The Power of Open-Minded Leadership: Projective Thinking Explained

Projective thinking can be an effective tool for leaders. We tend to see our strongly held beliefs to be true and then see everything through this prism. Our thinking is mostly reactive. Projective thinking needs us to suspend belief; create context, concepts and speculate. It is about being open minded and imaginative.

Human mind is intelligent enough to fit logic into anything. And so people can argue against anything new.

Even scientists and science falls into this trap and many times is blind to whatever is in front of it and which is not part of existing frameworks. Ignaz Semmelweis first suggested the idea that doctors should throughly clean  their hands between handling pregnancies and corpses or they were killing too many women. This was seen as so disruptive that he was ostracised and eventually he died in an insane asylum as fallout of this.

In the middle ages, in the era of extensive religious wars, Akbar, an Indian emepror came up with Din I Illahi, an eclectic religious thinking, that combined ideas from Islam, Hindusim, Christianity and other religions. While this did not become the state religion, it promoted the idea of tolerance and co-existence.

In the Indian business context Tatas realised that benefiting the society can help the business itself. Unlike almost all the groups, they made social responsibility their central theme. They had one ad of a steel company that talked about their various social initiatives and then ended with ‘ We also make steel’.

Projective thinking is about completely new paradigms and is the basis of innovation for leaders.