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As a leader, we need better processes, techniques, and protocols for reducing the likelihood that we're gonna trip ourselves up and harm other people in our companies and our organizations because we are effectively willfully ignorant of the cognitive mechanisms and social mechanisms behind this.
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You're listening to Traction Heroes.
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Digging In to Get Results with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
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Jorge, it's most excellent to see you again.
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It's great to see you.
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And we usually do these calls over Zoom, so we are very far apart.
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But last week we had the incredible privilege of being able to share a meal, which is rare and very cool.
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Yeah.
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I have to say, there are many people in my life that I appreciate seeing, but it is consistently the case that I am always beyond delighted to spend time with you.
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And I'm so glad we get a chance to do these readings because it forces that every couple of weeks as well.
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And let's jump into it because I suspect that folks don't tune in for our mutual appreciation.
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So, you said you brought a reading?
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I do.
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This one popped out of some research I was doing in another direction.
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We'll see where it leads.
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"Let me begin by saying that no leader or decision-maker, or human for that matter, is immune.
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Still, this large body of work in behavioral economics has not been widely adopted by leaders who want to improve their own decision-making.
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The reason is something I've come to call'Kahneman's conundrum.' Kahneman summarized the challenge succinctly in his 2011 international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow.
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Kahneman says that he himself has no idea when he's making any of the cognitive mistakes that he spent a lifetime identifying:'my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made the study of these issues.' Might there be a way for leaders to at least know when they're about to make a mistake based on a bias?
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Kahneman says no.
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We would all like to have a warning bell that rings loudly whenever we're about to make a serious error, but no such bell is available.
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I almost fell off my chair when I first read those words.
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The knowledge of these biases does not seem to matter.
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The expert knowledge gained from decades of research does not even help the co-founder of the discipline.
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We humans are destined to make the same kinds of mistakes repeatedly, to be blind about our blind spots.
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It is simple but true.
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We all know that we can easily see the errors in others while being frustratingly blind to our own.
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One of my GC members told me this dynamic reminded her of dating.
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She said,'I recognize issues in others' relationships, and I even know how I need to change, but I can't do it.' True.
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Spouses can see the mistakes that their partners make repeatedly.
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CEOs can see the errors that their peers make.
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Product managers can see more clearly the errors or weaknesses in the products of a competitor than they can in their own.
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And job seekers can see the biases and blind spots that impair each other's job search."
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I have a lot going through my mind, but I suspect that we're gonna be talking a lot about AI in this conversation.
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Now, you're totally gonna be surprised here.
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This is a book by Phyl Terry, and it's Phyl, P-H-Y-L.
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And it's a book called Never Search Alone: The Job Seeker's Playbook.
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I have heard a lot about this book because I know a lot of people who are or have been searching for a job, and they've brought up this very idea of not searching alone.
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And there's a...
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Isn't there a network of l-like people that are helping each other with this approach?
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There is, and it's at phyl.com, P-H-Y-L.com, and it's based on the book.
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And the title picks up and riffs off of the book, Never Eat Alone, right?
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The author of which I've forgotten.
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But it's really about networking.
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And the thing is, for many years, I was incredibly fortunate to have a mentor by the name of Richard Bolles, who wrote the book What Color Is Your Parachute?
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And I myself have developed a methodology for job searching and for networking and working with folks that are trying to get beyond a lot of self-imposed constraints and limitations and some of the structural challenges of finding a new role.
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And I stumbled on this book.
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It just astonishes me how so few of the books I end up gravitating toward are recommended by Amazon.
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These are things I stumble on, or somebody recommends them to me, but it's almost never the case that I find something that says,"Oh, people like you have bought a book like this." But the methodology in this book, which very much pivots around building a job search council, is, I think, sound and really potentially valuable.
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I've not myself gone through it, but I've read the book, and I deeply appreciated the author's perspective on this.
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And it is the first time in perhaps ten years that I've seen a methodology laid out for finding a new role based on one's skills and mindset and capabilities that are calibrated by the outside world, and in this case, these job search councils, which the author helps facilitate through a network.
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But the thing that struck me about this reading was, here I am, having written a book on prioritization, and we've talked about this before.
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I know for myself, I've heard the phrase,"people write the book they need to read." And I'm probably at the top of the list of people who struggle with really dealing with the complexities of making sure that I'm focusing on the things that matter most.
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But of course, what I realize now, after reading this, is it's more likely to be the result of cognitive biases that are affecting me, that I am incapable of seeing in action at the time, that only reveal themselves after the fact, and that Kahneman himself asserts that even as an expert in cognitive biases, that he himself would fall prey to, to these particular mental challenges.
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And I thought given our, evolving conversation on leadership clarity, on getting traction, on trying to see the world as it is, not as it,"should be," that this seems really key to me.
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Yeah, I suspect that we could go one of two ways here.
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One is, there is a portion of our audience who likely want to hear more about the approach to finding a new role because they might be on the market for a new role.
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So that's one path we could take.
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But I think that more in the spirit of the podcast and our previous conversations, I'll just reflect back to you what I heard from the reading, which is a bit broader than that.
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And it's the idea that we are really not skillful at diagnosing our own shortcomings and reading the relevant factors accurately.
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And it feels to me like this is a variation of one of the themes in this show, which is that perceiving conditions IRL, like really what is going on, perceiving clearly and in an unbiased way is fundamental to making good decisions and to acting skillfully.
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And it's hard to do that in general.
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But what I heard from the reading is it's especially hard to do it as it pertains to yourself, and that's where the Kahneman thing comes in.
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It's like it's not enough for you to know that you have these biases and these shortcomings because it's really, hard to point that lens on yourself.
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Is that fair?
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I think that's 100%.
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And I do agree that I think this is the vein that we should take the conversation, because if people are interested on the career side of things or in the job search side of things, there are so many good resources there.
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I'm just gonna list them real quickly.
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And if you're listening to this and you're struggling to find your next thing, I would start by reading, So Good They Can't Ignore You, right?
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And, oh, God, I wish I could remember the author's name.
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It's just completely escaping me right now.
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And What Color Is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles.
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So Good They Can't Ignore You follows the philosophy of,"do what you're good at and the love will follow," right?
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Versus What Color is Your Parachute is, do what you love and the money will follow.
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And now there's this book, that I think really provides a much more modern take on how to approach the search itself, which is Never Search Alone, which is build a collaborative network.
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And those three resources are your place to start.
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Listening to us is not gonna help, right?
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I think if you want to take something away from this conversation, it's learning that just knowing how to avoid these cognitive biases, whatever they are, is unhelpful in the moment.
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And...
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Yeah.
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And in that spirit, you mentioned three books.
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So, I would suggest that for the third of those, Never Search Alone, I've heard that book independently from two people who were following the methodology, and I just wanna emphasize that just based on their testimony, it's not enough to read the book.
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Like, they were actually doing the work with someone who was...
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Like, literally, it's like about not searching alone.
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You need to pair up with people.
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My sense, and I have not read it, I'm just saying from what I've heard from other people, my sense is that the effectiveness of that particular methodology is completely contingent on your ability to engage with people who will help you work through this.
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Yeah, and I do think we should bookmark a future conversation on this because there is something missing from all three of those books, and it is how to tell your personal narrative.
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And that structure and that process for getting to a place where you can tell your narrative and have it come off in a way that feels really genuine and authentic and be able to do it when you're in a reactive mode going up an elevator with somebody who's putting some, some unexpected pressure on you to answer the question,"what do you wanna do?" That piece of the methodology is missing from all three of those books.
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And so we can talk about that at another point.
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But I wanna bring it back to this thing that Phil Terry says and that Kahneman points out.
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Because I became fascinated, and I know we've talked about this, I became absolutely fascinated with the mechanisms of self-deception and how they fuel, decision-making and action that tend to result in outcomes that are the opposite of what we say we want.
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And as a leader, we need better processes, techniques, and protocols for reducing the likelihood that we're gonna trip ourselves up and harm other people in our companies and our organizations because we are effectively willfully ignorant of the cognitive mechanisms and social mechanisms behind this, whether you're talking about books like Social Traps, which I know we've talked about in the past, or whether we're talking about Mistakes Were Made, But Not by Me, the Aronson and Tavris book, and I know we've talked about that.
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But there's something new here.
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And the thing that's new is...
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and in a sense, I would ask you, Jorge, the question, as one of the most thoughtful people I know.
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Given this new insight, what should people do to reduce the likelihood that no matter how smart they are on their own, they are going to fall prey to these cognitive biases?
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Because Kahneman himself, the expert in the field, couldn't figure out how to prevent himself from doing it.
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I think the answer is you cannot do it alone.
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And the traditional way of doing this has been through finding a mentor and finding colleagues, trusted advisors that you can check in on who will be candid and forthcoming and will let you know when you are screwing up.
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That's easier said than done, and I don't think it's easy to say it either, because we are not...
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We don't like to hear hard truths.
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We don't like to feel uncomfortable.
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And many people, and I think I've said this in previous episodes, I tend to be a people pleaser.
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So people who like to be perceived as being nice, it's harder for us to give advice that, that might be taken as criticism.
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But I think it's very important both to do it and to find people who will do it for us.
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I don't know the science behind it, but I don't think I need the science to agree with the sentiment that we all have blind spots.
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Our egos are an amazing construct that shields us from things that might feel like they diminish us.
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So we tend to not see hard truths that we need to grapple with.
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So if we wanna be very practical about it, like what advice can we give folks to finding those kinds of relationships with other people that will help expose us to...
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help reveal our blind spots and maybe help us move past whatever is keeping us stuck there?
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Yeah, I think that's a great place to start, because it of course brings us back around to the notion of the Johari window, which is this two-by-two matrix, right?
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On one axis, it's, what you know about yourself, and on the other axis, it's what other people know about you, right?
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And your public persona is what other people know about you that you know about yourself, right?
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And your private persona is what you know about yourself that others don't know.
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But the blind spot is what others know about you that you don't know about yourself.
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And maybe the place to start is to understand what your tendencies are there that are visible enough for people that you know well enough or work with frequently enough to be able to speak to those things.
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I do use the Johari window in the executive coaching work that I do, not only for individual leaders, but also for teams.
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You know, what do other teams know about your team that your team may not be fully aware of or comprehend or willing to look at, right?
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And I still think that underneath all of that is this Kahneman piece, which is that the core, the primitives, the core biases that go into the decision-making, the apprehension of the world as it's functioning, and the filters that result from that are even lower level and more challenging.
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But maybe the blind spot and getting clearer about what other people know about you that you may either not know about yourself or be actively avoiding knowing about yourself, is a great place to start.
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I suspect that there might be a third dimension there, which is something like social dynamics between people.
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Say more.
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In an organization, maybe things like politics.
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Let's take a step back.
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So what you're saying with the Johari window and the example that you used is the part that's missing in the picture or a part that's missing in the picture is what other people say about you.
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And the question that prompts is, where is that data coming from?
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Like, in the example that you brought up, I would imagine that you would want to do research, you would want to interview people in other teams.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, 100%.
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Right?
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And maybe the questions are framed in such a way that you don't taint the answers too much, like you don't reveal what the survey is about.
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Right, exactly.
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So at the core of this there is a data problem.
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Because let's say that even in the things that you know about you, like you would imagine,"Well, I have the data.
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I know what I've done.
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I know what I think." But we don't tend to capture those things systematically.
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And let's say that you were to initiate a relationship with someone who can mentor you, that person doesn't have access to all of that information that they need to help you make sense of the blind spots.
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It feels to me like there's a data problem, and the acquisition of that data, and here we come to the social and maybe political dynamics, the acquisition of that data can be tricky, particularly in an organizational context.
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Like we were saying, like you might have to ask the questions in such a way as to not reveal the true intent of the survey because, I don't know, people in that other group might not want to tell you what they really think.
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Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I've seen politics at work in organizations, right?
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So getting good data can be challenging.
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And, and anyway, I just wanted to bring in the fact that because we are now talking about involving other people in the sense-making process, anytime you do that, you have to think about social and political relations.
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Yeah, that's an interesting angle here, and it harkens back to the discussion we had about eliciting information.
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I think we talked about the book Confidential at some point, which looks at acquiring potentially valuable or sensitive information without necessarily"interrogating" somebody or inquiring directly, because it can tend to cause people to deflect or avoid answering directly.
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And I think this is interesting because in the Johari window, it's not necessarily...
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and I may have misspoken when I said it's what people say about you.
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It's really what they think about you or what they know about you.
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It's what you know about yourself and what others know about you.
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Maybe they say it, maybe they don't, right?
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And in the qualitative 360 degree diagnostic process I use with executive coaching and team dynamics, yeah, I've gotta be very careful with how I probe for that.
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And generally, I can't go with one data point, right?
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I have to synthesize, multiple data points to get to some kind of resolution on a point of view to know that it's even marginally valid.
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But I think the most interesting angle here is a place I've run into for myself.
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Terrible challenges, especially in larger organizations and especially in political, small P politics, not capital P, horrible politics.
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But just the oxygen of how things get done in an organization tends to be political, right?
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And as a leader, one of the places that I find I struggle with what I know about myself and what other people don't know about me is my positive intentions, right?
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And if they only knew what I was trying to accomplish for the organization, for their team, for them personally, they would never question my motives, right?
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And yet, without being more on the nose about, as they say in the movie industry, about what I'm trying to accomplish or about how I'm trying to be of service for them or their team or the broader organization, and just hoping that they're gonna read my glorious positive intentions, they see the behavior, they hear the words, and they draw their own conclusions, which are sometimes, quite the opposite of what I wish or hoped or want.
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We can't evaluate these things by reading people's minds because we cannot read people's minds.
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So we have to do it based on eliciting information, like you're saying, and and that information might be based on unspoken things like actions, gestures, body language.
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I'll circle back to trying to make this as practical as possible, and this is why I suggested earlier on that I thought we might end up talking about AI.
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This is actually something that I've used AI for and I've found useful.
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And again, there's a data input problem because my interactions with, let's say, ChatGPT are not comprehensive.
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They're not holistic.
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ChatGPT doesn't know about everything in my life.
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It only knows about what I have asked it.
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So far.
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So far...
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yes, that's true.
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And that's not a small thing because I've been working with this system for several years now, almost every day, and it does give you, by default, the ability to answer questions based on the entirety of your chat history, right?
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So I don't know where I saw this, but I saw a prompt that focused on this, and I tried it, and it was really revealing to the point where I actually wrote a blog post where I shared its answers.
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Wow.
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And I'll include that in the show notes, but the prompt is:"Based on everything I've ever asked you, what do you think my biggest blind spots are?" And ChatGPT responded with five blind spots, and I'll read them to you real quick.
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These are just the headlines, but there's actually copy that explains each.
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The first is, underestimating the practical value of your ideas.
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The second is, too much focus on internal coherence over external resonance.
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Ooh, wow.
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Wow.
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I felt really seen when I saw these.
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The third was, hesitation to fully embrace a leadership identity.
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Boy, that's some X.
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It's true.
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The fourth, balancing craft and reach.
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Huh.
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And the fifth was, difficulty letting go of roles you've outgrown.
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Whoa, dude.
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Yeah, and it felt...
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reading through this, I felt...
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First, I felt a little, I felt seen, and I felt, you know that feeling you get sometimes it's like,"Oh my gosh, someone is speaking truth to me, and it feels a little embarrassing, but also it's like I'm really thrilled that I'm having someone tell me this." It's like you have, you have a piece of...
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Cabbage in your tooth, yeah.
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And also I must say when I shared this originally on social media, a few folks chimed back to say,"It's kinda like a horoscope.
00:26:02.414 --> 00:26:06.535
Like, you read into it." And there might be a little bit of that.
00:26:07.795 --> 00:26:13.845
But I think that because what we're talking about here is self-reflection and introspection, that might not be entirely a bad thing.
00:26:13.845 --> 00:26:22.984
Like, even if I'm projecting more capability into this system than is truly merited, even so, it's useful.
00:26:23.134 --> 00:26:29.761
And the other thing I'll say is, this is only based on the things that I've talked or chatted with, ChatGPT about.
00:26:31.471 --> 00:26:41.662
So, it thinks, for example, and again, if you go to this blog post and read them in detail, one of the criticisms was something like you, over-polish things.
00:26:42.291 --> 00:26:49.362
And that's because I've spent so much time using ChatGPT as a copy editor, so it thinks like I'm obsessive about like copy editing texts.
00:26:49.362 --> 00:26:51.561
It's no, that's just how I use ChatGPT, right?
00:26:52.241 --> 00:27:06.182
But I just wanted to put it out there because I did find it useful, and there is a lot less social pressure in asking a chatbot for this kind of reflection than asking a fellow human who hopefully isn't...
00:27:06.471 --> 00:27:07.531
we want...
00:27:07.682 --> 00:27:13.382
whose respect and who might not know as much of our history as these chatbots do, right?
00:27:14.602 --> 00:27:16.132
So I just wanted to put that out there.
00:27:17.045 --> 00:27:22.444
I love that you did that too, because, it's one thing to take the feedback from ChatGPT.
00:27:22.444 --> 00:27:27.404
It's another thing to share it with somebody who you might consider a trusted source for calibration, right?
00:27:27.595 --> 00:27:30.884
Because in this particular case, two of those things really, hit me, right?
00:27:30.884 --> 00:27:41.585
I'm like,"Whoa, yeah, those feel right," or they feel like they're interesting doorways to pass through and explore if you're interested in learning more.
00:27:42.234 --> 00:27:55.615
So maybe they're not the be-all, end-all truth, but at least they provide you a starting point to explore the possibility that maybe there's a blind spot there or something that you could start diving into and inquire more about.
00:27:55.984 --> 00:27:56.545
Absolutely.
00:27:56.545 --> 00:27:59.575
Like you could bring one of these to a conversation with a mentor, right?
00:27:59.575 --> 00:28:01.954
And say,"Hey, this one resonated with me.
00:28:02.234 --> 00:28:03.015
Do you see this?
00:28:03.015 --> 00:28:06.825
And could, how could I work on this?" It feels like a good starting point.
00:28:07.545 --> 00:28:11.724
Or the other way,"This one confused me." Or,"This one I disagree with," right?
00:28:11.934 --> 00:28:12.644
Either way.
00:28:12.994 --> 00:28:13.295
Right.
00:28:13.765 --> 00:28:25.515
So I think we have tools, and I'm glad that you brought this to the table because I think that a lot of people right now are in a modality of introspection as they think about,"What am I gonna be doing next," right?
00:28:26.724 --> 00:28:31.255
So, I think that it's a useful conversation, so thank you for, bringing this reading.
00:28:32.694 --> 00:28:34.664
I really appreciated the conversation.
00:28:34.664 --> 00:28:35.315
Thank you.
00:28:35.595 --> 00:28:36.335
Thank you so much.
00:28:36.335 --> 00:28:38.275
I'm looking forward to, to the next one.
00:28:39.912 --> 00:28:44.352
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
00:28:45.011 --> 00:28:52.692
Check out the show notes at tractionheroes.com and if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating in Apple's podcasts app.
00:28:53.051 --> 00:28:53.501
Thanks.
00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:26.149
As a leader, we need better processes, techniques, and protocols for reducing the likelihood that we're gonna trip ourselves up and harm other people in our companies and our organizations because we are effectively willfully ignorant of the cognitive mechanisms and social mechanisms behind this.
00:00:31.091 --> 00:00:33.371
You're listening to Traction Heroes.
00:00:33.490 --> 00:00:37.481
Digging In to Get Results with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
00:00:41.810 --> 00:00:43.909
Jorge, it's most excellent to see you again.
00:00:44.959 --> 00:00:45.969
It's great to see you.
00:00:45.969 --> 00:00:52.738
And we usually do these calls over Zoom, so we are very far apart.
00:00:52.789 --> 00:01:01.158
But last week we had the incredible privilege of being able to share a meal, which is rare and very cool.
00:01:03.119 --> 00:01:03.380
Yeah.
00:01:03.380 --> 00:01:15.079
I have to say, there are many people in my life that I appreciate seeing, but it is consistently the case that I am always beyond delighted to spend time with you.
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And I'm so glad we get a chance to do these readings because it forces that every couple of weeks as well.
00:01:22.938 --> 00:01:28.509
And let's jump into it because I suspect that folks don't tune in for our mutual appreciation.
00:01:28.867 --> 00:01:30.567
So, you said you brought a reading?
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I do.
00:01:33.097 --> 00:01:37.438
This one popped out of some research I was doing in another direction.
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We'll see where it leads.
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"Let me begin by saying that no leader or decision-maker, or human for that matter, is immune.
00:01:49.837 --> 00:01:57.248
Still, this large body of work in behavioral economics has not been widely adopted by leaders who want to improve their own decision-making.
00:01:58.108 --> 00:02:09.427
The reason is something I've come to call'Kahneman's conundrum.' Kahneman summarized the challenge succinctly in his 2011 international bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow.
00:02:10.657 --> 00:02:39.187
Kahneman says that he himself has no idea when he's making any of the cognitive mistakes that he spent a lifetime identifying:'my intuitive thinking is just as prone to overconfidence, extreme predictions, and the planning fallacy as it was before I made the study of these issues.' Might there be a way for leaders to at least know when they're about to make a mistake based on a bias?
00:02:40.127 --> 00:02:41.657
Kahneman says no.
00:02:43.117 --> 00:02:51.737
We would all like to have a warning bell that rings loudly whenever we're about to make a serious error, but no such bell is available.
00:02:52.638 --> 00:02:55.848
I almost fell off my chair when I first read those words.
00:02:56.358 --> 00:02:59.638
The knowledge of these biases does not seem to matter.
00:03:00.237 --> 00:03:06.048
The expert knowledge gained from decades of research does not even help the co-founder of the discipline.
00:03:07.258 --> 00:03:16.448
We humans are destined to make the same kinds of mistakes repeatedly, to be blind about our blind spots.
00:03:17.258 --> 00:03:19.425
It is simple but true.
00:03:20.259 --> 00:03:27.289
We all know that we can easily see the errors in others while being frustratingly blind to our own.
00:03:28.650 --> 00:03:32.189
One of my GC members told me this dynamic reminded her of dating.
00:03:32.370 --> 00:03:41.250
She said,'I recognize issues in others' relationships, and I even know how I need to change, but I can't do it.' True.
00:03:42.139 --> 00:03:45.560
Spouses can see the mistakes that their partners make repeatedly.
00:03:45.909 --> 00:03:48.550
CEOs can see the errors that their peers make.
00:03:48.909 --> 00:03:56.110
Product managers can see more clearly the errors or weaknesses in the products of a competitor than they can in their own.
00:03:56.710 --> 00:04:02.060
And job seekers can see the biases and blind spots that impair each other's job search."
00:04:03.872 --> 00:04:11.302
I have a lot going through my mind, but I suspect that we're gonna be talking a lot about AI in this conversation.
00:04:11.592 --> 00:04:15.639
Now, you're totally gonna be surprised here.
00:04:15.680 --> 00:04:20.079
This is a book by Phyl Terry, and it's Phyl, P-H-Y-L.
00:04:20.079 --> 00:04:24.660
And it's a book called Never Search Alone: The Job Seeker's Playbook.
00:04:25.410 --> 00:04:36.689
I have heard a lot about this book because I know a lot of people who are or have been searching for a job, and they've brought up this very idea of not searching alone.
00:04:36.689 --> 00:04:36.959
And there's a...
00:04:37.639 --> 00:04:42.365
Isn't there a network of l-like people that are helping each other with this approach?
00:04:43.084 --> 00:04:47.704
There is, and it's at phyl.com, P-H-Y-L.com, and it's based on the book.
00:04:48.685 --> 00:04:55.355
And the title picks up and riffs off of the book, Never Eat Alone, right?
00:04:55.394 --> 00:04:57.564
The author of which I've forgotten.
00:04:58.545 --> 00:05:00.754
But it's really about networking.
00:05:00.754 --> 00:05:11.014
And the thing is, for many years, I was incredibly fortunate to have a mentor by the name of Richard Bolles, who wrote the book What Color Is Your Parachute?
00:05:11.595 --> 00:05:28.504
And I myself have developed a methodology for job searching and for networking and working with folks that are trying to get beyond a lot of self-imposed constraints and limitations and some of the structural challenges of finding a new role.
00:05:29.545 --> 00:05:31.204
And I stumbled on this book.
00:05:31.235 --> 00:05:37.754
It just astonishes me how so few of the books I end up gravitating toward are recommended by Amazon.
00:05:38.384 --> 00:06:01.084
These are things I stumble on, or somebody recommends them to me, but it's almost never the case that I find something that says,"Oh, people like you have bought a book like this." But the methodology in this book, which very much pivots around building a job search council, is, I think, sound and really potentially valuable.
00:06:01.084 --> 00:06:06.324
I've not myself gone through it, but I've read the book, and I deeply appreciated the author's perspective on this.
00:06:06.324 --> 00:06:28.764
And it is the first time in perhaps ten years that I've seen a methodology laid out for finding a new role based on one's skills and mindset and capabilities that are calibrated by the outside world, and in this case, these job search councils, which the author helps facilitate through a network.
00:06:29.423 --> 00:06:41.927
But the thing that struck me about this reading was, here I am, having written a book on prioritization, and we've talked about this before.
00:06:42.151 --> 00:06:56.446
I know for myself, I've heard the phrase,"people write the book they need to read." And I'm probably at the top of the list of people who struggle with really dealing with the complexities of making sure that I'm focusing on the things that matter most.
00:06:56.446 --> 00:07:26.490
But of course, what I realize now, after reading this, is it's more likely to be the result of cognitive biases that are affecting me, that I am incapable of seeing in action at the time, that only reveal themselves after the fact, and that Kahneman himself asserts that even as an expert in cognitive biases, that he himself would fall prey to, to these particular mental challenges.
00:07:26.781 --> 00:07:40.641
And I thought given our, evolving conversation on leadership clarity, on getting traction, on trying to see the world as it is, not as it,"should be," that this seems really key to me.
00:07:41.213 --> 00:07:43.403
Yeah, I suspect that we could go one of two ways here.
00:07:43.403 --> 00:07:59.814
One is, there is a portion of our audience who likely want to hear more about the approach to finding a new role because they might be on the market for a new role.
00:08:00.663 --> 00:08:02.204
So that's one path we could take.
00:08:02.204 --> 00:08:18.403
But I think that more in the spirit of the podcast and our previous conversations, I'll just reflect back to you what I heard from the reading, which is a bit broader than that.
00:08:18.494 --> 00:08:31.326
And it's the idea that we are really not skillful at diagnosing our own shortcomings and reading the relevant factors accurately.
00:08:31.377 --> 00:08:57.647
And it feels to me like this is a variation of one of the themes in this show, which is that perceiving conditions IRL, like really what is going on, perceiving clearly and in an unbiased way is fundamental to making good decisions and to acting skillfully.
00:08:59.246 --> 00:09:02.687
And it's hard to do that in general.
00:09:03.616 --> 00:09:10.846
But what I heard from the reading is it's especially hard to do it as it pertains to yourself, and that's where the Kahneman thing comes in.
00:09:10.846 --> 00:09:22.104
It's like it's not enough for you to know that you have these biases and these shortcomings because it's really, hard to point that lens on yourself.
00:09:22.283 --> 00:09:22.903
Is that fair?
00:09:24.548 --> 00:09:25.619
I think that's 100%.
00:09:26.729 --> 00:09:37.479
And I do agree that I think this is the vein that we should take the conversation, because if people are interested on the career side of things or in the job search side of things, there are so many good resources there.
00:09:37.479 --> 00:09:39.028
I'm just gonna list them real quickly.
00:09:39.438 --> 00:09:48.528
And if you're listening to this and you're struggling to find your next thing, I would start by reading, So Good They Can't Ignore You, right?
00:09:48.739 --> 00:09:52.739
And, oh, God, I wish I could remember the author's name.
00:09:52.739 --> 00:09:54.989
It's just completely escaping me right now.
00:09:56.548 --> 00:10:00.599
And What Color Is Your Parachute by Richard Bolles.
00:10:01.808 --> 00:10:10.004
So Good They Can't Ignore You follows the philosophy of,"do what you're good at and the love will follow," right?
00:10:10.004 --> 00:10:16.494
Versus What Color is Your Parachute is, do what you love and the money will follow.
00:10:16.923 --> 00:10:28.094
And now there's this book, that I think really provides a much more modern take on how to approach the search itself, which is Never Search Alone, which is build a collaborative network.
00:10:28.094 --> 00:10:30.903
And those three resources are your place to start.
00:10:30.903 --> 00:10:33.083
Listening to us is not gonna help, right?
00:10:33.323 --> 00:10:46.571
I think if you want to take something away from this conversation, it's learning that just knowing how to avoid these cognitive biases, whatever they are, is unhelpful in the moment.
00:10:46.941 --> 00:10:47.120
And...
00:10:47.600 --> 00:10:47.831
Yeah.
00:10:48.081 --> 00:10:50.541
And in that spirit, you mentioned three books.
00:10:50.850 --> 00:11:10.975
So, I would suggest that for the third of those, Never Search Alone, I've heard that book independently from two people who were following the methodology, and I just wanna emphasize that just based on their testimony, it's not enough to read the book.
00:11:11.004 --> 00:11:14.845
Like, they were actually doing the work with someone who was...
00:11:15.674 --> 00:11:18.565
Like, literally, it's like about not searching alone.
00:11:18.565 --> 00:11:20.085
You need to pair up with people.
00:11:20.404 --> 00:11:35.625
My sense, and I have not read it, I'm just saying from what I've heard from other people, my sense is that the effectiveness of that particular methodology is completely contingent on your ability to engage with people who will help you work through this.
00:11:37.014 --> 00:11:45.784
Yeah, and I do think we should bookmark a future conversation on this because there is something missing from all three of those books, and it is how to tell your personal narrative.
00:11:46.184 --> 00:12:11.461
And that structure and that process for getting to a place where you can tell your narrative and have it come off in a way that feels really genuine and authentic and be able to do it when you're in a reactive mode going up an elevator with somebody who's putting some, some unexpected pressure on you to answer the question,"what do you wanna do?" That piece of the methodology is missing from all three of those books.
00:12:11.520 --> 00:12:13.337
And so we can talk about that at another point.
00:12:13.337 --> 00:12:21.427
But I wanna bring it back to this thing that Phil Terry says and that Kahneman points out.
00:12:21.807 --> 00:12:42.107
Because I became fascinated, and I know we've talked about this, I became absolutely fascinated with the mechanisms of self-deception and how they fuel, decision-making and action that tend to result in outcomes that are the opposite of what we say we want.
00:12:43.192 --> 00:13:23.783
And as a leader, we need better processes, techniques, and protocols for reducing the likelihood that we're gonna trip ourselves up and harm other people in our companies and our organizations because we are effectively willfully ignorant of the cognitive mechanisms and social mechanisms behind this, whether you're talking about books like Social Traps, which I know we've talked about in the past, or whether we're talking about Mistakes Were Made, But Not by Me, the Aronson and Tavris book, and I know we've talked about that.
00:13:25.342 --> 00:13:27.092
But there's something new here.
00:13:27.302 --> 00:13:30.133
And the thing that's new is...
00:13:30.812 --> 00:13:35.863
and in a sense, I would ask you, Jorge, the question, as one of the most thoughtful people I know.
00:13:37.182 --> 00:13:49.592
Given this new insight, what should people do to reduce the likelihood that no matter how smart they are on their own, they are going to fall prey to these cognitive biases?
00:13:49.592 --> 00:13:56.673
Because Kahneman himself, the expert in the field, couldn't figure out how to prevent himself from doing it.
00:13:57.291 --> 00:14:01.630
I think the answer is you cannot do it alone.
00:14:02.211 --> 00:14:26.081
And the traditional way of doing this has been through finding a mentor and finding colleagues, trusted advisors that you can check in on who will be candid and forthcoming and will let you know when you are screwing up.
00:14:27.510 --> 00:14:34.630
That's easier said than done, and I don't think it's easy to say it either, because we are not...
00:14:36.250 --> 00:14:38.471
We don't like to hear hard truths.
00:14:38.471 --> 00:14:41.250
We don't like to feel uncomfortable.
00:14:41.250 --> 00:14:46.510
And many people, and I think I've said this in previous episodes, I tend to be a people pleaser.
00:14:46.961 --> 00:15:00.530
So people who like to be perceived as being nice, it's harder for us to give advice that, that might be taken as criticism.
00:15:01.181 --> 00:15:05.571
But I think it's very important both to do it and to find people who will do it for us.
00:15:06.280 --> 00:15:15.551
I don't know the science behind it, but I don't think I need the science to agree with the sentiment that we all have blind spots.
00:15:16.701 --> 00:15:32.274
Our egos are an amazing construct that shields us from things that might feel like they diminish us.
00:15:33.364 --> 00:15:38.943
So we tend to not see hard truths that we need to grapple with.
00:15:39.734 --> 00:15:51.061
So if we wanna be very practical about it, like what advice can we give folks to finding those kinds of relationships with other people that will help expose us to...
00:15:52.360 --> 00:15:58.780
help reveal our blind spots and maybe help us move past whatever is keeping us stuck there?
00:15:59.754 --> 00:16:10.594
Yeah, I think that's a great place to start, because it of course brings us back around to the notion of the Johari window, which is this two-by-two matrix, right?
00:16:10.594 --> 00:16:18.063
On one axis, it's, what you know about yourself, and on the other axis, it's what other people know about you, right?
00:16:18.094 --> 00:16:26.344
And your public persona is what other people know about you that you know about yourself, right?
00:16:26.494 --> 00:16:35.283
And your private persona is what you know about yourself that others don't know.
00:16:35.984 --> 00:16:40.533
But the blind spot is what others know about you that you don't know about yourself.
00:16:41.083 --> 00:16:54.394
And maybe the place to start is to understand what your tendencies are there that are visible enough for people that you know well enough or work with frequently enough to be able to speak to those things.
00:16:55.943 --> 00:17:03.234
I do use the Johari window in the executive coaching work that I do, not only for individual leaders, but also for teams.
00:17:03.234 --> 00:17:12.403
You know, what do other teams know about your team that your team may not be fully aware of or comprehend or willing to look at, right?
00:17:12.584 --> 00:17:33.884
And I still think that underneath all of that is this Kahneman piece, which is that the core, the primitives, the core biases that go into the decision-making, the apprehension of the world as it's functioning, and the filters that result from that are even lower level and more challenging.
00:17:34.153 --> 00:17:45.703
But maybe the blind spot and getting clearer about what other people know about you that you may either not know about yourself or be actively avoiding knowing about yourself, is a great place to start.
00:17:46.578 --> 00:17:54.659
I suspect that there might be a third dimension there, which is something like social dynamics between people.
00:17:57.193 --> 00:17:57.773
Say more.
00:17:57.828 --> 00:18:00.199
In an organization, maybe things like politics.
00:18:00.959 --> 00:18:01.969
Let's take a step back.
00:18:01.969 --> 00:18:13.509
So what you're saying with the Johari window and the example that you used is the part that's missing in the picture or a part that's missing in the picture is what other people say about you.
00:18:14.460 --> 00:18:18.609
And the question that prompts is, where is that data coming from?
00:18:19.390 --> 00:18:25.660
Like, in the example that you brought up, I would imagine that you would want to do research, you would want to interview people in other teams.
00:18:26.394 --> 00:18:26.585
Yeah.
00:18:26.585 --> 00:18:27.325
Yeah, 100%.
00:18:28.089 --> 00:18:28.119
Right?
00:18:28.119 --> 00:18:37.509
And maybe the questions are framed in such a way that you don't taint the answers too much, like you don't reveal what the survey is about.
00:18:38.285 --> 00:18:39.244
Right, exactly.
00:18:44.019 --> 00:18:44.930
So at the core of this there is a data problem.
00:18:44.940 --> 00:18:51.880
Because let's say that even in the things that you know about you, like you would imagine,"Well, I have the data.
00:18:51.880 --> 00:18:52.779
I know what I've done.
00:18:52.779 --> 00:19:01.940
I know what I think." But we don't tend to capture those things systematically.
00:19:02.317 --> 00:19:15.247
And let's say that you were to initiate a relationship with someone who can mentor you, that person doesn't have access to all of that information that they need to help you make sense of the blind spots.
00:19:16.596 --> 00:19:29.576
It feels to me like there's a data problem, and the acquisition of that data, and here we come to the social and maybe political dynamics, the acquisition of that data can be tricky, particularly in an organizational context.
00:19:29.846 --> 00:19:45.715
Like we were saying, like you might have to ask the questions in such a way as to not reveal the true intent of the survey because, I don't know, people in that other group might not want to tell you what they really think.
00:19:46.246 --> 00:19:51.326
Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I've seen politics at work in organizations, right?
00:19:51.816 --> 00:19:55.905
So getting good data can be challenging.
00:19:56.736 --> 00:20:10.145
And, and anyway, I just wanted to bring in the fact that because we are now talking about involving other people in the sense-making process, anytime you do that, you have to think about social and political relations.
00:20:11.571 --> 00:20:17.642
Yeah, that's an interesting angle here, and it harkens back to the discussion we had about eliciting information.
00:20:17.692 --> 00:20:45.132
I think we talked about the book Confidential at some point, which looks at acquiring potentially valuable or sensitive information without necessarily"interrogating" somebody or inquiring directly, because it can tend to cause people to deflect or avoid answering directly.
00:20:45.481 --> 00:20:49.261
And I think this is interesting because in the Johari window, it's not necessarily...
00:20:49.271 --> 00:20:52.342
and I may have misspoken when I said it's what people say about you.
00:20:52.934 --> 00:20:55.994
It's really what they think about you or what they know about you.
00:20:56.065 --> 00:20:58.964
It's what you know about yourself and what others know about you.
00:20:59.355 --> 00:21:01.184
Maybe they say it, maybe they don't, right?
00:21:01.184 --> 00:21:13.551
And in the qualitative 360 degree diagnostic process I use with executive coaching and team dynamics, yeah, I've gotta be very careful with how I probe for that.
00:21:13.872 --> 00:21:17.491
And generally, I can't go with one data point, right?
00:21:17.491 --> 00:21:27.902
I have to synthesize, multiple data points to get to some kind of resolution on a point of view to know that it's even marginally valid.
00:21:28.481 --> 00:21:33.961
But I think the most interesting angle here is a place I've run into for myself.
00:21:34.392 --> 00:21:44.652
Terrible challenges, especially in larger organizations and especially in political, small P politics, not capital P, horrible politics.
00:21:44.652 --> 00:21:50.342
But just the oxygen of how things get done in an organization tends to be political, right?
00:21:50.821 --> 00:22:01.481
And as a leader, one of the places that I find I struggle with what I know about myself and what other people don't know about me is my positive intentions, right?
00:22:02.551 --> 00:22:12.491
And if they only knew what I was trying to accomplish for the organization, for their team, for them personally, they would never question my motives, right?
00:22:12.821 --> 00:22:41.231
And yet, without being more on the nose about, as they say in the movie industry, about what I'm trying to accomplish or about how I'm trying to be of service for them or their team or the broader organization, and just hoping that they're gonna read my glorious positive intentions, they see the behavior, they hear the words, and they draw their own conclusions, which are sometimes, quite the opposite of what I wish or hoped or want.
00:22:42.317 --> 00:22:48.424
We can't evaluate these things by reading people's minds because we cannot read people's minds.
00:22:48.424 --> 00:23:01.515
So we have to do it based on eliciting information, like you're saying, and and that information might be based on unspoken things like actions, gestures, body language.
00:23:02.615 --> 00:23:12.589
I'll circle back to trying to make this as practical as possible, and this is why I suggested earlier on that I thought we might end up talking about AI.
00:23:13.170 --> 00:23:17.640
This is actually something that I've used AI for and I've found useful.
00:23:18.779 --> 00:23:29.819
And again, there's a data input problem because my interactions with, let's say, ChatGPT are not comprehensive.
00:23:29.940 --> 00:23:31.660
They're not holistic.
00:23:32.039 --> 00:23:35.210
ChatGPT doesn't know about everything in my life.
00:23:35.609 --> 00:23:38.759
It only knows about what I have asked it.
00:23:39.615 --> 00:23:40.194
So far.
00:23:40.660 --> 00:23:41.130
So far...
00:23:41.349 --> 00:23:42.339
yes, that's true.
00:23:43.349 --> 00:24:02.309
And that's not a small thing because I've been working with this system for several years now, almost every day, and it does give you, by default, the ability to answer questions based on the entirety of your chat history, right?
00:24:03.009 --> 00:24:15.849
So I don't know where I saw this, but I saw a prompt that focused on this, and I tried it, and it was really revealing to the point where I actually wrote a blog post where I shared its answers.
00:24:16.515 --> 00:24:16.634
Wow.
00:24:16.940 --> 00:24:35.690
And I'll include that in the show notes, but the prompt is:"Based on everything I've ever asked you, what do you think my biggest blind spots are?" And ChatGPT responded with five blind spots, and I'll read them to you real quick.
00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:39.440
These are just the headlines, but there's actually copy that explains each.
00:24:40.150 --> 00:24:43.700
The first is, underestimating the practical value of your ideas.
00:24:45.190 --> 00:24:49.259
The second is, too much focus on internal coherence over external resonance.
00:24:50.125 --> 00:24:51.625
Ooh, wow.
00:24:52.984 --> 00:24:53.275
Wow.
00:24:53.980 --> 00:24:56.039
I felt really seen when I saw these.
00:24:57.819 --> 00:25:01.839
The third was, hesitation to fully embrace a leadership identity.
00:25:03.673 --> 00:25:04.683
Boy, that's some X.
00:25:04.903 --> 00:25:05.544
It's true.
00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:09.130
The fourth, balancing craft and reach.
00:25:09.974 --> 00:25:10.305
Huh.
00:25:10.660 --> 00:25:15.490
And the fifth was, difficulty letting go of roles you've outgrown.
00:25:18.224 --> 00:25:19.974
Whoa, dude.
00:25:21.930 --> 00:25:22.859
Yeah, and it felt...
00:25:23.109 --> 00:25:24.670
reading through this, I felt...
00:25:25.420 --> 00:25:46.519
First, I felt a little, I felt seen, and I felt, you know that feeling you get sometimes it's like,"Oh my gosh, someone is speaking truth to me, and it feels a little embarrassing, but also it's like I'm really thrilled that I'm having someone tell me this." It's like you have, you have a piece of...
00:25:48.775 --> 00:25:50.035
Cabbage in your tooth, yeah.
00:25:51.785 --> 00:26:02.414
And also I must say when I shared this originally on social media, a few folks chimed back to say,"It's kinda like a horoscope.
00:26:02.414 --> 00:26:06.535
Like, you read into it." And there might be a little bit of that.
00:26:07.795 --> 00:26:13.845
But I think that because what we're talking about here is self-reflection and introspection, that might not be entirely a bad thing.
00:26:13.845 --> 00:26:22.984
Like, even if I'm projecting more capability into this system than is truly merited, even so, it's useful.
00:26:23.134 --> 00:26:29.761
And the other thing I'll say is, this is only based on the things that I've talked or chatted with, ChatGPT about.
00:26:31.471 --> 00:26:41.662
So, it thinks, for example, and again, if you go to this blog post and read them in detail, one of the criticisms was something like you, over-polish things.
00:26:42.291 --> 00:26:49.362
And that's because I've spent so much time using ChatGPT as a copy editor, so it thinks like I'm obsessive about like copy editing texts.
00:26:49.362 --> 00:26:51.561
It's no, that's just how I use ChatGPT, right?
00:26:52.241 --> 00:27:06.182
But I just wanted to put it out there because I did find it useful, and there is a lot less social pressure in asking a chatbot for this kind of reflection than asking a fellow human who hopefully isn't...
00:27:06.471 --> 00:27:07.531
we want...
00:27:07.682 --> 00:27:13.382
whose respect and who might not know as much of our history as these chatbots do, right?
00:27:14.602 --> 00:27:16.132
So I just wanted to put that out there.
00:27:17.045 --> 00:27:22.444
I love that you did that too, because, it's one thing to take the feedback from ChatGPT.
00:27:22.444 --> 00:27:27.404
It's another thing to share it with somebody who you might consider a trusted source for calibration, right?
00:27:27.595 --> 00:27:30.884
Because in this particular case, two of those things really, hit me, right?
00:27:30.884 --> 00:27:41.585
I'm like,"Whoa, yeah, those feel right," or they feel like they're interesting doorways to pass through and explore if you're interested in learning more.
00:27:42.234 --> 00:27:55.615
So maybe they're not the be-all, end-all truth, but at least they provide you a starting point to explore the possibility that maybe there's a blind spot there or something that you could start diving into and inquire more about.
00:27:55.984 --> 00:27:56.545
Absolutely.
00:27:56.545 --> 00:27:59.575
Like you could bring one of these to a conversation with a mentor, right?
00:27:59.575 --> 00:28:01.954
And say,"Hey, this one resonated with me.
00:28:02.234 --> 00:28:03.015
Do you see this?
00:28:03.015 --> 00:28:06.825
And could, how could I work on this?" It feels like a good starting point.
00:28:07.545 --> 00:28:11.724
Or the other way,"This one confused me." Or,"This one I disagree with," right?
00:28:11.934 --> 00:28:12.644
Either way.
00:28:12.994 --> 00:28:13.295
Right.
00:28:13.765 --> 00:28:25.515
So I think we have tools, and I'm glad that you brought this to the table because I think that a lot of people right now are in a modality of introspection as they think about,"What am I gonna be doing next," right?
00:28:26.724 --> 00:28:31.255
So, I think that it's a useful conversation, so thank you for, bringing this reading.
00:28:32.694 --> 00:28:34.664
I really appreciated the conversation.
00:28:34.664 --> 00:28:35.315
Thank you.
00:28:35.595 --> 00:28:36.335
Thank you so much.
00:28:36.335 --> 00:28:38.275
I'm looking forward to, to the next one.
00:28:39.912 --> 00:28:44.352
Thank you for listening to Traction Heroes with Harry Max and Jorge Arango.
00:28:45.011 --> 00:28:52.692
Check out the show notes at tractionheroes.com and if you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating in Apple's podcasts app.
00:28:53.051 --> 00:28:53.501
Thanks.
