More data is available to more people, more quickly than ever. For leaders, this is a good thing… or not.
When I was young, my Grandma ran a small neighborhood grocery store. I delivered bags of groceries to the local “shut-ins” in my Radio Flyer. She had been a schoolteacher and was intent on me being smart. One of Grandma’s many missions in her tireless efforts to make me a smart and good citizen was to correct me every time I used binary (polarizing, black or white) thinking. She was simple, but consistent: “Randy, when you say ‘always’ or ‘never’, chances are you are wrong.” It was unlikely for an eight-year-old to learn about cognitive errors, but I did.
People who study such things say there are between 10-15 common cognitive errors that cause us to give inaccurate meaning to things, and to trick our minds in to thinking something is true and accurate when it is not. These are the ones that I see most commonly, in working with leaders:
- Filtering – Magnifying the negative while filtering out the positive. Whether it’s people or process, leaders look for ways to constantly improve.
- Fallacy of Change – We expect that other people will change to suit us if we just pressure or cajole them enough. We need to change people because our hopes for happiness seem to depend entirely on them.
- Blaming – We are always right. If everyone else is an idiot, it is time to take a look in the mirror.
- Fallacy of Fairness – Reality is persistently filtered through an individual’s personal definition of fairness that is distorted by whether things worked to their benefit or not.
- Over generalization – Younger generations are lazy, entitled slackers.
- Jumping to Conclusions – Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Get the facts before forming an opinion, even if – no – especially if the person in question is one whom you do not think well of.
- Minimizing and Maximizing – Minimize our success, maximize our failure. Minimizing others input while maximizing the benefit and rightness of our own.
As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
The leader who has no self-awareness or command of their filters misses what is obvious to others. Undesirable results are the common outcome. I’m the Outsider and that’s what I think.
