Introduction
Would you ask a stranger for €100? Or to sit on Santa’s lap? How about to sleep on the mattress of a furniture store?
For most people, the answer is probably no. Unless, of course, they were trying rejection therapy.
What is rejection therapy?
Rejection therapy started out as a game created by Canadian Jason Comely. The premise was simple: to desensitise yourself to rejection, expose yourself to as much of it as possible. For 30 days straight, the task was to get out of your comfort zone and ask for something to which you expect the response to be “no”. It could be to jump the queue at Starbucks, to take a photo of a stranger or to make an announcement on a train. Or bigger still – to drive a police car, fly a small plane, play football in a stranger’s back garden. Anything that is likely to get you good and firmly rejected, leaving you better placed to handle what Comely calls “the tyranny of social rejection” [1].
Although started by Comely, rejection therapy was popularised by someone else.
In 2012, Jia Jiang quit his well-paid but unfulfilling job at a Fortune 500 company and decided to go out on his own, starting a new business. After being rejected for an investment, he was left surprised by how much the experience hurt him. Twenty-four years prior, his first grade teacher had told her class of six year-olds to give compliments to all their classmates. They did. Except by Jiang’s turn, they were all out of kind words. He got nothing, and left the classroom feeling rejected and dejected. And even though so many years had passed since, when the investor told him no, he felt exactly the same again. He decided that if he was ever going to be a success in business, he’d have to thicken his skin and confront his unhealthy relationship with rejection head on. That’s when he stumbled on rejection therapy.
In 2016, Jiang’s TED Talk on the transformative impact rejection therapy had on his life went viral. He was given book deals, speaking opportunities, and ultimately, later in 2016, Comely called him and they mutually decided that Jiang would take over the reins of the rejection therapy crusade. Comely gave his successor control of the SocialRejection domain that he had set up many years prior. Jiang started his business running rejection therapy consultations, and in 2018 launched his mobile app. As of 2023, the hashtag “rejection therapy” had more than 72 million views on TikTok.
The science of rejection therapy
It’s perfectly natural to hate rejection. In fact, we can’t help it. It’s part of our neuro-chemistry.
“We started really simply with the question: what goes on in the brain when people feel socially excluded?” says social psychologist Naomi Eisenberger, speaking to The Guardian, whose study with her UCLA colleague Matthew Lieberman sought out to answer that very question [2].
“We brought people into the fMRI scanner and had them go through a game in which they were excluded,” she continued.
The virtual game, Cyberball, involved subjects tossing a ball back and forth with two other participants. Except the other players didn’t really exist – they were avatars programmed to stop throwing the ball to the subject at a certain point in the game.
Eisenberger tracked the subjects’ brains, monitoring what happened while the subjects were included and excluded from the social activity. She found that the regions of the brain that were activated when a person felt left out were the same regions that were activated during physical pain.
“From this early study we sort of thought, ‘OK, maybe there’s a reason people talk about feeling rejected as feeling hurt. Maybe there’s a good reason we use physical-pain words to describe these experiences of social pain.”
Rejection hurts. But what Jiang and now many others have found through rejection therapy is that over time it hurts less. This follows the same patterns as exposure therapy.
Upon hearing about rejection therapy, clinical psychologist Michael Stein, who has specialised in treating anxiety disorders using exposure therapy for more than 14 years, assisting clients from his private practice, Anxiety Solutions, in Denver, Colorado, responded, “It’s fantastic. It’s exactly what I would recommend for people with social anxiety” [3].
“Short-term avoidance of anxiety leads to long-term maintenance of anxiety,” he continues. “Anything you do when you feel anxious to try to make yourself feel better might work in the moment, but it actually guarantees more anxiety the next time you’re in a similar situation.”
Dr Peter Tuerk, a clinical psychologist who uses rejection therapy to treat adolescent social anxiety, agrees. “What we want is people to learn that they can tolerate the distress that’s associated with their physiological responses,” he says. “What happens over time is you habituate. Just like when you jump in a pool: it feels cold, then you wait, and that gets better.” [4]
On his first day of his self-prescribed 100-day rejection therapy challenge, Jiang asked a stranger for $100. The man said no. But then he asked Jiang why he wanted the money. Jiang didn’t have an answer. In fact, he just ran away, not engaging with the question. He realised this was his problem in microcosm, rather than facing up to his rejections, he was running away. He made a promise to himself that he would never do that again.
The next day, he asked for a “burger refill” at his local burger joint. This time, when the confused burger joint employee asked what that was, he did not run, he engaged. He explained that it was the same as a drinks refill except for burgers. He said he liked the burger and wanted another one for free. The employee told him it wasn’t possible but said he’d bring the idea up with his manager. Jiang left, happy with his rejection and with the fact that he’d had the courage to see the process out.
Jiang cites day three of his rejection therapy as the day that changed his life.
Don’t ask, don’t get
You may have seen the video. 6.2 million people have.
On day 3, Jiang enters a local Krispy Kreme and asks for donuts that look like the Olympic rings. Rather than rejecting this request outright, the woman behind the counter spends a moment thinking, then starts drawing diagrams, sketching out how one might go about realising his request. She asks Jiang the colours of the rings. He doesn’t even know – why would he? This request was bound to get rejected.
Not only does the woman come back 15 minutes later with a box of donuts designed to look like the Olympic rings, but she gives it to Jiang free of charge.
This opened up a whole new window in Jiang’s thinking. It wasn’t just that getting used to hearing no was good for you, it was that if you ask for what you want, you just might get it. With that in mind, within three months, Jiang had achieved his lifelong ambition: he’d taught a college class. How had he done it? He’d asked, and someone had said yes.
“When I finished teaching that class I walked out crying,” he says during his TED Talk. “I saw I could fulfil my life’s dream just by simply asking.”
Many others who have tried rejection therapy have had similar experiences. They ask for something ridiculous, something unreasonable even, and people go out of their way to help them get it.
It shows that it’s not just the fear of rejection that is in our heads but the expectation of it too. How many things do we not ask for in life simply because we presume we’ll be rejected? We’re so focused on what we assume will be the humiliation of the no that we don’t even consider there could be a yes. Rejection therapy is not about getting yeses, quite the opposite, but it happens far more often than one might expect, because people are kinder and the world a little less scary than we tend to think. And if you get rejected, well, that is rather the point.
Celebrating rejection
In a similar mould, some groups of academics have even started having rejection parties. Cognitive-science professor Barbara Sarnecka and two of her graduate students wanted to change their experience of professional rejection and so made a rule: for every 100 rejections amassed by their group, be it for grants, journal articles, fellowships, you name it, they would throw a party to celebrate [5].
One of the poisonous aspects of rejection is that it is so laced with shame that people avoid talking about it. As such, when one hears of another’s success, we assume that’s all they’re having, given we’ve heard nothing of their failures but are mortally aware of our own. Rejection parties or any such event that allows people to acknowledge and celebrate their own failures – and crucially those of others too – removes that sense of shame and shows us that we’re not alone.
Rhaina Cohen, producer and editor for NPR’s Embedded podcast and the author of The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center, writes in The Atlantic that in her rejection-collection group she has “seen how rejection stings less when it’s reframed as progress and handled communally. I’ve also observed how the collection encourages people to increase their submissions. When you see how much effort your fellow rejectees are putting in, it’s hard not to feel proud of their attempts, and motivated to put yourself out there more.” [6]
Detractors
Of course, there are those who don’t buy into rejection therapy. Dr Becky Spelman, a counselling psychologist and clinical director of Private Therapy Clinic, says that, “The effectiveness of rejection therapy in confronting and managing fears is not as well established as exposure therapy.” [7]
“In 30 days of rejection therapy, individuals might develop increased confidence in dealing with minor social rejections or become more comfortable with asking for what they want – but the impact may be limited without comprehensive therapeutic intervention,” she adds.
Meanwhile, writing in Forbes, Aaron Agius, co-founder and managing director of the global marketing agency Louder.Online argues that rejection therapy may help immunise one from the painful feelings that come with rejection, but that that’s no good thing.
“I’m not sure it’s in everybody’s best interests to get that comfortable with rejection,” he writes. “The fear of rejection is what keeps us trying. It keeps us sharp. And it’s one of the best teachers you can have.” [8]
Agius even uses rejection as a motivational tool and differentiator.
“I don’t want to make myself immune to rejection because I want rejection to power me. I want my ability to handle it – and to handle it well – to be the thing that sets me apart. The thing that means I’ll be in business long after those who can’t cut it are gone.”
Can rejection therapy help you?
Everyone is different. Some, like Agius, don’t need or want rejection therapy because rejection is not holding them back – in some ways it’s pushing them forwards. For others, like Jiang, fear of rejection and the associated feelings it brings was preventing him from achieving what he wanted to achieve and maximising his capability.
Only you know your personal relationship with rejection. But if it is disruptively negative, why not give rejection therapy a go? The worst you’ll hear is no.
As Jiang surmised, “Rejection was my curse, was my bogeyman. It had bothered me my whole life because I was running away from it. Then I started embracing it. I turned that into the biggest gift in my life.” [9]
More on Resilience
The psychology of success with Simon Hartley – Podcast
Game Changer: Mindset Mastery with Christian Straka – Podcast
Bouncing Back from Professional Failure
High Standards and Low Expectations: a Blueprint for Wellbeing
Sources
[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/01/celebrate-your-rejections-failures/621327/
[5] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/01/celebrate-your-rejections-failures/621327/
[6] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/01/celebrate-your-rejections-failures/621327/
[9] https://www.ted.com/talks/jia_jiang_what_i_learned_from_100_days_of_rejection?language=en
Introduction
What milk do you want with your coffee? Which song of the millions at your fingertips do you want to start your day? Which of that growing stack of emails are you going to answer first? Choose this. Now that. Are you sure? And again. Choices, choices, decisions, decisions, all day, every day – and aren’t you feeling tired?
By some estimates, adults today make 2,000 decisions an hour [1]. By others, 35,000 decisions a day [2]. Either way, it’s an overload. And it’s causing decision fatigue.
What is decision fatigue?
Decision fatigue is “the idea that after making many decisions, your ability to make more and more decisions over the course of a day becomes worse,” says Lisa MacLean, MD, psychiatrist and chief wellness officer at Henry Ford Health System. “The more decisions you have to make, the more fatigue you develop and the more difficult it can become” [3].
The immediacy afforded us by the internet and 24-hour news and work cycle, as well as the endless variety of almost identical products available to us at any given moment, means that people today are making more choices than ever before.
By some accounts, the average American supermarket in 1976 carried 9,000 different products. That number is thought to have swelled to 40,000 [4]. If you’re looking to buy some hangers for your clothes, Amazon provides you with over 200,000 options [5]. For the global-manufacturing industry, that’s great. Its output has ballooned 75% since 2007 to $35 trillion [6]. For the average consumer, though, it means endless scrolling trying to decipher marginal differences in the name of getting the best deal. It wears you out.
Decision fatigue in action
In a study described in the book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by John Tierney and Roy Baumeister, researchers analysed 1,100 decisions made by an Israeli parole board. Their decision-making was found to shift enormously throughout the day. Overall, parole was granted roughly a third of the time. But prisoners whose cases were heard early in the morning received parole about 70% of the time, while prisoners appearing late in the afternoon were granted freedom only 10% of the time [7].
This is not to say that the judges were making wrong choices later in the day. Rather, they were defaulting to easy ones.
In their report for Royal Society Open Finance, Quantifying the cost of decision fatigue: suboptimal risk decisions in finance, Tobias Baer and Simone Schnall evaluated the financial implications of making too many decisions. Their findings revealed that people who make a lot of decisions every day will eventually get tired and start defaulting to the easiest choice [8].
Other examples are plentiful. In voting, research shows it’s detrimental to be lower on the ballot paper [9]. In financial institutions, the accuracy of forecasts made by stock market analysts was found to decline as the day wore on [10]. And in healthcare, nurses were found to make less efficient and more expensive clinical decisions the longer they worked without a break [11].
It’s not complicated. For all the complexity of our genetic make-up and the improbable anthropological and technological heights we’ve reached, humans are still basically simple creatures. As the day goes on, we get tired. When we’re tired, we make worse decisions.
Why is it a problem?
Casting the situation in such a simplified light has its drawbacks, though. If this is just part of our humanity, some inherent flaw in our design, then surely there’s no use fighting it? This is merely the human condition playing out.
Except, evidently, this isn’t simply the way of things, as it wasn’t always like this. Yes, fatigue has always been part of our nature and affects our performance, but the specific decision-making aspect has exponentially amplified and worsened, as evidenced by the number of products on the supermarket shelves and the infinite hanger problem. We are wasting precious amounts of our finite energy on trivial decisions.
A 2021 American Psychological Association survey found that nearly one-third of adults – and nearly half of millennials – are struggling with basic decisions like what to eat or wear [12]. And if such menial, everyday decisions as those feel difficult, how do you think actual consequential ones feel?
How it feels
Naysayers would like to write decision fatigue off as an excuse for lazy workers, particularly those of the millennial and Gen Z generations, who simply don’t have the work ethic of their elder peers. But the impact decision fatigue has on brain function is real and has been measured.
“A person with decision fatigue may feel tired, have brain fog or experience other signs and symptoms of physical or mental fatigue,” explained Dr. MacLean [13]. “The phenomenon is cumulative so that as the person makes more decisions, they may feel worse or more drained as the day progresses.” She added that decision fatigue can also “cause you to simply do nothing, which can cause even more problems.”
As The Washington Post put it, “When decision fatigue kicks in, you may feel like you just don’t have the mental bandwidth to deal with more decisions. This can lead to decisional paralysis or depleted self-control, causing you to avoid making certain choices entirely, to go with the default option or to make ones that aren’t in line with your goals or values” [14].
The problem can be self-fulfilling. As Stanford University researcher Carol Dweck found in 2011, decision fatigue more negatively affects people who already expect their willpower to be low [15]. In other words, if you expect your performance to drop off by the end of the day, it likely will.
It reaches a point where people don’t just make bad decisions or easy ones, but see no point in making any decision at all. “We can get to this state of, does anything even matter anymore? There’s this almost nihilist point that you reach,” says Dane Jensen, the chief executive of Third Factor, a Toronto-based performance-consulting firm [16].
External factors contribute to this nihilism. Around half of adults said planning for the future felt impossible during the pandemic [17]. For many, the precarious state of today’s geopolitics is also having a negative effect. “It’s hard to make decisions even when the world isn’t throwing you curveball after curveball and freaking you out,” says Dr. Milkman, author of the book How to Change [18].
That theory is backed up by a landmark study published in Science that showed that being in poverty hurts one’s ability to make decisions about school, finances, and life. The impact on impoverished people, for whom the world really is throwing curveball after curveball, was found to impose a mental burden similar to losing 13 IQ points [19].
How to fight decision fatigue
Dr MacLean offers advice for combatting decision fatigue [20]. One way to make fewer decisions, she suggests, is to “streamline your choices.” By making a list before going to the shop, you have saved yourself the energy of deciding in the moment what you want or need.
In a corporate setting, she suggests delegating decisions rather than trying to micromanage. Given Asana’s 2022 Anatomy of Work Special Report found that nearly 7 in 10 executives say burnout has affected their ability to make decisions, this advice is much needed [21]. “By delegating, you also empower people by showing them that you trust them,” Dr MacLean adds.
She also suggests making big decisions in the morning. “Research shows that the best time to make decisions is in the morning…[it] is when we make the most accurate and thoughtful decisions, and we tend to be more cautious and meticulous. We hit a plateau in the afternoon and by evening our decisions may be more impulsive. So, definitely don’t make big decisions when you’re tired or hungry.”
Cutting down on perfectionism, too, can be helpful. If you’ve narrowed down your lunch spot to two or three places, just go to one and enjoy it without thinking whether the others might have been better. This is what Nell Derick Debevoise, author of Going First: Finding the Courage to Lead Purposefully and Inspire Action,calls the “decisions are for suckers” approach [22].
Ms Derick Debevoise suggests avoiding making decisions altogether, at least for one day every now and then. “It is about trusting the natural ebb and flow of life,” she says, “allowing opportunities to present themselves organically, and following intuition and instinct instead of succumbing to the paralysing weight of decision-making.”
Routine, too, is useful for combatting decision fatigue. Rather than having to decide what you’re going to do when 9am comes around, you simply follow your planned daily agenda, be it responding to emails or going for a run. Less important tasks can be tuned to autopilot through the prism of routine, saving mental energy.
“Another idea is to have a handful of go-to outfits planned out to further minimise decisions made,” Dr. MacLean adds. “The bottom line is, look at all the big and little decisions you make every day and think about how you can simplify your life.”
One devotee of such thinking is Barack Obama, who tried to remove extraneous, small decisions from his life so he was in the optimum state for the big ones. During his presidency, Obama would ask for “decision memos” with three check-boxes at the bottom: agree, disagree and let’s discuss. He also only wore grey or blue suits and, during the presidential campaign in 2008, he and his wife made a “no new friends” rule [23].
This approach can sound monotonous. Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking that such discipline and routine will carve away at your creativity. But it’s the exact opposite.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Jim Sollisch, a creative director and partner at Marcus Thomas, an advertising agency in Cleveland, Ohio, says that he tries to take away as many choices from his workers as he can. “I want to put them in a box,” he says. “A very small box…People think they hate boxes, but it’s in boxes that the creative process thrives. In a tight box, the will is not drained by too much decision-making. You are free to find the unexpected, to focus on what matters” [24].
“Having data feels like power,” he continues. “Having choices feels like freedom. Sometimes having both is having neither.”
Decision fatigue
In a world that feels determined to force you into a decision a second, you must be active in setting yourself free from that burden. It may not feel like you’re being impaired by the choice between the latte or the cappuccino, the granola bar or the bagel, but you are, just a tiny bit, 35,000 times in a row.
Do yourself a favour. Make the choice to choose less.
More on Decision-Making
Mastering Decisions: The Strategic Edge of Red Teaming in a Biased World
More on Delegation
Why You Should Delegate – And How To Do It Effectively
Sources
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cure-for-decision-fatigue-1465596928
[5] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/too-many-options/590185/
[6] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/05/too-many-options/590185/
[7] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cure-for-decision-fatigue-1465596928
[9] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/long-ballots-democracy/413701/
[12] https://www.wsj.com/articles/decision-fatigue-is-real-heres-how-to-beat-it-this-year-11641186063
[15] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/12/ill-do-it-latersomeone/578173/
[16] https://www.wsj.com/articles/decision-fatigue-is-real-heres-how-to-beat-it-this-year-11641186063
[17] https://www.wsj.com/articles/decision-fatigue-is-real-heres-how-to-beat-it-this-year-11641186063
[18] https://www.wsj.com/articles/decision-fatigue-is-real-heres-how-to-beat-it-this-year-11641186063
[21] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/12/06/the-energized-few-and-the-exhausted-many-senior-leaders-and-decision-fatigue-in-a-volatile-environment/?sh=4a821f1736b0
[23] https://www.ft.com/content/6c589726-4906-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86ab
[24] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cure-for-decision-fatigue-1465596928
Introduction
In May of last year, the “Godfather of AI” Dr. Geoffrey Hinton announced his resignation from Google citing concerns over the potential ramifications of advancing AI technologies [1]. Six months later, OpenAI’s board ousted CEO Sam Altman over concerns he was placing technological advancements ahead of human safety and ethical concerns, only to bring him back four days later [2]. Then in February of this year, Elon Musk sued both OpenAI and Altman saying they had abandoned the startup’s original mission to develop artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity and not for profit [3].
Put simply, how to implement artificial intelligence in an ethical manner currently poses more questions than answers, with disagreements over the necessary direction of travel growing increasingly heated. How to handle data privacy, discrimination, deepfake technology, job losses and the environmental impact are all problems in need of solutions.
Data privacy
AI is built on data. But questions exist over how the data being used to feed its insatiable appetite is being stored, used and accessed. Sensitive information such as people’s location, sexual preferences, health records and habits are all hoarded somewhere in the internet’s great database – we traded privacy for convenience some time ago. But who can access this data? Who is it being disseminated to? Is it liable to a data breach from hackers or unwarranted surveillance from governmental or corporate entities? It’s not clear. Worse still, by definition, “black box” AI is not understood even by its creators [4]. How it chooses to manipulate our data is and will remain an unknown; all we can do is cross our fingers and hope it’s working in our interests.
Of course, data privacy laws exist. But they were written up prior to AI’s emergence and as such fall well short in managing its capabilities. The average citizen knows little of what information they have unknowingly given away over the years, much less how it is being used. This will only worsen.
Discrimination
Many fear that AI could end up perpetuating inequality and discrimination. As noted, AI models are based on data. As such, any data that is fed into the system – no matter whether that data demonstrates biases or is made up of poorly represented subsets – will be used and built upon. Examples of biassed algorithmic decision-making have already been reported in healthcare, hiring, and other settings [5]. For example, a recruiting tool at Amazon was found to prefer male candidates for jobs that required technical skills [6].
Algorithmic bias is complicated. Would implementing an algorithm that displays discriminatory bias be acceptable if the level of bias appears to be less than that displayed by society as a whole, for example? An industry with a record of giving just 30% of jobs to women would be improved by an algorithm that gave 35%. And yet there feels something troubling about such a concession. Perhaps it is the optimist’s view that individual and even institutional biases can be rooted out – algorithmic ones cannot. To sign off on the problem would be to give it legitimacy.
Tara Behrend, PhD, a professor at Michigan State University’s School of Human Resources and Labor Relations, notes that the problem is not always as high-stakes as hiring, but can be just as consequential. For example, an AI-driven career guidance system could unintentionally steer a woman away from jobs in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and maths), influencing her entire life trajectory.
“That can be potentially hugely consequential for a person’s future decisions and pathways,” Behrend says. “It’s equally important to think about whether those tools are designed well” [7].
Another potential problem is that AI is not just feeding off our existing biases but forging more. “AI has many biases, but we’re often told not to worry, because there will always be a human in control,” said Helena Matute, PhD, a professor of experimental psychology at Universidad de Deusto in Bilbao, Spain. “But how do we know that AI is not influencing what a human believes and what a human can do?” [8]
In a study Matute conducted with graduate student Lucía Vicente, participants classified images for a simulated medical diagnosis either with or without the help of AI. They found that when the AI system made errors, humans inherited the same biassed decision-making, even when they stopped using the AI. “If you think of a doctor working with this type of assistance, will they be able to oppose the AI’s incorrect advice?” Matute asked.
Any football fans reading this may recall the effect being “sent to the monitor” by VAR officials had on referees when first implemented in the Premier League. Rather than being used to reconsider their original decision, referees overturned practically every time, with the act of going to the monitor serving as little more than a form of ritual theatre. No matter how good at our jobs we are, if we are told we’re wrong by a higher authority, our natural inclination is to believe them.
Job loss
According to a report by Goldman Sachs, AI has the potential to replace around 300 million full-time jobs [9]. One quarter of all the work tasks in Europe and the US could be automated [10]. The effect could be catastrophic. Would the government then subsidise these displaced workers? Would new industries emerge? Or would we witness unemployment, poverty and then likely protests and riots on an as yet unprecedented scale? No one’s quite sure.
Utopians tend to posit that AI will simply take over the tasks we don’t want to do, giving us more time to focus on ourselves and better, more profound endeavours. Similar arguments were made about typewriters, printers and the internet. As it turned out, all that really changed was the amount of work one was expected to get through in a day. We raise our expectations to meet the tools available to us. Productivity is the name of the game; that’s not going to change.
Businesses will be forced to make tough choices. The people versus profit decision has always been a component of corporate thinking, but will soon become far more stark. If a company sees that it can save a huge percentage every year by moving to newly available AI tools, will it really show loyalty to its staff? If so, how much, and for how long? Those that choose to prioritise profit, as many will, will have to embrace a swift, grand overhaul that could produce unparalleled turmoil. One also wonders what the effect will be on the psyche of retained staff as they see the ease with which their colleagues are automated out the door.
Deepfakes
We’re already seeing increasingly sophisticated deepfakes online. At the moment, the falsity is detectable. Soon it won’t be. The ramifications are terrifying on a number of levels. Politically, we’re going to see democracy pushed to the brink as videos emerge of candidates for office saying or doing something repulsive days before an election, potentially swaying undecideds. Worse still could be deepfake footage from war zones. The wrong video believed by the wrong people could cause an escalation in a conflict. At a minimum it will pour fuel on the fire.
In the post-truth society we occupy, citizens already live in different realities based on the ideology they submit to. The gulf seems set to widen.
That’s not to mention the effect deepfakes will have on scamming. Should you receive a call from a loved one who claims to have been kidnapped and is desperately asking for money, will you be able to believe them? AI technology is already nearing the point of being able to accurately replicate voices of anyone with vocal recordings (podcasts, YouTube videos) in the public ether. It used to be that we believed something because we saw it with our own eyes, heard it with our own ears. In the coming years, even that won’t be enough.
Then there is the pornographic aspect that has regrettably already begun. Taylor Swift is the most famous victim of deepfaked images online but the exact same thing will soon be happening in classrooms up and down the country. In fact, it’s already started [11]. Compromising images of teenage girls are being created by AI and then spread amongst their classmates. Needless to say, this is reprehensible – and harmful in the extreme. How do you prepare a young girl for such psychological damage? Why should you have to? Because almost every new technology throughout history has been quickly turned into a weapon of misogyny. AI is no different.
Environment
AI models require an unconscionable amount of energy to train [12]. For all its hopes of being a tool of progress, artificial intelligence is an enormous resource consumer. Researchers are working to create energy efficient models but as of right now the AI revolution is quite literally unsustainable.
The responsibility of businesses
Regulation will be introduced in an attempt to minimise the potential damage AI poses. Indeed, in 2023, the Biden administration released an executive order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI and the European Union came close to passing its first comprehensive AI Act [13]. But Biden’s act is limited in its scope and authority, plus Silicon Valley will continue pushing back. As such, for the time being at least, if AI is to be effectively regulated, businesses will have to regulate it themselves.
Writing in Harvard Business Review, author of Ethical Machines, Reid Blackman, PhD, suggests some methods as to how. He says that organisations need to assemble “a senior-level working group that is responsible for driving AI ethics in your organisation…At a minimum, we recommend involving four kinds of people: technologists, legal/compliance experts, ethicists, and business leaders who understand the problems you’re trying to solve for using AI” [14].
Companies that fail to act now risk reputational damage and missed opportunities to build trust with customers and key stakeholders. This is uneasy ground; customers will feel kindly towards a company that’s prioritising high ethical standards.
What they won’t respond to are the businesses choosing instead to cash in on the chaos. As Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor of The Atlantic, writes, “Corporations that stand to profit off this new technology are already memorising the platitudes necessary to wave away the critics. They’ll use sunny jargon like ‘human augmentation’ and ‘human-centred artificial intelligence.’ But these terms are as shallow as they are abstract” [15].
Self-regulation and ethics have never walked comfortably hand in hand, but until such a time as more official channels have a grip on this era-defining technological advancement, businesses must do so as best they can, with transparency and moral values at the centre of their thinking.
LaFrance sums the situation up well:
“In the face of world-altering invention, with the power of today’s tech barons so concentrated, it can seem as though ordinary people have no hope of influencing the machines that will soon be cognitively superior to us all. But there is tremendous power in defining ideals, even if they ultimately remain out of reach. Considering all that is at stake, we have to at least try.”
More on AI
AI: The Changing Face of Project Management
Source
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Business/sam-altman-reaches-deal-return-ceo-openai/story?id=105091534
[3] https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musk-sues-openai-ceo-sam-altman-breach-contract-2024-03-01/
[5] https://hbr.org/2019/10/what-do-we-do-about-the-biases-in-ai
[7] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/04/addressing-equity-ethics-artificial-intelligence
[8] https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/04/addressing-equity-ethics-artificial-intelligence
[11] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/02/opinion/deepfakes-teenagers.html
[12] https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishatalagala/2022/05/31/ai-ethics-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/
[13] https://www.pwc.com/jp/en/knowledge/column/generative-ai-regulation09.html
[14] https://hbr.org/2022/03/ethics-and-ai-3-conversations-companies-need-to-be-having
[15] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/07/generative-ai-human-culture-philosophy/674165/
Introduction
You’re the average of the five people you spend most of your time with. If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.
These quotes, the first by Jim Rohn [1], second by Benjamin Franklin [2], and third an old proverb [3], tell you everything you need to know about the effect the people you surround yourself with have on your life and trajectory. Surround yourself with smart, hard-working people and – wouldn’t you know it – you want to be smart and hard-working too. Hang out with lazy, negative types and before you know if you’ll be lazier and more negative than the rest. They’ll grind you down, dull your ambition and dampen your spirit. Then, one by one, the doors to all those brighter futures you’d envisioned for yourself will soon close, lock, and disappear from view.
The right people
“In my twenty-eight years as an executive search consultant, working across all major industries in more than forty countries, I’ve discovered that the key to outstanding performance and fulfillment – both in work and life – is the ability to surround oneself with outstanding people,” writes Claudio Fernández-Aráoz in his book It’s Not the How or the What but the Who [4].
Fernández-Aráoz explains how the attitudes of our husbands, wives, friends, employers, employees, mentors and colleagues affect us profoundly – and as such, how the decisions regarding whom we allow to fill these positions are the most crucial ones we can make.
Research shows that the habits of people we spend time with rub off on us. When studying the health habits of people who live in so-called “blue zones” – regions of the world with notably high life expectancies – National Geographic fellow and author Dan Buettnerr noted that positive friendships were a key recurring theme [5].
“Friends can exert a measurable and ongoing influence on your health behaviors in a way that a diet never can,” he says. For example, in Okinawa, Japan, people form social networks called maois. These moais consist of a group of five friends who offer social, logistic, emotional and even financial support to one another over the course of a lifetime. The average life expectancy for women in Okinawa is 90 years old, the highest in the world.
It’s basic human nature. Your friend orders the salad, all of a sudden you’re a little more hesitant to order the stuffed crust Mega Meaty with extra pepperoni. Conversely, your friend orders chicken wings, cheesy chips, beer and tequila and the voice in your head telling you to get the salad, go for a run later, and maybe hit the library quickly turns to an inaudible whisper.
Because it’s not just about surrounding yourself with the right people. It’s about not surrounding yourself with the wrong ones.
The wrong people
In Living for the Weekday: What Every Employee and Boss Needs to Know about Enjoying Work and Life, Clive Swindall writes that, “While your success can be determined in part by whom you surround yourself with, it can also be determined in part by whom you choose to not surround yourself with…If you’re around someone with a cold, there’s a good chance you’ll catch the cold. What are you catching from the people around you?” [6]
Negative thinking, laziness, cruelty, arrogance, delusion, bitterness. How many bad traits can we put up with from those around us before we start to embody them ourselves? People who spend a lot of time together end up speaking the same way. Couples who’ve been together for decades end up looking alike. Owners even come to look like their pets. Of course if we spend all our time with the person who calls in sick for work, bad mouths everyone around them and lies in until 11am on weekdays, we’re going to start adopting some bad traits too.
As such, Swindall recommends people “do an analysis of your circle of friends and see whether they add to your life or take away from it.” It can feel harsh, but most of us have people in our lives with whom we have consistently negative relationships. We walk away from every interaction asking ourselves in exasperation, “Why am I friends with this person?” Perhaps it’s time to ask the question more seriously – why? Is it because you genuinely enjoy their company, find them interesting, find them interested in you, think they’d be there for you when it mattered? Or just because you’ve known them a while.
Swindalll is “referring to the people in our lives who drain us of our energy because they thrive on sharing their own negativity. Refuse it. Don’t just walk away from the negativity – run. Get as far away from it as you can. Not only does it impact our perspective with regard to our own lives, it impacts our mental health.”
It should be noted that he is not advising us to simply abandon friends at the first sign of trouble. Someone we know may be going through a tough time, may not be themselves, and as such may be difficult to interact with for a period. In those scenarios, of course our job is to be there for them and to help in any way we can – otherwise we’d be proving ourselves to be the kind of person no one else should want to surround themselves with. But we’re all aware of the difference between a good friend having a bad day, week, month or year and a bad friend who constantly drains us. Chances are you’ve had a name in your head the whole time you’ve been reading this.
Mentors
Mentors are the ultimate method of surrounding yourselves with the right people. Mentors can provide motivation, direction, coaching, training and advice. Are there people you admire in your chosen field? Reach out to them. It may be bold but boldness is often rewarded. You don’t have to set your sight for the top of the tree – Warren Buffet is unlikely to reply to your email – but if there’s a professor, boss or colleague you admire, a TedTalk that inspired you, a podcast that engaged you, or a LinkedIn post that roused you, why not reach out and see? People are kinder than we give them credit for.
Once you’ve tracked your dream mentor down, Fernández-Aráoz, writing in Harvard Business Review, advises that you are candid about the reason for your interest and that you ask specifically how to get started [7]. People like helping people who want to learn. As Nietzsche put it, “There is an innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that [they] might one day be admired” [8].
If you think you’d benefit from a mentor but don’t have anyone in mind, head to conferences and lectures in your chosen field – even if you don’t make a mentor, you might meet a like-minded individual looking to do the same thing as you whom you can bounce ideas off; networking is always helpful. If you’re a University student or graduate, your University likely lays on alumni events that can help. Certain schools do the same.
If you can’t find a mentor or an event to inspire you, use the internet. The modern world allows you to listen to in-depth interviews with the best in business from pretty much every field in the world. Podcasts, YouTube, and LinkedIn are your allies. A wealth of knowledge is out there for you to soak up. Writing in Forbes, Jennifer Cohen refers to these mentors as the “friends in your head” [9]. Maybe for whatever reason you can’t surround yourself with inspirational people in your real life, but online you have no excuse.
Diverse viewpoints
When building the group you hope to feed off, ensure it is diverse, ideally in all aspects, but at least in thought. No matter how positive and talented your group is, if all you are doing is agreeing with one another, something is wrong. Having a plurality of ideas is essential. If your idea is not strong enough to survive being challenged, perhaps it’s not worth holding onto.
Similarly, when building out your network, the temptation is to make it one that demonstrates your strengths, but of far greater value is one that improves your weaknesses.
Research by Gianluca Carnabuci and Eric Quintane found that “the most effective way to unlock the full potential of your network is to maximize what we call “the complementarity premium” by building a network that supports you in areas where your cognitive style is not naturally suited. However, most people do just the opposite: They build networks that reinforce their natural strengths and this hinders their ability to perform at their best” [10].
We want to appear smart and talented. We want to be good. To do so, embarrassing as it may be, we have to expose some of our weaknesses first in order to make them better.
Surround yourself with the right people
Who we spend our time with matters. Traits and attitudes rub off. Spend too much time with someone else’s bad habits and you may soon find they’re your own. By asking yourself big questions, you can get an idea of the person you want to be, then assess those around you and ask if they’re going to help get you there. Obviously friendship is more than just a transaction – don’t abandon friends solely because they’re not stepping stones to the top. But there are likely to be people in your life that you know to be holding you back. Difficult as it may be, you need to ask yourself how long you’re going to let them.
Reach out to a mentor figure who inspires you, or if that’s not doable use “friends in your head” to keep improving. Be sure to develop your weaknesses and challenge your thinking from time to time. You need to take in all manner of competing perspectives. As John Stuart Mill put it, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.”
More on Diversity
Diversity and Conflict for a Plural Workforce
Rethinking How We Work with Libby Sander – Podcast
Why Work Isn’t Working and Envisioning The Future Economy with Jess Rimington – Podcast
References
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2015/03/31/success-tips-benjamin-franklin/?sh=12e59a7e4fe7
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/10/well/the-power-of-positive-people.html
[6] https://www.amazon.com/Living-Weekday-Every-Employee-Enjoying/dp/0470599405
[7] https://hbr.org/2018/09/the-key-to-career-growth-surround-yourself-with-people-who-will-push-you
[8] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/06/make-friends-you-admire-happiness/661245/
[10] https://hbr.org/2023/11/surround-yourself-with-colleagues-who-boost-your-performance
Introduction
Arthur Shopenhauer was a German philosopher best known for his 1818 treatise The World as Will and Representation, in which he posited, in short, that the world around us does not exist in itself, but is rather only a representation of the way we each subjectively experience it. Any objective reality, such that it exists, can never be witnessed or experienced by humankind due to the subjective nature of consciousness.
Writing recently in The Atlantic, Arthur C. Brooks, host of the How to Build a Happy Life podcast, argues that while Schopenhauer’s grand thesis may be what made his name, it is his other, lesser-known works which harbour greater wisdoms that we should each be incorporating into our day-to-day lives, especially if we are on the verge of undertaking a large, daunting project.
Brooks says Schopenhaur’s work “offered rules for living that stand up remarkably well when compared with the findings of modern research; they provide what has come, for me, to be the best guidelines for doing the big thing” [1]. By the big thing, Brooks refers to writing a book, running a marathon, learning to play piano, or any other such task that requires endurance and discipline.
The core arguments Schopenhauer made that Brooks champions are: embracing mindfulness, thinking of the big picture, living day-by-day, and blocking out external noise. By undertaking these practices, promoted by Schopenhauer in the middle of the 19th century, one can have a better relationship with their work today.
Mindfulness
Research at companies such as Google, Aetna and Intel have demonstrated that incorporating mindfulness into the workplace can decrease employee stress levels while improving focus, thoughtfulness, decision-making abilities and overall well-being [2]. Mindfulness has also been shown to reduce emotional exhaustion, increase openness to new ideas and develop compassion and empathy [3]. Modern procrastination scholars have also found that mindfulness significantly predicts the ability to avoid procrastination [4].
The benefits, then, are evident. And yet some sceptics still remain, because, as with anything in business, how people feel is considered less important than the bottom line. Except that incorporating mindfulness into the workplace has also been shown to be a money-maker.
As we have written about in the past, Aetna, a US health insurer that trained 13,000 employees in mindfulness practices, estimated an annual productivity improvement of around $3,000 per employee, as well as a reported reduction in stress levels of 28% [5]. Meanwhile SAP, a leading German software company, saw a 200% return on investment, based on data from a survey undertaken with the help of 650 SAP employees who underwent mindfulness training through the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) [6].
In other words, mindfulness is no hippy-dippy fad. It’s a cold, hard cash earner.
Thinking big
All businesses, and indeed all individuals, need a north star, some destination to which we’re heading. Of course, there’s rarely a direct route or comfortable mode of transport that takes us precisely where we want to go – the journey tends to be messy, often necessarily so – but knowing where we want to end up helps keep us on track, and more importantly helps us see when we’re heading in the wrong direction. Having a big picture allows us to take little steps towards it. You put a puzzle together one piece at a time.
As Brooks puts it, “Each ordinary day, you have a choice: You can build your house up a little, tear it down a bit, or neglect it entirely. To choose the first option, start each day by envisioning for a minute your whole purpose and your desire to complete it. Then resolve to live this day in alignment with that desire. In the evening, briefly survey the day, notice where you perhaps fell short of your goal, and make a few resolutions to tighten things up tomorrow” [7].
It can be difficult to find the balance between big, end-destination thinking and the micro-decisions you need to get right in order to get there. It takes what Denise Russo, Global VP of SAP and council member for ICF CIO, terms “leadershift.”
Leadershift is “a balance between standing back and seeing the big picture (vision) and moving in close while painting all of the fine details (execution),” she writes in Forbes [8].
“There is a need to balance the excitement of envisioning the big picture alongside the plan for how to best get that picture painted,” she continues. “The best leaders focus inward first and then outward.”
Or, as Pabo Picasso put it, “Our goals can only be reached through the vehicle of a plan. There is no other route to success” [9].
Have a plan, have a destination – set it, know it – only then will you be free to focus on the collection of smaller challenges you must overcome to get there. Which, in turn, requires the next piece of advice.
Live in day-tight compartments
In his article on Schopenhauer, Brooks advocates embracing Dale Carrnegie’s advice to live in “day-tight compartments”. Carnegie was inspired to create this phrase by Sir Wiliam Osler, who in turn was inspired by the Thomas Carlisle quote, “It is not our goal to see what lies dimly in the distance but to do what clearly lies at hand” [10].
Perhaps, in combining the need for big picture thinking with the advice to live in day-tight compartments, we could amend this to: do what clearly lies at hand in order to reach the point that lies dimly in the distance.
A day-tight compartment – quite literally sealing off today’s tasks from yesterday’s and tomorrow’s – allows for greater focus, as well as making progress easier to measure. Make a list of what you need to achieve through the day in the morning, or perhaps plan for the entire week on Sunday night, and ensure that by the end of the day it is done. It really is as simple as that. Do not think about the task you’ll be completing in a week’s time or a year’s, there is no need. Focus only on what you can do in the here and now – the days will add up all on their own.
Block out the noise
The news is a distraction. The song in your head is a distraction. The neighbours’ shouting is a distraction. The world is a distraction.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, everything is a distraction. But that’s okay.
It can be too easy to let external noise – literal and psychological – mess with your routine and prevent you from getting things done. Now more than ever, the whole world is at our fingertips, the temptation to touch it is hard to resist. And yet, most times we do, it offers little to nothing in reward other than a cheap dopamine hit and massive delay to our daily progress. No one is going to lie on their deathbed and say they wish they’d scrolled more.
Blocking out the noise takes a bit of practice, but there are many techniques that can help. Many leading CEOs advocate time blocking, i.e. allocating arbitrary chunks of time to a specific task. Half an hour for emails here. Two hours for the presentation there. Whatever it may be. Indeed, actually setting a timer on your phone or using an egg-timer is a useful psychological trick that forces your mind into focus mode and allows you to switch off once time is up. During this time, fully commit to the task at hand. Turn off your phone. Make yourself unavailable on Teams. Be strict with your limits, and use an app like Rescuetime for assistance if you really want to track how it’s going.
One piece of advice CEOs endorse that can also be tied into mindfulness is rather more simple, passive even: simply allow the distractions [11]. That doesn’t mean jump on social media every chance you get. Rather, if the noise from the street or the table next to you at the cafe is bugging you, make the choice to not let it. Allow the world to happen around you as it is. If you can only get the work done under the perfect circumstances, you’re never going to get the work done at all. Step back, breathe, and rather than fixating on the imperfections, let them fade into the background. You’ll be surprised what you can achieve.
Schopenhauer and the workplace
So there you have it. Schopenhauer’s legacy as one of pessimism’s great philosophical minds who forced humanity to face just how detached from reality we are and always will be is undeserved. He was secretly just a productivity guru, a man ahead of his time, who if around today would be churning out SEO-driven LinkedIn content or life hack TikToks. (Before any enraged Schopenhunnies reach out, please be aware that was written with tongue firmly in cheek.)
But there are lessons to be learned in his teachings. Embrace mindfulness, think big, then once you know where you’re headed, get your head down and focus on the day-to-day, and be sure to block out external noise. Schopenhauer may have been writing in the 19th century, but good advice is good advice forever.
More on Focus
How to focus and become indistractable with Nir Eyal – podcast
Four Thousand Weeks: Time And How To Use It with Oliver Burkeman – podcast
More on Mindfulness
Mindfulness, Meditation and Compassion in the Workplace and in Life with Scott Shute – podcast
Awakening Wisdom: Exploring the Legacy of Tony de Mello with Dr. Francis Valloor – podcast
Sources
[2] https://hbr.org/2015/12/why-google-target-and-general-mills-are-investing-in-mindfulness
[4] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-66266-001
[5] https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/unleashing-power-of-mindfulness-in-corporations
[10] https://dalecarnegiewaynj.com/2011/05/27/reduce-worry-by-living-in-day-tight-compartments/
Introduction
Manifestation is just one amongst a number of self-betterment practices endorsed by high-flying celebrities and budding social media presences alike. Simply put, it is the process of achieving something – often a personal or professional goal – through the power of thought. Via visualisations, affirmations and other similar techniques, one can, according to its champions, make their dream life a reality.
As Oprah Winfrey, one of manifestation’s most prominent advocates, put it to the class of Wellesley College in 1997, “Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life because you become what you believe” [1].
Understandably, for every supporter of manifestation there is a detractor. Held up as a cousin or outright sibling of tarot reading, soothsaying and any other variety of pseudoscience, the notion that reality can be bent to one’s whims as if by Neo in The Matrix can be a hard pill to swallow.
But does that mean the practice should be disregarded altogether? Does manifestation really offer life-changing benefits? Is it yet more self-improvement snake oil? Or does the truth lie somewhere in between?
Let’s see.
The many faces of manifestation
The particular form manifestation takes depends on which advocate you speak to. Most favour some kind of visualisation technique, in which one dedicates a certain amount of time every day to picturing themselves in the life they want, the more specific the better – the house they live in, the structure of their day-to-day – in the hope that knowing what they want will allow them to then realise that picture of success. Affirmations are equally prominent, with people repeating mantras in front of a mirror about the person they wish to be in order to make that dream a reality.
There are many other techniques too. One can keep a file of positive reinforcement so that even on the down days one has a bible of sorts they can turn to. Then there is the 3-6-9 method popularised on Tik-Tok, in which one writes down what they want three times, why they’re manifesting it six times, and how the desire makes them feel nine times, all from the perspective of having already achieved their goal [2].
This perspective shift is often relied upon. Practitioners adopt the mindset of the future version of themselves that has already achieved their goals in the hope it will act as a blueprint for how to get there. Some techniques externalise this shift, insisting people dress like the version of themselves they see themselves becoming, adopting a posture that demonstrates power and confidence, and surrounding themselves with people who fit their vision.
A pre-fame Jim Carey would use visualisations early in his career and famously wrote himself a cheque for ten million dollars for “acting services rendered” with the expiry date set three years in advance [3]. Just prior to this expiry, he was paid ten million dollars for Dumb & Dumber.
The rise of manifestation
Manifestation is not a new phenomenon. As noted, Oprah was preaching its possibilities back in 1997 and Jim Carey cut his cheque in the early 1990s, but its roots stretch back further still.
Manifestation is thought to be born of the New Thought movement of the 19th century. Rather than being beholden to any particular religious tradition, it stems from an intermixing of teachings from Jesus, Greek philosophy, and pop psychology, amongst others [4].
Its move into the mainstream was helped by the likes of Oprah championing it for many years, but it was really during Covid that it became a phenomenon, in large part thanks to social media.
Google trends reveal that searches for manifestation peaked during the summer of 2020, evidencing the impact pandemic-induced lockdowns had on its uptake [5]. Lucie Greene, a writer and trend forecaster in New York, says this is not surprising. In the climate of unknowability the pandemic provided, “it’s cathartic to feel you have some control over your destiny.”
“For Gen Z in particular,” she notes, “it can be a form of self-soothing. It’s a way to make sense of things in a moment where nothing makes sense” [6].
Manifestation in action: the positives
Despite its naysayers, manifestation has actually been found to improve athletic performance in individuals even when they did not put in any physical effort [7]. Just rehearsing the movements internally was enough.
Indeed, within professional sports, manifestation is an oft-relied upon tool, with the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Stuart Broad singing its praises. Perhaps that’s not surprising – elite sport takes place at such a speed that athletes are often reliant on trigger movements and their mind’s ability to handle the pressure in the heat of the moment. Having played through the scenario before can only help.
One of the key upsides of manifestation is its resultant positive thoughts. By manifesting, and thus seeing themselves as successful, people are more likely to feel positive about themselves and their abilities, and as such generate further positive thoughts that bring further success. A cycle of mental positivity, like one of negativity, can be hard to break.
Manifestation in action: the negatives
Future self
In Harvard Business Review, Damian Walsh writes that manifestation “presents a pervasive philosophical and practical problem” [8]
By engaging in visualisations of our future self, or even adopting the perspective of this future self, we are living our life for a hypothetical person that can never truly exist. Philosophically speaking, by definition, the future self can only exist in the future – tomorrow is only a day away, and crucially always will be. As Walsh writes, “Those of us who hold a rigid and self-definitional vision of who we want to be, say 10 years down the line, may unknowingly be using the concept of our future self to understand who we are in the present, and this can be damaging.”
Defining yourself through the lens of an as-yet unachieved version can only play tricks with your sense of self in the present. Especially considering how feeble a grasp of ourselves any of us truly have – the person we want to be in our mind and the person we should be are unlikely to be one and the same. Ironically, then, in pursuing this idealised, non-existent future self, we may actually end up closing the door on real possibilities in the present.
“When you tether your sense of self to such specific goals,” Walsh writes, “you can unintentionally shut the door on a whole subset of possibilities or predispose yourself to not taking opportunities that might seem extraneous to your goals, even though, in reality, they are foundational to achieving happiness or professional prosperity.”
Moral quandaries
While presuming to have total control over our outcomes may sound like we’re demonstrating autonomy, it actually betrays narcissism, and can even have sinister undertones. To presume that all success is earned equally and that all failures were avoidable on the part of the unsuccessful lacks compassion and puts one in a precarious moral position – do the poor deserve their poverty, victims deserve their suffering, the sick deserve their sickness?
It takes a questionable moral character to answer in the affirmative to any of the above, but such thinking is the logical extension of manifest thinking – these people simply should have visualised better circumstances for themselves.
Self-absorption
This gets to the heart of many criticisms of manifestation: its self-absorption. The idea that the universe is working in tandem with your thinking to make life better just for you.
“It’s all about me,” said Dr. Denise Fournier, a psychotherapist in Miami who treats a number of 15, 16 and 17-year-olds in her practice. She adds that many of manifestation’s practitioners misunderstand the most basic community-driven, time-honoured aspects of spiritual living, instead asking “How can I use my spirituality to serve my own person?” [9]
Lydia Sohn, a writer and minister in California, writes in The Atlantic on the great difference between manifestation and prayer: “The practice of prayer presupposes that while we can express and pursue our preferences, we ultimately hand them over to someone with a perspective much broader and a love more generous than any of us can fathom” [10].
One can see the appeal for the manifester – they get to cast themselves as both the person making the prayer and the God who answers.
Manifestation in action: the balance
In truth, the greatest issue with manifestation is that people are doing it wrong. They want to use it as a catch-all approach in lieu of effort – a one-shot life hack. But drinking protein shakes isn’t going to transform your body unless you also go to the gym to work those muscles.
The American psychologist Mark Travers, Ph.D., says that these people often lack what is called “an external locus of control”, meaning the belief that their fate is decided by external factors [11].
Studies have shown that children who feel that they have the power to shape their lives (an internal locus of control) were less likely to have health complications in adulthood compared to those who felt the results would boil down to external factors (an external locus of control.) Children who felt they could shape their life simply ate better and were less likely to smoke or take drugs. While children who felt their life was the result of external factors acted accordingly, shrugging off the need to take responsibility for their choices.
A separate study showed similar results regarding the success of individuals at work.
“It seems people who have an external locus of control often fail to take the steps required to bridge the gap between where they are and where they want to be,” Travers surveys.
Manifestation is useful as a tool of inspiration – by actively making and taking the time to think about this future self every day, naturally the desire to work towards that goal seeps into the subconscious. Writing in the Irish Examiner, Bernard O’Shea observes that after practising a manifestation of flying a plane every day for a month as a thought experiment (he had no desire to be a pilot), he was dreaming about flying a Boeing 747 by his second week [12].
Translate that into something one actually wants to do – a writer who wants to write a book or a businessperson who wants to start their own business – and one can see how the practice allows their desire to feature more prominently in their mind, thus making them more likely to take active steps towards it. As Ms Sohn put it, “Manifestation is helpful to the extent that it gives voice to [our] desires. However, we mustn’t stop there.”
In sum
Essentially, then, manifestation falls short when one considers its more new age aspects and philosophical and moral shortcomings. That’s not to mention the hucksters charging large sums for their manifestation services with promises of life changing results, one of whom boasted to the New York Times, “You don’t have to have qualifications to be a manifesting expert…like singers who were born to sing, I was born to help people” [13].
But that doesn’t mean the practice should be disregarded entirely. Its great strength lies not in its ethereal, reality-bending magic promises but as a motivational tool, a way of making space for one’s goals in their mind so that they can then act towards them.
But it is the acting itself that is the important part.
As Gabriele Oettingen, a scholar and professor of psychology at New York University, writes in her book Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation, “Dreamers are not often doers…the pleasurable act of dreaming saps our energy to perform the hard work of meeting the challenges in real life” [14].
It is not the power of thought that will meet those challenges. It is the power of action.
More on Positivity
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Optimism is a Force Multiplier
Stress Management and Leadership Through Mindfulness
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The Power of the Subconscious Mind
Magic, Brain-Hacking and Performance with Keith Barry – podcast
The Science of Succeeding: Unearthing the Mental Keys to Endurance and Excellence with Karen Weekes – podcast
Adventure and testing new boundaries with Damian Browne – podcast
References
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M1seIadZes
[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/style/self-care/how-to-manifest-2021.html
[8] https://hbr.org/2021/09/stop-striving-to-be-your-future-self
[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/style/self-care/how-to-manifest-2021.html
[12] https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/people/arid-41310382.html
[13] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/style/self-care/how-to-manifest-2021.html
[14] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/20/style/self-care/how-to-manifest-2021.html
Introduction
The concept of “imposter syndrome” was first covered by two American psychologists in 1978, Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes. Writing in the journal Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, they described imposter syndrome as the feeling of “phoniness in people who believe that they are not intelligent, capable or creative despite evidence of high achievement.” They say these people “are highly motivated to achieve,” but also “live in fear of being ‘found out’ or exposed as frauds” [1].
Clance and Imes first chose to look into the concept upon noticing that the female students in their class were full of doubt regarding their abilities. After conducting interviews with 150 women, a combination of students and professionals, many of whom were objectively successful, they found that “despite their earned degrees, scholastic honours, high achievement on standardised tests, praise and professional recognition from colleagues and respected authorities, these women do not experience an internal sense of success. They consider themselves to be ‘impostors’” [2].
While initial thinking was that this was a uniquely female problem, subsequent studies have shown that “if surveys are anonymous, there are similar levels of these symptoms between men and women. The difference is that men can find it more difficult to talk about these feelings”, according to Dr Jon van Niekerk, group clinical director at Cygnet Health Care [3].
Causes and effects
There is no obvious cause for imposter’s syndrome, nothing so simple as ‘Thing A’ happened, causing ‘Thing B’. But that’s not to say people haven’t tried to track its origins.
Australian academic and expert on self-management Hugh Kearns, who has been researching the phenomenon for more than 20 years, says the feelings associated with imposter syndrome often have their origins in childhood experiences [4]. Whether it’s being told you’re perfect, being made to fear failure, or even made to fear success, these experiences can set children off on a negative path – one from which it is hard to break free.
“For imposters, making mistakes is bad, very bad. It is the time when you risk being exposed,” Kearns says. “So somewhere along the line, you picked up the belief that mistakes are not OK and, since mistakes are a part of life, you have a problem and feel like an imposter.”
Dr Elena Touroni, consultant psychologist and co-founder of The Chelsea Psychology Clinic, says that at its core imposter syndrome relies on “feelings of self-doubt sparking fears of being ‘exposed’ as a fraud, or diminishing genuine achievements and attributing them to luck rather than skill” [5].
In theory, these can sound like positive traits – acknowledging the role of fortune and circumstance in success is taken as a sign of humility, and generally considered preferable to someone claiming they did it all on their own.
Writing in the New York Times, Carl Richards says that the problems really emerge once humility – a healthy and valued trait – crosses the line into paralysing fear. He makes an incisive point, too, about why so many talented, successful people may suffer from imposter syndrome [6].
“We often hesitate to believe that what’s natural, maybe even easy for us, can offer any value to the world,” he writes. “In fact, the very act of being really good at something can lead us to discount its value.” We often champion the value of hard work, but it can go unmentioned that there are people for whom certain valued skills just come naturally. If your talent, be it for writing, singing, painting, or sales, comes easily to you, it can be hard to understand why you are being so rewarded with praise and compensation for it. You don’t have to work that hard, and thus don’t feel like you deserve the positive outpourings coming your way.
That’s not to say that one has to be a uniquely talented specialist in their field to suffer from imposter syndrome. Many people who are not generational talents – but are competent, reliable and successful – suffer in a different way. As Dr Elena Touroni notes, for these cases, people’s imposter syndrome often manifests “as overworking to prove one’s worth, delaying tasks due to fear of imperfection, or [undertaking] an unending quest for validation” [7].
Like Room 101, imposter syndrome adjusts itself to each person’s individual worst fears.
Minority impact
Although it has subsequently been shown that imposter syndrome is not a gendered phenomenon, there is something to be said for the way it impacts certain groups differently.
Some researchers, for example, argue that imposter syndrome hits minority groups harder. Lack of representation can make minorities feel like outsiders. And any feeling of “I don’t belong here” is understandably compounded if you are the only person in a group setting who looks the way you do.
Kevin Cokley, a professor of educational psychology and African diaspora studies at the University of Texas at Austin, conducted a study published in The Journal of Counseling Psychology. His research showed that impostorism can augment discrimination some minority groups may already feel, which adds to their stress. He also found that African-American college students had higher levels of anxiety and discrimination-related depression when they had significant levels of impostorism [8].
Representation is improving, but it would be naive to discount the impact a lack of it has had on feelings of imposter syndrome among minority groups for many years.
Fighting imposter syndrome
We’ve already noted some of the negative effects imposter syndrome can bring about, from overworking and perfectionism to fear of failure or even putting oneself out there, but negative self-talk can be the most restrictive of all.
Negative self-talk doesn’t just debilitate people who are successful but often prevents people from even trying to become successful in the first place. As the “Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology” puts it: “If the person lacks confidence…there will be no action” [9]. If you stop putting yourself forward for roles or tasks you’d like or think you’re well suited for due to fear you’re not good enough, then you’ll never find out.
Breaking out of negative self-talk requires self-confidence.
“Internally, true self-confidence will lead to more positivity, happiness and resilience,” says Charlie Houpert, the author of “Charisma on Command” and the founder of a 2.7-million-subscriber YouTube channel of the same name. “Externally, high self-confidence will lead to taking more risks, which directly correlates with reaping more rewards” [10].
To develop self-confidence and assuage imposter syndrome, one can try a number of techniques.
Writing down
Dr Cokley advises keeping a daily diary and recording every instance of positive feedback you receive.
“Do that over the course of a week or a month and go back and look at all those instances in which you’ve gotten good feedback, where you’ve been told you’ve done a good job and done something well,” he said.
Kearn’s advice is similar. He suggests judging yourself by objective standards by writing down what you would consider a “win” in any scenario prior to commencing your task. If you achieve that goal, be satisfied, and don’t try to move the goalposts after the fact.
Hyper honesty
Houpert suggests being “hyper honest.” That means that if someone asks what you do for hobbies or for a living, you answer honestly, rather than trying to think of the answer they would want to hear.
“When you stop hiding parts of yourself from other people, you’ll find you feel more confident in who you are,” he says.
Exercise
Exercise is a brilliant way to develop self-confidence, which in turn is a brilliant way to combat imposter syndrome. The American Psychological Association says that exercise can improve your mood and – alongside regular treatment and therapy – help combat depression and anxiety [11].
New clothes
It may sound trivial, but dressing differently works not just in adjusting how other people perceive you but how you perceive yourself. Dr. Adam D. Galinsky, a professor at Columbia Business School, found that participants in a study who wore a white lab coat exhibited more focused attention than those dressed casually [12]. Dress as the version of yourself you want to be, the one that’s earned their success and is where they belong, see if it doesn’t help.
Understand you’re not alone
Imposter syndrome affects 70% of people in the world [13]. It is entirely normal to feel like you don’t deserve your success or that you’re out of your depth. It doesn’t mean that you are.
Accept these feelings as normal and try to move past them. Letting them hold you back helps no one, yourself least of all. Research suggests that as much as 40% of our happiness is linked to our intentional daily activities and the choices we make. Only 10% is affected by external circumstances and the other 50% is thought to come from our genes [14]. Focus on the 40% you can control, grow your confidence, and make imposter syndrome feel like an imposter for a change.
Sources
[1, 2] Clance, P. R., & Imes, S. A. (1978). The imposter phenomenon in high achieving women: Dynamics and therapeutic intervention. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research & Practice, 15(3), 241–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0086006
[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/your-money/learning-to-deal-with-the-impostor-syndrome.html
[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/smarter-living/how-to-improve-self-confidence.html
[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/smarter-living/how-to-improve-self-confidence.html
[11] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/smarter-living/how-to-improve-self-confidence.html
[12] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/03/smarter-living/how-to-improve-self-confidence.html
[13] https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/healthandwellbeing/arid-41200660.html
Introduction
In the US, the number of unfilled jobs in the country reached a record high in March of 2021 [1]. Also that month, the reservation wage – the term economists use to describe the minimum compensation workers require – was up by 19% from November 2019, with a jump of nearly $10,000 a year according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York [2].
Meanwhile, research by the CIPD, published in October 2023, found that around four million people in the UK had at some point changed their careers due to a lack of flexibility at work. The strange thing? Almost two million of them had done so in the previous year [3].
Unfilled jobs, higher salaries, career shifts based on work flexibility, all of these were the result of what was termed the Great Resignation.
Where are we now?
Throughout the pandemic, employers found themselves incapable of retaining staff. And though the process has slowed – in the US, figures from July of last year show that the rate at which workers were quitting their jobs was only modestly above pre-pandemic levels [4] – workers are still quitting at a rate three times that of reductions [5]. That’s according to the man who coined the term “the Great Resignation”, Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of organisational behaviour at the University College London’s School of Management.
The pandemic is over and can no longer be used as an excuse for such profound levels of employee turnover. If businesses want to keep their staff, they need to make steps to do so. That means valuing employee well-being, engaging with processes of flexible working, and giving managers the assistance they need to be able to keep staff on side.
To do that, businesses need to drop the delusion.
Delusional employers
Nearly two-thirds of bosses believe that workers will return to the office five days a week within the next three years. On top of that, a majority of company leaders think that pay and promotions could soon come to be based on workplace attendance [6].
Those are the findings of the KPMG CEO Outlook survey of 2023. More than 1,300 chief executives of the world’s largest businesses were surveyed to reach those numbers. Of them, 64% felt a full return to in-office working would take place by 2026 and 87% felt that financial rewards and promotional opportunities could be linked to office attendance in the future.
This betrays a level of delusion that’s hard to comprehend.
Almost every survey conducted since the pandemic began has found that workers have no desire to return to their desks full-time. Some even said they would quit their job if the possibility of home working was taken away. Our sister company, Lincoln Recruitment’s 2024 Salary & Employment Insights Survey echoes this sentiment with 53% of employees stating if their current employer changed their hybrid work policy they would be more inclined to seek a new role. The vast majority of workers expect at least some level of hybrid working. The idea that they will regress to the old ways – much less do so with a financial gun to their head by way of pay-based office attendance – is for the birds.
Jon Holt, chief executive of KPMG in the UK, acknowledged as much in response to the survey’s findings, saying that any such initiatives could “create tensions between leaders and employers” [7].
“Issuing an ‘all hands on deck’ edict is a simple response to a complex issue – it won’t work for all businesses”, Holt continued. “Some sort of hybrid working is likely to remain a useful way to attract and retain the good people the CEOs know their business needs.”
It’s not even clear why business leaders are so keen to return to what came before. From a purely financial standpoint, research from Timewise suggests that the upfront costs that come from moving to flexible working are quickly recouped from reductions in sick leave and staff turnover [8].
Hybrid working will not be simply willed away. Although, the findings of a recent paper by Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts professor who has studied the pandemic economy, might provide a cynical perspective as to why chief executives such as those surveyed wish that it could be.
Dube and his two co-authors found that during the pandemic the earnings gap between workers at the top of the income scale and those at the bottom, after widening for four decades, began to narrow. In fact, in just two years, the economy undid about a quarter of the increase in inequality since 1980 [9]. The researchers put much of that progress down to workers’ increased ability – and willingness – to change jobs. One could see why those at the top want things to go back to how they were.
For his part, Dube is not expecting a regression, saying, “There are good reasons to think that at least a chunk of the changes that we’ve seen in the low-wage labour market will prove lasting.”
Retaining workers: Well-being
In a study of Glassdoor employee reviews from April to September 2021, Donald Sull, a senior lecturer at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, found that corporate environment ranked as the top factor in employee retention [10]. A toxic work culture was found to be “ten times more predictive of having a higher-than-industry-average attrition rate than compensation.”
Of course, defining toxic culture is difficult. It is more a feeling than anything tangible. Though, of course, endless negative feedback, screaming bosses and unachievable expectations all contribute.
Conversely, the simplest way of developing a strong working culture is to value employees, and ensure that they feel it. Positive feedback, flexibility, compassion, communication, mental health awareness – all things that should be the bare minimum employers offer their staff and yet are so often neglected.
Research published in 2023 based on a survey of over 1,500 businesses across Ireland found that 80% of employers are not investing in workplace mental health at all [11]. The report, Healthy Workplace Ireland: A Survey of Mental Health and Well-being Promotion in Irish Firms, also found that mental health-related absenteeism was on the rise – hardly a shock given the lack of investment firms are placing in the area.
This goes back to Mr Sull’s study. He found that companies often failed to live up to the values they preached in public statements. Those companies whose actions matched their words “are the exception, not the rule,” he said [12]. A number of companies preach the value of mental health and taking care of their employees, but troublingly few follow through on that pledge.
Retaining workers: Growth opportunities
Other factors that help employee retention according to Sull’s research are offering remote working options, consistent scheduling, and, crucially, personal growth and development opportunities.
The analysis showed that providing lateral job moves was twelve times as important as promotions when it came to encouraging retention [13].
Helen Tupper, co-founder and CEO of Amazing If and co-author of The Sunday Times number-one bestseller The Squiggly Career, found the same. “Limited awareness of roles and a perceived lack of support from managers means that for many, it has become easier to leave and grow than squiggle — that is, change roles and develop in different directions — and stay” [14].
It falls to managers, then, to offer employees growth opportunities so that they are more inclined to stay. But as Tupper points out, partially due to the scale of resignations, “Increasingly squeezed managers are spending time they don’t have searching for new recruits in an expensive and competitive market.” Finding the time to offer existing employees new opportunities is not easy, but it is worthwhile.
What managers can do
Tupper argues that managers need help with three things. First, in helping shift the focus of career conversation from promotion to progression, including allowing employees to develop in different directions. Two, in creating a culture and structure that supports career experiments. Three, in shifting the focus from retaining employees in their specific team, to retaining employees in their entire organisation.
To achieve the first, she suggests having honest career conversations with employees. These should not be rushed or mere tick-box exercises. Tupper states that the goal should be two-fold: “to give employees the permission to be curious about where their career could take them and the practical support to make progress.”
To achieve the second, she suggests that managers work together to create career experiments across an organisation. This allows employees to try out new experiences and opportunities and discover more about where their skills can be put to use.
Too often retention is focused on keeping employees in whatever box they wound up in when they first got the job because the employee has shown him or herself to be skillful in that area. In seeking to retain employees who are successful in their individual role, managers often ask them for more of the same so that they maintain that success. As Tupper writes, “The unfortunate outcome is that the people managers most want to retain feel constrained and become more likely to leave, risking the performance metrics [the manager was] so keen to protect in the first place.”
To achieve the third, Tupper suggests reframing the question “how do I keep this person on my team?” to “how do I keep this person in my organisation?”
“A manager’s role in supporting someone’s career must expand to support people to explore opportunities beyond the boundaries of their existing team,” she writes. “Metrics matter in driving behaviour changes, and managers need to be recognized and rewarded for enabling internal mobility.”
Retaining an employee does not mean making them stagnant. Employers should want their employees to grow and develop new strings to their bow. It is beneficial to the whole team and, if done right, more likely to make them want to stay. Loyalty is earned through letting someone spread their wings, not through stockholm syndrome.
Employee retention
The Great Resignation brought a fresh focus to employee retention, as workers showed a newfound autonomy and willingness to walk away from roles that didn’t meet their needs. Many employers want to put Pandora back in the box, but it’s clear that the pandemic changed work practices for good – there is no going back.
To keep staff now, employers must demonstrate that they value them and their well-being. A lot of businesses have worked out that it is beneficial to say they care about their staff’s mental health. Hopefully soon, a few more will realise that actually caring about it will be more beneficial still.
So too must employers offer growth opportunities to employees. Workers often consider such opportunities more valuable than promotions or higher salaries. People want to develop their skills, managers should foster an environment that allows them to do so, understanding that retention should be viewed through a company-wide lens, not just an individual team one.
The pandemic is over, the Great Resignation too. The fallout, however, for employers and workers alike, is still playing out.
Sources
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/upshot/jobs-rising-wages.html
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/05/upshot/jobs-rising-wages.html
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/business/economy/jobs-great-resignation.html
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/business/employee-retention-quitting-companies.html
[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/06/business/economy/jobs-great-resignation.html
[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/business/employee-retention-quitting-companies.html
[12] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/business/employee-retention-quitting-companies.html
[13] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/13/business/employee-retention-quitting-companies.html
[14] https://hbr.org/2022/07/its-time-to-reimagine-employee-retention
Introduction
In the weeks leading up to a school exam, one of my classmates asked our teacher for some potent advice on how we should go about structuring our essays in the exam. We were going to be writing about Mao Zedong’s China – the 1949 revolution, The Great Leap Forward, the 100 flowers campaign; the ideology, the hunger, the fear. How should we possibly go about collating and framing such a sizable period of history into one coherent argument?
Our teacher gave an answer none of us were expecting.
“Use the 8 Mile technique.”
Seeing our blank faces staring back at him, he stood up excitedly, his fingers harassing a keyboard that couldn’t type fast enough. He pulled up YouTube and this video.
For anyone unfamiliar with Marshall Mathers’ (AKA Eminem’s) Academy Award-winning work in 8 Mile, the film follows an Eminem stand-in, “Rabbit” as he struggles against his impoverished background in Detroit, at the time the murder capital of America, taking part in freestyle rap battle competitions in the hope they might offer a chance of escape.
At the climax of the film, in his final confrontation in one of these competitions, Rabbit pulls a risk-it-all move: he reverses the usual rap battle formula. Rather than dissing his opponent, he turns the gaze upon himself.
“I know everything he’s about to say against me,” he says over a beat, before detailing the many shortcomings in his life for which his opponent might rip into him. He lives in a trailer with his mum, is being cheated on by his girlfriend, was recently beaten up by his opponent’s gang, and on and on he goes.
At the end he faces his opponent, who understands that he’s been stripped of all he was going to say.
“Here,” Rabbit says, chucking the mic his opponent’s way, “tell these people something they don’t know about me.”
This, according to our teacher, was precisely how we should structure our A-level essays. First, lay out all possible critiques of our argument, then pull each apart one by one, before moving on to our own points. The idea is that in doing so, you show that you’ve considered this topic from every angle, weighed up oppositional ideas, revealed why they don’t stand up to scrutiny and why your ultimate conclusion is therefore fully considered and correct.
It’s a fun technique, and the exam went well enough that I haven’t sworn it off yet. But it is just one approach to forming an argument.
Whether in the written form or through oration – or these days, increasingly online – how we formulate arguments matters, how we approach arguments matters. A well-formulated and delivered argument can re-shape the direction of the world.
Though with the advent of social media and an increased sense of polarisation and venom to debates, it’s possible we’re losing our ability to argue, to consider all other viewpoints, to assess the shortcomings of our own beliefs. Arguing well takes empathy, patience and practice. We could all do with a better understanding of how to do it properly.
The origins of argument
Our modern understanding of arguments, like many things, can be traced back to the ancients. Of the Greeks, Aristotle was the formative figure. Of the Romans, Cicero.
Aristotle said that, “What is convincing is what one can be convinced by” [1]. In other words, slavishly adhering to a set formula is not the way to approach argument; a technique works if it works. One should adjust according to their audience and according to the facts and feelings of the day.
Though, delving into more technical territory, Aristotle also contended that every good argument must consist of three elements or modes of persuasion: ethos, pathos and logos.
Ethos involves one’s character – are the points being made here ethical? Can one trust the person making the augment? Pathos is emotion. Every effective communicator plays on emotion. There’s a reason charity advertisements tell you one person’s individual story rather than falling back on cold, uninterpretable facts; it allows us to connect emotionally. Logos is the argument itself, its rationality and incisiveness, the merits of the points being made.
Any one of these can make for an impactful argument, but it takes all three to truly cut through.
Cicero, in his six-part process of persuasion, made clear that he understood how crucial the relationship between the speaker, the speech and the audience were to any successful act of persuasion. The three must be aligned. One alone is not enough.
Bad arguments
Arguments today are not like those of the ancient world. For starters, they are far less likely to take place face to face. Often they are either resigned to the digital realm or are relayed through he-said, she-said jibes. Unsurprisingly our inability to argue well has led to strife.
“In a country riven by discord, the extent of disagreement among people, their political representatives and their media outlets feels simultaneously intransigent, untenable and entirely inevitable,” writes former editor of the The New York Times book review, Pamela Paul. “Not only are we bad at agreeing with one another; we’re also terrible at arguing with one another” [2].
In Letters to a Young Contrarian, Christopher Hitchens wrote that, “Time spent arguing is, oddly enough, almost never wasted” [3]. Which perhaps indicates that the only good to come of his untimely passing was that he never had to witness just how wasteful a pastime arguing has become.
Hitchens was used to debating in person, reacting in real time, batting away well thought through points made against him with well thought through points of his own. Arguments benefit from taking place in-person. One is forced to confront the other’s humanity and cannot so easily duck and dive counterpoints. As the American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “By having a real other respond to me, I am spared one thing only, the worst cumulative effect of my own echo chamber of words.”
It’s frequently suggested that we should try to channel our online discourse to be more like that of debate. Bo Seo, a two-time world debating champion and author of Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and Be Heard, is certainly of this view. Polarisation is less a result of disagreement, he suggests, than it’s a result of bad disagreement. We don’t listen to the other side and are more interested in being right than making a coherent point.
In debate, Seo always saw countering someone’s argument as “a vote of confidence not only in ourselves but in our opponents, one that contained the judgement that the other person was deserving of our candour and that they would receive it with grace.” [4]
Good arguments
Despite the many problems afforded by the modern form of arguing, it is still a useful exercise. It is important that we challenge ideas that we disagree with and that we have our own ideas challenged in turn. The best ideas will hold up to scrutiny.
Pamela Paul posits that on top of our poor handling of arguments, “part of the problem may be that we’re not arguing enough.”
In his 2022 BBC Radio 4 series The Long History of Argument, former UK cabinet minister and The Rest is Politics co-host Rory Stewart says that he, “grew up believing that the way to reach truth was through argument” [5].
Arguing, he says, teaches one to think clearly, to empathise with another’s point of view, and to formulate and sharpen your own. It also equips you with powers of persuasion so that you are better placed to convince others that your point of view is right.
How to argue well
In Shakespeare’s day, rhetoric comprised one-third of basic schooling. In the modern world, we are bereft of such an education. We learn how to argue from what we see online and on TV – and it’s not good. But there still exist common techniques that can help one fine-tune their own argumentative instincts, some of which are detailed below.
Find common foundations
Ensure you and whoever you’re arguing against are working off the same definitions when it comes to the core parts of your discussion. Arguing over the merits of Covid lockdowns will take on a very different shape if you’re debating someone who thinks that Covid didn’t exist.
Stay relevant
Oftentimes people are so desperate to put their argument across that they’re not even bothered as to its relevance. You often see this online, with two warring posters engaged in endless fits of whataboutery, furiously debating two entirely separate subjects. Context matters in arguments. You may have a great point to make. But you have to use it at the right time, in the right place.
Be clear
“You can’t be persuasive if the other person doesn’t understand you,” says former World Universities Debating champion Fanele Mashwama [6]. Minimise the amount of miscommunication taking place, but make space for it as well. There is likely to be a difference between the point you’re making and the one the other person hears. Acknowledge that, and try to clear up any obvious misunderstandings as soon as possible.
Put your point across, rather than just putting down someone else’s
“Showing how someone else is wrong isn’t the same thing as being correct yourself,” Pamela Paul writes. “In debate, tearing down the other team doesn’t necessarily prove your team is in the right, nor is it likely to persuade anyone who didn’t agree with you in the first place.”
One of Bo Seo’s old debating coaches put it even more succinctly: “No amount of no is going to get you to yes.”
Listen
It sounds obvious, but most of our arguments either begin or continue too long because one side refuses to listen to the other. Avoid strawmanning the other person (framing their argument in a way they wouldn’t agree with) – if someone says they like cats, that’s not them saying they don’t like dogs.
Steer clear of dogma
There is no point engaging in an argument in the first place if no amount of contrary, provable facts would sway your thinking on the subject.
A five minute argument or the full half hour?
Arguing is pivotal. It lets us challenge and sharpen our ideas, and exposes us to opposing views we might not have considered. Though too often in the modern world, most particularly in online spaces, much like in the famous Monty Python sketch, people who come for an argument end up in the office of abuse.
Whether we are treating our arguments like debate or structuring them like a rap battle, the important thing is that we consider all points, have an open mind, and are willing to be challenged as well as just challenge. Utilising Aristotle’s principles of ethos, pathos and logos can help us put our point across in such a way that audience and speaker alike may benefit.
The old adage is that arguments are easy to start and difficult to finish. Hopefully we can return to a place where what takes place between those starts and endings is something worthwhile.
More on Conflict
Diversity and Conflict for a Plural Workforce
Emotional Intelligence and Engaging Others
A Master Class in Negotiation with Simon Horton – Podcast
Sources
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/oct/16/talking-me-aristotle-obama-review
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/opinion/polarization-debate.html
[3] Hitchens, C. (2001). Letters to a young contrarian. Basic Books.
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/11/opinion/polarization-debate.html
[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/m00199xy
[6] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/magazine/how-to-win-an-argument.html
Introduction
You’ve cut your hair. Maybe dyed it too. You’re wearing that new shirt that makes you feel confident. You’ve started meditating, or going to the gym. You’ve just turned 30, 40, 50. Or maybe it’s just Monday.
Restarts come in all shapes and sizes, each of which have a major impact on our behaviour. Studies show that people are more likely to commit to their goals at the beginning of a new week (by 62.9%), month (by 23.6%), or year (by 145.3%), and following official holiday periods (by 55.1%), as well as following their birthdays (by 2.6%) [1].
It’s not surprising. We tend to use temporal landmarks to assess our progress – new year’s and its tumult of follow-up resolutions being the most obvious example. But we ascribe ourselves new epochs individually too, demarcating time through personal milestones. Think of your approach to tracing a memory. “I’d just finished my second year at University” or “I’d just started working at the cafe” or “my son had just turned five” is a far more common approach to take than “it was March of 2006” or “it was the autumn of 2011”.
We compartmentalise time according to personal experiences, and each new personal experience in turn opens up a new mental accounting period. Studies show that it is at the start of these newly formed mental accounting periods that we are most likely to pursue our aspirations – and most likely to have success doing so.
The fresh start effect
Writing in Management Science [2] on what they term the “fresh start effect”, Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman and Jason Riis have two core suggestions for why these personal and collective landmarks open us up to change.
First, they suggest that naturally-arising time markers such as a new year, new month, or new week, “create discontinuities in time perceptions that make people feel disconnected from their past imperfections.”
Second, they “disrupt people’s focus on day-to-day minutiae, thereby promoting a big-picture view of life…these processes triggered by fresh start moments encourage people to pursue their aspirations.”
Let’s look at those sequentially.
Breaking from the past
Dai, Milkman and Riis write that, “Individuals think of their past, current, and future selves as interconnected but separable components of their identity and often compare these selves to one another.”
Feeling disassociated from our past selves can be the result of big changes – for example, studies show that people who receive a cancer diagnosis or recover from addiction tend to create clear boundaries between the self that came before and after – or smaller ones – a change of job, haircut, breakup, new clothes.
Dai, Milkman and Riis posit that these disassociations have a use when it comes to achieving our goals. The reason being that people tend to attribute their past failures to their former selves, the ones from whom they’ve distanced themselves, rather than their current iteration. This allows them to move forward without the burden of those failures on their back.
How people see themselves is important. Self-image and self perception are not just crucial for self-esteem, but actually shape our actions too. People who perceive themselves as moral are more likely to pursue moral actions than people who consider themselves immoral or somewhere in between. We act in accordance with the labels we ascribe ourselves – chicken and egg.
If someone considers him or herself to be a failure, they will then be more likely to fail as a result. But if they are able to break with the past, start a new mental accounting period, and leave that old negative deadweight behind, all of a sudden their future is a blank slate. The fresh start is underway.
The big picture
Dai, Milkman and Riis’ argument around “the big picture” is that these fresh start moments allow us to break out of the minutiae of day to day thinking – simply ticking off today’s tasks in order to make it to tomorrow’s. By stepping back for a moment, we can take a broader view.
Big picture thinking has a positive impact on goal motivation. “When induced to take a high-level view of a situation,” the researchers write, “people are more likely to evaluate their actions based on the desirability of the end state (or goal) they hope to achieve rather than the time and effort required to achieve it.”
Does everyone benefit from a fresh start?
Following on from her research with Milkman and Riis, Dai expanded the field of her research to ask not just when do we benefit from fresh starts, but who benefits the most.
Writing in Harvard Business Review, Dai says that she “found that a fresh start on people’s performance records — what I call a “performance reset” — affected their motivation and future performance differently, depending on their past performance. Those with lower performance became more motivated and improved after their performance was reset, while stronger performers found resets demotivating” [3].
Resets are commonplace in every business. There are annual resets, quarterly resets, project-by-project resets, whatever it may be, as well as the aforementioned more personal milestones that people in the team may impose upon themselves. That’s not to mention the reset that comes with every change of job, change of role or change of personnel around you. Each one represents a shift.
To measure the effect of resets on performance, Dai conducted a research experiment using a word-search game. Participants were told they would be paid based on the total number of correct words they submitted across 10 trials of the game. Their performance was tracked and after each round they were able to see how well they had performed on a graph. After five rounds, the graph was wiped clean for half of the participants, meaning they could no longer see how they had performed on the first five games, while the other half of participants could still see everything.
Dai found that, “Participants with weak performance in the first five trials did better if they experienced a reset than if they did not, whereas those with strong early performance did worse if they experienced a reset than if they did not.”
In a separate experiment, Dai tracked the impact of resets on motivation. Participants were made to complete 24 trials of a task that involved unscrambling letters to form English words. Like in the previous experiment, they could see a graph, this time one that indicated whether or not they met “researchers’ expectations”. During the first 12 trials, half of the participants were told they met expectations in ten trials, the other half in four.
After 12 trials, Dai introduced a reset. Some participants were told they would continue with the graph while others would have it wiped. Importantly, participants were also given the opportunity to switch to a different task.
Dai found that, “When participants were led to view their early performance as weak, the reset treatment increased their self-efficacy and boosted their motivation to continue the word task; but when participants were led to view their past performance as strong, the reset treatment decreased their self-efficacy and decreased their motivation to continue.”
It’s worth bearing in mind, then, that fresh starts are not beneficial to everyone. For those whose current work is flailing, resets can be useful tools for boosting motivation and performance. For those thriving, however, the reverse is true. They can be demotivating and costly – and all it takes is a small reset such as a change in desk or project to bring such a negative impact about.
Managing fresh starts
Given the clear effect fresh starts have on our performance, it only makes sense that we use them to our advantage. For managers, a simple way to do so is to coincide any in-office/project changes with naturally arising temporal landmarks such as the start of the week or the hiring of a new employee. People are more inclined to go along with a reset at these junctures so it’s advisable to take advantage of their natural disposition.
Equally, if looking to make a broader change, something like making a shift to office seating plans or regular meeting schedules are methods of strategically engineering turning points, rather than waiting for the new week to do it for you.
If hoping to promote aspirational behaviours amongst a specific employee, a manager would be well advised to deliver that message at the start of a week or month, when they will be more receptive and more likely to make a change. Managers should also recognise that fresh starts won’t affect all employees equally. Try to limit resets only to those who will benefit. If a worker is flying, the last thing you want is to tamper with their momentum.
If trying to take advantage of fresh starts in your personal life, tracking progress is a good way to start. Especially useful can be making that progress visual, for example with a calendar that you can tick off every day once you’ve taken a step to achieving your goal. Exposing yourself to your own achievements has been shown to positively affect motivation.
If working on a long-term goal, try the 30/30 rule, in which you set aside 30 minutes every day to work on something that’s benefits won’t be felt for 30 days or more [4]. It can be all too easy to slip into the habit of just getting through the day’s tasks, the 30/30 rule can help you step back and start thinking more long-term.
Dai, Milkman and Riis note that even if one is unable to maintain the momentum from their fresh start, the good thing about temporal landmarks is that they are so regular that they offer repeated chances for people to invoke change – if you fail this Monday, you can try again the next one. They’re also particularly useful for one-off goals. Perhaps you have to sign up for something, or make a payment or a call, but have been putting it off. Taking advantage of a fresh start reset can help push you over the line.
Fresh starts
Studies show that our performance and motivation are impacted by resets, or the “fresh start effect”. It only makes sense, then, that we use those resets to our advantage. Whether it’s through a new job, new clothes, new week or new year, we can leave the past behind, put our aspirations front and centre, and ride a wave of newfound energy to achieve our goals.
More on Motivation
Organisational Psychology and Motivation
Rekindling Lost Passion: A Remedy for Low Motivation at Work
The Workplace Motivation Theory That Works
The Progress Principle: or How to Stop Worrying and Celebrate the Small Wins
References
[1] Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman, Jason Riis (2014) The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior. Management Science
[2] Hengchen Dai, Katherine L. Milkman, Jason Riis (2014) The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior. Management Science
Introduction
The impact of climate change is already being felt. Between 2000 and 2019, there were more than 7,300 natural disasters globally, twice as many as between 1980 and 1999 [1]. These natural disasters cause loss of life, destruction of homes and displacement of peoples. In combating the problem, governments are generally strong in words but weak in action.
Data published in 2022 by Climate Action Tracker, an independent research group, revealed that none of the world’s biggest emitters – China, the United States, the European Union and India – have reduced their emissions enough to meet the goals set in the landmark Paris Agreement of 2015 [2].
If the agreed upon targets are to be met, change is needed, and fast.
And while it is the role of governments to set policy, other sectors are vital in enabling change, the financial sector chief amongst them.
Speaking in 2020, Vasileios Madouros, then Director of Financial Stability (now Deputy Governor) at the Central Bank of Ireland, stated that, “A climate-resilient financial system is a necessary condition to enable the transition to a low-carbon economy…we cannot have a situation where concerns around the resilience of the financial system act as an obstacle to that transition” [3].
The financial threat
In a joint report by Mazars and the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), based on research and surveys with 33 central banks and regulatory authorities, 70% of survey respondents considered climate change a major threat to financial stability [4]. Just over half of central banks (55%) said they were monitoring climate risks, with 27% saying they were actively responding to them [5].
Meanwhile, a London School of Economics study posits that climate change could cut the value of the world’s financial assets by US$2.5 trillion [6].
Financial exposure to catastrophic climate events, potential overvaluation of companies in fossil fuel and resource-scarce industries, increased regulation to enforce Sustainable Development Goals, rising shareholder activism, and the rapid increase in consumer scrutiny on corporate behaviour are just some of the issues around which financial institutions need to be wary [7].
Sustainable finance in Ireland
As host to a large, internationally-focused financial sector, Ireland will be impactful inand impacted by any changes moving forwards. The value of Ireland’s financial system’s total assets comes to more than €5tn, while it also boasts the second largest investment fund sector in the euro area [8].
Definitions and disclosure
For the financial system to be effective in ushering in a greener tomorrow, it’s necessary to introduce an element of standardisation around definitions – what do we mean when we say “green”, “sustainable” etc? A consistent framework is required, otherwise institutions are liable to set their own definitions, potentially ones that serve their own interests. Inconsistent definitions may even lead to “green washing”, with companies misinforming investors as to the sustainable credentials of their investments.
Equally vital is disclosure. Investors need to be able to assess any climate-related aspects of their investments. In his 2020 speech, Madouros pointed out that in instances in which a “financial product is sold as promoting environmental characteristics, the financial provider will be required to disclose information on the degree of compliance with the taxonomy” [9].
Risk
Those taking part in the aforementioned OMFIF report considered climate change a threat to financial stability because it is. It is an unprecedented and unpredictable source of risk, with physical risks and transition risks widely regarded as the key areas in need of focus.
Physical risks refer to the financial impact of floods, droughts, wildfires, earthquakes, rising temperatures – any problem, essentially, that is climate-induced. Such events impact various financial sectors but most especially insurance.
Weather-related insured losses – adjusted for inflation – have increased by several multiples since the 1980s [10]. As these events become more commonplace, insurance premiums shift. Some such events may become so commonplace that insurers grow reluctant to insure them at all, with obvious implications for those who would be cut adrift by such a move.
According to AON’s 2020 Weather, Climate & Catastrophe Insight report, the last decade was the costliest in terms of natural disasters, with the total economic damage and losses amounting to 2.98 trillion US dollars. Insurance pay-outs peaked, as 845 billion US dollars were paid out by private and public insurers [11].
We are not talking about chump change. And Ireland is not immune from the fallout.
“The Irish financial system is exposed to these physical risks,” said Madouros. “Our insurance sector is very international, with exposure to catastrophic weather events across the globe, from South East Asia to the South East of the United States. Irish banks are heavily exposed to property, with around two thirds of their loan exposures secured on property. So it is important that these risks are assessed, managed and priced appropriately, in a forward-looking way and taking into account the latest insights from climate science” [12].
Transition risks refer to any economic fallout brought about by the process of shifting to a low-carbon economy. For example, the asset price of energy firms with investments in oil and gas fields, who are at the mercy of any government-mandated acceleration or deceleration of sustainable initiatives. Outside the energy sector, the transition from petrol and diesel cars to electric will continue to have a notable effect. Look no further than Germany’s current economic predicament to understand the perils of being caught flat-footed when it comes to acting on sustainable trends in the automotive sector [13].
A further risk is that the rate and scale of any green transitions are at the mercy of geopolitical shifts that cannot be controlled and are likely to lack consistency. It’s possible that as the economic realities of transforming the global economy take hold, inequality will rise. This could see populist movements take power on the back of an anti-green ticket. The implications of this could be seismic, especially if it were to take place in a nation that holds sway over the global economy.
Climate litigation
In his keynote speech at the ECB Legal Conference of 2023, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB Frank Elderson warned banks that they needed to prepare themselves to face climate and environment-related litigation. To mitigate this risk, he suggested they put in place “realistic, transparent and credible transition plans that banks can and actually do implement in a timely manner.” Should they fail too, he said, they could find themselves the target of unwanted litigation [14].
While such litigation has generally so far only been targeted at States and corporations within the energy field, Elderson proffered that financial companies are next. He suggests that the litigants hope that by targeting banks and other financial companies, they can “turn off the taps” of funding to high emitters. Globally, some 560 cases of this type have been filed since 2021, often brought or supported by NGOs who possess resources and clout, and cannot be dismissed as armchair activists or trivial ideologues.
Economic benefits
That said, the motivation to embrace sustainable initiatives shouldn’t simply be to avoid getting in trouble. Outside of the obvious ecological benefits, embracing green initiatives offers opportunities for long-term value creation.
“The move towards more sustainable business models translates to concrete opportunities for companies to become more innovative and reduce the now high costs of production and waste management,” writes Joukje Janssen of PwC, citing the the money companies have saved by shifting from linear to circular models in plastic use as proof that green initiatives offer credible fiscal rewards, as well as ecological ones [15].
The role of financial services in combating the climate crisis
While it is down to governments to put in place any green policy shifts, the financial sector is pivotal in making any transition possible. The financial implications of climate change are enormous; to avoid disaster, clear definitions and disclosures as to sustainable compliance are required to ensure all parties are singing from the same hymn sheet.
Physical and transition risks pose a number of threats to the financial sector and the global economy more broadly, as does the social upheaval that could follow a potential rise in inequality brought about by such a seismic economic pivot. Banks should ensure their houses are in order so as to be prepared for any incoming climate litigation, though should ideally be motivated more by the prospect of a greener tomorrow than by covering their own backs.
To truly address the climate crisis and fulfil the pledges of Paris, action is needed quickly. Financial services cannot dictate the direction of travel themselves, but they can provide the clearest path.
More on Climate Change
Natural Sciences: The World Through Objective Lenses
References
[4] https://www.mazars.ie/Home/Insights/Global-insights/Tackling-climate-change-Mazars-OMFIF-Report
[5] https://www.mazars.ie/Home/Insights/Global-insights/Tackling-climate-change-Mazars-OMFIF-Report
[6] https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2972
[7] https://eyfinancialservicesthoughtgallery.ie/un-sustainable-development-goals/
[13] https://fortune.com/2023/09/06/germany-auto-industry-missed-ev-shift-blame-tesla-byd/
[14] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2023/html/ecb.sp230904_1~9d14ab8648.en.html
Introduction
Wanting validation is normal. It’s part of our genetic and societal make-up. Children seek praise from parents and teachers. Teens seek approval from peers. Even such basic day-to-day utterances like “thank you” are tiny validations – you’ve done something for me, now here I am acknowledging it.
Adults seek validation in the workplace.
There are scales of validation. From the polite “thank you”, to a senior figure or colleague offering praise for work you’ve done, to a higher salary or promotion, everything is a way of saying “we recognise what you’re doing and approve of it”.
But overreliance on validation is detrimental. Especially if that validation is external.
The many faces of validation
The need for validation comes in all shapes and sizes. It affects successful people and unsuccessful people alike. One problem is that people tie their self-worth to validation – if they are being praised, they are worthy, if they are not, they are worthless. The negative effects of such an outlook are obvious. A criticism of your report becomes a criticism of you. Work becomes personal. That makes it difficult for you and those around you, who are soon forced to tread on eggshells rather than being able to offer honest, constructive feedback.
An overreliance on validation also impairs decision making. When push comes to shove, are you going to make the call that feels right to you or the one that you think will earn you the most external respect? One can get tied up in knots trying to act in accordance with their perceptions of what will earn them praise.
For a leader, too, reliance on validation is a slippery slope. Employees want decisive leadership. Leaders should of course listen to and empathise with their workers, but if they are allowing their judgement to be clouded by a desire for approval from their staff then the business will suffer, and the staff they were so keen to please in the first place along with it.
Failures
The most painful thing that can happen to someone who relies on validation is failure. Failure is painful to anyone, of course, but many people are at least partially able to view failures with an air of objectivity that helps dilute the blow.
If you don’t get a job, it hurts, especially at first, but after a few hours, days or weeks, most people are able to step back and see that it’s not the end of the world. There will be other jobs. Things (sometimes) happen for a reason. You could have been up against better suited candidates or just a wrong fit for the role, in which case you likely dodged a bullet.
For some people though, such outlooks don’t appear. They didn’t not get a job. They were rejected, everything about them – and it was all about them. This personalisation of the professional realm helps nobody.
“Separating your career from who you are as a person and your mental and emotional well-being is essential,” writes personal branding expert and digital strategist Goldie Chan in Forbes [1].
“Seeking external validation sets you up for failure because having a permanent career is not guaranteed. You can go to bed and wake up unemployed in the morning. Then what? Are you going to crumble because you no longer have a job? Losing your ability to sustain yourself financially is difficult, but losing your identity is even harder.”
Successes
The reason many people fall into the trap of taking failures personally is they take successes personally too. They achieve something they wanted and are rewarded with accolades or praise that reinforce their understanding of themselves. The accolades align with their internal narratives: I’m smart, I work hard, I gave this piece of work my all, as such it’s only natural I receive praise for it.
Except sometimes you don’t get praise. Sometimes the work is not what the client or your boss wanted, no matter how much effort you put in. Do such instances change whether or not you’re smart? Whether or not you work hard? Whether or not you gave that piece of work your all? Of course not. But those who base their sense of self-worth only on the validation of others will think it does, then duly spiral.
It doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t allow oneself to celebrate successes – they are not guaranteed in life and should be duly welcomed and enjoyed on the occasions they arrive. But celebrating a success and defining yourself by it are two different things. A man can be happy he got a good haircut, but if he makes his hair his defining characteristic then all it takes is nature’s vengeance in the form of male pattern baldness for him to come undone. Enjoy the haircut while you have it. But accept one day that it will go, and that that’s fine too.
Validation as a disruptive force
Many of us recognise that we have some kind of relationship with validation but probably don’t think of the effect that relationship has on others. It can be easy to read about the perils involved in validating oneself based on praise and achievement and think, “So what? We all have shortcomings and this is mine. If this is how I get my work done or handle my life and it works for me in its own flawed way then what’s the problem?”
The problem is that one person’s need for validation can have a significant effect on those around them, at both ends of the scale.
For a worker, the need for validation can impact their colleagues and managers. Put yourself in the manager’s shoes. Do you not think it would be difficult to deal with an employee who needs constant reassurance, who requires that every piece of work they do or every idea they propose is praised and validated or else they’ll take it as an affront or as a personal critique?
Managers should be empathetic to their employees and adjust how they treat each one according to that employee’s specific traits. They should not dismiss an employee who feels criticised. But if this behaviour is regular or extreme, to the point where a manager feels they can’t be honest with their employee for fear it will trigger a negative reaction, then that affects the work.
In such scenarios, the manager should take the time to talk to the employee privately to ensure all is okay and come to a solution that works for all. But if you are the type of worker who takes any feedback poorly or personally, it is worth assessing how this affects those around you and whether your reaction is fair – you received criticism that was indeed overly harsh or skewed to the personal – or whether you are receiving it in ways it wasn’t intended.
For managers afflicted with the need for validation, it is their underlings who suffer. Oftentimes such managers are unable to provide clear direction or feedback for fear of upsetting an employee or coming across as harsh. Maybe they just want to be popular – the David Brent/Michael Scott approach to management, which I think we can all agree is not the ideal.
Being a boss means taking decisions whether they’re popular or not. As much as a boss may have kind intentions in not telling their staff what they really think of their work, actually this approach hurts not just the company but the employee too. Employees want to progress, they want to improve – feedback is critical to that. And most employees will appreciate firm but fair feedback that offers clear direction for future drafts far more than being told they’re doing well when in truth their work is inadequate. Communication and honesty are vital for any team to thrive.
Solutions
Some techniques that can help unlatch one from an overdependence on validation, according to Melody Wilding, author of Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work, are to focus on effort rather than outcome, to take regular gut checks, to try the “so what” test and to give your thoughts 24 hours to stew [2].
The shift from focusing on effort rather than outcome means that you can still measure progress but do so along fairer metrics that aren’t at the mercy of someone else’s bad day. Goldie Chan notes that, “when you focus on effort, you move from external validation to internal growth” [3] You cease to see setbacks as failures, rather as stepping stones. Focus on what you can control. At the end of the day, it’s all you have.
Taking regular gut checks doesn’t mean dropping in at your local clinic. It’s about assessing that deep-seated barometer that exists in all of us. As Wilding writes, “A gut check serves as a pause – a pattern interrupter to analyse whether your automatic responses are truly reflective of what’s best for the team and organisation, rather than on a desire to be liked. This introspection also helps differentiate between internal drivers (like personal values, ethics, or genuine interest) and external drivers (like the desire for praise, fear of negative judgment, or the need to fit in)” [4].
The “so what” test is especially useful for leaders. If you find yourself hesitating on a decision based on your preoccupations as to the thoughts of others, ask yourself: So what if this decision isn’t universally popular? So what if it doesn’t meet every expectation? So what if I have to change course later?
This exercise lets you step back and form a more objective view of the situation in front of you.
Taking 24 hours (in the circumstances where you have that luxury) gives your mind time to settle and move away from the in-the-moment trappings of “What will people think of this?” and “Is this criticism personal?” Time offers perspective. Take it when you can.
Outgrowing validation
Craving validation is normal. Most of us nurse insecurities of some degree or other and external praise and accolades can be a way to silence negative internal chatter. But to become overly reliant on the thoughts of others is a dangerous game that can adversely impact self-worth and performance, for bosses and employees, successful and unsuccessful, alike.
Placing value in your efforts rather than achievements, asking “so what”, and taking time to check your gut feeling or re-assess impulsive first thoughts can mitigate dependence on validation. You are not your job. You are not your salary. You are not your successes or your failures. The sooner you see that, the freer you will be to bring the best of yourself to everything you do.
More on Failure
Bouncing Back from Professional Failure
More on Feedback and Criticism
Performing Under Pressure with Hendrie Weisenger– Podcast
Leadership in Focus: Foundations and the Path Forward
References
[2] https://hbr.org/2023/12/overcoming-your-need-for-constant-validation-at-work
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/goldiechan/2023/12/12/how-to-take-career-failures-professionally-and-not-personally/?sh=671cde0c4f9b [4] https://hbr.org/2023/12/overcoming-your-need-for-constant-validation-at-work