Projection Inevitably Limits and Corrupts Feedback Processes (Premise 5)

No More Feedback — Chapter 13

This chapter is an excerpt from No More Feedback: Cultivate Consciousness at Work, the first in a series of books on toxic practices in the workplace. Read the introduction and previous chapter here on Medium, and find links to purchase the full book here.

Individuals without mature inner thoughts and emotions tend to offer feedback based on their dysfunctional worldviews, rather than any reality they see outside of themselves. When groups come together to provide feedback on other groups, they tend to unwittingly collude to offer group projections, shaped by one or more dominant personality or based on confusing jumbles of unreliable opinions. In addition, because of the way our human minds work, most often feedback results in maximization of a part or an element, rather than optimization of the whole, and this inevitably leads to runaway. For this reason, in any situation where reflections on behavior are shared, it is essential to develop processes to overcome the almost universal tendency toward personal projection.

The human tendency toward projection is cogently described in the form of an old Æsop’s fable, which tells how each of us carries two heavy bags, one on our back and one on our front. The one on our back is…