There I was sitting, with eleven esteemed HR consultants, all sporting Masters Degrees in Psychology and we tackled the definition of ‘Leadership.’ The result? It was much like discovering that the Zulu language has literally hundreds of names for a cow; the inputs were inconclusive and subjective. No truth or fact emerged.
Let’s be frank, Psychology is not a truly scientific discipline a lot of the time. We struggle, for example to succinctly and coherently explain what culture is, how the mind and brain interact (if at all). We have multiple perspective and views on Motivation and Personality traits. I could go on. We talk a lot about a lot, and often end up shooting in the dark for answers. It seems though that we are still obsessed with certainty and scientific place, and thus may not encourage the scientific paradigm that compels us to challenge and attempt to disprove everything that we believe (or would like to believe) is the truth. We don’t have a disciplinary wide focus that tries to poke holes into all and every theory, idea and so called ‘truth’. So we simply don’t do that, and end up having more theories. We thus talk a lot, about a lot, more of the time.
A Professor of Mathematics made this typically blunt judgement;
‘the problem with psychology is that you are not trying to work your way towards a universal theory, as a result you are breaking it down into further smaller theories.’
The process of science is to eliminate the weak theories and in psychology, it’s evident, we may be doing the exact opposite. Ever noticed how many ideas proliferate with different words and frameworks, and yet essentially are saying the same thing?
Here is the question we might all want to consider as we attempt to find a legitimate place in industry. For every piece of data or fact that we consume and use to enhance our credibility, do we go back to the original study? To the target group? To the time and context? Do we understand the assumptions that were made at the time of that research? Have we looked at the source of it all?
I am sure, because of my own experience that we generally don’t. As a result we trust the author, or article or highlights package and invariable share this as the gospel truth with our stakeholders. So does Culture really eat strategy for breakfast? Find me the evidence!
It seems that in order to move our body of knowledge forward we might need to move away from a dogmatic acceptance of everything we read and hear and want to believe, and should rather apply a healthy scientific scepticism.