Enemies & Allies of Collective Intelligence

Two formidable enemies of collective intelligence are: imposter syndrome and toxic narcissism.

Why do brilliant and accomplished people suffer from imposter syndrome? In my experience it’s because they believe that others think that they know more than they actually do, and they live in fear of being found out that they’re deficient. That fear gets amplified and reinforced in a workplace where job titles carry with them the expectation that your technical expertise includes comprehensive and instant retrieval of anything and everything related to your job description. But how many of you reading this ever knew ahead of time everything required to do the job for which you were hired? Don’t we usually discover, while performing the job, multiple areas of ignorance that require us to learn how to cope with novel situations? And do we feel like impostors when learning to resolve those issues?

Impostor syndrome has roots in the competition inherent in the university-corporate-meritocracy-complex which overvalues individual expertise. This is a holdover from an earlier age of thinking when it was possible for one individual (nearly always a man) to know enough to solve big problems through expertise alone. The interconnected nature and staggering magnitude of things like climate change, global governance, crime, addiction, authoritarianism, etc., have long since demonstrated the futility of overvaluing individual expertise. Sadly, many remain stuck in this mode of thinking even if they recognize its inability to cope with today’s messy problems. Surely the next expert will have the answer!

As our species awakens to the complexity of what some call the “poly-crisis,” dismantling the social constructions of imposter syndrome becomes necessary so that we can gain access to the larger possibilities afforded when we learn to integrate diverse perspectives. One way to do this is to let go of the practice of showing each other up and shift to showing each other off. Acknowledge and appreciate the value in what someone who sees things differently than you do offers instead of trying to denigrate or out do them. Learn to appreciate that different perspectives each contribute to enlarging our collective understanding.

What becomes possible when we acknowledge the legitimacy of each person’s view – no matter how odd or narrow it may seem to us – as representing some part of the whole we don’t see? What shifts when we treat those with whom we disagree as holding missing pieces of the puzzle we are attempting to solve?

“Solutions to complex problems take many dissimilar minds and points of view to design, so we have to do that together, linking up with as many other us-twos as we can to form networks of dynamic interaction. I’m not offering expert answers, only different questions, and ways of looking at things.” 

~ Tyson Yunkaporta in Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

What if the antidote to impostor syndrome is not acquiring more knowledge? What if, instead of trying to be the smartest person in the room, learning to listen and weave the knowledge of disparate people into a tapestry of shared understanding proves a more worthy goal? 

The other big obstacle to making groups smarter is toxic narcissism. It helps to recognize that if you are human, you are a narcissist. No shame in that, we all want and need to love ourselves and be loved by others and that makes each of us a bit narcissistic. The problem arises when we overvalue our perspective to the point where we are unable to acknowledge the validity of viewpoints that we don’t agree with. If there’s someone in the room who believes that they alone know more about what is going on than anyone else, and they alone can fix things, you are dealing with a case of toxic narcissism because such people are incapable of seeing beyond the limits of their thinking. As long as they insist on being “the one” with the “right” answer, collective intelligence will be elusive. It’s helpful to adopt a stance of never being more than 98% certain about anything. Allowing a 2% chance that you could be mistaken opens up the possibility of more satisfying collaborations with people and increases the chances that your team or organization can perform at a higher level. It also introduces a much needed note of humility, something required for any group to become collectively intelligent.

If you work in a siloed organization, don’t ask how to break down the siloes. Ask how to build bridges between siloes so that people want to step out and contribute their best thinking. Help everyone see that they each have a part of the whole and, when enough parts get assembled, something better and more useful than individual expertise will come into focus.

Make the effort to include the people who are usually left out of the conversation and the chances are good that you will piece together a much richer understanding of the challenges before you, and you’ll be able to generate more innovative coping strategies.

A core principle of collective intelligence is to make collective knowledge visible. Create ways to honor and reflect what each person contributes, and you begin to tap the genius of collective intelligence. If you build a deeper shared understanding, then a fuller picture of whatever your group is working on emerges. That in turn opens up more possibilities for creating the future you’re working towards. 

©Ken Homer • 4.28.23