Eric Kaufmann
We do not see the world as it is. We see it as we need it to be – organized, often invisibly, around three drivers: the need to be right, the need to be liked, and the need to have might. Eric Kaufmann calls this ego-myopia. The trouble isn't that we have it; it's that it operates in the one place we can't look from: inside our own perception. You can't read the label from inside the jar.
This colloquium takes that problem seriously rather than solving it reductively. Kaufmann brings what twenty-five years in executive coaching has taught him about how ego-myopia distorts decisions, fractures teams, and throttles a system's intelligence – and about the wisdom, love, and power that become available as it loosens.
But the harder question is the one we'll sit in together: how does a self, or a system, develop the capacity to see its own organizing distortions while still inside them? What actually moves a person – or a team, or a polity – from inside the jar to reading the label?
Bring your own cases, your own frameworks, your own skepticism. This works best as a room thinking out loud.