Change blindness – a phenomenon in visual
perception where large changes are undetected by
the viewer.
I
learned about change blindness in an APA Monitor
article by Zak Stambor, who cites as illustration a
card trick by psychology professor Dan Simons. I've
used the same card trick in workshops, as a metaphor
for how our Enneagram focus of attention can keep us
blind to anything but what we expect to see:
"Pick one [card] and point to it so everyone can see
which one it is," Simons said to the audience member
as he covered his eyes and looked away from the
screen. The participant chose the queen of clubs.
Simons uncovered his eyes, clicked his mouse and
only five cards remained on the screen. The queen of
clubs was not one of them. The audience gasped – and
chortled. So how did he do it? While the audience
focused on the queen of clubs' absence, the other
cards had changed as well.
Stambor says "Distinctive things, things that are
unusual, things that are highly salient, don't
necessarily draw attention to themselves if you're
engaged in some other task."
We all need to take note of change blindness. How
many times have you made what felt like significant
changes and no one noticed? How often, when working
with corporate clients, have co-workers failed to
observe, appreciate, and reinforce changes your
clients have made? This failure in perception occurs
because others have made up their minds "how" this
person is and they're blind to changes because their
own "blind spot" is filled in by what they think
they already know.
We give an example in our book of a
Seven named
Jack whose Six
boss, Ben, had asked me to coach Jack:
Coaching came too late to save Jack’s job. He’d made
progress learning how to solicit and accept feedback
and greatly improved his ability to listen to others
instead of always telling stories. He’d achieved
more balance when he presented business problems.
Ben and he had worked with Mary to blend their
different leadership styles: Ben had learned to be
more optimistic and to focus more on possibilities;
Jack had learned to work with more details and plan
more for potential problems. But senior management
still saw Jack as a lightweight. Ben had to let him
go, but did help him find a comparable job in
another company.
Others around your clients won't want to believe
they're guilty of change blindness (yep, denial of
change blindness is called "change blindness
blindness"). As Simons noted in a previous article,
"Nobody would be surprised... if I told you, 'Hey...
I changed one grain of sand on a beach and nobody
noticed. [But] it's counterintuitive that people can
miss things that are substantial and right in front
of them.”
In a feedback
session with a senior executive who'd made
significant changes in the previous six months, he
and I pondered the fact that others I interviewed
were highly focused on some problems from months
earlier,
even though I
specifically asked them how this person is different
in the present.
So it’s
essential to help clients provide people around them
with the equivalent of a seeing-eye dog.
Coach them to
tell others specifically what they plan to change,
with a few key priorities: “These are three things
I’ll be doing differently, this is exactly what
you’ll see, and I need your help because change is
difficult. Please, when you see me behaving in these
new ways, tell me what you perceive so I know I’m on
the right track.”
When we use
seeing-eye coaching, our clients teach others to
change their focus of attention , to see what wasn’t
on their visual screens before.
