We create stories to fit our lens

I was looking at an image of Styrofoam plates scattered on a surface. They all appeared upside down - until I noticed one cup among them that looked upright. The moment I saw the cup the right way, everything reorganised. The plates were no longer upside down. Nothing in the image had changed. Only how I looked at it had.

I showed it to my wife. She experienced the same shift.

She commented - this is how we are with people and with things. We form a view and then we look through it, not at it. If I find something I dislike about someone, I keep finding more. If I admire someone, I keep excusing what I don't like. We find stories to fit our lens.

For a leader, the cost of a single story about a person, a new team member, a market shift, a technology (like AI) is high. It shows up in who and what gets heard in a room, who gets a second chance after a mistake, whose idea gets taken seriously.

The leader may never notice the lens. The people around them almost always do.