Leadership is an inherently difficult role and especially so when challenging decisions must be made whilst balancing competing interests. Libraries have been filled with books and articles on this topic, and I hardly want to compete with those, but via the lens of an article recently published in Foreign Affairs, I want to look briefly at the communication and intelligence challenges leaders face.

The article, What the Mighty Miss: The Blind Spots of Power, by Ngaire Woods, focuses on Putin’s miscalculations in his invasion of Ukraine, his underestimation of how the Ukrainians would respond, and his overestimation of the strength of his military. While most leaders do not invade other countries, and most do not set themselves up as pariahs on the scale of Mr. Putin, this article does point out several danger zones in communication, intelligence collection, and decision-making that are relevant to leaders at all levels.

The individualist culture that dominates American culture is a direct result of the market economy that America has been at the forefront of developing over the past 200 years. We may not have created the first stock exchanges, but shortly after its origin in 1792, the New York Stock Exchange emerged as the clear leader in world financial markets.

Buying stock in a company you know little about, from a broker you do not know, is much different than the historical model of trading commodities with your neighbors. It requires a different type and degree of trust. So, while it may seem counterintuitive to how we may believe the market-driven business world operates, those in an individualist culture are very quick to give trust. We have to be or the market economy would not work as it does. Earning someone’s trust in our culture just is not that difficult compared to a collective culture where trust is earned over an extended period, through an ever-evolving web of reciprocity. Individualist cultures trust and then verify. Collective cultures, verify, verify again, and then consider trusting.

There are those who theorize that culture does not matter in interviewing—that if you consider the person in front of you, not worrying about cultural differences, you’ll get the best results—but the research proves this theory incorrect. Culture matters, and if we deal with someone from a different cultural background solely through our own cultural lenses, we’re very unlikely to reach a profitable outcome.

Regardless of whether you are aware of it, or believe it matters, you grew up in a culture, and that culture shaped how you perceive the world. Every bit of information that comes your way and every thought that results, happens through the filters your particular culture has created and continues to create within you. The mix of culture that develops within you may be different than those around you, but it will share many similarities and it will always be there in the background churning through the data.

“…half the time when someone asks you a question with a W, they aren’t really asking you a question. They’re making a statement in disguise.” (Amor Towles, The Lincoln Highway.)

This last week I was facilitating a group of undergraduate seniors on a tour of various law enforcement agencies in the Washington D.C. area. Some of them have never been to D.C. or on any trip like this and the conversation moves often to “why is it like this…and why isn’t it like that?” Why questions are awesome when we are that age and exploring new experiences and forging an understanding of the world. But in the world of investigative interviewing, whether corporate or law enforcement, as powerful as we may want to believe they are, why questions can be problematic.

Up to 80 percent of the choices and decisions we make in life are made at the subconscious level. We don’t weigh the costs and benefits; we don’t consider the long-term implications. An answer simply arrives in our conscious brain, and we act on that answer. We believe it to be the best answer, and that it was made by our conscious, rational brain, so we rationalize until we’re comfortable with it, so long as it generally aligns with our beliefs and values…unless we consciously intervene and overrule the subconscious processes where most of this decision-making takes place.

In any difficult conversation, and especially so when the stakes are high or we are under pressure, we tend to focus on our wants and needs—to see the situation through our lenses—and fail to take the time to see it from the perspective of the people with whom we are interacting. Any good photographer knows that if you change your perspective, you are likely to create something great and unexpected, and the same holds true for life and leadership. Take a different perspective and the outcome is likely to be better.

If you are like me, the word presence, and worse, mindfulness, probably make you shudder a bit. They bring to my mind people who talk too softly, have a preference for gypsy pants, and might want me to perform a group rhythmic dance to help cure trauma I’m not aware of having. That all is pretty much the opposite of my thing. Still, being present and being mindful can make us so much better at interviewing and at our jobs and lives in general, and it doesn’t have to be such an annoying process to get there.

I’ve started teaching undergraduate courses in the Criminal Justice program at New England College. While teaching the concept of drawing inferences from available facts and information, the students were coming up with inferences about the given situation that my expert mind rebelled against. I wanted them to come to the inferences my years of professional experience had already locked in, but they were seeing far greater possibilities.

Each year as the New Year begins, I reflect on what I accomplished last year, what I could have done better, and how I can be better this year. I imagine many of us do the same, making resolutions to learn more and to be better in some aspect of our lives. As I have been thinking about this, my thoughts keep returning to one book…