Modern Business Magazine October 2016 | Page 50

MODERN LEADERSHIP Why Your Expertise Is Damaging Your Leadership By Michael Bunting I n my experience as a mindfulness and leadership coach to high level executives, I’ve found time and again that leaders like to be seen as the “experts”–the ones who have all the answers. This makes them feel important and they believe it gives them more credibility. However, the truth is that being a beginner is a much more effective strategy. From Zen Buddhism we learn a concept called “beginner’s mind.” Beginner’s mind is viewing the world and our experiences with an innocent mind devoid of preconceptions, 50 ModernBusiness October 2016 expectations, judgments, and prejudices. Attitudinally, it is beautifully summed up by the quote from Socrates, “I would rather be proved wrong than right.” It is to explore and observe things with a deep sense of openness, much like a child explores the world with curiosity and wonder, with no fixed point of view. It is to lose our “expert’s mind,” which tends to be rigid, calcified, and fixated. When we view the world through expert’s mind, we think we know all the answers, and are therefore closed to new possibilities. Under the influence of expert’s mind, we fall prey to two common cognitive biases: confirmation bias and sunk cost bias. We’ve all heard of confirmation bias: the tendency to search for or interpret information that confirms our beliefs or hypotheses. We typically approach something with a preconceived notion, or a fiercely held belief. Then, we proceed to search only for evidence that