Seeing is believing, but can you believe what you see? Perceptions are influenced by past experience and uniquely individual frames of reference. Three people can enter the same room and report a very different scene because they are predisposed to notice diverse details. Filtering reality through a personalized lens produces disparate definitions of fact.
The accuracy of perceptions is distorted by certain biases. Inaccuracies in perception cause the thinking process to break down and become distorted. There are three specific barriers to accurate perception that can be surmounted by awareness:
We rely on generalizations and groupings to reduce the amount of time we spend really getting to recognize and understand others. This oversimplification captured by the use of stereotypes leads to false conclusions. Labeling, whether positive or negative, disregards the uniqueness. When you don’t see the individual or team nuances, your perception is stilted. Stereotypes hide aspects that could lead to more accurate perceptions.
We tend to think our first reaction or response is “all that there is.” However, that misleads us. Look at the illustration below. Some people see a vase, while others focus on the white areas where profiles face each other. As soon as one description of the figure is seen, there is no reason to look for another. It is important to always look for additional alternatives. And, you merely have to ask another: What do you see?
In a quickly changing world, it is important to recognize the everlasting need for new knowledge and new thinking. The answer to today’s problem is not guaranteed to always work. Yet, some leaders prefer to hold onto the past and seek agreement rather than consider new thinking and realities. If a leader only wants what has “always worked” team members will be reluctant to bring new facts or surface new opportunities. Fixed points of view conceal emerging alternatives and opportunities.
Leadership success is impacted by the evaluation and adjustment of perceptions. Accurate and timely perceptions compile information from several sources. Questioning others will bring out different perspectives which must be incorporated to make smart choices. Challenging your own perceptions instead of relying on outdated paradigms, assumptions and skill sets is vital in today’s world.
Active support is needed to make changes in an organization that are effective in the long term, but gaining that support is an endless challenge to leaders. The members of your organization might trust you to identify fluid circumstances and engineer change, but the suggestion of doing something differently is still met with resistance, defensiveness…
One of my clients was entering a strategic planning process with a dysfunctional executive team. The team was stuck over how to plan for the future. The lack of harmony was attributed to perceived personal slights, pressure tactics, and lack of information. In this case, resistance and competition replaced collaboration and the chance for agreement…
Stop the World I Want to Get Off opened on Broadway in the 1960’s, and decades later the cliche still takes center stage in our quest to maintain the status quo as changes engulf us at a dizzying pace. Adopting an “everything is fine” mentality creates the illusion that we can safely hide, ostrich style, while…
Legendary management consultant Peter F. Drucker may have pioneered the organizational reward system in the early 1900s with this observation: “If a company is to obtain the needed contributions, it must reward those who make them.” In the early 1970s it became the topic of my doctoral thesis after working with clients where old systems and quotas were kept in place despite new strategies and products.
Adopting a narrow or fixed perspective is both foolish and dangerous. My MBA students frequently and fervently embrace a single answer, but in their rush to provide an answer they overlook key aspects and alternatives. Experienced decision makers know to dig deeper to see all that they can to address what most important, rather than…
An invisible fence keeps my neighbor’s dogs constrained to the yard while they enjoy limited freedom outdoors. If the dogs wander too close to the boundaries, their collars give them a slight jolt warning them not to go further. After the first few times, they stopped challenging the system and seemed content to remain safely…