Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps | Book Review

Our experience of rightness kills curiosity and
openness to data that proves us wrong. (p. 46)

Subtitled How to Thrive in Complexity, is a concise examination of five quirks we all recognize and likely have fallen prey to at one time or another. Jennifer Garvey Berger’s work is particularly relevant in today’s typically chaotic organizational environment, which tends to trigger the five mindtraps associated with Berger’s five quirks. We can think of the quirks leading to counterintuitive behaviors. There are ways that our internal wiring tells us to do one thing, when the smart leadership move is to something totally opposite (p. 6). It’s the interactions of all these unpredictable things that create complexity (p. 8).

Berger’s work reminds us a bit of Navy SEAL Jeff Boss’ Navigating Chaos, in that a curious mindset serves as excellent way to overcome any of the five mindtraps. This review offers an additional way to think about/address the five mindtraps based on workshops in an Academy Leadership Excellence Course, in addition to the Keys provided by Berger.

Simple Stories | Data vs Evaluation

We don’t create stories on purpose most of the time; they are created in the background as we seek to make sense of the often-senseless parts of our lives (p. 25). We can think of our stories as presented in Crucial Conversations, our reactions to situations where we’ll often choose a role such a helpless victim. Once we have a simple story in place, we try to use that to reward the heroes and punish the villains and ensure this never happens again (p. 27).

Berger informs us we are constantly projecting from the things we have seen in the past to what the future will look like (p. 28). This is very similar to our findings in our Feedback workshop, where a focus on data, rather than evaluating or interpreting, helps avoid creating labels, stereotypes, prejudices or damaging self-fulfilling prophecies. Berger shares the same: Worse, once a hypothesis is made about someone, we select data that supports our hypothesis (p. 32).

Recall that a coaching best practice is asking for the one being coached to evaluate themselves.

Rightness | Point-Proving

We can generally take any opinion we have and explain very logically why the opinion is the right one, gathering evidence thoughtfully to show why we are certain (p. 42). Being right feels good, it’s a powerful emotion.

Berger quotes Daniel Kahneman:

“Our excessive confidence in what we believe we know, and
our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extent of our
ignorance and uncertainty of the world we live in.” (p. 45)

Usually in our Leader’s Compass workshops, I’ll share the five ways we tend to communicate with each other via Christine Comaford’s Smart Tribes:

1.   Information sharing.
2.   Requests.
3.   Promises or commitments.
4.   Sharing of oneself.
5.   Debating, decision-making or point-proving.

Recall that of the five, only making requests and promises or commitments leads to improvements or breakthroughs. Berger’s rightness corresponds well with point-proving, probably the most pernicious of Comaford’s communication forms. Berger also provides a golden nugget: Listen to learn rather than listen to fix (pp. 54-55).

Agreement | Groupthink

These are mindtraps (p. 61) when we believe that agreeability is a virtue, and that disagreement should be fixed with compromise (or collaboration). One of the most consistent findings in our leadership programs is that most of us tend toward conflict avoidance.

This means that rather than understanding the whole of a topic or
issue – including those pesky pieces of data we might disagree
about – we home in on what we think other people will like. (p. 63) 

Agreement is somewhat a balancing act. In Leveraging the Power of Conflict workshops the Collaboration Strategy offers the strongest win-win outcome. On the other hand, in our Effective Decision-Making workshops we learn one of the disadvantages of participative decision making is falling into the trap of “groupthink” if concern is mainly on consensus. Extended collaboration with the objective of learning more seems a prudent approach. In complexity, having more options is always better, because you can’t possibly know beforehand which options will actually pay off (p. 65).

Control | E2L Red/Green

“What’s really tragic is that I seem totally out of control at home as well as at work!” (p. 75)

Control is one of the mindtraps because, like the others, it leads us in exactly the wrong direction in complex and fast-moving times (p. 76).

We believe that being in control is critical
to our success and happiness. (p. 79)

This tendency comes up repeatedly in leadership workshops and coaching sessions, usually at the expense of delegation or creating developmental opportunities for others. We hold on too tight.

We this this very frequently in Energize2Lead (E2L) profiles, in the instinctive (lower) dimension, with the appearance of green and red colors. Green instinctive is drawn to planning and organizing and red instinctive is a very strong bias toward action. Together we may think of the two-color combination as command and control. 

Our desire to control uncontrollable outcomes often
leads us toward perverse and unhelpful moves as we
substitute one element that can be measured for the
larger thing we care about that can’t be measured (p. 80).

Berger advises us that instead of craving control, we have to shift to thinking about influence (p. 85). A great leadership mindset. She also shares two terrific (coaching) questions (p. 86): What can I help enable? What could enable me?

Ego | Title or Position

It turns out that the strongest trap is created by the person we are wanting to seem to be to ourselves and to others (p. 95). This tendency to covet an image is likely the result of a scarcity mindset.

…most people are spending time and energy covering up their weaknesses, managing other people’s impressions of them, showing themselves to their best advantage, playing politics, hiding their inadequacies, hiding their uncertainties, hiding their limitations. Hiding (p. 98).

The solution: An abundance mindset, which leads to gratitude. The problem is, we tend not to have a sense of the way the elements of our lives shape into a beautiful and helpful pattern (p. 100).

Let’s return to Jeff Boss for a moment:

This, in many ways, is like “listening to learn” from others, except
you’re turning that curiosity onto yourself and getting more curious.
about how you’re making sense of the world. (p. 109)

Our Leadership Philosophy

Berger follows the five mindtrap chapters with Building a Ladder to Escape the Mindtraps. We can easily substitute our Leadership Philosophy for the ladder. Let’s look at an example of a Leadership Philosophy addressing each of the five mindtraps as a means of continuously addressing and overcoming them.

Simple story. Leader as coach is a powerful theme in our philosophy. The more we focus on coaching, or genuinely helping others, at the expense of evaluation (creating stories) the better outcomes over time.

Being right. Expressions of curiosity or humility offer a powerful antidote. Likewise, genuine interest in feedback invites others to both help us and offer innovative team solutions.

Agreement. Creation of a safe environment leads to discussion, collaboration and disagreement, often the beginning of innovative breakthroughs. Safety beats conflict avoidance.

Control. A developmental mindset, along with coaching everyone allowing new levels of performance is very energizing. When we genuinely care about others, the impulse to control goes away.

Ego. Realize that leadership should be used as a verb, not a noun. Genuine leadership comprises aligned activities in pursuit of an objective. Thinking of leadership as a noun traps us into continuously thinking of title or position, when we should be thinking of influence and coaching.

Summary 

Our ability to grow beyond our reflexes is likely to shape what
happens to us a species as we reject simplistic reactions and find our
bigger selves so that we can solve some of the most complex
challenges humanity has ever faced (p. 135).

Live your Leadership Philosophy.