Alan Froggatt of Genratec, Spoke today to a group of SME owners and key staff. Alan spoke about how the individual pre-disposition of business owners, leaders and staff how that impacted on all levels of business including leadership and accessing opportunity and what they could do to change it.
Alan outlined how each individual has a subjective assessment of themselves, others and the circumstances. This assessment is incomplete and leads to blind spots. One of the remedies is a special kind of attention on the interior.
Each individual has an ongoing conversation in their mind at a subvocal level (the things they think but don't say out loud). Paying attention to this subjective conversation and asking questions about its propositions allows us to understand it and reasses our approach, and susequently recover what is obscured by these biases.
In the course of business this can lead to a substantial 'rethinking' of oneself, others and the opportunities at hand. Many conflicts and obstacles (or their approach to them) are a function of what Alan calls "faulty assessments". These faulty assessments lead to an approach or plan bound to fail as they are based on this incorrect information. As a leader getting clear of ones biases means you ability to assess (and therefore handle) a situation accurately.