You’ve been lied to your entire life. Some lies are small, told to you as you watch a television drama or a film at the movie theater. We’re okay with being lied to in that way—so much so, that there’s even a term for it: suspension of disbelief. We come to a kind of agreement with the director: If you promise to entertain me, I’ll promise to stop disbelieving in aliens and a hero who can single-handedly save the universe. We accept these little lies as harmless entertainment. Other lies are bigger, frequently told by us about others and their intentions. There’s a term for that kind of lie too: fundamental attribution error. One of the reasons we allow these bigger lies into our lives is that we don’t stop and check our paradigms.

Dr. Covey popularized the term “paradigm,” which comes from the Greek root paradigma, meaning a pattern, model, or representation of something. Our paradigms are the perceptions, frames of reference, worldviews, value systems, or lenses through which we see everyone and everything, including ourselves. They add meaning, true or false, to the world around us, and affect the way we interpret what we see and experience, and how we interact and relate with others.

Our paradigms are perhaps the most powerful tools we have in how we interact with others. It's worth serious introspection to check why we view others the way we do and correct any misperceptions or outdated beliefs.

I once had a fairly successful friend in the movie industry who had lots of credits to her name, working mostly on the production side of both movies and television. This friend once said something in passing that I’m sure she would never remember (and while she likely didn’t offer it with the same gravitas I received it, I’ve pondered her words for three decades now). When referring to an up-and-coming actor, she remarked, “I knew them when they were nothing.” It was a phrase I’d hear her repeat about other actors as well.

Now, it wasn’t the fact that her words were particularly unkind or mean-spirited that stuck with me, but that they exposed one of her paradigms. Over her career, this former friend had worked with numerous famous individuals. Many had started out as proverbial starving artists, performing in community theaters and living hand-to-mouth before working their way up to fame and wealth (unlike you and me, who were catapulted into the C-suite without hard work or experience; I highly recommend this second strategy—please email me at scott.miller@franklincovey.com and tell me how it worked for you). Her operating paradigm seemed to be that nobody really earned their success. They were forever tethered to how they started, which is absurd because we all started from somewhere—except for royalty, and my sense is that many of them want out. The power of that paradigm shaped her thoughts, actions, and beliefs regarding many people she knew. She had a fixed paradigm about who people were when they “started” instead of who they eventually became. My personal management mess appeared when I fell into the same limiting trap.

I’d worked with “Andy” for over a decade, and we had formed a friendship outside of our professional lives. We attended family birthday parties, traded career challenges over the backyard BBQ, and I genuinely thought of him as someone I both respected and trusted. But despite our friendship and our long working history, we had a rather public falling-out (one of less than a handful in my entire life, but painful nonetheless).

When I first met Andy, he was a junior entry-level associate—young, competent, fun, and hardworking. Because I was both older and more senior to him in the company, I based part of my paradigm on the organizational pecking order: My rung on the career ladder is higher than yours. And let’s face it: a good portion of my self-esteem was tied to my place on the ladder, so having a few rungs between us felt safe, at least to me.

The problem with this paradigm was that Andy was getting promoted through his hard work, successfully delivered projects, and refined professional skills. All the while, I never checked my paradigm or became introspective about why hierarchy mattered so much to me. Our falling-out had to do with the inevitable collision between my outdated paradigm and a new reality.

How arrogant of me.

It came to a head when Andy, now working directly on a project for the CEO, asked for “in-progress” work samples from my team. I’m the first to admit Andy was simply doing his job and executing on what the CEO had asked him to do. This was all well and good, but I had a long-standing policy of NEVER showing “in-progress” work because it rarely, if ever, produced a good outcome with the CEO. The nature of my team’s projects benefited from stakeholders seeing a finished or near-finished product, rather than having to try to visualize and understand how the “work in progress” would ultimately come together. Where my paradigm got me into a mess wasn’t the nature of the request (generally reasonable), but the fact that I viewed Andy as my “junior.” So instead of explaining my point of view and offering to go to the CEO to better understand the nature of the request, I took it as a subordinate disrespecting my process. I reacted harshly, shutting him down publicly in front of my team and sending him on his way empty-handed. For whatever reason, my paradigm about Andy and his role had remained rigidly locked into place. That’s no excuse for how I behaved, but it does help me understand why I behaved the way I did and the need for me to change.

Later that day, and over the course of the next few days, I tried to apologize, but our relationship had fractured beyond repair. With the benefit of hindsight, it became glaringly obvious that paradigms may start out true, but can often lose their veracity over time. You don’t have to have a negative view to end up with an inaccurate paradigm. A paradigm can be a snapshot in time. Go too long without checking it, and you may fail to recognize how people (and even the world) have changed around you. That was a hard lesson to learn, sadly, for us both.

Fortunately for Andy, he didn’t need me to succeed and has gone on to be a high-contributing associate in the organization. And I’ve worked hard to be mindful of how I view others, situations, and the nature of the paradigms I hold. I can honestly report I’m better at this than I once was.

Our paradigms are perhaps the most powerful tools we have in how we interact with others. It’s worth serious introspection to check why we view others the way we do and correct any misperceptions or outdated beliefs.