➔ Leadership in practice

I’m halfway through a brilliant new book, and I had to write about it. 

In 2013, the head of Sony Pictures Entertainment attended a table read for a new comedy script. The room had that electric energy that sometimes surrounds a project when major stars are in the room. By the end of the reading, Sony’s chief executive, Michael Lynton, skipped his normal process feedback notes and second thoughts and approved the film on the spot. No feedback. No pushback. Nothing.

The script was for The Interview, a satire about two journalists recruited by the CIA to assassinate the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. The project came from Seth Rogen and his longtime collaborator Evan Goldberg. Rogen had a track record of hits. And leverage. He worked closely with both Sony and Universal Pictures, so if one studio thought a script was too risky, the other might take the gamble instead. Those gambles often paid off. For Sony, saying yes could look bold. Saying no could look timid. 

In From Mistakes to Meaning, Lynton admits the decision wasn’t purely strategic: “We rushed into the decision giddy about the project, thrilled to have outflanked our competition at Universal Studios and, alas, oblivious to the potential ramifications.”

But competition wasn’t the real reason. Lynton admits that, as a child, he often felt like an outsider, a feeling that continued into his work at Sony, where he was seen as the spreadsheet guy. He’s had enough. He was sick of being the parent. Sick of being the fun police. Sick of saying “No!” Lynton laid out his mistake clearly: “All I wanted to do was be with the cool kids.”

The geopolitical fallout became global news. North Korea hacked Sony. Thousands of internal emails were leaked. Relationships with major stars were shattered. At one point, Lynton even received a call from Barack Obama asking, “What were you thinking?”

Most of us recognise the instinct. We’re wired to want to be liked. But the job of a creative leader isn’t to be liked by the cool kids. It’s to help everyone we lead make their best work. Ideally without triggering an international crisis.

The theme of this week’s newsletter is difficult feedback.

Enjoy,

Hugh

Go deeper:

Notes:

#1 The hack exposed unreleased films, the script for the next James Bond, private salaries, and brutally honest email exchanges about A‑listers, which strained relationships with stars like Will Smith, Adam Sandler and Angelina Jolie

#2 The attackers called themselves “Guardians of Peace” and issued 9/11‑style threats against cinemas, which led major theatre chains to refuse to screen the film before Sony pulled the wide release.

#3 In the book, Lynton admits he wanted “to join the badass gang that made subversive movies” and “hang, as an equal, with the actors.”

➔ Systems and frameworks for thinking

I was working with a client recently when they gave me some feedback. “I’m not feeling it.” That’s it. Four words. Almost no information.

Feedback like that used to eat a younger version of me alive. My brain would immediately start writing a story about what those words meant. “They hate the idea. I’ve missed the brief. They’re losing confidence in me.” It’s a lot to take away from such little data.

Misinterpreting poorly delivered feedback is a habit many of us have experienced. If it isn’t managed well, it can knock a project off course, turn it into conflict or sink it before it’s even out of the traps.

The organisational theorist Chris Argyris has a name for this tendency to escalate feedback into a horror story inside our brains. He calls it the Ladder of Inference.

At the bottom of the ladder sits the raw data - what was actually said. But we rarely stay there. We select the parts of words that catch our attention, interpret what they mean, make assumptions about intent, draw conclusions, and turn those conclusions into beliefs. Before long, we’re acting on a wild horror story our brain assembled in seconds.

Argyris suggested the only reliable way to defuse moments like this is to climb back down the ladder. Return to the data and separate the comment from the interpretation.

Once you’re back at the bottom of the ladder, a few simple questions can help build on the initial feedback. “Which part isn’t landing for you?” “What were you hoping to see here?” “Is it the idea, the tone, or something else?” And a favourite, “What would make this 10% better?” Questions like these bring the conversation back to observable information.

Often, when feedback sounds like a nightmare, it rarely is - it’s just poor communication and a story the brain wrote a little too quickly.

Notes:

#1 Argyris’ point was that most of us sprint up all seven rungs of the ladder in under a second, from raw data to action, without ever noticing we left the ground.

#2 Neuroscience work on threat shows that ambiguous social cues (“I’m not feeling it”) light up similar circuits to physical danger - your amygdala does not see a big difference between “this lion might eat me” and “this client might fire me.”

#3 Negotiation teachers at Harvard use the ladder to help people slow down during tough conversations: they train you to say “Here’s the data I’m reacting to…” before you offer any judgment.

➔ Lifting the lid on what’s happening inside our brains when we do creative work

In the early 2000s, neuroscientist Drew Westen ran a clever experiment. He recruited committed supporters of George W. Bush and John Kerry, placed them inside fMRI scanners, and showed them examples where their chosen candidate appeared to contradict themselves.

Participants were asked to read the evidence and decide whether it showed their candidate contradicting themselves. But something else was happening inside their brains.

When people encountered information that challenged their political hero, the parts of the brain associated with careful reasoning, the prefrontal cortex, didn’t immediately spring into action. Instead, the amygdala, the brain’s threat detection system, became active. Regions linked to emotion and conflict lit up, while the circuits responsible for cool, analytical thinking remained relatively quiet.

Rather than acting like a judge weighing evidence, their brains were behaving more like a lawyer building a defence. Participants quickly began searching for ways to dismiss the contradiction. They questioned the source, reinterpreted the wording, or invented explanations that allowed their candidate to remain innocent. And when they successfully explained the inconsistency away, something curious happened - their brain’s reward centres lit up, as their mind congratulated itself for protecting the belief.

Westen called this motivated reasoning. It helps explain why difficult feedback inside teams can feel surprisingly intense. When someone challenges an idea we care about, the brain can interpret that challenge as a threat to competence, identity, or status. Once the brain’s threat circuitry fires, the question quietly changes. We stop asking, “Is this idea right?” and start asking, “How do I defend it?”

It’s temting to remove disagreeenment rom teams but great leadership is about creating conditions where disagreement doesn’t feel like a personal attack. When people feel psychologically safe, the brain’s alarm system quietens and the reasoning centres come back online.

Go deeper:

Notes:

#1 Once participants had mentally explained away the inconsistency, reward circuits fired in a pattern similar to what shows up when addicts get a hit of their drug.

#2 Westen’s team didn’t see the same effect when participants looked at neutral figures (like Tom Hanks); the neural fireworks were specific to beliefs people were emotionally invested in.

#3 Westen notes that “everyone from executives and judges to scientists and politicians may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret ‘the facts’.”

🔗 Quick links to more stories 📖

Adam Grant on how to argue better - “The highest compliment from someone who disagrees with you is not ‘You were right.’ It’s ‘You made me think.’ (8 min read)

The Gut Decision Matrix: When to Trust Instinct and Intuition - A good read and a useful tool to help you make sense of the difference between Instinct and Intuition and how to act on each. (4 min read)

Ambiguity is expensive - Why the mind prefers a fast, negative story - Sometimes, no feedback can be worse than badly delivered feedback: “For most of human existence, missing a genuine threat could be fatal, while overestimating one was merely inefficient. As a result, our predictive systems tilt toward caution. They prioritise potentially negative information and generate simulations that err on the side of danger.” (6 min read)

How much money can you make in 2 hours with only $5? - I came across this via Neil Perkin’s Only Dead Fish newsletter. The 2 hour/$5 story is a classroom experiment set by Dr Tina Seelig in which one group earned $650 in the most brilliant way. It’s a great lesson in reframing problems and reevaluating our skills. (4 min watch)

Everybody wants to………., but nobody wants to…….. . - I really liked this from Alex Morris’ excellent Stratscraps newsletter. ⬇️⬇️⬇️

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