Do you often have to convince yourself that you are doing the right thing? Are you angry when your team ask you too many questions? Do you think that clarifying is the same as being interrogated? Do you think that anyone who asks too many questions is a rebel, revolutionary, controversial and with bad attitude?
If you answered yes, you may well be managing in a state of cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive Dissonance
A little bit of psychology 101…
What is it?
It is a psychological state in which the reality or actions of the individual do not match personal belief. Then, to resolve the conflict between actions and beliefs with reality, the person acts in new ways to seek or make up new thoughts.
One can simplify that Cognitive Dissonance are the actions subsequent to a change of paradigm, receiving of new orders, changes of course and etc.
Festinger started to study Cognitive Dissonance by 1957. It was found applications in the study of consumer behavior and management, to understand people’s behavior in the face of change. There is not much consensus on exactly what effects people use to solve their dissonances. So there’s still plenty down the hill on this field…
Positive and Negative Effects
By definition, any learning that changes some ground concept that a person has generates a certain cognitive dissonance.
Although it is an uncomfortable psychological state, as are all internal conflict states, it is not necessarily a bad thing. When confronted with the new, the individual will change to adapt to this new reality in the best way to reason this new reality. Either someone will change his/her actions so that these actions reflect what you believe.
This if all goes well.
There is no guarantee that an individual will have noble or correct actions when facing cases of cognitive dissonance. To resolve the conflict, it is possible to adopt other non-constructive positions such as denial, transfer and etc. Sometimes, depending on a person’s attachment to a particular belief, even extreme attitudes of denial can occur, with strong tendencies towards radicalism.
The Managerial Dissonance
Someone might fall into dissonance. But how is that, manager?
As a manager falls into dissonance …
Usually managers are the most affected by this situation. When they get a top-down order on something they do not agree, the manager falls into Cognitive Dissonance: he must act contrary to his belief. Then it is possible for the manager (1) to accept the order or (2) to live with the conflict. One might not always accept all orders he/she receives so it is a requirement of management positions to deal with this stressful situation. (That’s why managers tend to have higher wages: the result of this on the individual psychology is extremely hard.)
However, performing actions without believing in them when in the form of order is easily compensated with the idea that “I am following orders” and therefore end up wrapping up this way. This is basically an escape response: a reasonable explanation is created to resolve the cognitive conflict.
There are several other situations that present themselves to the manager that can lead him to cognitive dissonance that, when unresolved, can put the manager in a fragile psychological state. In this state, the manager no longer tolerates any behavior that exposes his/her cognitive conflict. It is not uncommon to judge problematic an inquisitive employee .
Leadership builds on principles. And these principles may change. But a manager who is in an exaggerated situation of dissonance, having to change all beliefs he has … Would it be a situation of wrong profile? Or is it the case that pressure for business requires overly flexible behavior?
Solution. For each one, one new recipe.
Adopting escape mechanisms or denial and not solving the dissonance is the worst way to go. “Don’t think about it” will only aggravate the condition and lead to uncertain decision-making. This is an awful way for managers to get a heavy conscience.
First, before ending up with a poor mood, aggressive, and worse, by loading the weight of cognitive dissonance over others, it is important to limit how much flexibility one must have.
This limit will also define how far one can go to keep a job. I have heard from a great executive the following:
I’m comfortable to lose my job over this.
That meant a limit of bearable dissonance. This amount is personal: I know people who humiliate themselves just to keep their jobs. I know people who won’t eat that frog. Therefore, the bearable amount of dissonance by each one is unique.
Leadership and Dissonance
Who has never seen a high-performance professional to freak out? Yeah. Usually, one or two questions are enough for one professional to lose his head and unload his problems all over the world due to unresolved Cognitive Dissonance. If the “dissonant” occupies a leadership position, he may even end up dismissing all the undesirable elements. As excuses never end to be created, anything that helps to mask the dissonance will be employed.
Here is a curiosity: innovation is, by definition, a process or criticism: the current condition is critically evaluated to evolve in a new condition. Talents are innovative people, therefore, with lots of critical thinking. Imagine if a manager, to ease the conflicts by dissonance would simply fire everyone? Without talent, a manager will fail. It remains only to find out when it is going to fail.
Leading is to create and live with a constant state of cognitive dissonance. Generate dissonance for employees to learn and evolve by themselves. He must live with that because the environment where he is in won’t stop changing. This point is important to generate and understand more significant changes in the corporation.
Of all the leadership courses I’ve received, I have a series of questions that I’ve never gotten a good response to was: “What if a potential talent with potential leadership profile does not buy in some certain package of actions, then what to do?”
The answers follow a pattern: “try to convince otherwise resignation”. What “trying to convince” actually means is “you should generate a state of cognitive dissonance on the individual” and expecting the person to then create new memories, thoughts or beliefs that match the new reality. Thus, a manager will better use the employee’s ability to resolve their cognitive dissonances for the sake of the employee and the corporation.
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