When being right becomes the blind spot (#304)
The Confident Leader
BOOST YOUR LEADERSHIP IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
The dread settled in before he had even replied—the certainty that this was the meeting where the team gets fired and he loses the account.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” — Mark Twain
This Week’s Edition
This edition is about reality testing, the one skill that decides whether you see the facts as they are or only the ones you were already looking for.
Clarify Your Thinking
For Cole, the danger was never the 90 percent he gets right.
It was the 10 percent he stopped checking, because being right that often starts to feel like being right every time.
Here is the thing about a brain as good as Cole’s.
It is efficient. It has to be.
You make tens of thousands of decisions a day, and you would seize up if you actually weighed each one.
So your brain takes shortcuts. It fills the gaps with what it already expects to find.
Most of the time that is a gift. For a founder who is right nine times out of ten, it feels like instinct.
But here is what the shortcut is quietly doing underneath.
“I’ve seen this before. I know how this one goes.”
What you think, you look for. What you look for, you find.
- Expect the threat and the threat is suddenly everywhere.
- Expect the deal to work and you collect the evidence that says it will.
Optimist or pessimist, the machinery is identical. Your brain hands you the facts you went looking for and drops the rest.
Reality testing is the gauge that tells you whether you are seeing things objectively or subjectively.
It is neither positive thinking nor bracing for the worst.
It is the discipline of seeing what is actually there instead of jumping to conclusions, running the risk of making assumptions.
And for the leader who is right most of the time, that discipline is harder, not easier. The track record is the very thing whispering that you do not need to check twice.
Old Thinking: I’m right almost every time, so I can trust my read of this one.
New Thinking: Being right 90 percent of the time is exactly why I have to account for the 10 I can’t see. What’s around the corner?y multiplies a desire I already own. My job is to create/find the desire first (then enroll someone to support me from that point).
Thoughts Lead to Actions
You cannot switch off your brain’s shortcuts.
The move is to interrupt it with better questions before it hands you a finished decision.
Here are the power questions to generate greater reality testing skill:
- What do I actually know here?
- What am I assuming?
- What else could be true? What other explanation fits these same facts?
- What would have to be true for the opposite of my read to be the right one?
- What do I not know yet, and how could I find out before I decide?
For Cole, a face-to-face could mean an infinite number of things: a new project, an expanded scope, a relationship they wanted to deepen face-to-face instead of over email.
None of this is about doubting yourself. It is about earning the certainty instead of assuming it.
Boost Your Performance
Learn how to increase your reality testing in two minutes with this week’s video.
What’s Your Opinion?
What is your favorite question to test your objective assessment of your reality?
I’d love to hear–robin.pou@robinpou.com
If you are going to be a leader, you might as well be a good one. Don’t let doubt count you out. Have a confident week!
Robin Pou, Chief Advisor and Strategist
We live to make bad leadership extinct so forward this newsletter to others who strive to be confident leaders.
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What is “The Confident Leader”?
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I began a video series called “Panic or Plan?” It was designed to equip leaders to navigate the doubt they experienced and to rise in the confidence they needed to lead during turbulent times. It took off. I then started this newsletter to equip leaders in the same fashion each week for the doubt that crashes across the bow of their leaderSHIP.
