305. Fear of Change And The Blind Spots Of Your Leadership

I feel safer in driverless cars than in ones driven by humans.

There, I said it.

You can call me crazy. Feel free to call me whatever you want. Sticks and stones and all that malarkey.

But I’m telling you, there’s a huge difference in comfort and security when a human isn’t involved in the decision-making.

It didn’t take me long to get to this point. It just took one ride in a Waymo for me to see the world through a completely different lens.

But I’m not here to promote Waymo. That’s not my point.

Here’s my point:

Humans are fallible.

Eventually, we will all realize that self-driving cars are better than human driving. Meanwhile, this provides a great analogy for how you should be living your life.

The Human Cost Of Humans

Next time you’re on the highway, watch the drivers.

Watch all the mistakes, all the swerving, all the sudden breaking. Watch the random acts of recklessness and consider how much of that would disappear if it weren’t for human distraction.

In fact, why wait when I can tell you now?

A report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that human error is the primary reason for a mind-blowing 94% of all traffic accidents.

Ninety-four percent!

That’s a lot of percents. It’s almost all of the percents.

That means 35,000 people in the United States die every year all because a human made an error while driving.

That’s like making every resident of Sedona, Arizona disappear because somebody slipped and mistakenly hit the “Don’t touch this or else it will destroy Sedona” button.

Insane, right?!

I know.

As it turns out, this conversation about driverless cars relates to you and your behavior - or at least your mindset. And it definitely relates to your leadership.

It all comes down to three things. The first is the cost of your distractions.

The Cost Of Human Distractions

It’s easy to get distracted. In fact, it’s natural to get distracted, especially when you’re doing things that require either intense thinking - or little to no thinking at all (like driving).

Being distracted is costly.

When it comes to the road, traffic accidents due to human error account for about $310 billion in economic costs per year!2

But cost isn’t just about money, it’s also about time.

Distractions waste time.

Heck, I get distracted whenever I write an article. I just got distracted writing that sentence.

You see, my writing requires me to focus so deeply, that after ten or fifteen minutes my mind naturally wanders off for relief. When I finally guide it back into focus mode, I’ve got to take the time to review where I’ve been and remember where I’m going.

I’m not special (no matter what my mother tells me.)

The average worker is distracted at work for 2 1/2 to 3 hours per day. Even worse, it takes us over 23 minutes to fully refocus on our work after becoming distracted.

Pretty crazy, right?

I thought so too.

In fact, I bet you get distracted all the time.

• Do you look at your email whenever you get a notification?
• How many times per day are you scrolling through social media?
• Do you feel like you have to respond to Slack/Teams messages within seconds of them being sent?
• How often are you multitasking or switching tasks before completing them?
• Do you get mired in boring back-to-back meetings?
• And don’t make me bring up your procrastination problem.

Those are all distractions and they are all taxing.

By the way, driverless cars never EVER get distracted. But humans do.

When it comes to driving, human distractions lead to 35,000 deaths per year.

When it comes to your life, unplanned distractions can stop you from reaching your goals. Or at least they can really slow down the process.

The most important thing you can do right now is to take control of your distractions. There are a few ways you can do this:

• Time block
• Commit to focus periods, like 25 minutes on and 5 minutes off (hashtag pomodoro)
• Take short mindfulness breaks every 2-3 hours to maintain focus.
• Try to understand why you are actually getting distracted. Maybe it’s time to push through some of the discomfort instead of procrastinating.

All of this leads to the inherent fallibility of human nature.

The Inherent Fallibility Of Human Nature

The total range of rotation for the human head is 140-180 degrees. And since we only have two eyes in front of our faces, we are simply not engineered to have a 360-degree field of vision (huge props to my dragonfly, rabbit, and hammerhead shark readership).

When it comes to driving, a lack of 360-degree vision is a big problem. We can’t see all around us. Driverless cars can. They can see everything all around them all at once.

Humans naturally make mistakes because we can’t see everything.

We are inherently fallible.

But that’s ok. Don’t go putting on your Imposter cloak quite yet. Fallibility is good - it’s the one thing every single human in history has in common.

Understanding your fallibility is one of the most important elements for growth. Because growth isn’t about pretending you’re perfect - it’s about recognizing your blind spots and doing something about them.

As a leadership and team coach, I’ve noticed that the best leaders are the ones who surround themselves with people who can see the things they can’t. They know their blind spots, ask for input from others, and trust the feedback.

In life and leadership, admitting your fallibility isn’t a weakness, it’s a strength. The sooner you acknowledge what you can’t see, the sooner you can build the support that keeps you from crashing.

And this leads us right to your fears.

Because You’re Scared Doesn’t Mean It’s Scary

People are scared of driverless cars. I get it. Maybe you’re scared to lose control. Perhaps you just don’t understand how the technology can be reliable.

[Editor’s Note: should we tell them that commercial airplanes have been mostly driverless for decades?]

But here’s the thing: fear of driverless cars isn’t really about the cars themselves. It’s about you. It’s about your fear of stepping into the unknown, where clarity is less crystal and more like a thick soupy fog.

Change feels scary. Not because it’s inherently bad, but because it’s unfamiliar.

But remember, you’ve gone through a lot of really scary changes in your life already. You rode a bike for the first time without training wheels. You started a new job. You maybe moved to a new location.

You weren’t afraid of the bike, the job, or the new location, you were scared of what would happen if it didn’t go as planned.

Most of our fear is based on a fear of uncertainty.

But personal growth (and great leadership) means getting comfortable with discomfort. It means facing the unknown when the known no longer works.

How are you holding on to the past when the present is already in the future?

[You know what, that sentence sucked, let’s try again.]

Are you ready to trust that the uncertainty you fear may actually be better than you ever imagined? I hope so, ‘cause that’s the entire point of me writing this and it’d kinda suck if we both wasted our time.

The Grand Takeaways

Fallibility is universal.

Fear of change is completely natural.

But growth? Well, that one is your choice.

Change (like driverless cars), isn’t inherently bad. It’s just different.

When we are confronted with “different”, it tends to trigger our need for control and comfort.

But as a leader, it’s critical for you to embrace your fallibility and confront your fear of the “different”. Always staying in the comfort zone isn’t always going to be comfortable. Eventually, it’s going to start holding you and your team back.

Remember, even if you’re scared, it doesn’t mean the change isn’t worth it.

Maybe it’s time to get in a driverless car and see the world from a different seat.

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I'm Jeff Matlow and this is The Best Leadership Newsletter Ever, a weekly way to reframe your daily behavior and catapult your career, like understanding why work-life balance is a lie.

I quickly transform teams into high-performing, collaborative units.

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