Mark Harrison's The Practice of Leadership

The Dangers of Losing One’s Agency: A Cautionary Tale Understanding Agency Agency is the ability to think, decide, and act independently, based on one’s own reasoning and values. It is the foundation of personal autonomy, allowing individuals to shape their own lives rather than being shaped by external forces. When you have agency, you critically evaluate information, make informed choices, and take responsibility for your actions. But agency is not absolute—it exists on a spectrum. While external influences such as culture, education, and social norms inevitably shape our decisions, true agency means engaging critically with these influences rather than blindly accepting them. Without it, you become a passive participant in your journey through life, directed by others’ interests rather than your own. The Risks of Losing or Abdicating One's Own Agency Losing agency is rarely sudden—it happens gradually, often unnoticed. Some willingly abdicate their agency, choosing co...

Stop Judging (almost) Everything Our brains evolved over millions of years and our current understanding suggests there are three main parts, the reptilian brain, the limbic brain, and the neocortex. The reptilian brain is responsible for the basic functions necessary to survive, namely breathing, heart rate, and balance and it influences the fight-flight-freeze functions and tends to be rigid and drive compulsive behavior. The limbic brain can record memories of behaviors that produced agreeable and disagreeable experiences, so it is responsible for what are called emotions in human beings. The limbic brain is the seat of the value judgments that we make, often unconsciously, that exert such a strong influence on our behavior. The neocortex evolved more recently and is the seat of human “smarts” such as development of human language, abstract thought, imagination, and consciousness. This is the part of the brain that is responsible for learning. There are some days while observing hum...

Recognize, Examine, and Challenge Cognitive Biases This subject fascinates me daily. I had an opportunity to study this as part of a 6-week course a few years ago and yet I still must watch for my own biases. I am referring to my own personal foibles here but know that everyone has cognitive biases. So, what the heck is a cognitive bias?  Cognitive biases can generally be described as systematic and universally occurring tendencies, inclinations, or dispositions that skew or distort information processes in ways that make their outcome inaccurate, suboptimal or simply wrong (e.g., Lichtenstein and Slovic, 1971). From: Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, 2nd edition, 2022. In my own words, a cognitive bias occurs when your brain rejects facts because of biases amassed through life experiences. Your brain accepts information when it aligns with the bias or rejects information when it is not aligned with your bias. The problem is that my brain will reject facts if I am not vigila...

  Don’t Yuk Somone’s Yum! We are quick to judge. It’s an evolutionary artifact and it was necessary to judge EVERYTHING for our survival. We needed to judge whether something tasted good, whether something was going to harm us, or whether SOMEONE was going to harm us. We come by it naturally. Fast forward a million years or so, and we’ve become quite adept at judging, but we often don’t need to for survival--it’s become more of a reflex action.   My wish is that I stifle this reflex significantly. For example, someone might say “I just enjoyed Chinese food at restaurant X” and my predilection may be to say “oh, I ate there last month, the food was crap, the service sucked, and restaurant Y is way better”. My issue with that immediate “judgy” reaction is that it intrudes upon someone else’s narrative. It is THEIR story and unless they explicitly solicit my opinion on restaurant X, I have no cause to add MY narrative to THEIR story. I would certainly not appreciate it if someone...

Don’t Expect Me (nor anyone!) to Sabre-Rattle for Your Cause I have causes, you have causes, everyone has causes. If my cause happens to be “the earth is clearly flat”, I have no expectation nor desire for you nor anyone else to join my cause. It is MY cause. I don’t think any less of anyone if they are not on my bandwagon as it is MY cause. I also hope no one has an expectation that I will rattle sabers for their cause. It’s YOUR cause, not mine. I may share the same belief and if that is the case, then great, we can rattle sabers together. Generally, my interest in other people’s causes is one of understanding why someone is mobilizing and participating in their cause. Unless your cause is a crime against humanity, I am perfectly OK with anyone having their causes.  I had a good friend for a long time. There was a situation where he was extraordinarily passionate about something however, I did not share the same views. To me, it did not matter, I sought to understand his views bu...