In our last blog post, we discussed perception and the formation of worldviews. We would like to revisit this topic and take a closer look at one aspect of the psychological filter known as "distortion."
The experiment
Let's start with a little experiment: Hold one of your thumbs three or four centimeters in front of the tip of your nose. How clearly can you see your thumbnail? Is it blurry?
Now slowly move it toward the tip of your nose until they touch.
How clearly can you see him now? Not at all...
What am I trying to say with this experiment? This example clearly demonstrates and illustrates what proximity does to visual acuity—it distorts it.
Now I ask you: Who is closest to you? Who do you perceive in a particularly distorted way? Your parents, your children, your partner? No, it is yourself! We all have a more or less distorted perception of ourselves. From a purely anatomical point of view, it couldn't be any other way.
Are you still having trouble accepting this? Here is a second example: Please describe the sound of your own voice as accurately as possible RIGHT NOW. Write down your description and set the piece of paper aside for a moment. You have surely heard your voice on an answering machine before.
How does it sound compared to what you wrote down and how you usually hear yourself?
Which of the two perspectives do you consider distorted? The immediate answer is probably: "The answering machine, of course."But if we think about it for a moment, we realize that the distortion lies in our self-perception.
How are you feeling now? Are you surprised? Unsure? Still a little skeptical? Are you able to accept the fact easily, or have you suspected or even known this for a long time?
Knowing oneself
The saying"Gnothi Seauton"– carved into the Temple of Delphi, attributed by some to Socrates and by others to Chilon of Sparta – takes on an important meaning here.
Translated, it means: "Know thyself." However, what seems so simple often turns out to be one of the most difficult tasks!
When our academy organizes an event with Boris Grundl as a speaker and around 300 or 500 visitors in the hall, the following often happens at the beginning:
Participants are asked: "Who among you knows themselves?" After that, we usually see faces that express: "I've rarely heard such a question! What's that supposed to mean?"
Then we conduct a little experiment: anyone who thinks they know themselves raises their hand, and we ask five questions. Anyone who can answer these questions clearly and precisely (in their own mind) keeps their hand raised. Anyone who is unable to do so puts their hand down.
- Who knows their current top five values in life?
- Who knows their top five strengths?
- How specifically do you strengthen your strengths?
- Who is aware of their main value conflict that hinders their development and cooperation with other people?
- Who knows their intolerable weaknesses and knows how to eliminate them?
So far, we've never had to ask all five questions. Hands go down long before that.
The conclusion: we know far too little about ourselves! This realization may be a little painful. Nevertheless, it is true. And that is because we are unable to view ourselves objectively.
Feedback – a neutral perspective?
So is external feedback an effective aid? How valuable is such feedback on my impact—assuming that it is professional feedback?
Ultimately, the feedback conveys nothing more than the perspective of the answering machine. With one huge difference: the machine has no filters. It perceives what is real objectively.
We humans cannot do that. Our perceptions are always subjective, selective, and interpretive through evaluation. And the closer we are to something, the more distorted our perception becomes.
The more neutral we are toward a person, without emotional sensitivities, the clearer our image of them is.
Strong emotions such as love, longing, or their opposites—antipathy, anger, hatred—activate the distortion filter and cause it to run at full speed.
What does all this mean for you personally? For your own leadership style, for your personal development? Do you have enough distance from your employees to perceive them as impartially and objectively as possible?
One great way to get to know yourself even better is the seminar "Get up!"
