Oh Say Can You See?

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Do The Blind Lead The Blind?

Competencies: self-development, diversity

Who benefits: open-mined people

Consultant Usage: essential reading for all consultants in any field

What’s it about? “There are none so blind as those who will not see. The most deluded people are those who choose to ignore what they already know”.   John Haywood, 1546

I would like to dedicate today’s post to friends and colleagues Joy Hawkins and Lee Gardenswartz who have dedicated their lives to helping others (including me) to examine our biases, prejudices and stereotypes about people who are “different” from ourselves … and teaching us better ways of self-governance.

Joy and Lee have opened my eyes.  Today I would like to review a new and powerful book that will hopefully open yours.  Yes you!  You have blind spots in how you view others and how you view the world.  The real (and perhaps only) question is how aware are you of your blind spots.

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People is the name of the book under review.  How aware are you of your “mindbugs” and “ingrained habits”?  If you dare to read this powerful and beautifully written book, it will attack you at your core.

Do you know about “blindsight”?  No?  Read this book.

Do you know about how hidden biases can influence your behavior? No? Read this book.  (If you answered “I don’t have hidden biases”, you really need to read this book.)

This book brings to light and to life the satire of Stephen Colbert who coined the term “truthiness” – “the tendency to accept propositions that one wishes to be true as true, ignoring the usual verification standards of fact”.

Or as the late Senator Daniel Moynihan once said “People have the right to their own opinion, but not a right to their own facts.”

The authors are both psychologists and scientists. They go out of their way to make clear that the book is based on long-term research.  Their book is not a conclusion in search of support.  The book is a careful report on multiple studies evolving over many years.

Yet for all its scientific analysis, it is exceptionally readable.  It has the same pull as a good mystery and is just as hard to put down.

And if humor is an attraction, this serious book offers some light insight to one of TV’s most famous lines on one of TV’s most favorite shows, dedicating Chapter 4 to the Jerry Seinfeld classic line “Not that there’s anything wrong with that”.  (On a darker note, the authors go on to discuss Kramer’s famous “Black” outburst in another chapter.)

Before closing I am struggling with some way to get you to pick up and read this brilliant book.  I think the authors offer the solution.  Midway through the book you will be given the opportunity to take their “Implicit Association Tests” – especially the one on race.  Warning – you might not like your results.  The IAT predicts racially discriminatory behavior and it doesn’t care if you are a good person or not.  I choose not to reveal my results.  (Disclosure – some social scientists have challenged the findings of the IAT – it is likely the truth, but not the whole truth.)

The book assumes that readers are good people.  It just proves that even good people have blind spots.

In the end this book reminds us that if we want to build a better world, we need to start with ourselves.  Even in the most beautiful of mansions we can find dust and even mold, rust if we look hard enough.  In ourselves, if we dig deep we can find hidden cracks and crevasses that hold unseen and unexamined stereotypes and discriminations.  And if you think you are the exception to this claim, then it is imperative you read and try to understand the content of this book.  I give Blindspot my absolutely highest recommendation.

Catch you later.

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.