You Don’t See What’s Wrong With You, But Everyone Else Does
Feedback matters: Specific, actionable strategies for collecting it in a way that’s helpful and not traumatizing.
The title of this post is a paraphrase of a line from Season 4 of Mad Men where Don Draper listens as his niece tells him a version of the words above, but he doesn’t really hear her. After all, she’s just a college student and a girl, so what could she possibly tell him that he, an accomplished executive, needs to know?
“Who can see your face? Everyone. Who can’t see your face? You.” (Stone & Heen, 2014)
Draper, though he’s fictional, represents real men and women who can become convinced of their own ability to make all the best decisions yet find themselves tripped up by their own expertise, overconfidence, and recent successes. Their brains (and egos) work against them, reinforcing these cognitive biases.
These behaviours have consequences for an entire organization, particularly as they reinforce a ‘lone wolf’ mentality that can block the formation of…
