The antidote to this is systemic thinking, the ability to look beyond the issue to the phenomenon and its causality. As part of our natural survival instinct, we default to the evil other, which we understand, and come up with conspiracy theories based on prejudice and stereotypes to rationalise that which we don’t understand. We all do it – unless we are trained not to – because our minds desperately try to make meaning out of everything and because our factory setting as humans is fear. He says: “in the absence of information, fantasy reigns”. Mark Feitelberg, my friend and former colleague at UCT’s Graduate School of Business, is a clinical psychologist and executive coach. But because people’s lived reality doesn’t reflect this, they dismiss it out of hand. The world is better off than it was a century ago the percentage of people living in absolute poverty has declined immensely – that’s a statistical fact. The brilliant theorist Hans Rosling speaks about this in his book Factfulness, using the example of poverty. That flies against what we consider to be true. It also makes it very difficult to break this spiral because of the cognitive dissonance that steps in, that naturally prevents us from accepting anything This emotional intellectualism doesn’t just effectively render us bipolar it makes us very susceptible to the diet of fake news that we are fed. The reason is because we have become enslaved by dramatic thinking, we veer between thinking everything’s brilliant to everything’s a disaster almost in the space of time it took you to read this, which explains how we can revere our politicians as heroes one day and damn them as villains the next. We can see how this would be potentially catastrophic in business or in sport, but we can’t seem to see the same consequences in personal relationships and The dangers are two-fold, you don’t see the imminent threats, but you are also blinded from seeing the opportunities. It’s something we’ve taken to heart in our MBA and related executive education programmes, incorporating emotional mastery into the curriculum, because when you become het up your peripheral vision narrows, literally, until you only focus on what’s in front of you. ![]() There are documented studies that show teaching people classical entrepreneurial skills when they are starting out with their businesses is counter-intuitive – and counter-productive, if you want them to succeed you teach them psychological resilience, which has a far more positive effect on their business. ![]() ![]() We’ve found the same in business management. The headlines we see every day, more often than not, only serve to underline this, while the politicians – on all sides – spin what they can and play on emotions because none of them really want you to think too deeply on how you vote or who you vote for, they would prefer if you did it viscerally, emotionally.Įmotions are a tricky thing not enough and our lives are listless, too much and we can’t see the wood for the trees – ask sports psychologists, it’s their stock in trade. It’s a very real question there’s a lot to be enraged about with the tsunami of revelations pouring from the various commissions of inquiry to probe state capture in general and malfeasance at the South African Revenue Service and the Public Investment corporation in particular. Will they even vote? If they do, will they even think before they make their mark in anger? Will you? ON Wednesday May 8 this year South Africans head to the polls again.
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