Through twitter i stumbled on the Harvard Business Review. Not sure why it hasn’t been on my reading list in the past, but it is now.
Today i read an article about “confirmation bias” which is the human predisposition to look for ways it is right. In other words, I am always looking for the evidence that i’m right and i don’t seem to see the evidence when i’m wrong.
The article was talking about how expectations affect behaviour and outlook.
It got me thinking about all of the teams that need to be built and invested in around the church that I work at.
I’ve only been here for 3 or 4 months but i’m already subconsciously putting people into categories with regards to what I can expect from them.
I should also tell you that already, there have been a number of occasions when someone has approached me and demonstrated capacities and aspirations that far exceeded what I had expected or more truthfully predicted.
I’m not embarrassed to say that I make predictions about people. We all do. All of our experience in leadership and teams, added to our history, however brief, with people shapes our predictions as to how people will perform in a given area.
But all of our experience in leadership and history with people can also negatively skew our expectations as well.
I’m going to work more on inspiring aspiration and developing people instead of simply predicting outcomes.
Predictions will no doubt take us down a shorter road, and we can expect to see all sorts of signage confirming our choice of paths but I can’t help but wonder where that other road might lead.
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