Ever feel like you and someone else can look at the exact same thing, but see something totally different?
Here’s an example. What do you see in the image?
Some people see a young woman with a feather coming out of her fancy hat.
Others see an old lady with a hooked nose.
What you see depends on your personal experiences, biases and beliefs.
More importantly, every situation in life is like this, open to interpretation.
As Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman explains in Thinking Fast and Slow:
“The confidence that individuals have in their beliefs depends mostly on the quality of the story they can tell about what they see, even if they see little. We often fail to allow for the possibility that evidence that should be critical to our judgment is missing — what we see is all there is.”
What happens when we assume that our story is the whole story?
we feel a sense of righteousness
we double-down on our POV
we make others wrong
And if we do find out there’s more to the story, either we sheepishly end up backpedaling or looking for ways to blame someone else.
Either way, we make it unsafe for people to tell us what they really think and lose their trust.
That’s why one of the most valuable things I help clients do is expand their perspective.
One country CEO, for example, was chafing after a company-wide restructuring that meant reporting to a new global CEO:
“He’s micro-managing decisions, overriding our input and trying to show he’s in control,” he told me.
“That must be frustrating,” I said. “I wonder, can you see his POV, having a lot of very senior people who’ve been doing this for years, all of a sudden reporting into him? It must be like trying to herd a bunch of lions. Do you think he might feel some pressure?”
A week later, my client reported back:
"In the past, I would have gone in like a bulldozer, trying to, like, punch holes in his approach or the way he runs the leadership team meetings.
But I’m flipping that around, because I’m putting myself in his shoes and thinking, ‘Well, this guy, he’s only been here nine months. But all of a sudden, he’s got to manage this 10,000 person company and a huge mission and objective and targets. He must feel overwhelmed. He needs your help, I told myself, not your ego.'"
And just like that: he went from ego-driven pushback to empathetic support.
These are the types of transformations I see in my brilliant founder clients. We focus on strategic leadership skills that move the needle. And we dive into tactical execution to get the work done.
Curious about how this approach can help you hit your growth goals faster? Let’s talk.