Leader’s Identity Mind Trap: Personal growth for the C-suite
LEADER’S IDENTITY MIND TRAP: PERSONAL GROWTH FOR THE C-SUITE
By Jennifer Garvey Berger and Zafer Gedeon Achi
Millions of years of evolution have shaped our brains, with nature selecting for many adaptive and energy-saving, if imperfect, shortcuts. Some are easy to spot—for example, how we systematically fall for optical illusions and how our loss-aversion reflex biases our choices. Other ancient shortcuts trip us up in subtler, more personal ways.
A CEO named Hans experienced this firsthand as he debriefed his executive team on what he’d learned at his leadership retreat. Hans gestured to a printout—a feedback report drawn from a combination of psychometric tests and 360-degree feedback. He told the team that the report found him intelligent, passionate, and purpose led. However, he added, he was also seen as too controlling, prone to quick judgments, and mostly certain of the rightness of his own opinions.
Hans jammed the papers back into his folder. “So you can see,” he noted with a somewhat rueful smile, “these assessments have shown me the ways I am difficult to work with. I have become aware of the reasons behind some of these challenges, and I want you to know that I am grateful to you for putting up with them.” He paused momentarily before adding, “I am delighted to say that with this new information, it will be easier for all of us as you are able to stretch your styles to work within my complications for the good of the work we all care so deeply about.” Hans smiled graciously at the team and moved to the next agenda item.
If Hans’s reaction strikes you as defensive, or perhaps just unthinking, then you’d be partly right. As we will see, it was a deeply human reaction. From our work with Hans, we know him to be a respected, intelligent, and generally well-liked CEO. In that moment, however, he was unconsciously protecting his ego and identity, as all of us do when we feel them come under threat. Hans held a view of himself as a tough, confident, and decisive—if rough-around-the-edges—leader. He knew what it took to get things done. He also didn’t believe that changing himself was possible. Instead of wasting time trying, he wanted to get back to business.
As Hans would come to learn, however, this fixed projection of his identity and his visceral defense of it were unconscious shortcuts that can point leaders in exactly the wrong direction when we face ambiguity. We call it the “identity mindtrap” and have seen it trip up executives all by itself or in combination with other shortcuts. In this article, we describe how the identity mindtrap can blind us to valuable personal-growth opportunities and how a more expansive view, grounded in the principles of adult development, can help us recognize our potential and improve the odds of seizing it. The results not only are personally beneficial—helping us lead with more ease and empathy and improving our ability to deal with complexity—but can also help our teams and organizations thrive in an uncertain, rapidly changing world.
Caught in the identity mindtrap
Research shows that most of us tend to believe that we have changed a lot up to now but won’t change much in the years ahead. Yet we tend to express this belief at any point in our lives when we’re asked about it.1 Like Hans, we assume that our identity is settled and that the real challenge is how to stay relevant in a fast-moving world. We may look outward for new information that helps increase our expertise, but we tend to avoid looking inward at how we make sense of what we know. We draw a line between the growing, evolving person we were and the evolved person we are now.
Unfortunately, we’re mistaken. Because we don’t think of ourselves as changing in the future, we focus our energy on projecting—and protecting—the person we have become, not on growing into the person we might become next. We are caught in the identity mindtrap.
Much of this happens instinctively, hidden from our awareness, and it happens constantly. Like Hans, we might think we’re “doing what it takes” or we’re “standing up for ourselves” or any other self-justification technique we might choose to explain our behavior as we subconsciously seek to manage the impressions that others have of us. So powerful is this impulse that it often acts as a master switch, activating other mindtraps to serve it: for instance, instinctively arguing that we are right, holding onto simple stories where we feature as heroes and others as villains, tribal—or polarizing—behavior, and inflating our sense of personal agency while deflecting responsibility (for more, see sidebar, “Mindtraps: A fearsome foursome”).2
The identity mindtrap highlights a uniquely human conundrum: we are trapped by our own egos. We constantly seek to manage the impression others have of us—this person that we see ourselves to be—while subconsciously defending that person from harm. In service of the struggle, our brains reach out subconsciously for justification and help, often in the form of four additional mindtraps.
Simple stories. Our desire for simple stories blinds us to real ones. Human beings are wired for narrative. We love to tell and hear stories—around the campfire or the coffee machine. Simple and easy-to-understand stories are powerful, helping societies, religions, and cultures to form. This is great, except when things get complex enough to stop fitting into our default templates. A simple story makes us feel we know who the heroes and villains are, as well as what will happen next. But we don’t really know these things, and our desire for simple stories often leads to unhappy endings in an ambiguous and uncertain world.
Rightness. Neuroscientists have shown that the feeling of certainty is actually an emotion, such as love or anger. And like those other emotional states, certainty attaches to a belief in the absence of formal reasoning. When we believe we are right, we stop listening well to others and ignore data that prove us wrong. This is not deliberate obstinacy; it is the way our brains work. Just because something feels right doesn’t mean it is.
Agreement. We crave agreement and hate conflict, having evolved to orient ourselves to the opinions and desires of others as a means of survival. And when we disagree with one another, we experience a social distress that is neurologically indistinguishable from physical pain. This leads teams to fall into agreement too easily and to forego valuable options when dealing with complex challenges. In other words, seeking to get along literally robs us of good ideas.
Of course, this mindtrap also has its flip side: when we decide that we are not in the same tribe as another person, we are likely to polarize and amplify our differences—an equally unhelpful response.
Control. Our desire for control is deeply connected to our sense of happiness. A sense of control even makes us live longer, healthier lives. Yet we crave the sort of direct control over outcomes that is not possible in an unpredictable world. Our compulsion to have control leads us down the path to simplistic and ineffective solutions, often based on unilateral power.
While we can never fully escape our mindtraps, spotting them sooner in ourselves—in part by asking questions about our own reactions—can help us better recognize the ancient instincts that serve us so poorly in a complex and unpredictable world.
The identity mindtrap highlights a uniquely human conundrum: we are trapped by our own egos. We constantly seek to manage the impression others have of us—this person that we see ourselves to be—while subconsciously defending that person from harm. In service of the struggle, our brains reach out subconsciously for justification and help, often in the form of four additional mindtraps.
Forms of mind
Happily, theories of adult development offer us a map of the terrain where our growth potential plays out. These theories tell us that our time on the planet doesn’t just change us physically; it also changes our emotional and mental shape—in other words, our “forms of mind.” Just as a baby becomes more able to handle life’s challenges when she learns to walk and talk, and a young child becomes more able to handle the difficulties of his life when he learns to read, our evolving forms of mind shape our ability to handle life’s complexities.
Unlike our earliest changes, however, development in our adult lives doesn’t tend to show up physically or even in terms of what we know. Instead, we can see it most easily in how people make sense of what they know. Academic research highlights four such stages—or forms of mind—of potential development.3 We move from one to another sequentially, growing new forms of mind much as a tree grows new rings. And like tree rings, our older ways of making sense of the world do not vanish but remain within us, where they may, occasionally and unbidden, shape our behavior.
Development in our adult lives doesn’t tend to show up physically or even in terms of what we know. Instead, we can see it most easily in how people make sense of what they know.
Nonetheless, it turns out that ongoing development is not inevitable: we may grow to a certain point and then stop. Going further means building capacity, and that requires time, self-awareness, and the willingness to discover and examine the hidden beliefs that govern our identity. It also requires humility. While it might be tempting to judge others (or ourselves) on the development level we’ve accomplished (or haven’t), it’s far better to view the four forms of mind as an invitation to growth—not an indictment. From that vantage point, we can better see where we start our development journey and, importantly, how we might continue it.
The self-sovereign mind
Holding the deeply critical 360-degree feedback form in her hands, Brenda looked angrily at her executive coach. “I knew that the people who reported to me are morons,” she began, her voice rising, “but what I didn’t know until today was how useless coaching was. You said you’d turn this around, but this review is even worse than the last one!”
Brenda’s response might remind you of your teenager on a bad day. Indeed, the self-sovereign mind is seen in adolescents, as well as in some adults; this is when our developmental drive stops propelling us automatically and we start moving (or not moving) at our own pace. That can make adult development confusing for us because while we have mostly reached our adult physical form by our late teens, we have the rest of our lives to develop our forms of mind.
