Seeing Through the Eye: Training Your Team’s "Right Mind"

The Vision Problem

The poet William Blake once wrote:

This life’s dim windows of the soul / Distorts the heavens from pole to pole / And leads you to believe a lie / When you see with, not through, the eye.

In the heat of a difficult project or team situation, you often see with the eye. You see a teammate who is “lazy,” a boss who is “controlling,” or a “Constantly Complaining Teammate” (CCT) who looks like a vicious dog ready to attack.

But RMT’s Right Choice Model teaches you that this is a distortion. When you see with the eye, you are following the Ego. You are believing the lie that the conflict is only outside of you. To find solutions to your difficulty, you must learn to see through the eye using Reason.

Element #2: The Psychological Goal

While Element #1 defines your team’s destination (Customer Satisfaction), Element #2 is the team’s agreed-upon map of how you will behave on the journey.

Element #2 is your collective commitment; it is your “Right-Minded” thought system. In this system, you acknowledge a simple truth: Your thoughts precede and cause your behavior. If you want to change how your team acts, you must first change how teammates think.

The Decision-Maker’s Choice

The Decision-Maker, which is you and is right there in the middle of RMT’s Right Choice Model, has only two choices as to how to respond in every difficult situation:

The Lower Loop (Ego): Rejection, attack, and defensiveness. This is “seeing with the eye.” It leads to a divided team.
The Upper Loop (Reason): Accepting, Forgiving, and Adjusting. This is “seeing through the eye.” It recognizes that an “attack” is primarily a desperate call for help.

Your Call to Action: Establish Your Team’s Psychological Goal

Don’t wait for a crisis to decide how you and your teammates will behave. Establish your team’s psychological goal now. Take the time in your next team meeting to define your shared commitment. This is the first step in how to train your team’s “Right Mind.”

The Exercise:

As a team, complete this sentence or one that accurately states your team’s goal and even post it so everyone can see it:

“As a team, we choose to follow Reason. When mistakes happen, we will not [Ego Behavior—e.g., blame or punish]. Instead, we will [Reason Behavior—e.g., learn, recover, and do no harm].”

Go Deeper:

Defining these attitudes is the starting line, but living them requires a structured approach. To learn more ways your team can create a fit-for-purpose psychological goal and explore the full list of 30 Right-Minded Attitudes, pick up your copy of Right-Minded Teamwork in Any Team or How to Apply the Right Choice Model.

May Oneness be with you.