LinkedIn Post: You Can't See Your Own Default

Source: NSFW Podcast ep. 124 — "Privilege Can't See Itself" with Lindsi Bollinger (episode-124-privilege-can-t-see-itself-with-lindsi-bollinger.txt, ~8:14–8:30)

Topic: Blind spots, and why comparing notes beats thinking harder

A guest on the show said something I've been turning over for months. She said privilege can't see itself, because privilege is just where you expect more.

That's the whole trick. It doesn't feel like a head start. It feels like the floor. You don't notice you're expecting more than somebody else, because it never occurred to you to expect what they got.

She said the only way you see it is through the outline, the shape that shows up when you start comparing notes with people whose constraints are different from yours.

I think that's true of running a business too, not just politics. Your assumptions about what's fair, what's reasonable, what a client obviously knows, those are invisible to you because they've always been your default. You don't catch them until you sit next to somebody working under a different set of constraints and watch them make a call you'd never have to make.

Most leaders try to fix blind spots by thinking harder about themselves. Doesn't work. You can't see your own default.

You see it by comparing notes. Find somebody who does your kind of work under different constraints and ask how they'd handle your week.

draft from corpus — based on NSFW Podcast ep. 124