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Opinion: Bankers might feel cheesed off
17/07/2012
By Michael Baxter, author ‘The Blindfolded Masochist’ and editor of Investment and Business News
Lets' face it, it's hard to pick up a newspaper, or watch a TV without seeing the latest in banking bashing.
Some of it, perhaps even a lot, is justified. Our ancestors would determine whether someone was guilty of a certain crime by throwing them in water, if they drowned they were innocent, if they survived they were guilty. I am not saying banker bashing has become a witch hunt, but it may be heading that way.
I am a journalist-come-entrepreneur who produces the newsletter Investment and Business News. I am also the author of a book called The Blindfolded Masochist which is about networks, and how groups can be wise and think brilliantly but can be self-destructive.
The iMA System Seems Pretty Impressive To Me
It essentially starts from the fact that we live in one of four comfort zones, which is determined by whether we are assertive, non assertive, left or right brained. No one comfort zone is better than any other; each has its own strengths.
It is just that when a group of people, for example an investment team at a bank, or even a bank’s board, are dominated by one or two particular comfort zones, the result can be a form of group polarisation, in which certain ideas can be advanced to the detriment of alternative points of view and serve to accidentally confuse.
It may simply be that there are not enough left brained, non assertive types occupying senior positions or trading floors at banks, they are the type that observe the rules and work not so much on instinct but from calculated positions.
The IMA system represents a pretty exciting breakthrough for communication. It teaches us that the way we talk to people must be different, depending... continued on page two >
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