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mind-set, then neither all-or-nothing
perfectionism nor “ticking the box”
makes sense; instead, you regard human
activity as an investment worth making
if it will lead to genuine learning and
consistently improved results.
3. Misperceptions of
Proficiency
How capable are you and your company
of influencing others and getting things
done? Your answer reveals an attitude
that psychologist Albert Bandura
termed self-efficacy, that is, confidence
in one’s own ability to succeed. People
with unrealistically high self-efficacy
assume they will prevail at difficult
tasks, even if they lack the proficiency to
do so. People with excessively low self-
efficacy are likely to give up, even when
they could actually succeed. Deceptive
organizational messages can carry
either misperception.
In organizations, low self-efficacy is
manifested as entrenched insecurity.
Entire groups internalize the idea We
are not effective now, and we never will
be. This misperception often involves the
cognitive distortion called “discounting
the positive.” Any good attributed to your
company or your work must be false.
Consider the story of Lauren and Majid,
two regional managers at an artisanal
food company. (Their identities are
disguised by request, but the details
are real.) Lauren, the product manager
for the region, had looked forward to
a blossoming career — until Majid
questioned a decision that she had made
to postpone expansion to a new location.
Instead of checking with Lauren, he
took his questions back to headquarters,
which intervened by taking Lauren’s
side. But Lauren didn’t interpret this
as a victory; she felt that the fact that
Majid went around her was itself a
sign of failure. After the incident, both
felt they would never be fully accepted,
Lauren because of her gender and Majid
because of his background as a foreign
national. Meanwhile, their bosses had
seen both of them as high-potential
managers — until it began to seem like
they couldn’t work well together.
The flip side, excessively high self-
efficacy, tends to take the form of
“mind reading,” or projecting your
own attitudes onto others, assuming
that they share your opinion about
yourself and the situation, and acting
on that assumption. Everybody wants
this deal just as much as I do. This
type of deceptive messaging shows
up in complex technologies, when
the engineers discount the novices’
complaints. When they get used to this
user interface, they’ll appreciate the
many features we’ve given them. In
other companies, mind reading leads
to underestimating customer concerns,
for example, about privacy or security.
Of course they trust us. Mind reading
is also present in many cases of
workplace sexual harassment or other
inappropriate behavior. When people
say no to me, they don’t really mean it.
4. Misperceptions of Validity
Misperceptions of validity lead us to
believe that something is true because
of the way it feels, or because of the
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