Insight: Why We Are Less Self-Aware Than We Think—and What to Do About It

by Tasha Eurich

The Commitment to Ongoing Team Self-Awareness in Action: The Candor Challenge

The Candor Challenge takes place over a period of months or years, but most notably begins with a Team Feedback Exchange, in which every team member gets the chance to give their peers feedback. And if that isn’t intimidating enough, each team member delivers that feedback in front of the entire team.

Focusing on what people are doing rather than our interpretations or judgments not only helps us better understand the feedback, it helps you hear it openly and non-defensively.”

“First, the richness and detail you get in a conversation is unmatched by written feedback. Second, believe it or not, anonymous feedback can often be more hurtful. When people’s comments can’t be traced back to them, they’re not as careful with how they word things. And third, delivering feedback out loud offers the opportunity to practice this habit in a safe, controlled environment, which makes you more likely to continue it in the future.”

It had been a long afternoon. All that was left was to agree on the plan to keep the process going—something I call Accountability Conversations. The team decided to circle back monthly and devote 30 or so minutes to a discussion: each person would provide an update on what they were doing to make good on their commitment. Then, they’d ask the team for their feedback, support, or anything else that would help them stay on the path toward improvement. But Accountability Conversations, the team astutely realized, weren’t an excuse to sit on feedback for days or weeks. So they also agreed to point out, in real time, when they saw behavior that either supported or contradicted each team member’s commitment.

If team self-awareness means confronting reality by fostering candor among team members, organizational self-awareness means confronting market realities by actively seeking feedback from all stakeholders—employees, unions, customers, shareholders, suppliers, communities, legislators—and keeping those stakeholders informed about how the company is adapting to serve their changing needs. Alan Mulally calls this “awareness for everybody.

it’s not always that organizations don’t have the information, but rather that they can’t or won’t accept it.

my colleague Chuck Blakeman likes to ask his clients: “What are you pretending not to know?” Put simply, companies who fail to appreciate their market realities are fostering a collective delusion that will almost always sow the seeds of their undoing. Though there are many reasons for this kind of delusion, it is often due to what Chuck calls “Quarterly Report Syndrome”—prioritizing short-term results over long-term success.

KEY CONCEPTS AND TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 9 Five cornerstones of collective insight Objectives: What are we trying to accomplish as a team? Progress: How well are we achieving our objectives? Processes: Is the way we’re working helping us reach our objectives? Assumptions: Do the assumptions we’re making about our business and environment hold true? Individual contributions: How is each team member impacting our performance? Three building blocks of self-aware teams A leader who models the way Tool: Leader Feedback Process The psychological safety and expectation to tell the truth Tool: Team Norms An ongoing process to stay collectively self-aware Tool: Peer Pirates Tool: Candor Challenge. Organizational awareness: Confronting market realities by actively seeking feedback from all stakeholders and keeping those stakeholders informed.

The seeds for this process came from Patrick Lencioni’s excellent book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which I consider required reading for all current and aspiring managers.

In the workplace, delusional people aren’t just annoying and frustrating; they hinder our performance. Being on a team with just one unaware person cuts the team’s chances of success in half, and unaware bosses hurt their employees’ job satisfaction, performance, and well-being.

We’ve already heard the stories of ordinary people who have radically improved their own self-awareness, so it must at least be possible to help the delusional become more self-aware. But not everyone will want to change. Given this reality, what is the best way to deal with these people? Is it to understand them and perhaps help them change? Or is it better to simply minimize their collateral damage on our success and happiness? In this chapter, I’ll address these questions with the goal of providing you a few actionable strategies for dealing with the three types of unaware people you may encounter in your life—the Lost Cause, the Aware Don’t Care, and the Nudgable—and keep them from draining your energy, enthusiasm, and happiness.

Maria represents the first of three categories of delusional people: the Lost Cause. Lost Causes cling to their delusion with a righteous, indignant, and unshakable zeal. Because they can’t (or won’t) consider any other opinion besides their own, anyone who attempts to shine a light on their less desirable characteristics will get the proverbial flashlight thwacked out of their hand. Although you can occasionally get them to listen to feedback by appealing to their self-interest (“This behavior is hurting your reputation”), it is usually pointless to challenge their self-views.

when surveyed about how they deal with the Lost Causes in their lives, only about half of our unicorns reported directly intervening, but nearly all used strategies to control their own reactions. In his superb book The No Asshole Rule, Stanford professor Bob Sutton shares an instructive metaphor for managing our reactions to Lost Causes. (And for that matter, to the second type, the Aware Don’t Care, whom you’ll read about in a minute.) Imagine you’re white-water rafting. Your boat is calmly floating down a picturesque river, when all of a sudden you see a rough patch and

Daniel was a textbook case of the second type of delusional person: one I call Aware Don’t Care. Whereas a Lost Cause’s primary issue is a lack of insight and no motivation to acquire it, the Aware Don’t Care know exactly what they’re doing—and the negative impact they’re having on others—but they act that way anyway. Why? They truly believe that their counterproductive (often borderline-abusive) behavior will help them get what they want. And therein lies their delusion. From Daniel’s perspective, he (wrongly) believed that cultivating fear helped him do his job better.

Another way to tell Lost Causes from the Aware Don’t Care is to look at their perspective-taking abilities. Lost Causes tend to believe that their way of thinking is the only way—like Maria, who assumed that everyone else shared her opinions and freaked out when they didn’t. The Aware Don’t Care, on the other hand, often show that they understand their behavior from other people’s perspectives—like the hospital attending who knew just how onerous those five flights of stairs really were—but they also demonstrate the belief that the behavior is productive. And for that reason, it’s usually not worth the energy to try to change them.

While all the techniques I’ve mentioned above will also work with the Aware Don’t Care, there is another that’s particularly well-suited for them. I came up with the laugh track when I worked for an Aware Don’t Care boss many years ago. After a series of public humiliations, including being reamed out for a relatively small mistake in front of our entire leadership team, I was at the end of my rope. I figured I had two choices: I could quit, or I could find a better way to deal with my manager. Because I adored every other aspect of my job, I decided to try the latter. One day, after a particularly unpleasant encounter with said boss, I happened to recall my favorite TV show growing up, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Mary’s boss was a surly man named Lou Grant, played by the incomparable Ed Asner. On a good day, Lou Grant was grumpy and hotheaded; on a bad day, he was nasty and downright abusive. But because his outrageous comments were often followed by a canned laugh track, to the viewer, they seemed comical

Granted, not everyone dealing with a delusional person has the luxury of walking away. But as Scott discovered, when someone is as thoroughly mired in delusion as Joe, the problems they create in our lives don’t magically disappear. If we’ve exhausted all of our options—changing our mindset, stating our needs, and reinforcing our boundaries—but still can’t manage, we must face these situations with unflinching honesty. Sometimes, we may indeed decide that whatever the sacrifice—whether it’s leaving a job we love, cutting ties with an impossibly unaware friend or family member, or giving up a lucrative contract—our best option may be to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and move forward.

All of a sudden it made sense. Completely unbeknownst to me, I had been shining my brights directly at Denver drivers for miles—and what’s more, they’d all been trying to tell me as much. I just couldn’t, quite literally, read the signals I was getting. This is a good metaphor for what life is like for unaware people. Though they can’t decode what the flashing lights in front of them mean, other people usually can. And if they’re open to it, we can help the unaware see themselves through our eyes.

Call me an optimist, but I believe that more often than not, most unaware people are at least somewhat Nudgable.

In Phil’s case, Lisa had the perfect opening to deliver her feedback. Unfortunately, though, not every unaware person is savvy enough to seek it out. After all, the big catch-22 of self-awareness is that the people who need it most are usually the least likely to know they need it. So is it ever a good idea to confront an unaware person more directly? And if so, how can we guard against the inevitable risks? How can we deliver these important insights without the recipient shooting the messenger (i.e., you)? As we’ll see from the following story, when it comes to the Nudgable, a little compassion, coupled with some thoughtful preparation, can really go a long way.

The answer to Sophia’s final question—Do I think that he will listen to me?—wasn’t as straightforward. Power differentials, like the one she had with Frank, make conversations like this very difficult. On the face of it, it may seem silly for a 21-year-old pre-med student to think she should tell a successful 52-year-old surgeon how to act. But Sophia thought that the trust they shared would tip the balance.

But often, if we keep the tone of the conversation positive and constructive and show that we come from a place of genuine support, we can help the unaware see themselves more clearly. When we confront with compassion, we can often nudge them to make powerful changes that don’t just improve their life and happiness, but ours as well.

No matter how much insight we’ve achieved, there is always more to be gained.

that insight is pointless if we don’t put it to use. As we’ve seen throughout the book, the most successful among us don’t just work to gain self-awareness—they act on it and reap the rewards.

Just one thing separates people who successfully act on insight from those who don’t: the ability to take things one step at a time.

KEY CONCEPTS AND TAKEAWAYS: CHAPTER 10 Delusional people: People who have no idea how their behavior impacts those around them. How to deal with the three types of delusional people The Lost Cause: They cling to their delusions; it is futile to challenge their self-views. Tool: Compassion without judgment Tool: Floating feet-first The “Aware Don’t Care”: They see their behavior clearly, but not its negative impact. Tool: The laugh track Tool: State our needs The Nudgeable: They want to change, but don’t know what they need to change. Tool: Confront with compassion