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Self-Awareness

Entry 2232, on 2022-08-23 at 22:23:22 (Rating 4, Comments)

My friend Fred (not his real name) recently had some issues with his employer. If you read this blog you will be aware of this already, but today I want to expand on this event and offer some interpretation of it in broader terms.

After suffering through unreasonable persecution (as he sees it) by his managers, Fred organised a meeting with a fairly senior bureaucrat (to bypass his immediate manager, who was a major cause of his problems). Fred already thought this more senior manager was an idiot, but he thought he should at least give him a chance. He thought the manager might listen to what he had to say and maybe even reach some sort of compromise on the issues involved.

But, of course, he didn't.

Instead the manager doubled down on all of the issues Fred raised while denigrating Fred's contributions to the organisation. The complete failure to listen extended to deliberately increasing the pressure which caused the issue in the first place, while not even asking about what caused it.

That sort of thing is what many people would expect from managers, but here's what I think (based on Fred's recollection) was maybe the biggest indicator of the problems with "leadership" at this time: the manager said, with a certain degree of reluctant admiration, that Fred was very self-aware, because Fred freely admitted that certain parts of his personality were responsible for the problems he suffered.

Fred thought that maybe that might encourage the management to admit that some of it was also their responsibility, but that didn't happen. Instead the manager jumped on the opportunity to place all the blame on Fred. So while he congratulated Fred on being self-aware he was totally devoid of that quality himself.

And I think that is the problem. I have said on many occasions that I quite like many people in leadership roles as people, but I despise them when they act from within that position of power. This applies to leadership at every level, from petty junior managers to presidents of great countries.

I think everyone needs to seek out and accept criticism, or they are likely to become arrogant and out of touch. But in most hierarchies, the people at the top rarely encounter any negative views, so they are never forced into reflection, awareness of other perspectives, or self-awareness.

There is no doubt that in large hierarchical organisations that those near the top are not exposed to criticism, because the structure specifically prevents that. It is easy to ignore criticism from the lower levels because it is generally filtered through a whole series of people between the person at the bottom and the one at the top. And if any criticism is detected, the people in power support each other, and assure the person being criticised that their critic is just "out of touch" or "can't see the big picture" or "just can't accept change" or whatever other trite catch-phrase might be fashionable.

I'm sure that those three phenomena really do happen, but it's just too easy to reject any negative opinions by trotting out those knee-jerk reactions without putting any real thought into whether they are relevant in the actual situation the organisation is in.

So maybe if the manager Fred encountered was a bit more self-aware himself he would have seen that Fred did make some good points which he should perhaps take seriously. Instead he just made things even worse by "fixing" the problem by applying more of the ridiculous rules which caused it in the first place.

I often wonder whether managers sometimes, just in those private moments of self-doubt that most of us have, think maybe what they are doing isn't necessarily the best way to achieve their goals. And it should be noted that Fred and the manager ostensibly have the same goal: to provide good service for their clients. They just have very different ways they think will achieve that. One is "top-down" where rules created by top management are implemented by the rest. The other is "bottom-up" where the actual clients guide how things are done. I'm sure you know by now which one Fred prefers!

So people acquire false and compromised beliefs in various ways and, unless those ideas are challenged, they tend to become entrenched into their personal belief system. But it can be even worse than that, because people tell lies, and the lies eventually become their truth if there is no feedback from critics or no self reflection on their own part.

Repetition of falsehoods leading to belief in what was originally known to be doubtful or even untrue is a well known psychological phenomenon. The best expression of this principle was from (Nazi propaganda minister) Goebbels, who said "tell a lie often enough and it becomes the truth" (the exact wording was slightly different than that, but that sums it up neatly).

Can anyone doubt that most, if not all, world leaders are at least partly victims of this phenomenon? Depending on your political preferences you might recognise it in Trump, or Biden, or Putin, or Trudeau, or Johnson, or our own Ardern. And if you are prepared to believe it in the people you consider your enemy politically, why would you not believe that your political allies are also affected, but you are just less likely to believe it?

In America, the left think Trump is deluded, or a liar, or fantasy prone. The right think the same thing about Biden. How likely is it that one side is right and the other wrong? You think that is likely? So which side is problematic, and don't just choose the one you prefer. See my point? Every leader is significantly affected by this.

And it is people in power who are affected, because those of us with no power are constantly challenged by others and forced into looking at our own beliefs. It is that feedback mechanism which keeps us grounded in reality instead of living in a fantasy world which only really exists in the pages of some inane management magazine.

So what's the answer? Well, politicians and managers need to be more self-aware and even self-critical. Anyone who doesn't recognise their own deficiencies suffers from the worst deficiency of all: lack of self-awareness.

Comment 1 (7275) by Allan on 2022-08-24 at 11:12:53:

There is a lot of truth in your sixth paragraph. You should get Fred to read it

Comment 2 (7276) by Allan on 2022-08-24 at 11:14:32:

Sorry about that. It is the seventh paragraph I was referring to.

Comment 3 (7277) by OJB on 2022-08-24 at 11:28:32:

Fred has always had a reasonable view on this and fitted in to the system to some extent while bypassing it when it was more efficient to do that. But he can’t do that any more after the bureaucrats became even less flexible than before. I think he has just given up following his higher morals and is just following the rules and doing the absolute minimum now. It’s very demotivating.

Comment 4 (7280) by Anonymous on 2022-08-26 at 12:43:23:

Very demotivating true, I had a friend, let's call him Bruce who was in a very similar situation, probably at a very similar workplace to yours. Bruce had his position undermined by a bullying, ignorant manager. Bruce's role was dumbed down as the manager took all of the enjoyable and high level tasks away from him and re-allocated them to other people who held higher titles, but had no clue what they were doing.

Eventually Bruce came to the realisation that nothing that was happening was his fault and that he had two options: (1) Take the money and work to a standard that was below his own standard but was perfectly acceptable to his manager; (2) Leave.

He did (1) for a while but it took time for him to truly accept that he wasn't selling out. He still tried to do the right thing, but was less upset when his manager told him to do the wrong thing. He knew where the responsibility for the substandard outcomes sat. He tried to subtly shift his useless manager's views, but eventually accepted that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome.

Comment 5 (7281) by OJB on 2022-08-26 at 15:05:35:

OMG. There's an awful lot of that which sounds very familiar!

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