WHY DON'T WE KNOW OURSELVES AND WHO WE ARE?

WHY DON'T WE KNOW OURSELVES AND WHO WE ARE?

 

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

Copyright February 11, 2014

 

During my consulting days, one of my clients was a hi-tech subsidiary of a Fortune 100 corporation.  I met with the CEO under amiable conditions, and listened to him for the better part of an hour berate his direct reports and their staffs, claiming they were constantly squabbling and that, as a result, the operation wasn't reaching its quotas.

My initial sense of the man was that he might very well be the problem, and so I suggested that we have a series of meetings before moving on to his people.  He claimed that was totally unnecessary, then looked me in the eye, and said "You don't think I'm the problem?" 

Of course, he was the problem, or if not the problem directly, he was not immune to having influenced the behavior he described among his staff.  His leadership, or the lack thereof, established the climate.  He wanted his situation fixed but without his involvement.  That was not how I worked.  So, I let the question dance on the walls without comment with a slight smile pursing my lips.  "Goddamn it," he said anxiously, "say something!"  Again, I let the question bounce off the walls a few seconds, and ricochet back into his humorless face.  "Well?" he waited.

Finally, I said, rubbing my chin, "Can I make a proposal?"

"So you answer my question with a question?"

"If you like."

Still simmering, he got up from his chair behind his desk which separated us by a good six feet, and said, "Well, go on!"  He perched himself on his desk and looked down at me. 

"I propose we have an offsite of your direct reports and their direct reports, a total of ten people.  Before we have the offsite, I would like to interview each of them, and that includes you, and have you all provide a thumbnail sketch of how you see yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, your peccadilloes, and each other in the same manner."

“Peccadilloes?”

“Yes, irritants, those peculiarities, or tics if you well, that are characteristic of a person that cause you some discomfort, that you find irritating.”

“Yes, I see what you mean.  Quite frankly, I don't have any if you must know.  My people love me and I love my people.  I’m fair, consistent, honest and play no favorites.  I’m tough but it is the nature of the business, but peccadilloes?  No, that’s not me.”

Ignoring this declaration, I continued.  “Once I talk to each of these people, I am told they are eight men and two women, I would like them to develop personality profiles of themselves and of the other ten.  This would be pre-offsite work.  I would like to have it a week before the offsite if that is not too inconvenient."

“The other ten?  That would be nine.  Math must not be your strong suit.”

“No, it would be ten, including you.”

“As I told you before, that would be redundant.  I know how they feel about me.”

“In that case, giving me that assurance, I take it you won’t mind if I include you in the profiles.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you did, sir, or you implied it as you said it would be obvious how it would come out.  This is a way to confirm your assessment.  That is all I am saying.”

He returned to his desk, ran his hand through his hair, took off his glasses, wiped them with a sparkling white linen handkerchief, replaced them on his face.  “You’re something of a bastard.  Ever been told that before?”

“All the time.  It's part of the job description.”

“I have one question.  What do you plan to accomplish with this?”

“Hopefully, to find the answer to why your people are squabbling and your operation is not meeting its quotas."

"Don't you think this is a bit off the wall?  To me it sounds like a lot of nonsense while my situation doesn't get any better."

"I’m quite certain you checked me out thoroughly, and yes, my approach has sometimes been considered a bit unconventional, but you also know my reputation for success."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I take that to mean we're on."  

He ignored the comment.  “How much time will you need with each of us?  We’re all pretty busy.”

“At least two hours.”

“You’ve got one.”

I smiled broadly.  It was precisely what I needed.  My Irish mother taught me the benefit of exaggeration from as early age.  When I was a boy, she would send me to the neighborhood grocer, asking for twice as much as he would give her on credit, and always satisfied with what I brought home, which was half as much as I asked for.  She would have delighted in the modern parlance of a “win-win” situation, but for her it was a survival strategy during WWII.

The eleven executives were interviewed.  They created personal profiles, and offered assessments of their other ten colleagues, including the CEO.  These data were then used to create eleven personality profiles based on this data.

To a person, the personal profiles pretty much followed what had been experienced initially with the CEO.  To put it another way, all of the personal profiles were defensively positive when it came to self-assessment, while the personal profiles of associates, including the CEO, were consistently offensively negative.  Obviously, they differed from person to person, but it was possible to create a personality profile of each of them based succinctly on their collective assessment of each other.

The offsite was held.  Each was given a Myers-Brigg’s Personality Assessment, mainly for them to warm up to the process.  They seem to enjoy discovering that they were introverts, extroverts or ambiverts.  They laughed and joked about these assessments in good humor feeling no threat to their own self-appraisal.  In other words, exposure to Myers-Briggs was an entertaining exercise, no less or no more. 

It has been my experience people delight in these instruments that give them some insight into themselves, but feel little threat from them, as they are outside themselves and generate no imposition on their current behavior, and therefore provide little insight into who they are or who they think they are. 

It is why television gurus and roaming psychological evangelists fill conference centers with their antidotes on how to relieve anxiety and anecdotes that send them happily into the streets after the sessions, feeling it was money well spent. 

These psychic preachers bombard passive participants with truisms that bounce off their persons like soap bubbles, tickle a bit but fail to penetrate.  The evidence is irrevocable for in failing to penetrate behavior doesn't change. 

The assessment process I was mounting was not value free, was not scientific, but personal and impressionistic.  My objective was to get inside their minds by getting inside their impressions of each other in an attempt to establish common ground, not in making them all alike, or encouraging them to think alike, but getting them to accept and build on their differences, recognizing that that was their collective strength, for which they need not apologize.

These personality profiles were impressions, and impressions harbor feelings, and feelings become facts when it comes to how people relate to each other in intimate situations, such as in love and in work environments. 

The eleven personality profiles were taped to the four walls of the rustic inn where the offsite was held in a pastoral setting, far removed from the workplace.  The eleven participants were asked to take from the wall the profile that best matched how they saw themselves. 

How many of these well-trained discriminating and highly intelligent executives acquired their own designated profile as perceived collectively by their colleagues?

The answer is NONE!  That included the CEO.

The balance of this three-day offsite was working through this disconnect, pointing out that because of the nature of our culture, and its programming, self-estrangement is not only not uncommon, but rather it would be uncommon if it were not so distinct. 

We are all, as it were, harder on ourselves no matter how hard we are on other people, and are more critical of ourselves no matter how critical we are of other people.  But when it comes to indicating this with unabashed good humor and candor, we are likely to retreat into the myth that protects us from not only self-knowing but self-accepting and self-understanding.  Our personal dodge is a programmed virus into our personality that results in our seeing the world and ourselves through rose colored glasses.  It was why Leon Fessinger’s “cognitive dissonance” is both so alarming to our self-regard and yet so pervasively self-revealing. 

The television program “60 Minutes” once interviewed a high ranking educator with clearly bogus degrees on her impressive academic office.  On national television, she answered questions of her interlocutor with blasé aplomb with no trace of irony, when he presented proof that she had not matriculated at any of the institutions she claimed to have attended.  It was embarrassing to watch, but I marveled at the woman's composure while being called a fraud.  I could not say that impression extended to the interviewer.  

Equally ironic, subsequently, “60 Minutes” was exposed as to presenting bogus malfunctioning automobiles that accelerated into crashes to dramatize the point of one of its stories.  Self-ignorance is a cultural phenomenon that obviously doesn't stop at the individual.  None of us escapes this irony.  None of us.