Are you suffering from the Peacock Phenomenon?

Human beings are creatures of certainty. None of us like too much change – at least not all at once, and not if we aren’t the architects of it. This leads to a curious phenomenon I frequently see in both leaders and teams. This phenomenon is not as self-evident as the Ostrich Phenomenon – where otherwise intelligent, astute, people manage to bury their heads in the sand and deny what others clearly see coming. This phenomenon is more subtle. I call it the Peacock Phenomenon.

Just like peacocks who seem to have supreme confidence in their own general awesomeness, leaders and teams in the grip of the Peacock Phenomenon seem to craft ingenious logic that means they refuse to truly consider the implications of subtle but significant changes in their environment.

You get left out of key email conversations, missed off invites to meetings, one-to-ones get postponed, feedback seems to be unhelpfully bland, unspecific or absent altogether. In isolation, any of these factors may well be just an oversight, but in combination they may mean something else.

So rather than sticking our heads in the sand or failing to put things together, I think we need to be proactive. Do we need to have a courageous conversation and front foot our concerns? Do we need to read the situation and proactively come up with a solution that addresses the concerns hinted at? Do we need to do some scenario planning individually or as a team and come up with Plan B and Plan C if Plan A doesn’t work out?

As humans, we do better with change we believe we can influence. So, before we get blind-sided, we need to pay attention, put the various messages in context and choose our response, so we and our teams can show up as the best versions of ourselves.