex sequences of actions into a single, smooth unit. When you first learn to tie your shoes, you slowly concentrate on the details of each step. You make a loop, then swoop, and then pull. As each step becomes automatic, you just think “tie shoes.” It becomes one chunk.

But when we want to learn some new concept, chunking can work against us. For example, a leadership concept like providing psychological safety comes from experts who have built up a robust understanding of the term over a long time. They have a rich and nuanced meaning to the chunked concept.

Then, when we first hear about it, it sounds great! Just what we need to solve our problems. Then we try to put it into action and quickly find ourselves lost at sea.

A term for this I have noted in an earlier essay is ‘downward assimilation.’ It explains the need for granularity. A highly chunked concept comes with a rich web of components that make it up. We can’t take it all in at first. To get started, we make connections to what we already know, or ‘assimilate’ it into our existing knowledge and skills. However, in doing this, we inevitably filter out components that are less familiar. At the same time, we don’t have the means to assess if what we already know is aligned with the concept. We also don’t know if what we leave out is central or peripheral to it. Often, we don’t even notice that we have left anything out.

Downward assimilation is like looking at the sun and saying, ‘It’s just a yellow circle.’ You’ve simplified it to fit your current view. Making distinctions is the act of refusing that type of simplified assimilation. We can use a sextant to enable ourselves to see the exact ‘arc’ of the sun—or to see that ‘psychological safety’ isn’t just a vague feeling. It is a specific set of sub-skills, like the art of the pause or the signal of vulnerability. We are accommodating the parts we accidentally filtered out, expanding the rich web of how we understand the skill.

In summary, to turn our “will” into action, we need to break down the skill. We need granularity. We need to make distinctions.

Now that we’ve identified downward assimilation, how can we use suggestive lists to prompt curiosity, exploration and experimentation? Our current approach is to not just give people a definition; we give them a palette of distinctions to see which one ‘resonates’ with their current Goldilocks Zone. This is where the ‘art of making distinctions’ becomes a collaborative inquiry.

The Tuning Fork of Perception

Step 2 of the Learning Loop is about fine tuning your attention. It is about taking that big, fuzzy goal (even though we already worked on refining it in step 1) and looking at it through a navigator’s lens—a magnifying glass that reveals the granularity in the map.

At Adeptify, we approach this process in two main ways.

1. Tuning into the Implicit (recognizing what you already do)

First, we use the tuning fork to resonate with what is already happening in your experience. Often, you possess sub-skills that you take for granted, or conversely, you have reactive habits that are so automatic you don’t notice them.

For example, if your goal is “to be a better listener,” we might ask you to tune into the somatic sensation of feeling the urge to interrupt. Do you notice a tight feeling in your chest, or your hands in a clenched fist? That is a distinction. Once you can notice and name it, you can work with it. It stops being “I’m a bad listener” and becomes “I am noticing the urge to interrupt.”

2. Tuning into the Explicit (New Variations)

Second, we introduce new distinctions to help you see variations of an experience you didn’t know existed. For instance, we might take the work of Karen Horney to help you understand different reactive tendencies. Her distinctions: moving toward (complying), moving against (controlling), or moving away (protecting) have been tremendously helpful to hundreds of students and clients I’ve worked with. While they provide a new level of granularity, the process often goes one or two layers of specificity deeper.

Another example is if you are working on communication and have refined the learning goal to asking good questions, we might distinguish between types of clarifying questions (seeking understanding) and opinion questions (disguised advice). Suddenly, “communication” isn’t just a blob. It is a menu of specific choices.

Finding the Goldilocks Zone

Why do we go to this level of detail? Because we are helping you find your Goldilocks Zone.

In developmental psychology, this is often called the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). It is the sweet spot where a task is challenging enough to engage us, but not so overwhelming that it triggers our defenses, activating our vulnerability factors and making us armored up.

If you read a piece in HBR, Forbes or hear a podcast that convinces you that you need to focus on creating psychological safety for your team, that’s great. It is truly important. Yet it also requires building a lot of subskills, some of which you may already have to a degree, some of which you might not. The list of 5-10 key points given in such an article to make it happen are themselves highly chunked.

The likelihood is that you need to do it quickly, as there are urgent issues to solve. Then you will inevitably downwardly assimilate the concept, the list of helpful points and in the end, feel it was just another fad that didn’t have traction.

But when we use the navigator’s lens to find a specific sub-skill—like ‘notice when I ask a question that is actually a statement in disguise’—the sea change happens. This isn’t just a ‘tip’; it is a high-resolution coordinate. By slicing the goal this thin, we ensure it sits firmly in the Goldilocks Zone. It creates a signal so sharp that the brain’s prediction engine cannot help but notice when you drift off course. You are no longer trying to ‘be’ safe; you are practicing the specific, granular mechanics of safety. This is how we move from a vague hope of improvement to the precision required for actual transformation.

Scaffolding the Invisible

This process of making distinctions requires scaffolding. It is hard to see what you haven’t seen before; your brain is literally wired to filter out what doesn’t fit your existing “chunks.”

In our programs, we provide “suggestive lists” of distinctions. Think of these as the constellation charts for the navigator. They aren’t multiple-choice answers where you pick the “right” one; they are prompts designed to activate your inner balcony—your metacognitive ability to look at your thinking rather than through it.

When you read a list of potential distinctions—e.g., “Am I listening to fix? Am I listening to win? Am I listening to learn?”—you are essentially cleaning your navigator lens. You are not just picking a category; you are waking up your powers of observation. You are stepping out of your habituated prediction model (which assumes you are just “listening”) and opening yourself up to notice prediction errors. You might realize, “Oh! I thought I was listening, but the list helped me see I was actually preparing my rebuttal”.

That realization is the spark of development—the moment where the lens snaps into focus, the territory becomes clearer and the next step is obvious.

The Practical “How-To”: Breaking the Chunk

So, how do we apply this? We take the “will” (the goal) and we look for the building blocks. Let’s say your goal is: “I will create more psychological safety in my team meetings”.

That is a noble will, but it is still a big chunk. To find your Goldilocks Zone, you must use your navigator lens to find the sub-skills you can experiment with. For example:

Distinction 1 (Somatic Signaling): Am I leaning in (maybe creating pressure) or leaning back (creating space)?
Distinction 2 (The Temporal Map): How long do I wait after asking a question? Can I distinguish between a “pause” (brief) and “silence” (spacious)?
Distinction 3 (The Linguistic Pivot): When someone brings bad news, do I respond with “judgment” (Why did that happen?) or “curiosity” (What can we learn?)?

Now, instead of walking into a meeting trying to “create psychological safety” you walk in looking for one specific coordinate: “I will notice my lean-in” or “I will count to three after I ask a question.”

From Map to Territory

We have set the compass (the goal). We have used the navigator’s lens to draw a detailed map of the immediate terrain (distinctions). We have cleared the “fuzzy signals” enough to see the first step.

But a map is not the territory. To learn, we have to step out of the planning phase and into the messy reality of action. We must test our map against the world.

In our next essay, we will explore Step 3: Experimentation, or Inquiry-in-Action. We will look at how to turn these granular distinctions into “Skill Adventures”—low-stakes experiments that allow us to fail fast, learn slowly and thoroughly, and build capacity without triggering our vulnerability factors.

The Reflection Loop

De-Chunking: Take a skill you think you are “good” at. Can you break it down into three smaller sub-skills? What are the tiny micro-actions that make up that larger competence?
The Navigator’s Audit: Think of a recent interaction that felt “off.” If you were to look through a lens at your internal state, what specific distinction can you name? Was it a physical sensation? A reactive habit (Moving Toward, Against, or Away)?
The Goldilocks Check: Look at your learning goal from the previous essay. Is it small enough to practice in a 5-minute conversation? If not, make a distinction to slice it thinner until the signal is high-fidelity.