Psychological distancing—stepping back along identity, place, and time—helps leaders reduce biases and perceive situations more clearly. Distancing techniques include imagining oneself as someone else, occupying a different role, or viewing a decision from the future. Strategic reframing can break paralysis caused by attachment to current practices or loss aversion, as illustrated by leaders who shifted company direction after imagining an outsider's choice. Distancing enables focus on core objectives, better risk assessment, and improved decision quality. Practical application of distancing fosters organizational effectiveness, clearer priorities, and stronger leadership judgment under uncertainty.
Great leaders have a superpower that lets them remove many of their biases, see reality more clearly, and make better decisions: distance. By distancing themselves from situations along the dimensions of identity (what if I were someone else?), place (what if I was in a different position?), and time (what if I was in the future?) they can connect with the essence of what is truly important.
In the early 1980s, Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove, who were running Intel, faced a critical dilemma. Intel, founded a decade and a half earlier, was slipping in its original business-memory chips-but had developed a new product, the 4004 microprocessor. The two leaders remained paralyzed for over a year, unable to make the decision to shift the company's focus to microprocessors because the idea of abandoning memory chips was just too painful.
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