Self-Awareness for a “creative economy”: The biggest opportunity for business leaders today

September, 2012

“We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.” – Anais Nin

“The more you know, the more you realize you know nothing.” – Socrates

I recently watched a terrific TED talk with Kathryn Schulz about how most of us will do virtually anything to avoid being wrong. Schulz, the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, lays a case for not just admitting but embracing our fallibility.

Fear around being wrong tends to resonate with all of us and what’s fascinating is that wherever fear is present, a defense of the mind – self-deception – is also present. In our personal lives, self-deception can lead to divorce and job loss. In politics, it can lead to war. In the business world, it can tank companies or even the entire economy.

I’d like to focus on self-deception and explore why systematically overcoming it in organizations and in leaders may be the biggest business opportunity today. Evidently, I am not alone in holding this belief; Google’s “Search Inside Yourself” program seems to follow a similar logic, focusing on building capacity in mindfulness training and self-awareness.

From a business perspective, the big opportunity lies in being able to deal with the fact that self-deception is so widespread and costly. Consider the companies that have suffered financially or even collapsed because of a “big assumption” or “false belief” about how things work or should be. Think about all the leaders you have encountered who have refused to see clearly, no matter what information was presented that countered their beliefs. Few business leaders have the support or capacity – or are willing to take the perceived risk – of shining the light on their own blind spots, and businesses pay a huge price for this across all organizational elements.

The main challenge for leaders is the same as it is for everyone: overcoming the mother of all blind spots…thinking you don’t have any! I think this mind trap may be especially common for many business leaders due to the perception that they are, based on conventional terms of validation, already “successful.” Come to think of it, I haven’t met a single business leader – or person, for that matter – who doesn’t suffer from this fallacy to some degree (myself included!).

Again, the ramifications of this mind trap are immense. The more self-deceived an individual is, the more blurred their vision becomes, leading to increased levels of cynicism, blame-laying and self-victimization, burnout and ultimately to a dearth of innovation and creativity, without which you cannot survive in today’s “creative economy.” More than ever, we need business leaders who challenge beliefs about how things are and what is possible, and who can skillfully discern between limiting and growth-affirming beliefs. It is my prediction that the organizations with the most self-aware and behaviourally-effective leaders will be the big winners of tomorrow.

Seizing the opportunity – What can you do about it right now?

To transform to this new level of performance and learn to “see things as they really are,” you must build capacity in accurate self-assessment, including collecting and receiving objective feedback about yourself as a leader.

Here are a few things you can do to kick start your journey:

1. First, realize that no matter how sharp or successful you are, you simply don’t know everything and suffer from blind spots just like everyone else. Vigilantly pursue what you don’t know rather than look for evidence that confirms what you think you know, as this is how self-deception sustains itself.
2.  Look out for situations where you feel like an innocent victim. When you find one, look closely at the ways you may be adding to the problem and thus co-creating it.
3.  Seek outside perspectives through 360 feedback surveys and professional leadership coaching. Don’t accept being left with just a nice 360 report without coaching support to help you interpret the results and define a clear path forward. Without this, you are vulnerable to self-deceptive interpretation of the data. Blind spots by their very nature seek to remain blind!
4.  Practice mindfulness and meditation; the art and science of intentionally paying close attention to “yourself and the way things are” in the present moment in a detached (yet alert) and nonjudgmental way. Mindfulness and meditation practice builds self-awareness, a cornerstone in developing “emotional intelligence,” a crucial component of effective leadership.
5.  Write regularly in a journal. This will help you explore your beliefs in a more objective way.
6.  Observe and listen to others to help you understand them better. Chances are you will learn a lot about yourself and it will develop your ability to more skillfully handle the self-deceptive qualities of others.
7.  Read up about the human mind, common leadership fallacies and human misperceptions. Some great books include:

• Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan
• Conscious Business by Fred Kofman
• Leadership and Self-Deception by The Arbinger Institute
• Immunity To Change by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey