SHORTS | The Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Spots of Leadership with Nuala Walsh

I don't know if you remember the. I think it was called in the Red Skies of Montana. There was, there was a chap called Wagner Dodge and anyway, and they made a film of it where he was a fireman and the farm and there were 15 fire, they're called Stormtroopers. Stormtroopers, right. And anyway, the fire was coming his way fast and he didn't have time and he set, he set fire to the ground around him so that it burned so that the main fire would, would go over him and form, form a shelter. To some extent anyway, the longer of it is that was a high pressure decision that required, you know, instant thinking off the cuff and out of the box thinking. So in those situations he didn't have much time, but he had some time and it wasn't long. You might have been on it a couple of minutes in that scenario. So he didn't have too much time. But it is possible to do it and the science says that if you'd use those three seconds that it does make a difference. And there are other studies in hospitals that show the same, that the surgeons who don't just rush to their instinct based on however many years experience they have, that if they pause and then double check that the accuracy level, it actually goes up by 30% when they. Rather than just rushing to judgment. But it is much harder now. But being harsh doesn't mean it's impossible. It is, it is a conscious step and the consequences of not doing it are far more severe than the consequences of just slowing down a little. But that's not to say it's easy, it's possible. But I think, as you say, it starts with a conscious decision that actually you want to be more responsible. And if you do hold a position of power, it's unbelievably important because the consequences, not just you and your reputation, it's the impact on other people. And we don't always think of that. When we're in a hurry, we typically think of ourselves. But you know, if you look around you, it can be your family, your clients, you know, your customers, your employees. All the decisions we make have consequences and we're too busy to think about it. And evidence the whole premise of the book, which is human error is rising and it is. And people are feeling more and more unheard because we're so busy, we don't get the chance to firstly tune in and then reinterpret what people are saying. So it is, it is a bit of a crisis. Not wishing to be negative, but it kind of is.

Yeah. No, I get that. I. I see that. I. I sense that. I think you're. I think you're absolutely right. I do think there, in many respects is a sort of attention crisis, a crisis about. Around our ability to make good decisions and actually tune in to what matters. Right. I agree. Yeah. In the book, Nuala, you mention two things that really piqued my interest, and it's. The first one is a. I guess a twist on a common use phrase. Right. We all talk about blind spots, certainly in terms of leadership development. For years, people have been talking about what are your blind spots? But you flipped that round. Right. And talking about deaf spots. What do you mean by deaf spots, please?

You're absolutely right. I think most of us, you know, get the idea of blind spots, the inability or unwillingness, if you like, to, you know, to perceive a problem or a fact or whatever. But deaf spots are less known but equally powerful. And I deliberately use deaf spots. Obviously, it tied in with being tuned out, but it has its roots in. In that we hear what we want, we mishear, and we don't hear what really matters. And it's. It's rooted in science very clearly. There is a concept of deaf ear syndrome which is exactly that. And there are quite a spate of biases that support it, whether it's. I'll give. The most obvious one is the ostrich effect, you know, where we literally put our heads in the house, the sand, and don't listen to people, whether it's about medical advice or, you know, parental advice or feedback or whatever. And then I suppose you could use the romantic example where we hear what we want when we're told. And how many of us have fallen for those sweet lines over time? But then in business, there is a. There's another one that touches on that naivety that maybe I pointed to earlier, which is a default to truth. We automatically believe what we're told. We don't think bad things happen. And that mixes with something that's called the just world hypothesis, which is we believe that good people get rewarded. You work hard, you'll get your. Your pay rise or your bonus or a promotion. And, you know, bad people, the. The underperformers in a work context or people on the battlefield, in your case, you know, get punished. So there is that view, and it is an incorrect view because it. That's exactly what it says. We believe in a just world, and that can lead us astray as well. Because you. I guess it means you're not. You're not really looking for hidden agendas and motivated reasoning and others. So that's another. And it is a death. It's still, it is what you're listening. You're not reinterpreting what someone's telling you. You're just taking it at face value and, and moving on. And there are many examples of people who have done that and got it wrong. So that's why I wanted to focus on deaf spots, but I didn't want to ignore dumb spots. And because they are blind, deaf and dumb spots. And dumb spots are very current because they relate to the inability or unwillingness to speak up. So you might self silence, you might hear about a wrongdoing and decide that you're a bystander in that scenario. And many people do. But when you choose to self silence, other people can't hear your voices. So by definition it's a dumb spot because no one can hear whatever opinion you have. And of course there's a degree of severity there as well. So all three actually have been formed what I've called the trilogy of error, which is blind, deaf and dumb spots. And it's about thinking in 3D. So again, it's just a quick way because people, people might find, you know, bias, biases or blind spots or death spots too hard to grasp. I think anyone can get a trilogy of error. Just try and think of all of those and see are you at risk against them?

Yeah. And linked to that. What I wanted to ask you about, you also in the book, when you're talking about deaf spots, mentioning this concept of unintentional deafness. But I wanted to ask you, what's your take on sort of intentional deafness? And what I mean by that is it's started to become really clear to me, like I was gonna say over the past few years, but it's much longer than that really. Having sat in kind of countless meetings when I worked in the corporate sector and now sort of doing my work in terms of leadership and team development, I might kind of sit in and observe lots of meetings with clients or whatever. And I don't know whether this is intentional or unintentional sort of deafness, but I notice more and more that people choose to hear comments, data points, whatever you want to call it that supports their position or their argument, and they choose to sort of block out all the stuff that doesn't. So like, is that intentional? Is that unintentional? Is that deliberate sort of selective listening? What's, what's your take on that? And are There any tips for overcoming it?

You've actually made two really good points there. Your point about that people choose to block out certain information in meetings to support their arguments is actually confirmation bias. And that is, and that is a, you know, that's a blind spot or a death spot because they only hear what they want. A lot of people do that unconsciously. If I said to you now, Ben, do you know that you're suffering from confirmation bias? You just go, huh? But if I, but if I, if I asked you what your favorite sports team was and then gave you all these reasons as to why, you know, they were, they were, they were great. You would only pick out the reasons that you agreed with. If I gave you a counter argument about why they were awful, of course, you wouldn't hear a word of it. So that's confirmation bias. You only pick up what you want to hear. But your question about intentional deafness plays directly to a full chapter in the book, which is called, which is what I consider the, you know, the ethical misjudgment traps. Because if you are intentionally doing that, and in a business situation, or indeed any situation, if you're a judge or whoever, you are actually sort of entering into that slippery slope. So, for example, intentional deafness is when, let's just say the rogue traders, so the raid rogue, rogue traders, Nick Len or Jerome Kervile from, from, you know, Soc Gen, they, they intentionally, they were very consciously not listening to, you know, the instructions from compliance or the advice from their, from, from their managers or whatever Ponzi schemes. So if you look at Bernie Madoff, his wasn't unintentional. He didn't accidentally create a Ponzi scheme for 65 billion pounds. He started really small and he fell down the slippery slope. So the ethical, I think, I think exactly what you're saying, when it becomes intentional versus unintentional, you're sort of bordering into the voice of conscience or the voice of wrongdoing in this case, for the ethical traps. And maybe just to give one example, in the book I mentioned Barclays CEO Jess Staley. He caught my attention when I was doing some whistleblowing research at the London School of Economics. And in maybe it was, I think it was 2018 or so, the regulators fined him nearly a million. A million pounds. I think it was for a conflict of interest because he basically hunted down a whistleblower who had complained about a friend on the board. Now, was that intentional or unintentional? It had to be intentional. He didn't accidentally say Go find the whistleblower. So that was intentional. So what I would say would be unintentional was, was a s. Was. Was. It was the consequence. I'm thinking he probably didn't think about the consequences. So he by definition fell into other traps there after when he did it, not thinking about the consequences, he. Maybe it's because of ego, maybe it was his risk calculation. He downgraded in his head the risk of getting caught. He was the CEO and you know, no one's going to, no one's going to bring me, hold me to account. But then actually, ironically, I don't know if you remember this, but three years later he had, he resigned when regulators found him guilty of, you know, his relationship with Epstein. I think he mischaracterized the relationship rather. And you know, this was after a 30 year career in JP Morgan when he ran a huge business. But compliance had placed red flags against Epstein following, you know, his own, the charges. But the problem there is that Staley vouched for Epstein. So what did he hear? Did Staley, because they were friends or professional colleagues or whatever, or they had some, they had a professional relationship. He vouched for him despite compliance, saying here there are red flags against this guy despite him knowing the consequences of that in a, in a wealth management environment. So to my mind, I don't think, I don't think he did know about what was going on, you know, and that's what he says. I mean, I don't know, but that's my, that's my assumption. But. So that's a combination, I think of intentional deafness, if you like, and unintentional sort of wrapped up it in the one situation. So it can be both. So you can start with unconscious and then you lead on to some conscious decision making. So you'll find, you'll find throughout this book that it's not simple and human behavior isn't. But human behavior typically wants to break everything down into a very simple nugget or give me the simple answer to, you know, hundreds of years of research. It sometimes just isn't that easy.