Don't Introspect!

Life is not therapy. And therapy is not life. Most therapists will claim that your best life is more therapeutic, but that simply means that they are trying to gin up business… for themselves. 

Amazingly, some business leaders happily jump on the therapy bandwagon. They claim, in all seriousness, that you should live therapeutically. They mean that you should gain self-awareness through introspection.

To which Herminia Ibarra, a professor at the London Business School, responds by telling them to get over themselves. That means, to cease introspecting, to cease looking for the next big insight, but to direct their attention outward, to the reality of their businesses. 

Rather than ponder your unresolved infantile issues, you, as manager, should make a move, try out a new proposal, and see whether it works.

Ibarra proposes pragmatism and empiricism as cures for therapy culture malaise.    

As the old saying goes: Get out of your mind and into your life.

Of course, introspection is a theoretical term, one that therapists love to use. In more common parlance it means that you should feel your feelings, get in touch with your feelings and ask yourself how something makes you feel.

When faced with a complex real situation, therapy culture denizens plunge head-first into the depths of their souls, the better to discover their real feelings. And that means, they want to understand whether they are re-enacting some unresolved infantile trauma. 

Presumably, once you discover the relevant infantile issue and once you purge it from your psyche, you will naturally know exactly how to deal with your current dilemma.

Obviously, as Ibarra suggests, this is a futile exercise. Look at a different context. Let’s say that you are playing chess. Before you make a move on the chessboard, do you search your soul for some unresolved infantile trauma? Do you try to figure out how badly you want to win or how much you are trying to sabotage yourself? 

If you want to learn how to play chess, you can only do so by playing the game. And by analyzing the moves, the good, the bad and the indifferent.

Yet, therapy has been selling the notion that once you resolve your infantile issues you will naturally be a chess champion. It is a vapid notion, one that deserves to be called out.

CNBC explains Ibarra’s position:                  

Plenty of experts — from Harvard University neuroscientists and Yale University psychologists to self-made millionaires and ex-Google executives — preach self-awareness as a crucial trait separating highly successful people from everyone else.

At least one researcher is over it.

"I got a little tired of hearing so much about introspection as the solution for everything when, in fact, the only way we learn new behavior is by doing it," Herminia Ibarra, a professor of organizational behavior at London Business School, tells CNBC Make It.

Managing a company, in her description, feels a lot like playing a game:

But to become more successful you need to study the bigger picture of what's happening in your company, industry or community — and train yourself through experimentation to fill in any gaps you spot, says Ibarra.

Ibarra adds that introspection sends you back to the past. And it makes you believe that the current situation is merely repeating the past.

But, what if it is not? What if it is a new situation? Confusing the present with the past is not going to make you a better manager or even a better chess player.

"When you are focused introspectively, you are going to favor what you have past experience doing," Ibarra says. "But a lot of the stuff that we are being challenged to do [in our careers], we have no past experience doing. They are new."

To be a good manager, you need to know your people. You need to know your goals. You need to delegate where possible and allow people to do their jobs. If you do not have much managerial experience you will be more likely to want to do everything yourself. And then, learn from your experience.

And also, if you are going to be a good manager, you need to get over yourself. You also need to overcome the therapy-induced feeling that you need to express your feelings.

When Ibarra coaches people to become better listeners, they often respond that they're passionate people who need to express their opinions, and it's not in their nature to be passive, she says.

When you have an idea or a policy, do not scour your memory bank to see what past experience it resembles. Ibarra recommends that you try it out, to see how it works in practice:

Her typical response: "Try it out, lazily play with it, to see what happens." That's because your own experience is much more likely to convince you to shift your behavior than any advice someone gives you, says Ibarra.

You do not need to know why you are doing what you're doing. The value lies in the results obtained, or not. Once you get it right you should make it into a good habit. 

Psychologists often refer to that concept as "behavioral activation," which can be used to help create new habits and reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, experts say.

"Evidence shows that motivation actually follows behavior," Seattle-based psychologist Rachel Turrow told Make It in March. "It's really a 'just do it' kind of thing."

Most people might recognize it as something simpler: Fake it until you make it.

"The only thing that is going to get you on a more successful path is to just try it out and see what works, and what doesn't work, and then let your own experience change your mind," says Ibarra.

Again, be pragmatic. Try out different approaches. Do not pretend that your problem is that you have not had enough therapy.

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