323. Why you believe you're right, even when you're wrong, with Owen Fitzpatrick, social psychologist and author

26:17So whether you keep working in this organization, which I hope you do, or you decide to do anything yourself or move anywhere, you are always going to be the kind of person that's going to enjoy massive amounts of success as a result of this. Obviously, I'm just spitballing because we're doing this off the spot, but it's that kind of message. It's getting them to think about themselves and how this can help them to become greater because nothing I've said you could argue with from a logical perspective, but yet I'm painting a picture of what's of interest to them. I'm trying to get them to feel excited about it As opposed to, you know, if you do X, it'll make your job easier.

26:54But that then immediately lends to the story. Yeah, so easy. I won't have to do it because you'll replace me with this boss that I've just trained in doing it. Whereas when you paint a picture about them and their identity, and again, you always need to be genuine and real with this. But when you paint a picture of who they can become as a result of that, and you include yourself in there, and you ensure that nobody's left behind, you're not going to – if someone is not comfortable, you're not just going to leave them. You're going to work with them and help them. Then you're helping them become – because it is inevitable.

27:28And so you're helping them become ready for this. And future ready is a word that's used quite a lot. But, you know, I think of it as present ready, right? We want to be ready for the present and keep being ready for the present so that every single thing that occurs, we're able to handle it. Owen, I'm following you into battle at this point. That was just, that was off the cuff. It was like, it felt like a Churchillian sort of sweet thing. Tell me, how do I get as good as you just were then? How do I learn how to position my arguments that way? I think, first of all, and I don't, you know, my example was based upon my simple structure, which is I'm thinking to myself, what is it that I want them to feel?

28:10How is it that I can ensure that this idea of, in this context, AI becoming something that they do and use, how could that become part of their identity? So I always think back to Star Wars, actually. and one of the most interesting pieces of Star Wars is how, and spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen it, but if you haven't seen Star Wars at this stage, I don't know what to tell you, right? But one of the most interesting parts wasn't just how Emperor Palpatine or the Emperor was able to convince Darth Vader to go to the dark side. It was how Luke Skywalker was able to convince Darth Vader to, you know, kill the Emperor, spoiler alert.

28:49And when we look at what he did is that the one thing that Luke Skywalker did all the way through the film is he believed in his father. He said, there is good in him. I know it. And so a big thing is our capacity to believe in people and to believe in the potential of people. Now, that doesn't mean that we close our eyes when someone is not performing. We go, oh, I believe in that they're doing an amazing job. If they're not doing an amazing job, we have to see the objective evidence and to be able to give them the feedback and empower them to be able to do what they need to do. And sometimes they might not even be right for the organization.

29:22Who knows? But we have to have the capacity to believe in people's potential. And the one thing that AI will never be able to do is to believe in you. So as what I call a belief leader, as a leader who cultivates belief, the first place you need to do that is in yourself. And the more that we believe in people, the more we see the brilliance in them. So in the example I gave, just to go back to your question, in the example I gave, I thought to myself, how is it that I can believe in my team or believe in the group of individuals that are standing in front of me? What is it that I can believe about them that will empower them, that will give them what they need?

30:02And since I believe that the future is going to be more and more taken over by AI, I want them to believe in themselves as well. But that will start in me believing in them. And so as I talk to them, I'm believing in their identity and their future. And I'm saying, look, I know that you can become this. And I always believe in other people's capacity to improve and to get better. So when you convey that to them, that's, I think, what does tend to inspire people. Because, you know, to your point, in Irish history, we have some incredible leaders over time that have demonstrated. I've written about a couple in my book.

30:38And one of them was Robert Emmett, who, you know, with his final speech, he was this, you know, sort of Irish patriot that was around in the early 19th century, right at the very beginning. And there was a rebellion that didn't work out and he was being put to death. And in his final speech, he made this incredible speech that was so powerful. It was quoted by Abraham Lincoln, you know, years later. Like it was so good that Abraham Lincoln would recite it at parties, right and this is the kind of example of words that are etched in stone and he one of the the lines he talked about was do not write my epithet right i don't want people to write about i don't need a grave i don't need people to write about me until ireland becomes a free nation all right that's how much his conviction was and devlin who worked for him there's again another story about her where she refused to talk she refused to let anybody convince her to talk about anything and once again she went through hell but still did not speak so in one case we have somebody who spoke and had words that were member forever another person who didn't say anything and it's because they believed in not just their country but they believed in those around them they were the ultimate examples of leaders and to me we don't all have that if we're you know producing some sort of product or service the stakes are not that high but yet what people respond to is the example of someone who not only walks the talk, but believes in us and gives us the conviction to say, you can improve, you can be better.

32:15I believe in you. We all desperately want to be believed in. And when you can do that, you're not necessarily believing, like I said, if a person's performing poorly, you're not believing that they're performing great, but you're believing in their potential. And once you do that, it won't work all the time, but it's definitely going to work a lot better than turning around going, here are the logical reasons as to why you should do what I'm telling you to do, which is unfortunately where our default goes. Owen, I think in my head, when I hear the word propaganda, I kind of think, oh, that's a bad thing.

32:45What would you say to that? Well, I think in the 17th century, the word propaganda sort of came into being. And it was like, it came actually from, I think, the Pope. And it was about propagating information. So the spreading of information. And obviously, propaganda is a bad thing from the perspective of, If you ask, 10 out of 10 people will tell you the word propaganda is negative. The problem is that it's not whether or not propaganda is good or bad. The problem is the story that we sell to ourselves about what propaganda is means that it's always what's happening to everybody else. So especially when it comes to politics, if we talk to somebody and we go, what do you think of this?

33:21And they go, it's propaganda. People only label it propaganda if they don't believe it. Nobody will turn around and go, yeah, yeah, it's propaganda and I totally believe it. They only label it propaganda if they think it's what other people have been convinced about. Now, when I went to North Korea, I saw incredibly obvious examples of propaganda. And it's very blatant, very much in your face. Everyone wears a lapel pin with a picture of the leader or the flag. You have to have a perfect sort of picture of either the great leader, the dear leader in your house. And it's like regularly polished.

33:57There's all sorts of small things that would indicate that they're very sort of inverted commas brainwashed. But when I went there, I found very smart, very cool people who really great opinions about different things. Obviously, they do believe whatever the nation tells them to believe in a lot of cases. But then I went back and I was spending some time in the States. This is before I moved to the States. And somebody came to me and said, oh, my goodness, it must have been crazy in North Korea with all the propaganda. I said, well, the main difference is, and this is particularly when it comes to the polarization in America, it's the difference is that in North Korea, they've got one point of view.

34:37In America, they've got two. And obviously, I'm being a little bit sort of glib there. But if you think about the notion of what people believe in North Korea, it's that the leader is great, and the nation is great, and this and that and the other. The news channel in North Korea was so positive. Now, you know 90 % of it is lies, but it's still nice to actually have news that's positive for once in a while. So I was like, oh, it's nice to listen to, even though you knew behind the scenes there's terrible atrocities being committed, which is horrific. But when you go to the States and you see, or not even just the States, it could be a lot of different countries today, you have the opposing news channels and they've exact opposite stories.

35:23and you would look at the both and you'd struggle to figure out are they talking about the same country if you didn't know and people are convinced absolutely convinced that their side is the right one and this is the polarization that's happening today and so the question i sort of ask is is that we believe that because we have the freedom in the west let's say we have the freedom um that other countries don't have and in north korea they don't have freedom like we do And I would agree with that in many ways. But unfortunately, oftentimes with that freedom comes the choice that we often make to buy into one sort of narrative about how things are.

35:59And so we buy into that. And so to me, that's the equivalent of in North Korea, you're being imprisoned in a cell and you can't get out. But in, let's say the Western world, we're being imprisoned in a cell, the door is open, but we can choose whichever cell we want to go into, but we're still in the cell. And that reminds me of Plato's cave. Plato talked about, you know, if you were imprisoned in a cave and you could only see shadows in the wall from the time you were born and, you know, that was where you were stuck, you would believe that those shadows on the wall were your reality. And then he said, well, what happens if somebody eventually escapes and they go out into the world and they see the, you know, the real world, they would immediately escape and reason can help us to get there.

36:42But actually, when we think we've escaped, we're just in a different cave because we go, oh, I see the light now. Well, do you or have you just convinced yourself of a different story? And maybe your new story is objectively true, but more often than not, it's not. It's just a difference of opinion. And the more I think we get more intellectually humble about this, where we go, maybe I don't have it all figured out. Maybe I'm not right. It doesn't mean that we have to feel bad about being wrong. It means we could feel good about being wrong because it means that we can get more information. And I think intellectual humility, curiosity are underrated for leaders.

37:16And it's not that we want to always be unsure in front of the teams that we lead. We want to demonstrate conviction, but we want to balance that with the notion that we want to learn more. We're always looking for information and evidence. We're always trying to figure out how other people think. Because if I'm trying to convince you, if I'm going to try to change your mind, I want to understand the propaganda that you've been listening to and recognize the propaganda I've been listening to and understand that the propaganda machines are actually in our heads. Because the more we do that, we take responsibility for it and we go, okay, let me figure out how I'm feeling about this.

37:50Let me figure out why I believe what I do. And then I can make a more judicious decision as a result. And then if I'm trying to communicate with you, I understand that you're influenced as well. So how can I put this in a way that it fits in with who you are and what you need to know? I have to ask you, in that particular situation, right? So a leader or a manager is coming with their own propaganda. They've got, right, okay, this is what I believe is going to happen. They have read your book. So now they are open to the ideas and open to listening to some pushback on their ideas. What happens if they then decide, actually, I was wrong in the first place?

38:25have I not just told sold myself this story that cannot be changed is that the point of the book let's say you've read the book or gone through the the work then what you'd recognize is the fact that your belief can change so Carol Dweck calls uh talks about a growth mindset which means that you know if you believe that you can improve your abilities or your skills and you practice with effort and you get feedback and you challenge yourself then you can and that's no the notion of a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed one going this is what I'm good at this one I'm bad that, it is what it is.

38:55I like the idea of what I call a belief growth mindset, where you believe that your beliefs can improve, can get better. And this is connected to, there was a guy called Thomas Bayes a couple of hundred years ago that came up with Bayesian reasoning. And this is really what's behind a lot of scientific discoveries and evidence, which is the notion that you start out with a prior, which is a belief that you have, and then you update it as more evidence comes to light. So it's thinking in terms of probability as opposed to certainty. And when you start to think like that, it means that you're engaged in conversations where you always know you have a certain level of certainty.

39:31And that level of certainty will adjust based upon the feedback you get. So I believe in A, like idea A. Like we need to use this particular AI model, model A. And so I get pushback from my team and I listen and I'm open enough. and the notion is is that it's easier for me to change because i'm now thinking in terms of i believe this i feel quite certain about it but i'm open to new evidence and then my team member gives me more evidence and walks through the the the different reasons as to why this works and as a result of me having the intellectual humility to know that i haven't 100 you know convinced myself of something i know that this is what i believe that is probably the right approach Now, all of a sudden, it's easier for me today and get that probability shifted as more evidence comes to light.

40:23So it effectively means that I'm making myself more open-minded to different points of view. It helps me to override some of the problems that can happen when really my identity or how I feel is what's protecting the belief because your identity protects your beliefs and prevents those beliefs from changing because I link to that identity. And that's why you see in politics, oftentimes, someone will decide to go on a certain side. They'll say, okay, I'm going with the Republicans or I'm going with the conservatives or I'm going with the liberals. I'm going with the Democrats or whatever the case may be.

40:57They'll make the choice. And as soon as they do that, it's almost like the membership that they pay is the shared belief that they have with everyone in that side. So all of a sudden, they will change their mind on anything else so that they could fit in with the rest of the tribe. And this is something that's built into our psychology from evolutionary times because we had to make sure we're part of the tribe. Why? Because that ensures we survive and our brain, as we learned earlier, really wants us to survive more than anything. And that's what it's orienting itself to. And it's also simpler.

41:29When everyone believes in the same beliefs in your tribe, you're good. So often we make that choice to believe what our groups believe, to lock ourselves in that way. And so it's very difficult to shift. And so for a leader who reads the book, hopefully they recognize these things. They had to develop the belief growth minds and they go, look, I'm not going to connect all of these beliefs to who I am. Instead, we hopefully will build a, what I call a anti-fragile belief system. And the notion anti-fragility came from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, talked about things that get stronger as a result of adversity.

42:07And if you start to see yourself as that kind of leader that constantly evolves and gets better, the more adversity that's thrown at you, the more challenges thrown at you. then what that does is it means that every time you learn you're wrong that's a great thing because it means you can get even better and you relish that you love getting that kind of feedback from your team you love learning about what mistakes you were making because that helps you to evolve and get even more effective and it completely transforms your mindset about those kind of conversations which builds psychological trust in the team as well because they go you know what if the leader of this organization could take this kind of feedback Well, that's what I want to be able to do too.

42:47And before you know it, you're cultivating an incredible culture of people that believe in themselves, that believe in each other, and that they're open and willing to continuously improve moving forward. So how do we balance this idea of being open to ideas without being weak as a leader? So if you look at the work of Brené Brown, one of the things that Brené would talk about is the importance of vulnerability. She's written some powerful books and has some incredible thoughts around why being vulnerable is such an important leadership skill. Dare to Lead is an excellent book for leaders. The reason this resonates so well is because when someone turns around like they're the smartest person in the room, that works to a certain extent, but eventually they stop being relatable to the folks that they work with.

43:36They stop being fully trusted. Because when we trust someone, we don't just trust them because they know what they're talking about. We need to feel like they care. We need to feel like they're real. We need to feel like they're authentic. We need to feel like they're not perfect so that we can not, you know, maybe we'll aspire to be more like them. Maybe they'll inspire us with their presence or with their behavior. But ultimately, we need to believe in them. And that means seeing the humanity inside of who they are. And so the notion of being wrong, if you believe that people won't respect you as a leader, if you're wrong, that belief in and of itself is going to be a big obstacle for you because it's not getting things wrong.

44:17That's the problem. It's how you respond or react when you get things wrong. And ultimately business is unforgiven. At the end of the day, it all lands on a spreadsheet, right? You can't get away from the numbers. So if I'm wrong about a decision and you're telling me that I'm wrong about a decision and I refuse to back down because I don't want to be weak. Well, I'm still going to be wrong. The spreadsheet is still not going to lie. We're still going to lose out because of my stubbornness and my decision because I didn't want Al to prove me wrong. And so you're going to be found out anyway. So instead of that, if you adapt and if you're confident, that I call a confident vulnerability, if you're confident about changing your mind and you're open and you're listening and you're, you know, you demonstrate good decision-making by listening and embracing views and then challenging them back and, you know, looking at what's really going on.

45:07If you demonstrate you're pursuing the objective reality of the situation, then that I think is inspiring to people because it means that you're completely invested in ensuring that you're moving in the right direction and you're not letting your ego get in the way. Because there's one thing that causes so many problems. It's our ego. And the ego is the desire we have to live up to this perfect standard that we expect other people to perceive ourselves, like our identity, is so fixed into what we believe that I believe the real weakness is the failure to listen. Man, the real weakness is the failure to listen.

45:45That should be on everyone's tinship. Is there someone you have in mind who has nailed this perfectly, this whole inner propaganda idea? No, no, there's not. Look, there's incredible leaders through history, and there's incredible business leaders out there in all different areas. If you talk about business leaders that are incredible at convincing people, any amazing founder that you'll have heard of, any incredible business leaders that you'll have heard of out there, the richest people on planet Earth, they all have a phenomenal ability to cultivate belief. and but but the mistake a lot of people make is i think that what they do is they immediately start to equate um themselves i'll give you a simple example a few years ago i was working uh with a team in an organization teaching a leadership development course and somebody comes up to it on it and says you know by the way this uh you know i know you're going to teach us about leadership and how to work well with people but ultimately i just want to let you know that um i I did a leadership survey and I'm what we call an authoritative dictatorial leader and that's my style.

46:56So I don't need to learn about all this emotional skills and all that sort of stuff. And so I said, cool, how's that working for you? And he goes, well, the turnover on my team is quite high, but it's hard to find good people these days, right? So immediately that's an example of someone who sort of forecloses on an identity of this is the type of leader. I don't want to have to learn anything else, right? Now, you also have people who another individual I work with turned around to me and said, look, I'm abrasive because that's my style. I'm just like Steve Jobs. and the problem is is that they equate the reason Steve Jobs was successful as a leader was because he was rude and abrasive I would argue the opposite I would argue the one big weakness of Steve Jobs was this rude abrasive nature that he had for many years you know as a leader but he got away with it because he was so brilliant in the other ways and eventually I think in the later years, he became less abrasive and less rude.

47:58He worked with a guy called Bill Campbell, who was kind of like his coach. There's a great book called The Trillion Dollar Coach, written about Bill Campbell's life. And one of the people that he spent a lot of time with was Steve Jobs, and Bill would help him with a lot of that. But the truth of the matter was, is that if you look at Steve Jobs as his success, one of the things that they talked about, and I think in Walter Isaacson's biography of him, he talked about the reality distortion effect. So he was able to convince people of what he wanted them to believe. So that's a great example of a belief leader.

48:34But a large part of it was because he was able to inspire the vision. It's like that famous quote, he asked the guy from Pepsi to come in and he said he wanted him to come in as CEO into the organization. And he said, do you want to keep selling sugared water or do you want to come with me and change the world? Well, that's literally changing the way in which he felt and ensuring that he paints this desired identity for this executive to come in. And so I think it was John Mulaney. He made that decision to come on board and was so inspired by who Steve Jobs was. Another time, Steve asked one of his engineers to be able to cut the time that it would take in order to do this.

49:16And the guy said, oh, that's impossible. And Steve said, well, if every second you could cut would save someone's life, how many lives do you think you could save? Like, who says that? That's insane. But if you think about it, it's changing the feeling that the person has. If I'm doing something and every second I save can save someone's life. And he gave him a logical reasoning later on where he was like, look, every single second you save of a person, if you add up all those seconds at all those people, that's effectively a person's life. But it was that feeling that he created in that. And so that's, they're two wonderful examples of a very well-known legend being able to cultivate belief in other people.

49:58But every great leader that's helped their nation, overcome adversity, demonstrates that. And the problem is, the reason I said there's nobody is because nobody is perfect. While you have great leaders, there's also dark sides to great leaders as well. Some of the greatest leaders of our time, people that triumphed in some of the wars, they also have very, very dark backgrounds and dark aspects to their beings as well. And I think in the world, we like to think in terms of goodies and baddies, and we like to think, oh, well, this person was obviously bad, and this person was obviously good. And I would agree there's easy ones like Hitler and stuff that you go, he was just a despicable, horrendous human being.

50:47But most of the time, that tendency we have to reduce people to good and bad, that's part of the problem. Because as soon as we look at a person that doesn't believe the same thing as us, and we think that they're dumb or they're bad or evil, it stops us from being able to talk to them and it stops them from being able to listen to us. And that's part of the work that I'm trying to do is to get people to start to become humble enough to go, you know, the person has very different beliefs to me. But most of the time, we agree on 95 % of our values and we just argue about the other five. And that becomes the the decision that we make to say this person is different to me therefore they're bad and i think we need to start to recognize that we're all victims of our own inner propaganda because once we do and we understand it i think it allows us to open up to each other connect more and build better organizations as a result fabulous absolutely fabulous and also i remember this just made me mindful actually there was a there was an interview i think with christopher waltz who played i can't remember the character but he's in ingroys bastard yeah hands yeah uh i i I can't think of a second name, yeah.

51:52I can't either, but how do you play evil so bad? And he says, he doesn't believe he's evil. Yeah. He believes he's 100 % right. That's propaganda to his core. Yeah, and here's the thing, Al. That's what Robert McKee, who's the greatest screenwriting teacher of all time, he's taught the greatest. If you think about anybody who's written a great screenplay, more than likely they've learned from Robert McKee. He's the author of the book story. He's amazing. I've been lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time learning from him. And one of the things he talks about is that, you know, villains never think of themselves as villains.

52:26A villain doesn't walk around going, I'm a baddie. Lex Luthor didn't see himself as bad, right? Even Thanos in Marvel, right? The whole thing of clicking your fingers and making half of the universe disappear. Everyone gives themselves a reason as to why what they're doing is the right thing. They're on the right side. it. And as soon as we recognize that and really understand that, it helps us to go, for me to change this person's mind, the least successful thing I can do is to shame them, right? Because as soon as you shame them, you will lose all sorts of credibility with them. And therefore, they're no longer going to be open to changing their minds because they don't want to prove you right.

53:04Because as soon as they argue with you and you argue with them, since you're never going to listen since you've already labeled them in that way, why should they? Immediately you lose all sorts of trust. And as soon as we lose trust in the other person, as soon as we tell ourselves a story or sell ourselves a story that the other person is not to be trusted, well, there's nothing that can be said that we'll get through that. Whereas when we stop and recognize that everybody believes they're doing the right thing or everyone is coming from that side, it's not that evil might not exist, for example, but it's just that it gives us a better shot at influencing people.

53:37And that's kind of why I believe so much in this is because I want people to be better at getting through to the people that disagree with them so that they can start to impact or influence them more. Because logic bullying won't work, as Adam Grant pointed out, and labeling or shaming people won't work. So maybe believing in their potential, like Luke Skywalker did, believing that there is good in him, I sense it, that might be the only thing that actually can work in those situations. And once you understand how belief works, then it helps you to get better at that. I know in your book, you start off with a very personal story.

54:15And I won't go into it because I don't want to spoil, not that you want to spoil that kind of story, but it definitely a story people want to read. Is there something you used to believe in that now you have realized you've been completely wrong about? Many, many, many, many things. every day, I realized something that I believed wasn't actually what I thought was true. And back then, what you're referring to, so I struggled with my mental health when I was a teenager. I was suicidal for a while. And therefore, as someone who was struggling with that and wanting to end his life, I believed that I needed to die.

54:52And the best thing for everyone, including myself, would be for me to die. And for an experience I had there, things changed for me. and I believed that I needed to live. Not that I wanted to live. I didn't go, oh, I want to die. I want to live. It was, I needed to die and I needed to live. And that belief shifted in a very powerful way based once again on something that shifted in me in terms of a feeling that changed at that moment in time. And largely that's what happens is that so many times, I mean, think about it, you know, Al, if you think back to what kind of clothes you wore, you know, 20, 30 years ago, right?

55:29Are you thinking to yourself, yeah, I look cool then? Or are you going, oh my goodness, I can't believe I had the haircut. I can't believe I listened to that music. I can't believe I wore that. Like we all have those things that were like, I believed I was the coolest person in the world. And then all of a sudden I wasn't. And so I'm, you know, I constantly upgrade my beliefs. I constantly recognize the areas in which I'm wrong. I'm going to get a lot more wrong in the future too. But the goal is to recognize the more I get things wrong, the more I learn, the more I grow, the more I hopefully continuously improve.

56:01And I also give myself more of a break, right? I think sometimes when people think about the notion of, well, you're your own inner propagandist and you're convincing yourself for this, kind of makes people feel, well, I don't want to blame myself. But the way I look at it is, well, if I'm willing enough to be wrong, then the more I recognize that, the more I understand that, the more I can actually grow and improve and get better. And that to me is a wonderful thing, because ultimately, I think the goal that we all can look forward to in life is improving and learning and growing and making our relationships better and making our teams better and ensuring that we're improving.

56:39And the only way we do that is by realizing that you don't always have to be right. And a belief doesn't always have to be the right one. Our beliefs are not always factual, but they are always functional. And so the more that you understand the function of why you believe what you do, the more you can upgrade it, the more you can, as I call it, believe better. And to me, that's what I'm hoping more people do as a result of the work that I'm doing in the book. That was Owen Fitzpatrick, author of the new book, Inner Propaganda. Turns out the person you most need to convince first is yourself. As always, here are our top three takeaways.

57:16Number one, stop leading with logic. If you're trying to change someone's mind, whether that's your team, a client or an investor, the evidence comes last, not first. Work out how you want them to feel before you work out what you want to tell them. Number two, catch what Owen calls your own desired truth. If you're a founder pushing an idea, ask yourself honestly whether you believe it because the evidence supports it or because you need it to be true. Both can be valid but you have to know which one you're operating on. And number three believe in your team's potential before the evidence proves it.

57:49Owen's point about Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader wasn't a throwaway line. The leaders people follow are the ones who believe in who someone can become not just who they are right now. Owen's new book Inner Propaganda is out on August the 4th. head to innerpropaganda.com for the book and some bonuses that come with it or find him at owenfitzpatrick.com and of course on linkedin he's also got his own podcast brilliant podcast by the way inner propaganda if you want more of him and of course you will this is truth lies and work we will see you next week