Mind Trap Game Examples

[Steven]

Mentalmodels are frameworks of understanding that help us make sense of the world around us. They are simplified representations of complex concepts, processes, and systems that allow us to process information and make decisions more efficiently. A negative mental model can become a mind trap, limiting our perspective and the ability to process new information without bias. Mind traps are blind spots in our logic, reason, and problem-solving. If our thoughts are filtered first through our cognitive biases instead of logic and reason, then our mind is trapped inside our perspective of false filters.

Similar to mind-reading, fortune-telling occurs when we predict that things will turn out bad. When we believe the future is already set in stone and negative, we often act like it is which can be a self-fulfilling prophecy once again.

Similar to black and white thinking, filtering involves only paying attention to the negative aspects of a situation while ignoring all the positive. When you only focus on the negatives, you end up viewing the entire situation as negative and so, in your mind, everything is negative. This stops us from looking at all the aspects of a situation and drawing a more balanced conclusion.

This thinking trap involves two similar beliefs about being in complete control of pretty much everything in your life. The first type is called external control fallacy, where we see ourselves as victims of fate with no direct control over our lives. The second type of control fallacy, internal control, occurs when we assume we are completely responsible for the pain and happiness of everyone around us.

Four decades ago, Hannah* sensed something was amiss in her gut, setting her on a 40-year journey to reclaim control of her digestive well-being. Finding a level of relief she could live with after years of trial and error for her IBS-C, a surprise cancer diagnosis in her 50s unraveled her hard-earned progress. With gut health no longer a priority, Hannah shifted into survival mode.

It is important to recognize that mind traps vary over time and are highly dependent on the environment in which you find yourself. There may be times when you think you have no mind traps, and then suddenly when facing a change of job or pressure for results, some are automatically activated. The nature of your day-to-day life greatly impacts your mind traps.

Identify them: Identifying the main safety mind traps and knowing which ones you are more likely to fall into is the first step to overcoming them. Leverage evaluations to easily identify individual mind traps.

In an ideal state, at the more advanced levels of safety culture, there is a sense of community where everyone cares about each other. While the goal is still safely achieving business results (efficiency, income, margins), safety is not sacrificed.

In summary, to achieve significant improvements in organizational safety and wellbeing, it is fundamental that companies focus on developing a culture of safety. Key to any organization sustainably achieving their goals, a safety culture not only enables success but also ensures that everyone gets home to their loved ones safe and sound. To achieve this goal, it is critical to understand the mind traps within your organization and learn the mechanisms to challenge and overcome them.

Agreement. We crave agreement and hate conflict, having evolved to orient ourselves to the opinions and desires of others as a means of survival. And when we disagree with one another, we experience a social distress that is neurologically indistinguishable from physical pain. This leads teams to fall into agreement too easily and to forgo valuable options when dealing with complex challenges. In other words, seeking to get along literally robs us of good ideas.

Control. Our desire for control is deeply connected to our sense of happiness. A sense of control even makes us live longer, healthier lives. Yet we crave the sort of direct control over outcomes that is not possible in an unpredictable world. Our compulsion to have control leads us down the path to simplistic and ineffective solutions, often based on unilateral power.

In this form of mind, we mostly protect and project the identity that others give us. When others feel good about us, we feel good about ourselves. For Oscar, a big part of his identity was being the expert who pleased others by solving their problems.

You can recognize some of the hallmarks of the socialized mind in yourself and others when the act of thinking through what you believe about a topic naturally leads you to what authorities believe, or when you find yourself taking either all of the responsibility for a given situation or none. A rigid adherence to expertise, role, or hierarchy is also typical of this form of mind.

You can catch glimpses of the self-authored mind in someone who is strongly guided by a purpose she sets for herself, who takes responsibility for her own actions and emotions and holds you responsible for yours, and who can name and reflect on (as well as edit and redefine) the values that shape her actions. You might also see that she is blind to her adherence to those same values or that, like Eman, she pursues her purpose at the expense of other important possibilities.

Over time, the environmental and social agendas of the acquired companies began to move into the larger organization, creating more social capital. By opening up her own form of mind, Eman was creating new possibilities for people, far beyond what would have been possible in her previous chapter.

Interviews, written assessments, and other instruments can help orient us on the map of our development. Self-awareness is the torchlight for walking through this terrain. Over years or decades, we can see and understand the patterns and large shifts described in this article, but we live them in a series of tiny moves. In these moments, things we were once blind to become assumptions we can see and make decisions about. We can help prompt this form of developmental self-awareness by asking ourselves three vital questions:

And not a moment too soon. Some of the organizational, environmental, and geopolitical issues before us represent the biggest and most complex challenges human beings have ever faced. By avoiding the mindtraps, and participating more fully in our own evolution, we can generate the collaboration and new ideas needed to solve these challenges.

Jennifer Garvey Berger is the CEO of Cultivating Leadership; her latest book is Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps: How to Thrive in Complexity (Stanford University Press, 2019). Zafer Gedeon Achi is a partner at Cultivating Leadership and a director emeritus at McKinsey.

There is a massive space of complex problems where cause and effect can only be deduced in retrospect, and there are no right answers. I love challenges! And because of that, I just jumped into the world of complex problems. I am still strongly influenced by this domain. Agile Methods help me deal with the issues I see.

The reason behind that may rest in our minds. I would like to present a list of mind traps, which may block our perception. Being aware of these fallacies may help you on your journey. For me, they were like a revelation. And I am still jumping into them more often that I would like to admit. However, being aware of that is just a first step to work on them.

From my perspective, this mind trap is deeply rooted in our experience and often caused by the environment where we work. Seeing problems as own flaws may cause defensive postures and inability to resolve the issue. Maybe your work environment is not a safe place to fail? Perhaps you are too pushed for results that you are unable to do the right thing right?

You do not have to be hot-tempered. Our minds hate to work on complex problems. They love simplifications and getting rid of all unwanted bumps on our road. I often see a possible solution to the problem and decide before I gather all the available information or consider all pieces of evidence. It is hasty conclusions fallacy.

It may not be an issue per se. Making decisions are often better than avoid them. But making a decision before considering all available information or opinions may lead to incorrect decisions or local optimisations.

Even with enough data, our minds may ignore them because they do not fit into our agenda. Sometimes we ignore the consequences of our actions. In a crisis, when I have to get back on track, it may be helpful. But what if I am doing this more often?

Referring to the experience may support decision making, but it does not help if you are only looking at the past and, at the same time, ignore other facts. Outdated data or images can become the cause of an error and will make you blind to new information.

Being aware of risks and possible issues which may show up on our way is a great skill. However, making decisions based only on a bad feeling will not let you move forward and may stop you doing any significant change.

Lost costs can cause you to pull something that you should already finish. It may be a product that does not meet expectations, but the Product Owner does not want to admit its failure and the Sponsor still believes in it. It may be the path the Development Team selected and right now, it only gives them a headache and more work.

Of course, we should not give up when it is hard, because we will achieve nothing. The disagreement to withdraw means you allow the past to decide the present. You should acknowledge that what matters is what happens next and what we can achieve in the future.

The awareness for those fallacies may help you dodge a bullet next time and notice aberration quicker. There is still plenty of things to do to absorb the failure and reforge it into success. Practice them and let noticing them become your superpower.

Money is a simple example, but there are many other places where the zero-sum mind trap can lurk. One of these is the belief that for every improvement you make in one area of life needs to come at the cost of everything else.

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