Terry Newell is currently director of his own firm, Leadership for a Responsible Society. His work focuses on values-based leadership, ethics, and decision making. A former Air Force officer, Terry also previously served as Director of the Horace Mann Learning Center, the training arm of the U.S. Department of Education, and as Dean of Faculty at the Federal Executive Institute. Terry is co-editor and author of The Trusted Leader: Building the Relationships That Make Government Work (CQ Press, 2011). He also wrote Statesmanship, Character and Leadership in America (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and To Serve with Honor: Doing the Right Thing in Government (Loftlands Press 2015).
All in The Ways We Think
Rationalization is comforting, allowing us to live with a version of ourselves we like. Yet, by definition it is self-deluding. It closes us off to our mistakes and can close our hearts
How an issue is framed focuses not only the conversation about a problem but the range of solutions considered. It shapes the problem definition and limits what we see.
Forgetting is human and necessary. Yet acting as if we always remember accurately is self-delusional and can be dangerous in our personal and national lives.
If we used logic alone to decide our views on public policy issues, we should expect much less extreme partisanship. So there must be something going on below the level of reason and conscious awareness. There is.
As we confront the horror of Las Vegas, we are framing the problem the wrong way: solely as an issue of gun control. This distracts us from asking why Americans want guns and why some use them in violent acts.
Storytelling serves us well, except when it doesn't. The capacity to use stories is an important human trait, but stories in the wrong hands or used without awareness of their limits are dangerous.
Effective government depends on truth, without which we get shoddy thinking and disastrous action. Those who live in democracies have a right to guide their future, but only if they think well.
The state of the "free press" is not the greatest cause for concern. Our ability to think about what it offers, without emotional and logical blinders, is what should worry us more.
Going with our "gut" has served us in the past (though we tend to forget when it has not). But when we don't do our homework, intuition can fail. In our personal lives, the damage might be limited. For leaders, the consequences can be catastrophic.
Research suggests that the emotional parts of the brain often fire before those of the rational neocortex. In short, our logical brain helps our emotional brain justify itself. The implications are sobering.
When we get our facts correct and integrate them appropriately with our feelings, our actions can help wonderful things happen. But when we act on feelings alone, as if they are facts, we have only half of what we need to build good lives and strong societies.
Science - and scientists - in real life often get much less respect. How can we explain this disconnect?
Until we put more emphasis - resources and political action - on thinking ahead and rewarding those who do, we'll continue to react to events rather than anticipate and plan for them.
There is evidence to suggest that the warp speed at which we can now live our lives may not be leading to the best decisions for our lives.
Hindsight is a dangerous mental error. It convinces us of the inevitably of events by no means inevitable. Both political parties should recognize their reality is mentally constructed. It has the same danger as a gambler who finds quick ways to explain his winning (or losing) streak.
We need to question what we see in cyberspace. We need to remember that passionate belief must not override reasoned analysis. We need to understand that what we “know” is colored by our assumptions and prejudices.
We often employ simplistic mental strategies to deal with our own mental exhaustion.We are endangering democracy by doing so.
The anchor effect suggests that we tend to “anchor” or rely too heavily in our decision making on a single piece of data to the exclusion of other information. Once the anchor is set, it dominates our thinking and moves us in the direction of the anchor.
Einstein said that if he had a minute to live and only one question he could answer, he'd spend 59 seconds framing the question. He knew the power of a well-framed question. Asking the right question is worthy of a greater investment than we usually give it.
Distractions cost time, resources, and attention. They leave us confused and uncertain about where to focus. As a nation, we have been distracted too long from serious attention to our problems
