Reality Distortion in Leadership: How Cognitive Bias Undermines Teams and Feedback

Reality Distortion Leadership: The Steve Jobs Effect

Steve Jobs was famous for creating a reality distortion field. Black is white — doesn’t matter, just do it. And people did it, and they achieved things. Though sometimes the field would fail, and the company and its products would suffer for it: the Macintosh and NeXT are textbook examples.

Yesterday, at a strategy session in a large company, I witnessed two other versions of distorted reality.

When Leaders Fall in Love With Their Own Product

A client invited to the strategy session — a smart move, by the way, to bring in an outside perspective — gave feedback on how the operations department actually worked. He named specific problems he had observed firsthand as a customer. A representative from the operations team stood up and passionately delivered a speech about everything that had been done to make the department run well.

But all of it sounded as if the client had somehow interacted with an entirely different operations department — not the one standing in the room. This is what happens when we fall too deeply in love with our own product: we stop seeing the cracks. A reminder of the x10 rule from Growth Hacking — perception of results can be wildly off from reality.

Cognitive Bias in Leadership: The Recognition Gap

The second case. A department head gave feedback: we nearly burned out, but we got there — we overtook our competitor. They expected praise. Nothing came.

The CEO, for his part, explained that his primary goal had long been set at a completely different altitude — well above the mountains, so to speak. They delivered 100 million rubles; the CEO is already thinking in billions. What does this tell us? It tells us that different people operate at different levels of perceived achievement. For the CEO, 100 million stopped being a result a long time ago — it is simply a stepping stone toward a billion. For the frontline employee, it is a real accomplishment.

How Reality Distortion Destroys Feedback and Team Trust

The key point here: do not devalue. Do not dismiss a subordinate’s effort. Do not distort their reality. Give feedback where feedback is due — acknowledge the achievement for what it is.

On the other side of this equation: if you are a frontline employee, try to grasp the scale of your leader’s thinking. Your job, in part, is to serve the leader’s vision. That means understanding where their mind actually is — and then going there.

All names, companies, and identifying details have been changed.