Success Impulse: What you should learn from René Descartes
René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician and scientist. He coined the phrase: Cogito ergo sum - I think, therefore I am. But there are even more insights of this philosopher that we can use for leadership.
René Descartes: Ability to form opinions is unlimited
For some people - like Donald Trump - this correspondence between opinion and facts is 100 percent: From his point of view, there can be no truth other than his own opinion. And since, according to Descartes, the ability to form opinions is unlimited, we can also create "truths" at will (such as having won the election). I think this explains very elegantly many of his behaviors that are strange to clear-thinking people.
But this is not about the ex-president, but about parallels to our leadership. Because for each of us, too, the line between belief and truth sometimes becomes blurred. Awareness of this can help you to deal elegantly with some typical leadership challenges.
Three findings
Here are three examples of our fuzzy thinking in leadership and what we should do with it:
- Limited potential. All too often, we believe that our potential success is severely limited. Mentally, we move in a bubble of past experience (e.g., by observing the market environment). However, history shows time and again that these experiences are not truths, but opinions. This is important when you are working on your business strategy.
- Fixed Identity. "We are not who we are, but who we define ourselves to be" is a frequent statement of mine. Most of the time, we have formed very fixed opinions about ourselves and others that we believe to be truths. But in reality, we can adjust our identity at any time. However, it is not easy. As a first step, however, we need to let go of the belief that "this is who we are."
- Lack of courage. We love to categorize failures as confirmation of our entrenched beliefs. When in fact they would be more suitable as proof that our assessment was not quite right at this point and that we should therefore adjust it before the next attempt. We always do this instinctively when something is really important to us. Otherwise, we often lose courage because we believe that failure is a sign that we should rather not try.
You see, this is how you can use direct insights from philosophers for your leadership. Good luck with the application!
To the author:
Volkmar Völzke is a success maximizer. Book author. Consultant. Coach. Speaker. www.volkmarvoelzke.ch
