Image source: hobvias sudoneighm, Creative Commons
Someone the other day said the best advice he ever received was from his uncle who said, “Don’t listen to anyone!” Everyone chuckled and nodded in seeming agreement.
But if we don’t listen to anyone, then the only person we have left to listen to is ourselves…and we can’t be trusted!
Some revealing current brain research is helping us understand that our memories are
- Not only wrong (often) but
- They’re very powerful at convincing us that we think we’re more right than not.
One great survey has a college professor requiring his students to write down precisely everything they remember about the space shuttle explosion that had occurred the day before. Details such as
- Where they were
- Who they were with
- What they felt
- How people were reacting
- Plus many other aspects and details of the previous twenty-four hours.
Ten years later, that professor tracked down many of those students and asked them to recall their memory of that day. Almost all of the memories were different from what the students had themselves written down.
But what was more amazing was that when the professor produced their written reports that disagreed with their memory, the students chose to reject the written reports and stick with their memory of “the truth.” And the farther the memory was from the written report, the stronger the rejection.
This is just one more reason why building a trusting team is so important. We can’t trust our own memory. All we can do is share our memory with the team and learn from their memories as well.
Build a trusting team. It’s our only hope to save us from ourselves.