How honest is your view of your current situation?

Individuals, and thus the organizations they lead, fight the tendency to slip into a mindset of seeing what they want to believe.  It is far too easy to avoid tough conversations about data that contradicts our existing assumptions.  In turn, we over-emphasize upside conclusions drawn from ambiguous information.  We are masters at creating our own blind spots.

Here are four simple ways to eliminate self-created blind spots

• Discount external praise.
• Don’t drown out negative data.
• Extend your normal scope of information inputs.
• Ask others to challenge the “honesty” of your viewpoint.

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations