One of the mistakes we can easily make in times of change is that when people don’t behave in the ways we want them to, we can assume that they must be ‘stupid’, ‘bad’, ‘corrupt’, or ‘insignificant’, ‘unimportant’, ‘irrelevant’, ‘low status’.
All these thoughts are value judgments.
But a story from ancient China illustrates how qualities and behaviours judged ‘bad’ in one situation can easily become ‘good’ in another:
“A city came under siege and for many weeks the people suffered. Day after day a notorious thief, locked up in jail, offered to help. But he was such a bad and low-status person that they dismissed him without a second thought, taunting and ridiculing him instead.
“As their suffering went on, for month after month, eventually the people decided to listen to the thief’s plan and give him a chance.
“That night, using his skills, the thief crept unseen into the enemy camp. Entering the sleeping general’s tent, he stabbed a dagger into the table and crept away. The next morning, finding the unknown dagger embedded in his table, the enemy general felt scared and angry. He shouted at his men to double the guard.
“On the second night, the thief again crept between the enemy sentries and left another dagger, this time plunged deep into the sleeping general’s pillow.
“The next morning, the enemy general gathered his troops and marched away. Because he knew that if he stayed another night the third dagger would be plunged deep into him.”
When the situation changes, behaviours and people that we used to judge as ‘bad’ can easily become ‘good’. An undocumented migrant (automatically seen as ‘bad’ by many people) might climb up to a balcony and save a child’s life. A leader or celebrity who we once looked up to might turn out to have been involved in sexual misconduct. And so on.
Whenever we make a value judgment that a person is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ we are being lazy: we are locking ourselves into our old ideas about the way the world used to work. And when the world around us is changing, this makes all our value judgments unreliable. It also stops us from seeing the new possibilities that are emerging.
Better, instead, to make a clear assessment of a person’s strengths and weaknesses and accept them as they are: not to judge them as intrinsically either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ but to accept them as a mix of both, as we all are. And then, like the story of the Chinese thief, to realise that even a ‘bad person’ might have a skill that could transform the situation. Because there is a massive difference between what a person does and who a person is.
Seeing past our value judgments reduces our risks, increases our opportunities, and makes us more likely to achieve the outcomes we most want. All of which brings us another step closer to becoming antifragile.
Have you ever made a value judgment about a person in a way that prevented you from getting the outcomes you wanted? Are you currently judging someone as ‘bad’ in a way that prevents you from seeing the contribution they might make? Are you judging someone as ‘good’ in a way that is blinding you to the risk they represent? What possibilities would emerge if you let go of your value judgments and preconceptions?
Adapted from Inner Leadership: a framework and tools for building inspiration in times of change.
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Photo By The British Library via StockPholio.net