How Descartes can help you

leadership Jan 21, 2021

The other day I read an interesting essay in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung about the philosopher René Descartes and the failing ex-president Donald Trump. The essence is that, according to Descartes, we can all form infinite opinions about anything and sometimes take these opinions for the truth, i.e. for facts. 

For some people - like Donald Trump - this correspondence between opinion and facts is 100 percent: from his point of view, there can be no truth other than his own opinion. And since, according to Descartes, the capacity to form opinions is unlimited, we can also create "truths" at will (such as having won the election). I think this explains very elegantly many of his behaviors that are strange to others.

However, this is not about the ex-president, but about parallels to our leadership. For each of us, too, the line between belief and truth blurs at times. Recognizing this can help you deal elegantly with some typical leadership challenges.

Here are three examples of our fuzzy thinking in leadership and how we should deal with it:
  1. Limited potential. Too often, we believe that our potential success is severely limited. Mentally, we move in a bubble of past experience or observation of the difficult market environment. However, history shows again and again that these are not truths, but opinions. In my strategy projects, we work on breaking down these thought barriers.
  2. Fixed identity. "We are not who we are, but who we define ourselves to be" is a frequent statement of mine. Often, we have formed very fixed opinions about ourselves and others that we believe to be truths. In reality, however, we can adjust our identity at any time. As a first step, however, we need to let go of the belief that "this is who we are."
  3. Lack of courage. We love to categorize failures as confirmation of our entrenched beliefs. In fact, they are more likely to prove that our assessment was not quite right at that point and that we should adjust it before the next attempt. We always do this instinctively when something is really important to us. Otherwise, we often lose heart because we believe that failure is a reason not to try anymore.

You can work on all of these issues deliberately with your team. ➔ Get in touch if you have any questions.

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