Page 84 - Fearless Leadership

The Need to Be Right 71

Believing Your Perception Is the Truth

As a leader, the most dangerous delusion is believing your perception is
reality. It stops you from challenging assumptions, examining thinking,
and questioning conclusions. The belief that “my reality is the truth”
prevents committed partnerships from forming. It places the burden on
others to understand you and lets you off the hook for understanding
others.
In Robert Heinlein’s book Stranger in a Strange Land, he talks about
a “fair witness”—an individual who reports what is or is not true. His char-
acter Jubal asks Anne, a fair witness, to describe the color of a recently
painted house on a hilltop. Anne replies: “It’s white on this side.” As a fair
witness, she does not infer anything other than what she can actually
observe. She will not report that the other side of the house is white unless
she actually went there and looked, and even then, she would not assume
that it had stayed white after she left.

Your perception of reality is not the truth. It is an interpretation—
one among many.

Unless you are a fair witness, you treat your perceptions as the truth,
and not as your interpretation of reality. The world appears as you perceive
it, and what you cannot see, you infer. In short, you do what all human
beings do: you make up stories.

Expecting Others to Judge You by Your Intention

We place an enormous burden on others to understand us and read
between the lines. We know why we do things and we expect others to
appreciate our reasons. When there is a misunderstanding, we assume oth-
ers saw the situation in the same way we did. We think that others should
realize we have a positive intention and understand that we do not intend
to hurt them. When we have a negative impact, we believe we should be
able to say “That was not my intention” or “I’m sorry” with the expecta-
tion that everything will instantly clear up.
We operate with a double standard: we judge others by their behavior,
but we expect them to judge us by our intentions. We quickly blame