The Unstuck Mind and The Power of Not Knowing
A leadership expert who has spent 30 years working to create a vaccine against closed-mindedness shares the tools of his trade.
Most people love the comforting feeling that they are right. Why is that so dangerous right now? Jaygordoncone:
Everyone likes to be right, but the fact is, we find it much easier to notice and accept things that are consistent with our underlying beliefs than things that aren’t. Seeking this out is understandable in our increasingly polarized world, because we crave the comfort of having our worldview reinforced and embraced. The danger comes when we overlook evidence that we might not have all the facts, or we might just be plain wrong. ‘Confirmation bias’ makes us susceptible to overly simplistic answers and vulnerable to people who are just telling us what we want to hear.
In general, people who hold prejudices view the differences between people as threatening. What is the best way to shift this mindset?
JGC:
It’s difficult to see someone as threatening once you discover that you have things in common with them. In my work
I’ve spent a lot of time with groups that need to work together, focusing on building trust and rapport, and you typically do that by getting people to share something personal. Hardheaded business-types — including me — often cringe when meetings start off with something personal, but the fact is, people need to feel ‘seen’, heard, connected and safe in order for them to be willing to relate with others. When we recognize our shared humanity, confirmation bias transforms from a problem into a benefit — because instead of looking for the ways that people will fit the labels that we want to assign to them, we start to look for what we have in common.
Everyone has been through significant stress in the past year, and when we are stressed, we often make bad decisions. What can help?
JGC:
In the book ( The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What to Do) I present some really important research on the cognitive and emotional traps that keep us ‘stuck’ and push us towards
bad decisions. When we’re looking for information, we like to think we act like vacuum cleaners, sucking up all the pertinent information in our path; but actually, we operate more like metal detectors that are programmed to notice some things and not others. In fact, we just ‘sweep past’ a lot of things — and some of them are really important. The result is that we are always working with limited information.
Add to that the research around how stress pushes us towards ‘premature closure’, and we often take that limited information we have amassed and quickly reach a conclusion, especially when we’re feeling overwhelmed or stressed. This ‘inquiry loop’ closes when the conclusions that we reach get compared to our worldviews and assumptions. If the conclusions feel threatening, our worldview wins out, and nothing changes. We get stuck.
A Quinnipiac poll that came out recently said 77 per cent of Republicans still believe that there was widespread voter fraud in the last U.S. election. It would be easy to brush that aside and say, ‘Well, they must be insane’ — but I really don’t believe 77 per cent of Republicans lack an ability to interpret factual evidence. What has happened is, their thinking traps have been combined with their fears, which makes accepting the factual evidence feel like an existential threat. When we’re threatened, we often become irrational.
If the conclusions we reach are a direct result of the information we ingest, that’s a scary proposition in a world filled with fake news. What to do?
JGC:
This is the big mission I’m on, and I would sum it up as follows: We have to get better at building our thinking stamina. We need a regimen to help us deal with uncertainty and complexity. It’s not that these are evil things; there can be hidden gems within them, if we can only take a deep breath, pause and resist the temptation to eliminate them.
Think of it this way: We’ve now got vaccines to help us build up our physical immunity to COVID-19. But we also have cognitive and emotional immune systems, and we need to build them up so we can deal more effectively with fake news and absolutist
worldviews. We need a regimen that will help us get more comfortable with the turbulence that we’re dealing with — because it’s not going away.
What is the best way to ensure we have a balanced worldview? JGC:
Balanced worldviews come from getting in the habit of challenging our assumptions. One discipline that is really useful, but not common, is to think about how we think. If you’re inclined to self-reflection, take some time to ask yourself a few good questions. If this feels stressful to you, you might need help from somebody — a coach or a thought partner.
You can also learn to question your assumptions by putting yourself in unfamiliar surroundings. That’s why travel is so broadening. When we can visit other places and put ourselves in a vastly different culture, that’s a quick way to recognize our unquestioned assumptions. You don’t have to go very far to do this: If you’re an atheist, go to a church; if you live in one neighbourhood, volunteer to help people in a different part of town. Putting yourself in unfamiliar surroundings on a regular basis is a great way to fight mind traps.
Why is there so much animosity towards those who disagree with us at the moment?
JGC:
I am not actually sure, but I have a hunch that if we’re honest with ourselves, we don’t even know why we hold certain convictions. We’ve just been raised to have some of them. And when we have to engage with someone who doesn’t share our worldview, we have to confront our insecurities about why we believe what we believe. That can feel scary. It’s just easier to distance ourselves from people with different worldviews than it is to engage with them.
Describe the power of adopting a ‘beginner’s mind’—and how to go about it.
JGC:
I borrowed this concept from Zen Buddhism. Buddhists use the term ‘Shoshan’ to describe the kind of posture you strive to achieve in moments of meditation. There is a great story that I first read about in Warren Berger’s book, A More Beautiful
Question, about Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid instant camera. Land was on a family vacation in 1943 and he had taken some pictures of his three-year-old daughter, Jennifer. She was extremely eager to see the pictures, and Land had to explain to her that she would have to wait for the photos to be developed. According to the story, Jennifer asked, ‘Why do we have to wait?’ Land later claimed that he was inspired by this simple question and decided to take on the challenge of creating a camera and film that didn’t require processing.
That is an example of what a beginner can do. Beginners can ask naive questions, because they’re unburdened by the constraints of expertise. As we age and gain experience in the world, we are quick to judge things based on what we think is possible. If we immediately notice contradictions, we often decide that an idea isn’t worthy. But the beginner’s mind is more open to playing with ideas and doesn’t need to pass judgment because it doesn’t know what is out of bounds.
It’s not that we should always approach the world with a beginner’s mind, but if we get stuck or are looking for creativity, one way to do that is to ask ourselves, ‘If we were just beginning right now and didn’t know anything about this situation, what would be some of the naive questions we might ask?’ By compiling these, you can challenge assumptions that are limiting what you consider to be possible.
You recommend four ‘thinking disciplines’ for navigating chaos and ambiguity. Please summarize them.
JGC:
To be clear, you don’t have to do these in any particular order. The first one is exploring the context. That’s about zooming out from your challenge to consider environmental factors that you can’t control, but still might be relevant. The second one is analyzing structures, which is about zooming in and looking at the relationships between the variables that make up your norms, habits, systems, processes — all the things that are connected to the challenge you’re working on.
The third discipline is to empathize with needs, which is fundamentally about recognizing that stakeholder needs may be changing and the perspectives of people that you excluded from
consideration might help you out. And the fourth discipline is challenging assumptions, which is about surfacing and then considering the role that assumptions are playing in how the challenge is being framed.
The reason we need all four of these in turbulent, uncertain situations is that two of the domains focus on stability, and two focus on instability. Structures and assumptions are things that keep us in the situation we’re in; they are sources of stability and control. The other two domains focus on change, which is where opportunities often lie.
Our unconscious ‘mental traps’ conspire against change, which we sorely need in the world. For those who want to be part of positive change, what are the first steps?
JGC:
Change is particularly difficult when people are not feeling safe, which can happen when they’re coping with all of the interlocking calamities coming at us right now — social injustice, a climate crisis, a pandemic, unemployment. As a result, I think you’ve got to start with compassion. You’ve got to be kind to yourself and to others.
This creates a particular obligation for leaders who may feel an impatience to move things along or get a new approach in place. People are using terms like ‘new normal’, and of course, every leader wants to get there sooner rather than later. But under the current conditions, leaders have a special obligation to create safety first. Positive change will only be possible when people feel safe.
Dr. Jay Gordon Cone is the Founder of Unstuck Minds and the author of The Surprising Power of Not Knowing What To Do: Discovering Creativity and Compassion in a Time of Chaos (Unstuck Minds, LLC, 2021). His past and current clients include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dell Technologies, GE, W.L. Gore and Pepsico.