How To Read The Room, See What Others Miss, and Be Right More Often | Kirstin Ferguson

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Health & Fitness, Mental Health

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2025

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Your blindspots and biases block your success and happiness. Here's how to navigate that.

Dr Kirstin Ferguson AM is an award-winning leadership expert, author and columnist, ranked among the top 50 management thinkers in the world. Her career began in the Royal Australian Air Force and includes roles as CEO of a global consultancy and Acting Chair of the ABC. She holds a PhD in leadership and culture, writes the popular 'Got a Minute?' column in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and is a Member of the Order of Australia.

In this episode we talk about:

The concept of blindspotting – what it is and how to do it
The power of intellectual humility and how to practice it
The difference between seekers and knowers – and when each mindset is useful
The three major thinking traps
How to disentangle ego from identity, manage defensiveness, and turn feedback into growth
The role of curiosity in finding truth, building psychological safety, and leading more effectively
How to "read the room" in workplaces, relationships, and global contexts
The key to good leadership
The importance of modeling uncertainty as a leader

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the 10% Happier Podcast.
0:07.0	I'm Dan Harris.
0:08.0	Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing? Today we're going to talk about how to make fewer
0:23.4	dumb decisions. The truth is we live in a world of constant flux. We may not like that, but it's the
0:30.3	truth. Everything's changing all the time. So the question then becomes, how do you want to engage
0:35.8	with this unpredictable, often chaotic world?
0:39.5	Do you want to be brittle and breakable or subtle and sophisticated?
0:44.1	If like me, you would rather choose the latter, one of the key moves is to confront and work around your blind spots, your biases.
0:53.3	The stories you tell yourself often subconsciously
0:55.7	about the world, about yourself, about other people. These stories can really limit your growth
1:00.7	and block your happiness and your success. The Buddha himself talked a lot about the importance
1:05.8	of not being attached to your views and opinions. He talked about the value of being an
1:10.4	analyst, not a dogmatist.
1:12.4	In fact, one of my favorite Buddha quotes goes something like this.
1:15.3	I might be mangling it, but it's something like this.
1:17.6	Those who cling to views and opinions wander the world, annoying people.
1:23.1	I love that.
1:24.2	I've been that guy, so I really love it.
1:27.1	All of this brings me to my guest today, Dr. Kirsten Ferguson. She's a leadership expert and author. She was introduced to me by our mutual friend, Adam Grant, who's been on this show many times. Curston's got a new book. It's called Blind Spotting. In this conversation, we talk about the concept of blind spotting, what it is, how to do it, the power of intellectual humility and how to practice it in your actual life, the difference between seekers and knowers and when each of those mindsets is useful, the three major thinking traps that we often fall into, how to disentangle ego from identity, manage defensiveness,
2:02.9	which has been a big problem for me, and turn feedback into growth.
2:07.6	Feedback is often very annoying, but often also very valuable.
2:11.4	We also talk about the role of curiosity, building psychological safety on your teams,
	...

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