Biased Leader Quotes

BLACK AND WHITE I was born into A religion of Light, But with so many other Religions and Philosophies, How do I know which ONE Is right? Is it not My birthright To seek out the light? To find Truth After surveying all the proof, Am I supposed To love Or fight? And why do all those who Try to guide me, Always start by dividing And multiplying me – From what they consider Wrong or right? I thought, There were no walls For whoever beams truth and light. And how can one speak on Light's behalf, lf all they do Is act black, But talk WHITE?

Silence is for fools. Communication is for leaders. Justice is for those brave enough to not stand another moment dealing with people that feel the solution to any problem is through cold indifference because of their lack of courage and insecurities.

You are not a victim. You are a willing participant that has created your own anxiety through your negative mind, insecurities and actions. If you want to secure your future then the only way is through love, forgiveness and the willingness to admit you have participated in the uncomfortableness you are experiencing now. Stop telling yourself you are justified in hate, indifference, silence or bias. You are not. You can't build a positive life through battling others. The world is full of victims. No one wants to hear that story. People want to know how you did what the majority wouldn't do-you forgave and built up your enemies. It is seems totally rare and unheard of these days to swallow your pain and take the high road, but guess what? Those are the leaders that people admire and want to know. Those are the 1% who change the world and people's lives. So why do you want to be like the world when you can be beyond it?

Leaders need to correct for cognitive biases the way a sharpshooter corrects for wind velocity or a yachtsman corrects for the tide.

Diversity happens, Inclusion is a choice.

We are so obsessed with rationality, that we even try to rationalize our irrational behaviours.

Trust must not be blind. When you trust with open eyes, it lasts longer.

Cars and decision makers, both need a service break, for better performance and long life.

Our emotional intelligence makes our passion intelligent or unintelligent.

Authority works only when people obey.

Impossible becomes possible when people believe in it.

Leaders see everything with a leadership bias. Their focus is on mobilizing people and leveraging resources to achieve their goals rather than on using their own individual efforts. Leaders who want to succeed maximize every asset and resource they have for the benefit of their organization. For that reason, they are continually aware of what they have at their disposal.

All of us are not always smarter than one of us, leaders need to distinguish between the wisdom of crowds and the madness of crowds.

The most damaging cognitive bias is overconfidence (illusory superiority), making leaders use their “gut” when they should be more rational.

There are only two types of people in an organization. The people who make decisions and the people who execute them.

Decision making is a little like cologne, everyone has their own style when it comes to running a company and making decisions.

Decision makers are the only differentiators between the successful organizations and the less successful ones.

Creativity should not be contained, it should be channelized.

Cohesiveness and critical thinking can coexist when decision makers know how to balance personal and professional life.

Indecision is like a slow poison.

The most trivial things create the most critical complications in any execution.

Change is the law of nature, not humans. Humans still go by the first law of Newton.

Overcommunication is as good as no communication.

Monitoring and reviewing are the two paddles of the decision making cycle.

God doesn't listen to me too, but people have their suspicions. सुनता तो रब हमारी भी नहीं, पर लोगों को अल्लाह पे शक बेशक है

The greatest leaders in the world fight cognitive bias by developing 'rules to live by' and carefully following predetermined routines to maximize efficiency and control of their environment

First, when he looked closely at the existing studies on personality and leadership, he found that the correlation between extroversion and leadership was modest. Second, these studies were often based on people’s perceptions of who made a good leader, as opposed to actual results. And personal opinions are often a simple reflection of cultural bias.

Many authors, professors, pastors, and social justice leaders and organizations (both Christian and secular) who are considered to be on the forefront on the racial dialogue frequently use the term “white privilege.” However, the word privilege suggests that the inequality that favors white people is actually a blessing which they must learn to share. The term white privilege perpetuates an implicit bias. Whiteness is neither a privilege nor a blessing to be shared, it is a diseased social construct that needs to be confronted.

The problem is not lack of competence, it is confidence without competence.

Managers not just make 90% organizational decisions, they influence the rest 10% decisions as well.

Balancing group decision making with individual decision making balances speed and quality of decisions.

Dynamic decision making needs dynamic decision makers, who can think on their feet.

The best hidden secret is always in front of the eyes of people. Decision ecosystem is one such secret of successful organizations that is not easy to recognize and replicate.

Frontline decision making approach of an organization determines customer as well as employee experience and can prove to be a competitive advantage.

Data Driven Decision making is a cultural intervention which requires habit change from the leaders to the frontline employees.

Ethical decision making is sustainable decision making. It increases the lifespan of an organization.

Once a company sticks with its successful present, it becomes past very fast.

The good news is that you can minimize the bias preserved by AI, but this comes as a joint responsibility between leaders, domain experts, and developers.

You have to change how you see yourself so you can see others in a new way. This is the work of leaders. #NetworkBeyondBias

Assorted theories have been advanced to explain confirmation bias—why people rush to embrace information that supports their beliefs while rejecting information that disputes them: that first impressions are difficult to dislodge, that there’s a primitive instinct to defend one’s turf, that people tend to have emotional rather than intellectual responses to being challenged and are loath to carefully examine evidence. Group dynamics only exaggerate these tendencies, the author and legal scholar Cass Sunstein observed in his book Going to Extremes: insularity often means limited information input (and usually information that reinforces preexisting views) and a desire for peer approval; and if the group’s leader “does not encourage dissent and is inclined to an identifiable conclusion, it is highly likely that the group as a whole will move toward that conclusion.” Once the group has been psychologically walled off, Sunstein wrote, “the information and views of those outside the group can be discredited, and hence nothing will disturb the process of polarization as group members continue to talk.” In fact, groups of like-minded people can become breeding grounds for extreme movements. “Terrorists are made, not born,” Sunstein observed, “and terrorist networks often operate in just this way. As a result, they can move otherwise ordinary people to violent acts.

A wise leader, therefore, does not see herself as someone who simply makes sound decisions; because she realizes she can never, on her own, be an optimal decision maker, she views herself as a decision architect in charge of designing her organization’s decision-making processes.

Soon you shall be landing In the battleground, ensure you have the right weapons to fight the enemy; ensure you know your enemy and what he is capable of; take them unprepared to gain the victory and stand with your head held high; show it to the world the cause you have been fighting for, deception is the key, challenge your enemy when it is least expected; break them mentally before breaking them physically. You are a soldier; your enemy is a soldier and you are facing the best, both sides have a lot of similarities only variation lies in the cause. Cause is driver for the battle; cause is binding comrades together and even if the victory is gained the cause stays undefeated. You stand defeated for your strategy, tactics and leaders but never for the cause, it’s still alive, it shall always be alive with the men who have sacrificed their lives, with the men who are still alive. They stand defeated with the physical strength but not for the cause they have believed in and you can never take it away from them. Fight for a cause and you shall stay invincible. A war story is always biased towards one side and it’s hard to narrate a true war story. We choose and make our heroes from what we have read, heard and believed in. If we know the cause both sides are standing for, it will become difficult to take sides. Always respect your enemy, respect for the fact they are standing neck to neck with you, respect them for the courage they have shown to defend the other side, their land, respect them for whatever you have earned the respect for from your men, from your country and from your people. Powerful strategies, tactics, weapons, leaders are allies to the war, they support but never claims victory all my themselves Greatest wars won always had the greater cause. Rebel without a cause is never a rebel just an aimless person whose fate lies in the defeat.

Optimists Optimism is normal, but some fortunate people are more optimistic than the rest of us. If you are genetically endowed with an optimistic bias, you hardly need to be told that you are a lucky person—you already feel fortunate. An optimistic attitude is largely inherited, and it is part of a general disposition for well-being, which may also include a preference for seeing the bright side of everything. If you were allowed one wish for your child, seriously consider wishing him or her optimism. Optimists are normally cheerful and happy, and therefore popular; they are resilient in adapting to failures and hardships, their chances of clinical depression are reduced, their immune system is stronger, they take better care of their health, they feel healthier than others and are in fact likely to live longer. A study of people who exaggerate their expected life span beyond actuarial predictions showed that they work longer hours, are more optimistic about their future income, are more likely to remarry after divorce (the classic “triumph of hope over experience”), and are more prone to bet on individual stocks. Of course, the blessings of optimism are offered only to individuals who are only mildly biased and who are able to “accentuate the positive” without losing track of reality. Optimistic individuals play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are the inventors, the entrepreneurs, the political and military leaders—not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks. They are talented and they have been lucky, almost certainly luckier than they acknowledge. They are probably optimistic by temperament; a survey of founders of small businesses concluded that entrepreneurs are more sanguine than midlevel managers about life in general. Their experiences of success have confirmed their faith in their judgment and in their ability to control events. Their self-confidence is reinforced by the admiration of others. This reasoning leads to a hypothesis: the people who have the greatest influence on the lives of others are likely to be optimistic and overconfident, and to take more risks than they realize.

Remember one thing as South Africa prepares to go to the polls this week and the world grapples with the ascendancy of the African National Congress leader Jacob Zuma: South Africa is not Zimbabwe. In South Africa, no one doubts that Wednesday's elections will be free and fair. While there is an unacceptable degree of government corruption, there is no evidence of the wholesale kleptocracy of Robert Mugabe's elite. While there has been the abuse of the organs of state by the ruling ANC, there is not the state terror of Mugabe's Zanu-PF. And while there is a clear left bias to Zuma's ANC, there is no suggestion of the kind of voluntarist experimentation that has brought Zimbabwe to its knees.

But what is sovereignty? It is, they say, the power to make laws. Another absurdity, a relic of despotism. The nation had long seen kings issuing their commands in this form: for such is our pleasure; it wished to taste in its turn the pleasure of making laws. For fifty years it has brought them forth by myriads; always, be it understood, through the agency of representatives. The play is far from ended. The definition of sovereignty was derived from the definition of the law. The law, they said, is the expression of the will of the sovereign: then, under a monarchy, the law is the expression of the will of the king; in a republic, the law is the expression of the will of the people. Aside from the difference in the number of wills, the two systems are exactly identical: both share the same error, namely, that the law is the expression of a will; it ought to be the expression of a fact. Moreover they followed good leaders: they took the citizen of Geneva for their prophet, and the contrat social for their Koran. Bias and prejudice are apparent in all the phrases of the new legislators. The nation had suffered from a multitude of exclusions and privileges; its representatives issued the following declaration: All men are equal by nature and before the law; an ambiguous and redundant declaration. Men are equal by nature: does that mean that they are equal in size, beauty, talents, and virtue? No; they meant, then, political and civil equality. Then it would have been sufficient to have said: All men are equal before the law.

Biologically speaking, our brains were designed for within-group cooperation and between-group competition. Cooperation between groups is thwarted by tribalism (group-level selfishness), disagreements over the proper terms of cooperation (individualism or collectivism?), commitments to local “proper nouns” (leaders, gods, holy books), a biased sense of fairness, and a biased perception of the facts.

Consider the following: “Will Mindik be a good leader? She is intelligent and strong…” An answer quickly came to your mind, and it was yes. You picked the best answer based on the very limited information available, but you jumped the gun. What if the next two adjectives were corrupt and cruel? Take note of what you did not do as you briefly thought of Mindik as a leader. You did not start by asking, “What would I need to know before I formed an opinion about the quality of someone’s leadership?” System 1 got to work on its own from the first adjective: intelligent is good, intelligent and strong is very good. This is the best story that can be constructed from two adjectives, and System 1 delivered it with great cognitive ease. The story will be revised if new information comes in (such as Mindik is corrupt), but there is no waiting and no subjective discomfort. And there also remains a bias favoring the first impression.

Again, it is important to stress that this belief is not necessarily a consciously chosen one. It is a deeply hidden, unconscious aspect of white supremacy that is hardly ever spoken about but practiced in daily life without even thinking about it. The reality is that you have been conditioned since you were a child to believe in white superiority through the way your history was taught, through the way race was talked about, and through the way students of color were treated differently from you. You have been educated by institutions that have taught white superiority through curricula that favor a white-biased narrative, through the lack of representation of BIPOC, and through the way these institutions handled acts of racism. You have been conditioned by media that continues to reinforce white superiority through an overrepresentation of celebrities and leaders who look like you, through the cultural appropriation of BIPOC fashion, language, and customs, and through the narrative of the white savior.

Most people who haven’t had direct contact with the leadership of their own and other countries form their views based on what they learn in the media, and become quite naive and inappropriately opinionated as a result. That’s because dramatic stories and gossip draw more readers and viewers than does clinical objectivity. Also, in some cases “journalists” have their own ideological biases that they are trying to advance. As a result, most people who see the world through the lens of the media tend to look for who is good and who is evil rather than what the vested interests and relative powers are and how they are being played out. For example, people tend to embrace stories about how their own country is moral and the rival country is not, when most of the time these countries have different interests that they are trying to maximize. The best behaviors one can hope for come from leaders who can weigh the benefits of cooperation, and who have long enough time frames that they can see how the gifts they give this year may bring them benefits in the future.

I’ve learned this deeply from friends and leaders in the black community. Previously unaware of systemic injustice, my implicit bias, and my knee-jerk reaction to black pain or outrage, I’ve since discovered that “Yeah, but . . .” or “Well, I’m not . . .” or “Okay, but what about . . .” or “No, it didn’t . . .” is the opposite of love. Love means saying to someone else’s story or pain or anger or experience: “I’m listening. Tell me more.” Love refuses to deny or dismantle another’s perspective simply because I don’t share it. At its core, love means caring more

The big breakthrough came with Christianity. This faith began as an esoteric Jewish sect that sought to convince Jews that Jesus of Nazareth was their long-awaited messiah. However, one of the sect’s first leaders, Paul of Tarsus, reasoned that if the supreme power of the universe has interests and biases, and if He had bothered to incarnate Himself in the flesh and to die on the cross for the salvation of humankind, then this is something everyone should hear about, not just Jews. It was thus necessary to spread the good word – the gospel – about Jesus throughout the world.

Groups have powerful self-reinforcing mechanisms at work. These can lead to group polarization—a tendency for members of the group to end up in a more extreme position than they started in because they have heard the views repeated frequently. At the extreme limit of group behavior is groupthink. This occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of “mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment.” The original work was conducted with reference to the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs fiasco. However, it rears its head again and again, whether it is in connection with the Challenger space shuttle disaster or the CIA intelligence failure over the WMD of Saddam Hussein. Groupthink tends to have eight symptoms: 1 . An illusion of invulnerability. This creates excessive optimism that encourages taking extreme risks. [...] 2. Collective rationalization. Members of the group discount warnings and do not reconsider their assumptions. [...] 3. Belief in inherent morality. Members believe in the rightness of their cause and therefore ignore the ethical or moral consequences of their decisions. 4. Stereotyped views of out-groups. Negative views of “enemy” make effective responses to conflict seem unnecessary. Remember how those who wouldn't go along with the dot-com bubble were dismissed as simply not getting it. 5. Direct pressure on dissenters. Members are under pressure not to express arguments against any of the group’s views. 6. Self-censorship. Doubts and deviations from the perceived group consensus are not expressed. 7. Illusion of unanimity. The majority view and judgments are assumed to be unanimous. 8. "Mind guards" are appointed. Members protect the group and the leader from information that is problematic or contradictory to the group's cohesiveness, view, and/or decisions. This is confirmatory bias writ large.

When countries negotiate with one another, they typically operate as if they are opponents in a chess match or merchants in a bazaar in which maximizing one’s own benefit is the sole objective. Smart leaders know their own countries’ vulnerabilities, take advantage of others’ vulnerabilities, and expect the other countries’ leaders to do the same. Most people who haven’t had direct contact with the leadership of their own and other countries form their views based on what they learn in the media, and become quite naive and inappropriately opinionated as a result. That’s because dramatic stories and gossip draw more readers and viewers than does clinical objectivity. Also, in some cases “journalists” have their own ideological biases that they are trying to advance. As a result, most people who see the world through the lens of the media tend to look for who is good and who is evil rather than what the vested interests and relative powers are and how they are being played out. For example, people tend to embrace stories about how their own country is moral and the rival country is not, when most of the time these countries have different interests that they are trying to maximize. The best behaviors one can hope for come from leaders who can weigh the benefits of cooperation, and who have long enough time frames that they can see how the gifts they give this year may bring them benefits in the future.

You can reasonably assume that overconfidence affects project teams in general, but you cannot be sure that it is the only bias (or even the main one) affecting a particular project team. Maybe the team leader has had a bad experience with a similar project and so has learned to be especially conservative when making estimates. The team thus exhibits the opposite error from the one you thought you should correct. Or perhaps the team developed its forecast by analogy with another similar project and was anchored on the time it took to complete that project. Or maybe the project team, anticipating that you would add a buffer to its estimate, has preempted your adjustment by making its recommendation even more bullish than its true belief.

That was the conclusion of a study conducted by BI Norwegian Business School, which identified the five key traits (emotional stability, extraversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness and conscientiousness) of a successful leader. Women scored higher than men in four out of the five. But it may also be because the women who do manage to make it through are filling a gender data gap: studies have repeatedly found that the more diverse a company’s leadership is, the more innovative they are. This could be because women are just innately more innovative – but more likely is that the presence of diverse perspectives makes businesses better informed about their customers. Certainly, innovation is strongly linked to financial performance.

Good leaders constantly worry about their limited ability to see. To rise above those limitations, good leaders exercise judgment, which is a different thing from intelligence. Intelligence is the ability to solve a problem, to decipher a riddle, to master a set of facts. Judgment is the ability to orbit a problem or a set of facts and see it as it might be seen through other eyes, by observers with different biases, motives, and backgrounds. It is also the ability to take a set of facts and move it in place and time—perhaps to a hearing room or a courtroom, months or years in the future—or to the newsroom of a major publication or the boardroom of a competitor. Intelligence is the ability to collect and report what the documents and witnesses say; judgment is the ability to say what those same facts mean and what effect they will have on other audiences.

astonishing number of senior leaders are systemically incapable of identifying their organization’s most glaring and dangerous shortcomings. This is not a function of stupidity, but rather stems from two routine pressures that constrain everybody’s thinking and behavior. The first is comprised of cognitive biases, such as mirror imaging, anchoring, and confirmation bias. These unconscious motivations on decision-making under uncertain conditions make it inherently difficult to evaluate one’s own judgments and actions. As David Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, has shown in countless environments, people who are highly incompetent in terms of their skills or knowledge are also terrible judges of their own performance. For example, people who perform the worst on pop quizzes also have the widest variance between how they thought they performed and the actual score that they earned.22

When Christians write and speak about racial issues, they sound much like their secular counterparts. Instead of initiating our own solutions to the problem of racism, we merely copy the solutions offered by the rest of the world. We use the Bible to support our own biases and presuppositions rather than looking to the Bible to transcend our moral limitations. Christians argue with other Christians about racial issues as much as non-Christians argue with each other because the solutions we propose are based not on intrinsic Christian values but on more worldly presuppositions. Because of the way we mimic the rest of society, Christianity does not appear to offer any unique solution to racism. It appears that the best Christians can do is to pick and choose from the ideas of the larger society. Christians can get on board with the best of these solutions, but we will never be leaders in the search for solutions.

In biology, the most basic assumptions of evolutionary theory elude otherwise able students who insist that the process of evolution is guided by a striving toward perfection. College students who have studied economics offer explanations of market forces that are essentially identical to those preferred by college students who have never taken an economics course. Equally severe biases and stereotypes pervade the humanistic segment of the curriculum, from history to art. Students who can discuss in detail the complex causes of the First World War turn right around and explain equally complex current events in terms of the simplest "good guy-bad guy" scenario. (This habit of mind is not absent from political leaders, who are fond of portraying the most complicated international situations along the lines of a Hollywood script.) Those who have studied the intricacies of modern poetry, learning to esteem T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, show little capacity to distinguish masterworks from amateurish drivel once the identity of the author has been hidden from view.

Another example of neoracist influence in K–12 public education comes from New York City. In 2018, the NYC Department of Education earmarked $23 million for mandatory “anti-bias” training for the city’s teachers over the course of four years. Leading this charge was chancellor of schools Richard Carranza, whose philosophy has less to do with eliminating actual racism than with eliminating so-called white supremacy culture in schools. In a presentation to top administrators, Carranza called for an end to all aspects of white supremacy, including “a sense of urgency,” “worship of the written word,” “perfectionism,” “individualism,” and “objectivity.” Instead of these false values, he argued that teachers should prioritize non-white values like “the ability to relate to others.” The idea that perfectionism, objectivity, and good grammar belong to white people and shouldn’t be taught to blacks and Hispanics is exactly the kind of idea that leaders of the civil rights movement fought against. There is nothing anti-racist about this idea. It is, at its core, racist.

These include: the Bar Raiser hiring process that ensures that the company continues to acquire top talent; a bias for separable teams run by leaders with a singular focus that optimizes for speed of delivery and innovation; the use of written narratives instead of slide decks to ensure that deep understanding of complex issues drives well-informed decisions; a relentless focus on input metrics to ensure that teams work on activities that propel the business. And finally there is the product development process that gives this book its name: working backwards from the desired customer experience. Many of the business problems that Amazon faces are no different from those faced by every other company, small or large. The difference is how Amazon keeps coming up with uniquely Amazonian solutions to those problems. Taken together, these elements combine to form a way of thinking, managing, and working that we refer to as being Amazonian, a term that we coined for the purposes of this book. Both of us, Colin and Bill, were “in the room,” and—along with other senior leaders—we shaped and refined what it means to be Amazonian. We both worked extensively with Jeff and were actively involved in creating a number of Amazon’s most enduring successes (not to mention some of its notable flops) in what was the most invigorating professional experience of our lives.

Let schools specialize, as private schools would, and common interest would overcome bias of color and lead to more integration than now occurs. The integration would be real, not merely on paper. The voucher scheme would eliminate the forced busing that a large majority of both blacks and whites object to. Busing would occur, and might indeed increase, but it would be voluntary—just as the busing of children to music and dance classes is today. The failure of black leaders to espouse vouchers has long puzzled us. Their constituents would benefit most. It would give them control over the schooling of their children, eliminate domination by both the city-wide politicians and, even more important, the entrenched educational bureaucracy. Black leaders frequently send their own children to private schools. Why do they not help others to do the same? Our tentative answer is that vouchers would also free the black man from domination by his own political leaders, who currently see control over schooling as a source of political patronage and power. However, as the educational opportunities open to the mass of black children have continued to deteriorate, an increasing number of black educators, columnists, and other community leaders have started to support vouchers. The Congress of Racial Equality has made the support of vouchers a major plank in its agenda.

Where to stash your organizational risk? Lately, I’m increasingly hearing folks reference the idea of organizational debt. This is the organizational sibling of technical debt, and it represents things like biased interview processes and inequitable compensation mechanisms. These are systemic problems that are preventing your organization from reaching its potential. Like technical debt, these risks linger because they are never the most pressing problem. Until that one fateful moment when they are. Within organizational debt, there is a volatile subset most likely to come abruptly due, and I call that subset organizational risk. Some good examples might be a toxic team culture, a toilsome fire drill, or a struggling leader. These problems bubble up from your peers, skip-level one-on-ones,16 and organizational health surveys. If you care and are listening, these are hard to miss. But they are slow to fix. And, oh, do they accumulate! The larger and older your organization is, the more you’ll find perched on your capable shoulders. How you respond to this is, in my opinion, the core challenge of leading a large organization. How do you continue to remain emotionally engaged with the challenges faced by individuals you’re responsible to help, when their problem is low in your problems queue? In that moment, do you shrug off the responsibility, either by changing roles or picking powerlessness? Hide in indifference? Become so hard on yourself that you collapse inward? I’ve tried all of these! They weren’t very satisfying. What I’ve found most successful is to identify a few areas to improve, ensure you’re making progress on those, and give yourself permission to do the rest poorly. Work with your manager to write this up as an explicit plan and agree on what reasonable progress looks like. These issues are still stored with your other bags of risk and responsibility, but you’ve agreed on expectations. Now you have a set of organizational risks that you’re pretty confident will get fixed, and then you have all the others: known problems, likely to go sideways, that you don’t believe you’re able to address quickly. What do you do about those? I like to keep them close. Typically, my organizational philosophy is to stabilize team-by-team and organization-by-organization. Ensuring any given area is well on the path to health before moving my focus. I try not to push risks onto teams that are functioning well. You do need to delegate some risks, but generally I think it’s best to only delegate solvable risk. If something simply isn’t likely to go well, I think it’s best to hold the bag yourself. You may be the best suited to manage the risk, but you’re almost certainly the best positioned to take responsibility. As an organizational leader, you’ll always have a portfolio of risk, and you’ll always be doing very badly at some things that are important to you. That’s not only okay, it’s unavoidable.

Given that at all times, so long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of human beings (racial groups, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many followers in relation to the small number of those issuing orders―and taking into consideration also that so far nothing has been better and longer practised and cultivated among human beings than obedience, we can reasonably assume that typically now the need for obedience is inborn in each individual, as a sort of formal conscience which states "You are to do something or other without conditions, and leave aside something else without conditions," in short, "Thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes on something, without being very particular, like a coarse appetite, and accepts what someone or other issuing commands―parents, teachers, laws, class biases, public opinion―shouts in people's ears. The curiously limitation of human development―the way it hesitates, takes so long, often regresses, and turns around on itself―is based on the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is passed on best and at the expense of the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct at some point striding right to its ultimate excess, then there would finally be a total lack of commanders and independent people, or they would suffer inside from a bad conscience and find it necessary first to prepare a deception for themselves in order to be able to command, as if they, too, were only obeying orders. This condition is what, in fact, exists nowadays in Europe: I call it the moral hypocrisy of those in command. They don't know how to protect themselves from their bad conscience except by behaving as if they were carrying out older or higher orders (from ancestors, the constitution, rights, law, or even God), or they even borrow herd maxims from the herd way of thinking, for example, as "the first servant of their people" or as "tools of the common good." On the other hand, the herd man in Europe today makes himself appear as if he is the single kind of human being allowed, and he glorifies those characteristics of his thanks to which he is tame, good natured, and useful to the herd, as the really human virtues, that is, public spiritedness, wishing everyone well, consideration, diligence, moderation, modesty, forbearance, and pity. For those cases, however, where people believe they cannot do without a leader and bell wether, they make attempt after attempt to replace the commander by adding together collections of clever herd people All the representative constitutional assemblies, for example, have this origin. But for all that, what a blissful relief, what a release from a pressure which is growing unbearable is the appearance of an absolute commander for these European herd animals. The effect which the appearance of Napoleon made was the most recent major evidence for that:―the history of the effect of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness which this entire century derived from its most valuable men and moments.

Given that at all times, so long as there have been human beings, there have also been herds of human beings (racial groups, communities, tribes, peoples, states, churches) and always a great many followers in relation to the small number of those issuing orders - and taking into consideration also that so far nothing has been better and longer practised and cultivated among human beings than obedience, we can reasonably assume that typically now the need for obedience is inborn in each individual, as a sort of formal conscience which states "You are to do something or other without conditions, and leave aside something else without conditions," in short, "Thou shalt." This need seeks to satisfy itself and to fill its form with some content. Depending on its strength, impatience, and tension, it seizes on something, without being very particular, like a coarse appetite, and accepts what someone or other issuing commands - parents, teachers, laws, class biases, public opinion - shouts in people's ears. The curiously limitation of human development - the way it hesitates, takes so long, often regresses, and turns around on itself - is based on the fact that the herd instinct of obedience is passed on best and at the expense of the art of commanding. If we imagine this instinct at some point striding right to its ultimate excess, then there would finally be a total lack of commanders and independent people, or they would suffer inside from a bad conscience and find it necessary first to prepare a deception for themselves in order to be able to command, as if they, too, were only obeying orders. This condition is what, in fact, exists nowadays in Europe: I call it the moral hypocrisy of those in command. They don't know how to protect themselves from their bad conscience except by behaving as if they were carrying out older or higher orders (from ancestors, the constitution, rights, law, or even God), or they even borrow herd maxims from the herd way of thinking, for example, as "the first servant of their people" or as "tools of the common good." On the other hand, the herd man in Europe today makes himself appear as if he is the single kind of human being allowed, and he glorifies those characteristics of his thanks to which he is tame, good natured, and useful to the herd, as the really human virtues, that is, public spiritedness, wishing everyone well, consideration, diligence, moderation, modesty, forbearance, and pity. For those cases, however, where people believe they cannot do without a leader and bell wether, they make attempt after attempt to replace the commander by adding together collections of clever herd people All the representative constitutional assemblies, for example, have this origin. But for all that, what a blissful relief, what a release from a pressure which is growing unbearable is the appearance of an absolute commander for these European herd animals. The effect which the appearance of Napoleon made was the most recent major evidence for that: - the history of the effect of Napoleon is almost the history of the higher happiness which this entire century derived from its most valuable men and moments.

Well before the end of the 20th century however print had lost its former dominance. This resulted in, among other things, a different kind of person getting elected as leader. One who can present himself and his programs in a polished way, as Lee Quan Yu you observed in 2000, adding, “Satellite television has allowed me to follow the American presidential campaign. I am amazed at the way media professionals can give a candidate a new image and transform him, at least superficially, into a different personality. Winning an election becomes, in large measure, a contest in packaging and advertising. Just as the benefits of the printed era were inextricable from its costs, so it is with the visual age. With screens in every home entertainment is omnipresent and boredom a rarity. More substantively, injustice visualized is more visceral than injustice described. Television played a crucial role in the American Civil rights movement, yet the costs of television are substantial, privileging emotional display over self-command, changing the kinds of people and arguments that are taken seriously in public life. The shift from print to visual culture continues with the contemporary entrenchment of the Internet and social media, which bring with them four biases that make it more difficult for leaders to develop their capabilities than in the age of print. These are immediacy, intensity, polarity, and conformity. Although the Internet makes news and data more immediately accessible than ever, this surfeit of information has hardly made us individually more knowledgeable, let alone wiser, as the cost of accessing information becomes negligible, as with the Internet, the incentives to remember it seem to weaken. While forgetting anyone fact may not matter, the systematic failure to internalize information brings about a change in perception, and a weakening of analytical ability. Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance and interpretation depend on context and relevance. For information to be transmuted into something approaching wisdom it must be placed within a broader context of history and experience. As a general rule, images speak at a more emotional register of intensity than do words. Television and social media rely on images that inflamed the passions, threatening to overwhelm leadership with the combination of personal and mass emotion. Social media, in particular, have encouraged users to become image conscious spin doctors. All this engenders a more populist politics that celebrates utterances perceived to be authentic over the polished sound bites of the television era, not to mention the more analytical output of print. The architects of the Internet thought of their invention as an ingenious means of connecting the world. In reality, it has also yielded a new way to divide humanity into warring tribes. Polarity and conformity rely upon, and reinforce, each other. One is shunted into a group, and then the group polices once thinking. Small wonder that on many contemporary social media platforms, users are divided into followers and influencers. There are no leaders. What are the consequences for leadership? In our present circumstances, Lee's gloomy assessment of visual media's effects is relevant. From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill or Roosevelt or a de Gaulle can emerge. It is not that changes in communications technology have made inspired leadership and deep thinking about world order impossible, but that in an age dominated by television and the Internet, thoughtful leaders must struggle against the tide.

A Prussian officer was expected to share a set of core values, defining his “honor,” which took precedence over an order. If he acted in accordance with honor – or, as we might more commonly say today, with integrity – disobedience was legitimate. The right talent and the right behavioral biases were put in place as a first step.

We have a strong bias against leaders who champion themselves: people who use “I” far more than “we” and focus exclusively on what they accomplished, rather than how.

To boost reps’ ability to approach various customer stakeholders in a language they were more likely to understand, Solae’s first step was to document for the rep what these various customer stakeholders cared about in the first place. To do that they went beyond general demographic information, providing their reps with a set of cards explaining what each stakeholder was trying to accomplish as a business leader. In sum, each explains a stakeholders’ functional bias: their personal value drivers and their economic context.

Applying cognitive psychology helps you manage your biases and blind spots.

It’s about learning to let some things go sometimes, to relax our grip on politics, and to lead without bias. We do this to avoid the pitfalls that cause mistrust so that we can achieve our goals and maintain relationships.

Sir Michael Howard suggested, in “width, depth, and context.”3 Leader development and education should promote an organizational culture in which higher-level commanders are comfortable with relinquishing control and authority to junior commanders while setting conditions for effective decentralized operations consistent with the doctrine of mission command. Junior leaders must possess a bias toward action and accept necessary risks associated with leading and fighting in complex and uncertain environments against determined and adaptive enemies.

He believes successful CEOs share five qualities: passion and curiosity; confidence; team smarts; an ability to simplify complex information; and fearlessness, which he describes as a bias towards action.

Kennedy saw himself and all Americans as the in-group and Khrushchev and the Soviets as the out-group. All of the biases we’ve seen accrued: Americans saw themselves as trustworthy, and any aggressive behaviors by the United States (even as judged by international standards) were justified; any aggressive behaviors by the Soviets showed their true nature as vicious, heartless, and irrational agents bent on destruction. The turning point came when Khrushchev broke through all of the bravado and rhetoric and asked Kennedy to consider things from his perspective, to use a little empathy. He implored Kennedy several times to “try to put yourself in our place.” He then pointed out their similarities, that both of them were leaders of their respective countries: “If you are really concerned about the peace and welfare of your people, and this is your responsibility as President, then I, as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, am concerned for my people. Moreover, the preservation of world peace should be our joint concern, since if, under contemporary conditions, war should break out, it would be a war not only between the reciprocal claims, but a world wide cruel and destructive war.” In effect, Khrushchev pointed to a group in which he and Kennedy were both members—leaders of major world powers. In so doing, he turned Kennedy into an in-group member from an out-group member. This was the turning point in the crisis, opening up the possibility for a compromise solution that resolved the crisis on October 26, 1962.

It's not enough for people to learn how to be more creative; they also need to be persistent through the rejection they might face. All of the ideas mentioned in this chapter were eventually adopted. When they were, it wasn't just because of their creativity, at least not at first. It was the persistence of their creators that moved them from idea to innovation. Likewise, it's not enough for leaders to make their teams more innovative. Leaders need to get better at counteracting their own bias and recognizing potential innovations sooner. We don't just need more great ideas; we need to spread the great ideas we already have.

A great leader, one who applies bright spot analysis, does not trust sales managers to know who their top performers are. Yes, that is blasphemy, but sales managers are people too, and hold biases due to personal relationships and past performance. The right first step is to stack rank account executives by recent performance

PROVEN BIAS HAS COME TO BE THE VIRTUE OF A LEADER. Bias has become the first qualification to join a party, and extreme bias the virtue to become a leader.

Amazon’s Leadership Principles6 Customer Obsession. Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. Ownership. Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say, “that’s not my job.” Invent and Simplify. Leaders expect and require innovation and invention from their teams and always find ways to simplify. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here.” As we do new things, we accept that we may be misunderstood for long periods of time. Are Right, A Lot. Leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts. They seek diverse perspectives and work to disconfirm their beliefs. Learn and Be Curious. Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them. Hire and Develop the Best. Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice. Insist on the Highest Standards. Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high-quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed. Think Big. Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers. Bias for Action. Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk-taking. Frugality. Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size, or fixed expense. Earn Trust. Leaders listen attentively, speak candidly, and treat others respectfully. They are vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

What has clearly happened in the case of many otherwise intelligent people, is that childhood crippling of their brains and emotions in favor of some dogmatic religion has for all practical purposes made their theistic views impervious to logical analysis. It is an area they simply will not investigate objectively or impartially, because it has become so deeply fused with their entire self-image that it is beyond their psychological powers to question it. My own view is that this infantile brainwashing is one of the great crimes against humanity and it has been practiced for countless millennia (well before the advent of organized religion) and continues to be practiced to this day. Religious leaders would no doubt react with horror at the recommendation that children actually be allowed to make up their own minds about the adoption of a given religion, or any religion at all, until they are intellectually and emotionally ready to do so, without the prejudicial influence of parents, clerics, and the society at large. (No exception need be made for communist societies, for in such societies the people are brainwashed into atheism just as vigorously-and perniciously-as people in other societies are brainwashed into theism.) H. P. Lovecraft laid bare the matter long ago: We all know that any emotional bias-irrespective of truth or falsity-can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value regarding the real "is-or-isn'tness" of things. Only the exceptional individual reared in the nineteenth century or before has any chance of holding any genuine opinion of value regarding the universe-except by a slow and painful process of courageous disillusionment. If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honorable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasihypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.

Leaders routinely pay too much attention to outcomes while neglecting information about individuals’ decision-making processes and the uncertainty that surrounds their decisions, a phenomenon known as the outcome bias.

Just as how unconscious bias can seep into algorithms, so can conscious bias. Conscious bias happens when we know we’re being biased toward a particular person or a group of people. Although this is rare in AI, the threat is always there.

Deity does not create data and then bestow it upon mankind. All data is man-made. Somebody, at some point, decided what data to collect, how to organize it, how to present it, and how to infer meaning from it—and it embeds all kinds of false rigor into the process. Data has the same agenda as the person who created it, wittingly or unwittingly. For all the time that senior leaders spend analyzing data, they should be making equal investments to determine what data should be created in the first place.

Gernot Wagner, a student and coauthor, notes the need to use judgment when assessing whether refraining from action reflects status quo bias. More generally, maxims describing human behavior apply in some contexts, but not others. “Status quo bias is a prime example. It is the friend of not acting, and you ignore it at your peril. But we also see ‘action bias.’ Often political leaders just want to be seen as doing something, anything – leading them to want to act, even if no action is the preferred choice.

Multiple-choice aptitude tests which required ‘little nuance or context-specific problem solving’ focused instead on the kind of mathematical trivia that even then industry leaders were seeing as increasingly irrelevant to programming.

In January 2017, Bloomberg reported that although Facebook had started giving recruiters an incentive to bring in more women, black, and Latino engineering candidates back in 2015, the program was netting few new hires. According to former Facebook recruiters, this was because the people responsible for final hiring approvals—twenty to thirty senior leaders who were almost entirely white and Asian men—still assessed candidates by using the same metrics as always: whether they had gone to the right school, already worked at a top tech company, or had friends at Facebook who gave them a positive referral.15 What this means is that, even after making it through round after round of interviews designed to prove their skills and merits, many diverse hires would be blocked at the final stage—all because they didn’t match the profile of the people already working at Facebook.

When you’re inspired, you become inspiring.” “Before building walls, build a foundation, make sure it’s solid and that it remains solid.” “Never limit your ambitions.” “If you want to shine like a star, care to make others shine like stars.” “Someone’s respect for the environment will likely reflect his truest respect for others.” “Learn to recognize and celebrate your personal milestones. It will trigger positive emotions in you.” “Make peace with your past. You’ll emotionally be more positive. You’ll improve your wisdom. You’re inner sweetness will breathe out more efficiently.” “When you emotionally manage the fact that perfection does not exist and only reaching excellence does, your inner sweetness will breathe efficiently.” “We all have emotional batteries. We are all energy. Your positive energy can help someone else recharge.” “Humans are responsible for nearly all problems and are the solution for everything - Be positively, the solution!” “Be careful what you tolerate in your company, you are teaching levels of the pyramid how to treat your business Culture and Core Values.” “Raising your voice is not an argument.” “Feed positively your roots. As a result, your inner sweetness will breathe efficiently thru your shell.” “Authenticity in the workplace is not define as making yourself difficult to manage – Be positively authentic!” “Be positively the influencer, not the follower.” “Biases can trick us as humans and have a negative impact on our emotions – Be positively curious!” “Never make someone emotionally pay the price because of how you were not able to manage positively your own emotions.” “If you want your team to improve their technical skills, make sure to improve your interpersonal skills first.” “Beware of the individualism culture. If you are in a people management/leadership position, remember the following: IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU!” “Like the roots of a human’s mind, feed social media positively. It will feed a large scale of humans mind!” “Like an upside-down pineapple fruit, the inner sweetness of a company becomes sweeter when you flip upside down the position level pyramid!” “Do not wait for someone to harvest you. Build your own path!” “A leader should trigger positive emotions and it all starts with you!” “Earth is more beautiful than we think – Imagine how splendid it would be if we were all interacting positively on it!” Communication becomes efficient when it’s done we positive emotions – Be positively curious!” “Having excuses for everything is the roadblock of self-awareness and inner growth” “Don’t limit your challenges – rather – Challenge your limits!” “The higher the position level you’re ambitious to reach, the less about you it should be. In life, you’re already at the top, therefore, it starts with you because it is not about you!” “I’m realistically optimistic!” “The pineapple - from all fruits – looks authentic. The great thing about it is no matter its shape – size - high – and color, one thing remains the same: Its inner sweetness! A pineapple = a pineapple. A pineapple = a human” “Often, what we think we know - what we think is - and what we think should are our biggest obstacles in life. Be positively curious!” “Being curious is best practice – Be positive curious, meaning, with positive emotions. Your inner sweetness will be felt with this approach” “Keep it sweet with yourself, not everything is suited for everyone!” “The art of managing with discipline emotional challenges and a sign of a mental strength is when many appreciate what you do in the shadow and in silence, and you still do more than expected.” “Beware of the time is money mindset blind spots, respectful interactions and good social etiquettes are not to be served like an American fast food!” “Look and listen without biases – Be positively curious!

When you’re inspired, you become inspiring.” “Before building walls, build a foundation, make sure it’s solid and that it remains solid.” “Never limit your ambitions.” “If you want to shine like a star, care to make others shine like stars.” “Someone’s respect for the environment will likely reflect his truest respect for others.” “Learn to recognize and celebrate your personal milestones. It will trigger positive emotions in you.” “Make peace with your past. You’ll emotionally be more positive. You’ll improve your wisdom. You’re inner sweetness will breathe out more efficiently.” “When you emotionally manage the fact that perfection does not exist and only reaching excellence does, your inner sweetness will breathe efficiently.” “We all have emotional batteries. We are all energy. Your positive energy can help someone else recharge.” “Humans are responsible for nearly all problems and are the solution for everything - Be positively, the solution!” “Be careful what you tolerate in your company, you are teaching levels of the pyramid how to treat your business Culture and Core Values.” “Raising your voice is not an argument.” “Feed positively your roots. As a result, your inner sweetness will breathe efficiently thru your shell.” “Authenticity in the workplace is not define as making yourself difficult to manage – Be positively authentic!” “Be positively the influencer, not the follower.” “Biases can trick us as humans and have a negative impact on our emotions – Be positively curious!” “Never make someone emotionally pay the price because of how you were not able to manage positively your own emotions.” “If you want your team to improve their technical skills, make sure to improve your interpersonal skills first.” “Beware of the individualism culture. If you are in a people management/leadership position, remember the following: IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU!” “Like the roots of a human’s mind, feed social media positively. It will feed a large scale of humans mind!” “Like an upside-down pineapple fruit, the inner sweetness of a company becomes sweeter when you flip upside down the position level pyramid!” “Do not wait for someone to harvest you. Build your own path!” “A leader should trigger positive emotions and it all starts with you!” “Earth is more beautiful than we think – Imagine how splendid it would be if we were all interacting positively on it!” Communication becomes efficient when it’s done we positive emotions – Be positively curious!” “Having excuses for everything is the roadblock of self-awareness and inner growth” “Don’t limit your challenges – rather – Challenge your limits!” “The higher the position level you’re ambitious to reach, the less about you it should be. In life, you’re already at the top, therefore, it starts with you because it is not about you!” “I’m realistically optimistic!” “The pineapple - from all fruits – looks authentic. The great thing about it is no matter its shape – size - high – and color, one thing remains the same: Its inner sweetness! A pineapple = a pineapple. A pineapple = a human” “Often, what we think we know - what we think is - and what we think should are our biggest obstacles in life. Be positively curious!” “Being curious is best practice – Be positive curious, meaning, with positive emotions. Your inner sweetness will be felt with this approach” “Keep it sweet with yourself, not everything is suited for everyone!” “The art of managing with discipline emotional challenges and a sign of a mental strength is when many appreciate what you do in the shadow and in silence, and you still do more than expected.” “Beware of the time is money mindset blind spots, respectful interactions and good social etiquettes are not to be served like an American fast food!” “Look and listen without biases – Be positively curious!

Articulate a Vision. Formulate a clear and persuasive vision and communicate it repeatedly to all members of the enterprise. Think and Act Strategically. Set forth a pragmatic strategy for achieving that vision both short- and long-term, and ensure that it is widely understood; consider all the players, and anticipate their reactions and resistance before they are manifest. Honor the Room. Frequently express your confidence in and support for those who work with and for you. Take Charge and Lead Change. Embrace a bias for action, taking responsibility even if it is not fully or formally delegated, particularly if you are especially well positioned to make a difference.

all adults, especially high-achieving ones, are subject to a cognitive bias called naive realism that gives us the experience of “knowing” what's going on.25 As noted in the previous section, we believe we are seeing “reality” – rather than a subjective view of reality. As a result, we often fail to wonder what others are seeing. We fail to be curious. Worse, many leaders, even when they are motivated to ask a question, worry that it will make them look uninformed or weak.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN social status and reproduction has been lost in modern society, thanks to our prosperity and our access to effective birth control. Human psychology, however, can’t shake the effects of this age-old connection. Since our inborn tendencies derive from ancestors who spread their genes, their means of social success are engraved into our psychology. Both male and female primates, and both men and women, are eager to ascend the social ladder. This has always been the winning ticket. Our primate heritage is still visible in the way we evaluate male and female leaders. We pay attention to the physical size of men, for example, but not of women. You’d think that we’d pay at least as much attention to a man’s intellect, experience, and expertise, but we remain stubbornly sensitive to his height. Our biases echo a time when physical prowess mattered more.

When you steal other people’s belongings, you become a thief. This is very simple and clear. But people’s today think one becomes a criminal only after being arrested by a policeman, investigated by a prosecutor, sentenced by a judge, and confined in a prison. Therefore, corrupt politicians think they are men of virtue and skill if they can cover up their deeds and escape getting caught. They are heavily influenced by “group stupidity.” Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Genghis Khan were nothing other than great thieves, Hitler and Mussolini where greater robbers than the legendary thieves Ishikawa Goemon and Tenichibo. Although these dictators operated on a much larger scale, they were not fundamentally different from Kunisada Chuji, who said, “Let’s go as far as we can, no matter what.” And hey the henchmen of thieves think their bosses are respected. We’re always falling into ruts. Politicians and their followers, many schoolteachers, and opinion leaders work hard to manipulate people into biased, habitual ways of thinking. The ways we’re distorted are subtle, deliberate, and complicated. When we’re liberated from this distortion, we will find the true wisdom of Buddhism.

Assuming TV really did rot their brains, how would they be in a position to know? Its intrinsic biases—toward flash over illumination, sound bites over substance, the methods of advertising over the methods of persuasion—have become their basic intuitions. When subjective evaluation fails, objective measures must be consulted, and the most glaring objective consequence of the boomers’ embrace of mass culture has been the death of both folk culture and high culture. … During the cold war, the Communist leaders of the Eastern bloc did their best to keep pop culture out of their countries, because they believed that Western entertainment would put their children in thrall to decadent bourgeois values—and they were right.

Another way to understand the difference between equality and equity is to realize that addressing equity issues strikes at the source of the problem rather than dealing with the symptoms, one by one. Our attachment to the myth of meritocracy—which is the notion that companies are structured to reward only the most talented and determined individuals15—is increasingly being viewed as out of touch because it doesn’t acknowledge our very real differences, and how much harder the journey up the ladder, or even onto the ladder, is for some. An insightful article by author Amy Sun makes this clear: Treating everyone exactly the same actually is not fair. What equal treatment does do is erase our differences and promote privilege. Equity is giving everyone what they need to be successful. Equality is treating everyone the same.16 Surrounding Yourself with a Trusted Few If you’ve recognized some of yourself in this chapter, you’re likely feeling motivated to take a closer look at your potential to be a more inclusive leader. Similarly, if you want to support your colleagues in their journey out of Unawareness, this chapter has likely provided many points of entry to transformational conversations. It’s important to note that this stage of your journey might be somewhat private. If you realize you haven’t given certain people a fair chance, you might not want to broadcast that to your colleagues. (Not only would this be damaging to your reputation, it could also make other people feel bad.) But as you become aware of your biases, you’ll start to understand how you can do things differently to better support others. It is a learning process, and it helps to have support from people you trust. When you’re ready, seek out conversations with a trusted few who can help you find your balance, your vocabulary, and begin to identify new skills.

Everyone in the aid community says that the Chinese are doing a lot of highly visible things, parachuting hardware [by this he meant major, very visible projects like bridges and stadiums], but not really involving themselves in the hard work of institutional development and of capacity building.” In passing, he acknowledged that 90 percent of the requests made to his Millennium Challenge Corporation were also for construction projects. “I personally think that infrastructure is incredibly important, but I’m also not willing to say that [it] is the answer to all the big questions here. Infrastructure reflects the priorities of the governments. This does not necessarily mean that a bias for hardware equates with the best development choices. In many cases, it may reflect nothing more than the fact that because construction projects are visible and tend to be big, that they leave something behind that is tangible, that leaders can point to and take credit for. It becomes their argument for staying in power.

Studies show that the most effective business leaders are at their productive peak on the days when, even if they’ve faced some serious setbacks, they’ve actively engaged their mindset on the progress they’ve made. In so doing, they’ve inoculated themselves from the self-sabotaging influence of the brain’s negativity bias. One of the great keys to terrific performance, then, is to train your attention on making consistent 1% wins and micro-achievements throughout each hour of your workday. Small daily achievements, when done consistently over time, definitely do lead to stunning results. And by deliberately reflecting on the areas where you are moving ahead, you’ll insulate your ambition, guard your confidence and defeat the dangerous trickster of fear, so you get amazing feats done.

I’ve also seen leaders shout down a potentially viable idea too soon. It’s understandable why we want to appear certain. When uncertainty or unbidden surprises arise, an alert signal goes off in the brain. We’re wired to quickly make unfamiliar objects and ideas familiar so we can “get on with the day.” Cognitive psychologists call this tendency “the familiarity bias.” Yet, although cynicism masks itself as sophistication and superiority, it is a form of rigid thinking.

When I close my eyes, I can see the world of my dream clear as day - a world where there is no man, there is no woman, there is no queer, there is only love - a world where there is no white, there is no color, there is only love - a world where there is no believer, there is no nonbeliever, there is only love - a world where there is no leader, there is no follower, there is only love. This is the civilization that we must build - a civilization that has conquered its animal nature rather being conquered by it - a civilization that is human at heart, human at thought, and human in action.

Hire and Develop the Best: Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. Leaders develop leaders and take seriously their role in coaching others. We work on behalf of our people to invent mechanisms for development like Career Choice. Insist on the Highest Standards: Leaders have relentlessly high standards—many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and drive their teams to deliver high quality products, services, and processes. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed. Think Big: Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers. Bias for Action: Speed matters in business. Many decisions and actions are reversible and do not need extensive study. We value calculated risk taking. Frugality: Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention. There are no extra points for growing headcount, budget size or fixed expense.

It is dopamine that makes us a goal-oriented species with a bias for progress. When we are given a task to complete, a metric to reach, as long as we can see it or clearly imagine it in our mind’s eye, we will get a little burst of dopamine to get us on our way.

The mental health field also maintains authority through selectivity of its members and suppressed dissent. There is a pretense of certainty propagated by leaders in mental health, with oft repeated promises of supporting evidence to be discovered soon; it is taken for granted that their authoritative stance is merited. Despite this political posturing, several areas of concern actually leave much to question, for instance: it is rare for findings to be replicated (Open Science Collaboration, 2015), with only about 3% of journals even being willing to accept articles attempting to repeat previous studies to see if their findings were more than just a fluke (Martin & Clarke, 2017); the peer -review process of journals is biased toward recognizable names and against newcomers or detractors (Bravo, Farjam, Grimaldo Moreno, Birukou, & Squazzoni, 2018), setting up a sort of “good ol’ boys’ club” dynamic; the rates of authors retracting their studies due to problems or false findings are rapidly rising (Steen, Casadevall, & Fang, 2013); the subjects used in studies are consistently biased (Nielsen, Haun, Kartner, & Legare, 2017) and based on samples that are among the least representative of humans, in general (e.g., Arnett, 2008); spurious and meaningless correlations are frequently reported as exciting new discoveries (see Richardson, 2017); gold-standard “evidence-based treatments” are, on average and at best, only helpful for about 25% of people (Shedler, 2015); selective reporting, guild interests, and researcher allegiance heavily bias psychiatric research (Leichsenring et al., 2017; Whitaker & Cosgrove, 2015); and, perhaps most important, with all the purported advances in treatment, the prevalence and long-term outcomes of diagnosable mental disorders has not decreased in the last century (Jorm, Patten, Brugha, & Mojtabai, 2017; Margraf & Schneider, 2016), while disability rates continue to rise exponentially (see Whitaker, 2010 for an analysis on this trend).