Addressing Denial

I want to talk to you this morning about Denial. I wonder whether you’ve been in denial. I have been many times and sometimes it creeps up upon you and you are not aware of it and other times, something that we willfully do but I think in most cases denial is a problem.

Theologian Walter Brueggemann, tells the story of Toots Shor, a famous New York Salon keeper who died of Cancer. He says, Toot Shor, just few days before he died, told the people around him, “I don’t want to know what I have.” Denial.
Does Denial play out in the market place? Does denial happen in our workplaces, in the offices, in complex situation? I believe it does and Henry Ford is a classic example of that isn’t it?

Henry Ford saw the need for an inexpensive, motorized transportation but when buyers began to look for style and not just functionality, Ford refused to see the facts. And he paid dearly for that. 

Denial in the market place; how does that fall-out for us?

What happens when we have denial?

John Kenneth Galbraith; one of America’s most famous Economist, also Ambassador to India in the Kennedy days; when we have denial, it’s when one’s view of the world remains with the comfortable and the familiar, while the world moves on.

We stay with what is comfortable, with what is worth, with what is familiar and the world has moved on and we are still holding onto something and that can have repercussion isn’t it? That can have a fall-out for us if that is where we are getting stuck, in our leadership, in our management of people because denial leads to missed opportunities. We miss the opportunity to take advantage of a market situation. We miss the opportunity to hire an outstanding person. We miss an opportunity to invest into something. We miss an opportunity to rectify a situation. It’s like the --- frog upon the boiling waters. How do you boil the frog? You don’t put the frog in the hot water but you lure into a ---- complacency, put it in warm water, it stays there and slowly heat the water and pretty soon it can’t jump out because it’s already too late.

That’s what denial does my friend. It makes us miss opportunities that we ought to be taking.

John Kotter; one who is associated with Harvard Business School; says this and he talks to you about significant impediment to change but denial is not wanting to change. The classic symptom denial is

1. A high level of complacency
2. A low sense of urgency

What is the solution?

I believe the solution is to listen to voices around us, below us and outside of our immediate fear; I would think.

I refer to the Bible very often and remember the children of Israel coming out; they would constantly forget about what they were supposed to do, their identity and prophets who were around them, would call them back to reality. They would tell them what to be doing, where they ought to be going and their job was to penetrate the self-deception.

And that’s what we need. We need people who will help us penetrate self-deception.

Richard S. Tedlow who is the Professor ---, Harvard Business School tells us, “A firm that deals with bad news by literally or figuratively dismissing the person who bears it is both in denial and in trouble. Not only will that news go unheard but potential truth-tellers will quickly learn to keep quiet. Or get out.”

And that’s not what you need to have around you. You need people who will come to you and tell you the truth, to tell you the way they see it Or you will create an atmosphere where truth will never get to you and people will just leave.

Again Ford lost out on this because when his own relative Ernest Kanzler came and told him, came and said to him, you need to do something about Ford Model T myopia; Ford fired him and he was actually the brother-in-law of Ford’s only child Edsel. Ford refused to listen.

It’s a good word for us isn’t it, my friends this morning? as we look at Leadership, we look at Management , we look at all that’s happening around us. Are we in comfortable and familiar places and holding onto it while the world is moving on? Do we need to do something about it? Are we in denial? And if we are, what do we do? We watch out for those 2 things that Kotter reminded us of; a high level of complacency and a low level of urgency. What do we do about it? We listen to voices around us. We need to bring truth into our situations.

My hope and prayer to you all this morning is that; just to be a word of advice for you that you will do a reality check and see whether indeed you are in that place or not.

God Bless You All.