With Gratitude to Pixabay

I recently came across a clip, dedicated to Critical Thinking. It is far from perfect, I am irritated by the off-voice and the request to sign-up is cheap. Worse of all, the promise that, by the end of the clip we will know the Truth, seems heading towards a frontal collision with the concept of Critical Thinking… just like the conspiracy theory theme which is periodically emerging. If you can decide not to let this irritate you and are ready to invest 25 minutes of your time on it, I’d warmly recommend you to watch this clip, still.

But, if you do not have 25 minutes to spare viewing it, I hope my comments hereafter will do the job in a shorter time…

The clip warns us about the worrying demise of “Critical Thinking”, eroded and submerged by the conformism of what it labels “Collective Stupidity”. The reasoning is simple: Social Networks, information overdose (notifications, messages, breaking news, opinions) supported by our mental habits (research of immediate gratification, dopamine addiction, etc.), cognitive biases, group-think, peers opinions, influencers or perceived authorities in their domain (all called “Social Proofs”) are creating a globally dominant culture rewarding speed, emotional responses, polarisation, arguments and conformity, or the illusion of knowledge, over depth, gravitas, curiosity, inquiry or, simply, the admission that we don’t know.

If an example is needed to illustrate our challenge in admitting, with humility, that we simply don’t know, French physicist and philosopher, Etienne Klein, quoted back in 2022,  an amazing poll published in a French daily (Le Parisien): on April 5th 2020, when no one in the scientific community had properly validated/invalidated the impact of a specific drug on Covid-19, the newspaper asked their readers “is that drug able to heal Covid-19?”. Even though nobody could scientifically claim to hold a valid answer, 59% replied positively (this drug heals Covid-19), 20% stated the opposite and only 21% admitted that in the current state of affairs, they did not know (see clip below, in French unfortunately), reinforcing the famous Stephen Hawking quote (mentioned at the start of the first clip): “The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge!”

And this phenomenon is not only a worrying societal trend; It also impacts the way we lead: As good products of the education system, we have been trained and conditioned to “lead because we know” faster and better than the others. John Taylor Gatto, a controversial specialist in education, also quoted in the clip, says that modern education does not exist to create independent thinkers but compliant and obedient students. In other terms, go with the flow, guess what it is that the authority figure wants to hear as a proper response and pretend that it is right, even though your curiosity, inquiry or intuition may deny it.

If you wish to test yourself on how easy it is to comply, under the false premise of focus, take the following “test” (which will not work if you have seen the video in the past). And please pay attention to the following:

• The question is: how many passes does the team in white do
• Be very careful since the team in black also have a ball and those two frequently cross
• In order to count in the same way, it is when the receiver gets the ball that a pass is completed. In other terms, when the ball leaves the hand of the first player, nothing is accounted for. It is only when the receiver gets the ball that you start the count… one, two etc.

Off you go:

Great! There is, indeed, a correct number of passes that will be uncovered at the start of the second video:

But… Have you seen etc.???

This clip is a great demonstration of how our brains are prompted and (when I focus them on the white team, two balls, when a pass is reputed as confirmed or not etc.) conditioned towards focusing on finding the answer, which we label as Content Leadership or Leading when I know. But what if we were using our curiosity, inquiry, doubts and intuition instead? What if spotting the Moonwalking bear were, in fact, the formula healing Covid in a record of time, or the rationale helping some of our political leaders to be convinced that tariffs will kill our mutual economies unless…, or that infinite growth can not be an end per se etc.? We don’t know what we don’t know and counting the ball passes, since instructed so, is important, just as much as keeping our minds, intelligence, senses open to other potential sources of importance… This is called Context Leadership or Leading when I don’t (necessarily) know.

Closing this “video-rich” article, I can’t resist the pleasure to show you again, this memorable piece of the fascinating (and, sadly, timely) movie Conclave. We are at the start of the procedure and the Camerlengo, Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, addresses the assembly of his peers:

“Certainty is a Sin, Certainty is the great enemy of Unity… Certainty is the deadly enemy of Tolerance”… Please give us a Pope who doubts!”

Enjoy your Leadership Journey!