Leadership: Awakening your Best Self

Actually, it is about being fully human. Which means remembering that we are subject to the laws of the Animal Kingdom...........that's right! Before you are a CEO, a Lawyer, Engineer, Manager, Entrepreneur, Consultant or Coach; before you are a man or a woman, a graduate or a teacher, a singer, actor a spouse, friend, partner; mentor; member of any group.....You are part of the Animal Kingdom. This is FACT (no alternative facts here). Here's why:

Among the 'laws' that govern our behaviour is our survival instinct. The chemicals that fire in the body of all mammals (adrenalin, cortisol for example) when we perceive threat. This happens automatically and unconsciously and when adrenalin fires, we immediately react to protect our very existence. Fight, Flight or Freeze - basic behavioural reactions to ensure our survival (and to avoid discomfort).

But somehow, we keep reacting to change as though it were danger - so the adrenalin fires and our work life is immersed in adrenalin fuelled reaction. Consciously or unconsciously, we are at the mercy of our adrenalin (linked to anxiety) and our equilibrium is upset. This does not make for best decision-making. "In the presence of agitated emotion, thinking is impaired" (ref. Gonzalez and Moliné: Follow this Path)

Recognising Our Biases

Centre for Action and Contemplation (CAC) faculty member, Brian McLaren has done thoughtful and helpful research about what makes us see things so differently from one another. He identified thirteen biases that we outline today. He writes:

People can't see what they can’t see. Their biases get in the way, surrounding them like a high wall, trapping them in ignorance, deception, and illusion. No amount of reasoning and argument will get through to them, unless we first learn how to break down the walls of bias. . . .

Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit.

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth.

Community Bias: It’s almost impossible to see what our community doesn’t, can’t, or won’t see.

Complementarity Bias: If you are hostile to my ideas, I’ll be hostile to yours. If you are curious and respectful toward my ideas, I’ll respond in kind.

Competency Bias: We don’t know how much (or little) we know because we don’t know how much (or little) others know. In other words, incompetent people assume that most other people are about as incompetent as they are. As a result, they underestimate their [own] incompetence, and consider themselves at least of average competence.

Consciousness Bias: Some things simply can’t be seen from where I am right now. But if I keep growing, maturing, and developing, someday I will be able to see what is now inaccessible to me.

Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed.

Conservative/Liberal Bias: I lean toward nurturing fairness and kindness, or towards strictly enforcing purity, loyalty, liberty, and authority, as an expression of my political identity.

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth.

Catastrophe or Normalcy Bias: I remember dramatic catastrophes but don’t notice gradual decline (or improvement).

Contact Bias: When I don’t have intense and sustained personal contact with “the other,” my prejudices and false assumptions go unchallenged.

Cash Bias: It’s hard for me to see something when my way of making a living requires me not to see it.

Conspiracy Bias: Under stress or shame, our brains are attracted to stories that relieve us, exonerate us, or portray us as innocent victims of malicious conspirators. [1]

Richard Rohr - founder of the CAC comments: "I don’t know any other way to be free of all these biases except through the contemplative mind. I see almost every one of them within myself–at least at some point in my life. I also believe there are enough good-willed people out there who, if presented with a list of these biases, have the freedom to investigate, “How can I let go of that? How can I move beyond that?” [2]”. 

[1] Brian McLaren, Why Don’t They Get It? Overcoming Bias in Others (and Yourself)(Self-published: 2019), e-book.

[2] Adapted from Brian McLaren, Jacqui Lewis, with Richard Rohr, “Why Can’t We See?,” October 5, 2020, in Learning How to See, episode 1 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2020), podcast, MP3 audio.