March 17, 2025 • 26 mins
Pastors facing up to our imposter syndrome - navigating the noise that leads us to make bad decisions.
As Pastors, we feel the pressure to have the right answers to people’s questions.
We want to be able to navigate the complexities of life and church and land everyone safely at the other end.
People share with us and the hardest parts of their lives, they trust us with their most private issues, and time and their money.
And they trust us that we will handle the most complex relationship difficulties with wisdom.
We end up feeling like imposters. Who am I to lead the people of God? And how can I have wisdom here?
Archie Poulos from Sydney’s Moore Theological College has found the secular book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment helpful as he has addressed these issues.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
pastors facing up to our imposter syndrome,
navigating the noise that leadsus to make bad decisions.
It is the pastor's heart anddominic steel.
Archie poulos is our guest now.
As pastors, we feel thepressure to have the right
answers to people's questions,all sorts of questions.
We want to be able to navigatethe complexities of life and
(00:30):
church and then land everyonesafely at the other end.
People share with us thehardest parts of their lives.
They trust us with theirresources, their most private
issues, their time, their money,and they trust us that we'll be
able to handle the most complexrelationship difficulties with
(00:51):
wisdom.
And you know what?
We end up feeling likeimposters.
Who am I to lead the people ofGod and how can I have wisdom
here?
Old friend Archie Poulos iswith us from Sydney's Moore
Theological College.
And look, I picked up thisimposter idea with Gary Miller a
few weeks ago when we talked tohim about his Both and ministry
(01:13):
book.
But even before we had Gary onthe Pastors Heart, archie, you
had said to me this idea that aspastors we feel like imposters.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Of course we do, and there's all sorts of reasons.
Dominic, it's great to be herewith you today, and with
everybody else too.
We feel like imposters.
I think it's more intense evenfor us in ministry, because we
know the importance of whatwe're doing.
This isn't just about makingmoney or anything like this.
This is people's eternal souls,and also we know that God is at
work.
So the person we're workingwith, we're working alongside
(01:49):
God in what he is doing andwho's up to the task, to quote
the Apostle Paul.
And so we do feel likeimposters, because our
congregations keep assuming thatwe will know what to do, we'll
be able to lead them well, andwe keep thinking well, I should
be like that.
And, of course, so often wedon't measure up to what we
expect, what other people expectand the outcomes that we get.
(02:10):
Where do we?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
particularly get it wrong.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I think the book that I want to talk about says that
we don't really think so oftenabout the best solution to the
problems that we've got, and sowhat we need to do is we need to
look at what's going on, weneed to interpret what's going
on, and then we need to enactsomething, implement something
(02:36):
that tries and fixes ormaintains or enhances the good
things that are going on, and Ithink at each of those places we
can get it wrong, and so thebook I wanted to talk about is
yeah, let's talk about this.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
It's the book Noise, A Flaw in Human Judgment, a
secular book, but you're sayingit's been a super helpful book.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, it's helpful.
I read these books because God,in his kindness, gives wisdom
everywhere and what we need todo is see what others are
writing, filter it through thelens of God's great revelation
for there's nothing better thanthat and see what we can learn
from it.
So, one of the authors there,cunnaman, daniel Cunnaman I've
(03:18):
spoken about him before.
Some of you will know his otherwork, particularly Fast and
Slow Thinking.
It says it's sold over amillion copies and in that what
he wants to do is he talks aboutbias there, the way that in our
decision-making, that is, weget data but we actually don't
read the data well, becausewe're biased in our
(03:38):
decision-making.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Now there are some jobs where we really assume in
that particular role.
They're going to be objective.
They're the radiographerreading the cancer scan, or the
judge in the court case, orsomething like that.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, if only that were the case.
And you're saying those peopleare frail and yeah, well, that's
not so much the bias one.
That's the next thing that thisbook is about.
With biases, he talks aboutthings I don't know if people
remember the movie Moneyball,but what we do in we naturally
have two pathways that we canthink about with ways of
thinking.
One is what he calls fastthinking, the other one he calls
(04:15):
slow thinking.
We always default to fastthinking.
You've got to train yourself toslow thinking, and what fast
thinking does is it sees asituation and our brain looks
for the closest thing that we'veexperienced to that, and then
we say this is what's going onhere.
And so he uses the example, inbias, of you see a young person,
an 18-year-old, playingbasketball and you say he looks
(04:37):
like Michael Jordan.
Therefore, he is the nextMichael Jordan, and you don't do
what he calls slow thinking,and that is how high can he jump
?
How often does he make baskets,those sorts of things?
And so you are biased becauseyou go for the thing that is
closest to what you'veexperienced before you can
normally.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I mean, when you said that, I thought I'm talking to
somebody about a marriageproblem and I immediately think
where's the problem that I'vehad that's been similar to that.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, yeah, because that's what we naturally do and
you need to function that way.
If you're flying a fighter jetand something happens, you think
what's the closest thing that'sgoing on here that I can get
out of this problem?
For it's a natural way ofthinking.
So that's bias.
What this book is about is adifferent thing, which he calls
noise, and he says noise issomething which we can't easily
(05:27):
measure, don't usually recognizeand is very, very significant.
So, to use his example, he saysbias is, if you can imagine
shooting an arrow at a target.
Bias is the way that your 10arrows are all going underneath
the target, so you're biaseddown.
What he says, the way hedescribes noise, is that you
(05:49):
shoot at the target and it's allaround, but you know you would
think oh well, it's roughly thetarget because there's one above
, one below, one to the side,one to the other side.
That's noise and it's hard tosee because it's just, it's
random.
And he says noise causes usproblems and it affects our
decision-making.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
It affects our decision-making as a
radiographer or as a judge.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, or as a pastor.
Well, actually we'll pick allthree of them.
It's interesting that in thesedays there's a whole new
industry in reading x-rays,because they've worked out that
AI can do it as well or better,because there's noise and
sometimes bias, but mainly noiseLike always with judges what
(06:36):
they do in their book.
They are all good researchersand so they've got a whole lot
of evidence behind this, butthey looked at the way judges'
decisions are made in the UnitedStates and they discovered a
few things.
One is that judges gave morelenient sentences after they'd
had lunch than before lunch.
(06:57):
Right, so they were hangry, youknow, they were hungry.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Whereas I would always think I want to be first
on the court list, then I won'tbe kept waiting all day.
I'm better off to wait all dayand then get done at 3pm in
court and get off.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
So that's a noise thing that they discover.
They also discover, too, thejudges, if their football team
or whatever sporting code theyplay, if their team won on the
weekends, they're more likely tobe leaning on the Monday than
if their team had lost on theweekend.
And so that's the sort of thing.
So that's the world of noise inthe secular world For us.
(07:35):
As pastors, we do the same sortof thing all the time.
Let's think of some examples.
It might be individuals.
We preach the gospel to acongregation, but a congregation
is made up of individuals anddifferent people hear different
things and respond differently.
And what noise is going onthere?
(07:56):
So one person embraces what yousay and takes it even further,
so they are more black and whitethan you are.
Another person says, oh, whatwould he have to know about this
?
He doesn't understand mysituation, so he ignores you,
and so there's a whole lot ofnoise around what you're saying.
That's an example of how we doit.
Likewise, our small groups canbe like that too.
(08:18):
How effective is my small group?
You could say well, this smallgroup has seen more people grow
than that small group.
That's a bias issue.
But within a small group, again, you can have this noise.
Some people are growing reallywell, some people are not
growing at all those sorts ofthings, and so how do you
measure that type of noise oreven our congregational life?
(08:41):
Who is it that we think we arewanting to reach?
And who is it that we think weare wanting to reach?
And who is it that we arereaching?
I'm sure in your congregation,in my congregation, there's
noise around that Some peopleare saying we are just reaching
people just like me, because Ilook around here and I see
people who are just like me.
Others are saying, oh, I lookaround the congregation and
there are all of these people ofwhatever ethnic background.
(09:03):
So this is who we are reaching,and so there's noise around
even the people we're trying toreach and what we are trying to
do in this particular place, inour churches.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So you're using noise in a few different ways.
That word I think I mean At onelevel it's what's going on with
me in the decision that I'mmaking, and what's the other way
.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Well, that's one.
The way I make decisions.
There is noise that are goingon for me, because in my head I
am not just a blank slate tryingto work out what's going on in
front of me.
I'm the product of things thathave gone on in the past and so
it affects my decision making.
The other way that I'm usingnoise, I think, is corporately,
(09:44):
that the way people areresponding is noisy and it and
it's not biased gen, sorrysometimes and I should expect
there to be noise in their livesyou know well, there there is
noise, and so is the noisesomething that you can try and
diminish.
This is what their argument isthat if you can measure noise,
you can actually then try anddiminish it.
So you can try and diminish.
This is what their argument isthat if you can measure noise,
you can actually then try anddiminish it so you can get
(10:05):
closer to the centre of thetarget.
So, rather than having hugedistances away from the target
that the arrows are hitting, youcan say this is what we want to
hit and these are things thatare getting in the way of us
hitting it.
So let's try and minimise thoseso we get closer to what we're
striving to do, which, of course, is what our task as pastors is
(10:25):
is to use the resources Godgives us.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So let me give you my little takeaway of how this I
think applies to me, and thenyou can broaden it out.
Tuesday afternoon, the pastor'sheart, and I find Tuesdays
stressful.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I'm stressful enough sitting here with you.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
But if I think about Sunday, it's people, people,
people all day and I've haddeadlines to get the sermon
together.
And then Monday I haveone-on-one meetings, staff
meetings, and then almost alwaysa committee meeting Monday
night.
I've got to get up to preparefor this early in the morning,
(11:08):
and then I have no people onWednesdays.
But I find at the end of thison Tuesday afternoon I'm just
about ready to bite someone'shead off.
You know you should not have apastoral conversation with me at
5 o'clock on.
Friday, tuesday 5 o'clock onTuesday and in fact we've ended
up with a community group onTuesday night at our place, so
(11:32):
I've got to go home at 3 o'clockand not talk to anyone for a
few hours because there's toomuch noise in my head.
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, that is a great example, dominic and uh, of
what noise is in our sort ofsetting.
But the other thing too is goodon you for being able to see
that, because the sorts ofcomments that you are likely to
make, the sorts of assumptionsabout yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, it'll be assumptions really bad at 5 pm
tuesday and so it's in.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
It's important to think about noise.
Uh, the other thing I likedabout the book some of which we
can appropriate and some of itwe shouldn't is that they talk
about ways to overcome noise,and there's two things I want to
pick up in it.
Some of them I don't think areparticularly Christian.
One of the ways that they sayyou minimise noise is what they
(12:22):
call algorithms, and by thatthey mean just good practices
that we know generally work, andI think often in our ministry.
We want to leave a mark inministry, which is not a bad
thing at all.
We do want the Lord Jesusglorified through what we do, so
we want to leave a mark in ourministry.
So therefore, we want to shapethe ministry the way I want it
(12:45):
to be, and what they say is thatgenerally is more noisy than
having good evidence of otherthings about how to function
properly.
And so in our own setting herein Sydney, we have the Centre
for Ministry Development thatI'm involved in.
We have partners in ministry,we have REACH, all of which have
done research and say here is agood way of doing different
(13:08):
things, of developing people, ofwelcoming all of those sorts of
things.
That is what they would callalgorithms.
So what they've done… Patternsof ministry.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Patterns, yeah, processes, pathways.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Because if you're just doing something once, it's
very easy to have a lot of noisearound that If you've looked at
a thousand different times,it's been done.
What you can do is minimise thenoise.
And yet so often we think, oh,I can't just take this thing off
the shelf.
I want to say that's a reallygood place to start Taking the
thing off the shelf Off theshelf yeah, because they tell us
(13:40):
they've done the research andit says here is a good way of
doing things, a good way ofachieving things.
I think that's really helpful.
I'd want to take it a littlebit further and say and what is
it that's peculiar andparticular about your situation
that you would nuance it?
Sometimes you'll say, well,there's nothing particular and
unusual, so therefore let's doit.
Other times you'll say, yeah,our situation is different for
(14:08):
this reason, but then you'vejustified it and so you've
minimised the noise of doingsomething a little bit
differently.
So I want to say let's keeplooking at what good looks like.
Other people have done goodwork for us in it, so let's take
that on board.
That's the first thing that theysay that is helpful.
The second one is somethingwhich I've spoken to you about
before here on the Pastor'sHeart, and that is they say get
trusted experts to come and havea look at what's going on in
(14:33):
your setting so that they canhelp you to see the noise.
And the reason for that is thatwe can't see the noise.
The argument of the book isnoise is invisible almost all
the time, and so if we try tosay where is the noise?
Where am I making bad decisions?
You know it on Tuesday night,but it probably took you a while
to work that out.
(14:53):
So you need to have the trustedexpert, somebody who understands
your situation, whom you trustand can look as a third party
and so, therefore, inconversation with you, it can
reduce the noise.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I don't think we do that very well, I was just
remembering one of my friendswho was a senior manager at
McDonald's Australia.
He talked about store blindness, that in their McDonald's
stores across the country, intheir McDonald's stores across
the country, the local manageror local owner something would
have happened and they justwouldn't even be able to see
(15:30):
that it was there, that therewas a mess, there was a thing
left in the corner and it hadbeen sitting there for months
and I remember thinking that'sso helpful and that you can walk
into our building at church andwe have a store blindness.
You know, there are things thatwe've got a couple of tabletops
sitting in our auditorium justoff on the far left-hand side
(15:54):
that have been sitting there forsix months, that should have
been put in a store room but youdon't notice it.
But we've got store blindnessabout them.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, yeah, but you don't notice it, but we've got
store blindness about them.
Yeah yeah, I did some researcha few years ago on the topic of
whether churches were welcomingfor outsiders, and one of the
things that I did was I askedmembers of congregations whether
you think you're welcoming foroutsiders and universally they
said we are the friendliestchurch that we know.
(16:24):
And of course they're thefriendliest church because you
go in and catch up with yourfriends.
But if you go in and catch upwith your friends, you're not
paying attention to the newcomer, are you?
So they're actually notparticularly welcoming.
The more friendly they were,the less welcoming they were for
the outsider.
So that's the sort of thing ofnoise Now that consultation.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
You were talking about that external input.
Do we resist that?
Is it pride?
Is it fear?
Territorial?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I think there's a whole lot of things.
I think it's those personalthings that in the denomination
that I'm in we have rectors.
Rectors are kings and so it'smy domain, and so I don't want
somebody telling me what to doin my domain.
And likewise, the person who'snext door feels like what an
(17:13):
intrusion it is for me to go inand say to the other person how
about we talk about, how about Ihave a look at what you're
doing?
Because it looks like I'm beingsuperior.
So we don't do that very well.
So I think we have a siloing ofour ministries.
I want to protect myself as therector.
The other person who is willingto engage with me thinks what
right do I have to speak intothis?
(17:35):
And so I'd want us to be sayinglet's compact with each other
in the same geographical areaperhaps In our setting we have
mission areas and say can I takea video of what's going on in
our church this Sunday and shareit with our group, and you can
tell me what noisy things Icannot see, and next week you
can do it as well and we'll workon it together.
(17:56):
It takes a great deal of trust.
We generally trust each otheras long as we're not challenged.
I think, and I think it'sactually one of the big things
that we need to keep working on.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
We generally trust each other as long as we're not
challenged.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, that is.
Everybody has the sameconvictions as the person next
door.
That's why we're in ministry.
We want to see the Lord Jesusglorified in every part of the
world.
So that's why we trust eachother.
We share the same convictions.
But if you challenge me, it'snot just so that the kingdom of
(18:33):
God might grow, it's I am shownnot to be as good as what I
could be, and there's thisimposter syndrome thing that we
started with.
Being a minister has got to befor a whole lot of reasons, the
hardest thing in the world to do.
One of them is you are yourministry.
(18:54):
We don't speak like this and wedon't want it to be the case,
but it's like being a concertpianist.
The concert pianist's veryidentity is how well they
performed in playing the pianotonight at the concert.
I am an extension of what I do,and in our ministry that is what
happens for us as well, and sowhat we need to do then, for our
(19:18):
own self-image and identity'ssake, is protect it.
And so I'm happy for people tosay, oh yeah, I want to see the
Lord Jesus glorified.
It encourages me to want to seethe Lord Jesus glorified.
But when they come and say Iwant to see the Lord Jesus
glorified, it encourages me towant to see the Lord Jesus
glorified.
But when they come and say Iwant to see the Lord Jesus
glorified, you're doing a greatjob over there, but have you
thought that this could beimproved?
It is so easy to hear that, asyou're an imposter, you're
(19:41):
second rate.
You should have seen this andyou should have done something
about it.
Rather than saying thank youfor that insight Now, can you
help me to work out what weshould do?
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Well, I think you're saying that we're not good at
having those conversations,we're not good at challenging,
we're not good at sharpeningeach other and we're not good at
listening.
Yeah, when have you seen thatdone well, and I mean how can I
(20:12):
do those conversations better?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I'll spruik you a little bit.
You have you're doing a unitedyouth ministry with the Next
Door Parish, yeah, and I assumethat they did some things really
well in their youth ministry.
You did some things really wellin your youth ministry.
You did some things really wellin your youth ministry.
As you both get together, Iassume that the noise issues
those things that neither of youdid well, or one did well and
(20:37):
the other one didn't do well.
You're actually able to getcloser to the mark.
Do you want to tell us a bitabout that?
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it was about how to end
it.
Well, I mean, what drove us todo that, to run a combined youth
minute?
Neither of us felt me and DavidO'Mara down the road.
Neither of us felt that we werequite getting what's the word.
(21:05):
We just didn't have a quorum,you know, didn't have the
sufficient quorum to just makeit feel viable for the number of
high schoolers that we wanted.
And, in the kindness of God,over time it's taken us four
years of working together butover time we're definitely well,
we're probably quadruple what,well, certainly what we were,
(21:26):
quadruple what they were.
So it's doubled over the fouror five years and now there's
actually a viable quorum.
Do I think that they'veparticularly well?
Probably there would have beenareas we might have brought more
(21:47):
strategic thinking to the tableand they might have brought
some other skills to the table.
Yeah, yeah, I think thatprobably has happened.
I'm sure that has happened.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely happened.
Yeah, I think that's the sortof thing that we don't see the
noise because you don't seenoise.
Somebody else who's outside ofthe system actually can see some
of the noisy things that aregoing on, like the table that
you just mentioned, at the backcorner of your church.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
So I want to say that noise is serious.
Canam and his mates here aresaying it really affects the
decision-making that you do,because we have blindness around
it and because it's not likebias that you can see there's
something that's not quite rightand so we've got to correct
(22:35):
that.
Because it's all over the place, you tend to ignore it and tend
to not see it.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
If I could just go back to something you said
earlier, you spoke about, I'vegot to make a decision.
I tend to go to the algorithmor the system of what I've seen
before.
What's the other way of doingit?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Well, that's a slow thinking is to take the data.
And really this is so, kahneman, it's an extension of
Kahneman's early work.
So, thinking fast and thinkingslow, he said, what you do is,
rather than just going to thething that is closer to what
you've experienced, you go andlook at the data, look at the
evidence that is closer to whatyou've experienced.
(23:11):
You go and look at the data,look at the evidence and see
what is the truth of what'sgoing on.
And so he gives the example ofthe Israeli Air Force.
He and his mate, aaron Vertsky,were.
When the Seven Day War came on,they went back to Israel and
(23:31):
signed up and he said that hesaw the Israeli military and air
force are brilliant, theirpilots are brilliant and they
were doing a training run andone of the pilots didn't perform
as well as he could and whenthey landed, the man in charge
of the group just tore him toshreds in front of everybody.
(23:52):
And Kahneman said why did youdo that?
And he said well, when I dothis, they do better next time.
That's fast thinking.
Kahneman said do you think thatthey were all really good
pilots?
And he just made a mistake thistime and what you saw next time
was a reversion to the norm,him going back to being really
good.
So that's the slow thinkingthat Kahneman speaks of.
(24:14):
And that's slow thinking islook at the evidence, look more
widely than just what youimmediately think.
Where he goes now with thenoise, one is to say now let's
think of what else is confusingthings that might be causing us
(24:35):
not to see what's really goingon.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Thank you so much for coming in.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
It's my pleasure, it's great to see you again, Don
.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Great to see you and everyone else Archie Poulos has
been my guest.
The book we've been chattingabout is Noise, a Flaw in Human
Judgment by Kahneman, siboneyand Sunstein and I mean the
Sunday Times says monumental,gripping book outstanding.
Noise may be the most importantbook I've read in more than a
decade.
A genuinely new idea soexceedingly important.
(25:03):
You'll immediately put it intopractice.
That's Angela Duckworth.
My name is Dominic Steele.
You've been with us on thePastor's Heart.
We'll look forward to yourcompany next Tuesday afternoon.
pastors facing up to our imposter syndrome,
navigating the noise that leadsus to make bad decisions.
It is the pastor's heart anddominic steel.
Archie poulos is our guest now.
As pastors, we feel thepressure to have the right
answers to people's questions,all sorts of questions.
We want to be able to navigatethe complexities of life and
(00:30):
church and then land everyonesafely at the other end.
People share with us thehardest parts of their lives.
They trust us with theirresources, their most private
issues, their time, their money,and they trust us that we'll be
able to handle the most complexrelationship difficulties with
(00:51):
wisdom.
And you know what?
We end up feeling likeimposters.
Who am I to lead the people ofGod and how can I have wisdom
here?
Old friend Archie Poulos iswith us from Sydney's Moore
Theological College.
And look, I picked up thisimposter idea with Gary Miller a
few weeks ago when we talked tohim about his Both and ministry
(01:13):
book.
But even before we had Gary onthe Pastors Heart, archie, you
had said to me this idea that aspastors we feel like imposters.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Of course we do, and there's all sorts of reasons.
Dominic, it's great to be herewith you today, and with
everybody else too.
We feel like imposters.
I think it's more intense evenfor us in ministry, because we
know the importance of whatwe're doing.
This isn't just about makingmoney or anything like this.
This is people's eternal souls,and also we know that God is at
work.
So the person we're workingwith, we're working alongside
(01:49):
God in what he is doing andwho's up to the task, to quote
the Apostle Paul.
And so we do feel likeimposters, because our
congregations keep assuming thatwe will know what to do, we'll
be able to lead them well, andwe keep thinking well, I should
be like that.
And, of course, so often wedon't measure up to what we
expect, what other people expectand the outcomes that we get.
(02:10):
Where do we?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
particularly get it wrong.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I think the book that I want to talk about says that
we don't really think so oftenabout the best solution to the
problems that we've got, and sowhat we need to do is we need to
look at what's going on, weneed to interpret what's going
on, and then we need to enactsomething, implement something
(02:36):
that tries and fixes ormaintains or enhances the good
things that are going on, and Ithink at each of those places we
can get it wrong, and so thebook I wanted to talk about is
yeah, let's talk about this.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
It's the book Noise, A Flaw in Human Judgment, a
secular book, but you're sayingit's been a super helpful book.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, it's helpful.
I read these books because God,in his kindness, gives wisdom
everywhere and what we need todo is see what others are
writing, filter it through thelens of God's great revelation
for there's nothing better thanthat and see what we can learn
from it.
So, one of the authors there,cunnaman, daniel Cunnaman I've
(03:18):
spoken about him before.
Some of you will know his otherwork, particularly Fast and
Slow Thinking.
It says it's sold over amillion copies and in that what
he wants to do is he talks aboutbias there, the way that in our
decision-making, that is, weget data but we actually don't
read the data well, becausewe're biased in our
(03:38):
decision-making.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Now there are some jobs where we really assume in
that particular role.
They're going to be objective.
They're the radiographerreading the cancer scan, or the
judge in the court case, orsomething like that.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, if only that were the case.
And you're saying those peopleare frail and yeah, well, that's
not so much the bias one.
That's the next thing that thisbook is about.
With biases, he talks aboutthings I don't know if people
remember the movie Moneyball,but what we do in we naturally
have two pathways that we canthink about with ways of
thinking.
One is what he calls fastthinking, the other one he calls
(04:15):
slow thinking.
We always default to fastthinking.
You've got to train yourself toslow thinking, and what fast
thinking does is it sees asituation and our brain looks
for the closest thing that we'veexperienced to that, and then
we say this is what's going onhere.
And so he uses the example, inbias, of you see a young person,
an 18-year-old, playingbasketball and you say he looks
(04:37):
like Michael Jordan.
Therefore, he is the nextMichael Jordan, and you don't do
what he calls slow thinking,and that is how high can he jump
?
How often does he make baskets,those sorts of things?
And so you are biased becauseyou go for the thing that is
closest to what you'veexperienced before you can
normally.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I mean, when you said that, I thought I'm talking to
somebody about a marriageproblem and I immediately think
where's the problem that I'vehad that's been similar to that.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, yeah, because that's what we naturally do and
you need to function that way.
If you're flying a fighter jetand something happens, you think
what's the closest thing that'sgoing on here that I can get
out of this problem?
For it's a natural way ofthinking.
So that's bias.
What this book is about is adifferent thing, which he calls
noise, and he says noise issomething which we can't easily
(05:27):
measure, don't usually recognizeand is very, very significant.
So, to use his example, he saysbias is, if you can imagine
shooting an arrow at a target.
Bias is the way that your 10arrows are all going underneath
the target, so you're biaseddown.
What he says, the way hedescribes noise, is that you
(05:49):
shoot at the target and it's allaround, but you know you would
think oh well, it's roughly thetarget because there's one above
, one below, one to the side,one to the other side.
That's noise and it's hard tosee because it's just, it's
random.
And he says noise causes usproblems and it affects our
decision-making.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
It affects our decision-making as a
radiographer or as a judge.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yeah, or as a pastor.
Well, actually we'll pick allthree of them.
It's interesting that in thesedays there's a whole new
industry in reading x-rays,because they've worked out that
AI can do it as well or better,because there's noise and
sometimes bias, but mainly noiseLike always with judges what
(06:36):
they do in their book.
They are all good researchersand so they've got a whole lot
of evidence behind this, butthey looked at the way judges'
decisions are made in the UnitedStates and they discovered a
few things.
One is that judges gave morelenient sentences after they'd
had lunch than before lunch.
(06:57):
Right, so they were hangry, youknow, they were hungry.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Whereas I would always think I want to be first
on the court list, then I won'tbe kept waiting all day.
I'm better off to wait all dayand then get done at 3pm in
court and get off.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
So that's a noise thing that they discover.
They also discover, too, thejudges, if their football team
or whatever sporting code theyplay, if their team won on the
weekends, they're more likely tobe leaning on the Monday than
if their team had lost on theweekend.
And so that's the sort of thing.
So that's the world of noise inthe secular world For us.
(07:35):
As pastors, we do the same sortof thing all the time.
Let's think of some examples.
It might be individuals.
We preach the gospel to acongregation, but a congregation
is made up of individuals anddifferent people hear different
things and respond differently.
And what noise is going onthere?
(07:56):
So one person embraces what yousay and takes it even further,
so they are more black and whitethan you are.
Another person says, oh, whatwould he have to know about this
?
He doesn't understand mysituation, so he ignores you,
and so there's a whole lot ofnoise around what you're saying.
That's an example of how we doit.
Likewise, our small groups canbe like that too.
(08:18):
How effective is my small group?
You could say well, this smallgroup has seen more people grow
than that small group.
That's a bias issue.
But within a small group, again, you can have this noise.
Some people are growing reallywell, some people are not
growing at all those sorts ofthings, and so how do you
measure that type of noise oreven our congregational life?
(08:41):
Who is it that we think we arewanting to reach?
And who is it that we think weare wanting to reach?
And who is it that we arereaching?
I'm sure in your congregation,in my congregation, there's
noise around that Some peopleare saying we are just reaching
people just like me, because Ilook around here and I see
people who are just like me.
Others are saying, oh, I lookaround the congregation and
there are all of these people ofwhatever ethnic background.
(09:03):
So this is who we are reaching,and so there's noise around
even the people we're trying toreach and what we are trying to
do in this particular place, inour churches.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
So you're using noise in a few different ways.
That word I think I mean At onelevel it's what's going on with
me in the decision that I'mmaking, and what's the other way
.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Well, that's one.
The way I make decisions.
There is noise that are goingon for me, because in my head I
am not just a blank slate tryingto work out what's going on in
front of me.
I'm the product of things thathave gone on in the past and so
it affects my decision making.
The other way that I'm usingnoise, I think, is corporately,
(09:44):
that the way people areresponding is noisy and it and
it's not biased gen, sorrysometimes and I should expect
there to be noise in their livesyou know well, there there is
noise, and so is the noisesomething that you can try and
diminish.
This is what their argument isthat if you can measure noise,
you can actually then try anddiminish it.
So you can try and diminish.
This is what their argument isthat if you can measure noise,
you can actually then try anddiminish it so you can get
(10:05):
closer to the centre of thetarget.
So, rather than having hugedistances away from the target
that the arrows are hitting, youcan say this is what we want to
hit and these are things thatare getting in the way of us
hitting it.
So let's try and minimise thoseso we get closer to what we're
striving to do, which, of course, is what our task as pastors is
(10:25):
is to use the resources Godgives us.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
So let me give you my little takeaway of how this I
think applies to me, and thenyou can broaden it out.
Tuesday afternoon, the pastor'sheart, and I find Tuesdays
stressful.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
I'm stressful enough sitting here with you.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
But if I think about Sunday, it's people, people,
people all day and I've haddeadlines to get the sermon
together.
And then Monday I haveone-on-one meetings, staff
meetings, and then almost alwaysa committee meeting Monday
night.
I've got to get up to preparefor this early in the morning,
(11:08):
and then I have no people onWednesdays.
But I find at the end of thison Tuesday afternoon I'm just
about ready to bite someone'shead off.
You know you should not have apastoral conversation with me at
5 o'clock on.
Friday, tuesday 5 o'clock onTuesday and in fact we've ended
up with a community group onTuesday night at our place, so
(11:32):
I've got to go home at 3 o'clockand not talk to anyone for a
few hours because there's toomuch noise in my head.
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Yeah, that is a great example, dominic and uh, of
what noise is in our sort ofsetting.
But the other thing too is goodon you for being able to see
that, because the sorts ofcomments that you are likely to
make, the sorts of assumptionsabout yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, it'll be assumptions really bad at 5 pm
tuesday and so it's in.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
It's important to think about noise.
Uh, the other thing I likedabout the book some of which we
can appropriate and some of itwe shouldn't is that they talk
about ways to overcome noise,and there's two things I want to
pick up in it.
Some of them I don't think areparticularly Christian.
One of the ways that they sayyou minimise noise is what they
(12:22):
call algorithms, and by thatthey mean just good practices
that we know generally work, andI think often in our ministry.
We want to leave a mark inministry, which is not a bad
thing at all.
We do want the Lord Jesusglorified through what we do, so
we want to leave a mark in ourministry.
So therefore, we want to shapethe ministry the way I want it
(12:45):
to be, and what they say is thatgenerally is more noisy than
having good evidence of otherthings about how to function
properly.
And so in our own setting herein Sydney, we have the Centre
for Ministry Development thatI'm involved in.
We have partners in ministry,we have REACH, all of which have
done research and say here is agood way of doing different
(13:08):
things, of developing people, ofwelcoming all of those sorts of
things.
That is what they would callalgorithms.
So what they've done… Patternsof ministry.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Patterns, yeah, processes, pathways.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Because if you're just doing something once, it's
very easy to have a lot of noisearound that If you've looked at
a thousand different times,it's been done.
What you can do is minimise thenoise.
And yet so often we think, oh,I can't just take this thing off
the shelf.
I want to say that's a reallygood place to start Taking the
thing off the shelf Off theshelf yeah, because they tell us
(13:40):
they've done the research andit says here is a good way of
doing things, a good way ofachieving things.
I think that's really helpful.
I'd want to take it a littlebit further and say and what is
it that's peculiar andparticular about your situation
that you would nuance it?
Sometimes you'll say, well,there's nothing particular and
unusual, so therefore let's doit.
Other times you'll say, yeah,our situation is different for
(14:08):
this reason, but then you'vejustified it and so you've
minimised the noise of doingsomething a little bit
differently.
So I want to say let's keeplooking at what good looks like.
Other people have done goodwork for us in it, so let's take
that on board.
That's the first thing that theysay that is helpful.
The second one is somethingwhich I've spoken to you about
before here on the Pastor'sHeart, and that is they say get
trusted experts to come and havea look at what's going on in
(14:33):
your setting so that they canhelp you to see the noise.
And the reason for that is thatwe can't see the noise.
The argument of the book isnoise is invisible almost all
the time, and so if we try tosay where is the noise?
Where am I making bad decisions?
You know it on Tuesday night,but it probably took you a while
to work that out.
(14:53):
So you need to have the trustedexpert, somebody who understands
your situation, whom you trustand can look as a third party
and so, therefore, inconversation with you, it can
reduce the noise.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
I don't think we do that very well, I was just
remembering one of my friendswho was a senior manager at
McDonald's Australia.
He talked about store blindness, that in their McDonald's
stores across the country, intheir McDonald's stores across
the country, the local manageror local owner something would
have happened and they justwouldn't even be able to see
(15:30):
that it was there, that therewas a mess, there was a thing
left in the corner and it hadbeen sitting there for months
and I remember thinking that'sso helpful and that you can walk
into our building at church andwe have a store blindness.
You know, there are things thatwe've got a couple of tabletops
sitting in our auditorium justoff on the far left-hand side
(15:54):
that have been sitting there forsix months, that should have
been put in a store room but youdon't notice it.
But we've got store blindnessabout them.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, yeah, but you don't notice it, but we've got
store blindness about them.
Yeah yeah, I did some researcha few years ago on the topic of
whether churches were welcomingfor outsiders, and one of the
things that I did was I askedmembers of congregations whether
you think you're welcoming foroutsiders and universally they
said we are the friendliestchurch that we know.
(16:24):
And of course they're thefriendliest church because you
go in and catch up with yourfriends.
But if you go in and catch upwith your friends, you're not
paying attention to the newcomer, are you?
So they're actually notparticularly welcoming.
The more friendly they were,the less welcoming they were for
the outsider.
So that's the sort of thing ofnoise Now that consultation.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
You were talking about that external input.
Do we resist that?
Is it pride?
Is it fear?
Territorial?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I think there's a whole lot of things.
I think it's those personalthings that in the denomination
that I'm in we have rectors.
Rectors are kings and so it'smy domain, and so I don't want
somebody telling me what to doin my domain.
And likewise, the person who'snext door feels like what an
(17:13):
intrusion it is for me to go inand say to the other person how
about we talk about, how about Ihave a look at what you're
doing?
Because it looks like I'm beingsuperior.
So we don't do that very well.
So I think we have a siloing ofour ministries.
I want to protect myself as therector.
The other person who is willingto engage with me thinks what
right do I have to speak intothis?
(17:35):
And so I'd want us to be sayinglet's compact with each other
in the same geographical areaperhaps In our setting we have
mission areas and say can I takea video of what's going on in
our church this Sunday and shareit with our group, and you can
tell me what noisy things Icannot see, and next week you
can do it as well and we'll workon it together.
(17:56):
It takes a great deal of trust.
We generally trust each otheras long as we're not challenged.
I think, and I think it'sactually one of the big things
that we need to keep working on.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
We generally trust each other as long as we're not
challenged.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, that is.
Everybody has the sameconvictions as the person next
door.
That's why we're in ministry.
We want to see the Lord Jesusglorified in every part of the
world.
So that's why we trust eachother.
We share the same convictions.
But if you challenge me, it'snot just so that the kingdom of
(18:33):
God might grow, it's I am shownnot to be as good as what I
could be, and there's thisimposter syndrome thing that we
started with.
Being a minister has got to befor a whole lot of reasons, the
hardest thing in the world to do.
One of them is you are yourministry.
(18:54):
We don't speak like this and wedon't want it to be the case,
but it's like being a concertpianist.
The concert pianist's veryidentity is how well they
performed in playing the pianotonight at the concert.
I am an extension of what I do,and in our ministry that is what
happens for us as well, and sowhat we need to do then, for our
(19:18):
own self-image and identity'ssake, is protect it.
And so I'm happy for people tosay, oh yeah, I want to see the
Lord Jesus glorified.
It encourages me to want to seethe Lord Jesus glorified.
But when they come and say Iwant to see the Lord Jesus
glorified, it encourages me towant to see the Lord Jesus
glorified.
But when they come and say Iwant to see the Lord Jesus
glorified, you're doing a greatjob over there, but have you
thought that this could beimproved?
It is so easy to hear that, asyou're an imposter, you're
(19:41):
second rate.
You should have seen this andyou should have done something
about it.
Rather than saying thank youfor that insight Now, can you
help me to work out what weshould do?
Speaker 1 (19:51):
Well, I think you're saying that we're not good at
having those conversations,we're not good at challenging,
we're not good at sharpeningeach other and we're not good at
listening.
Yeah, when have you seen thatdone well, and I mean how can I
(20:12):
do those conversations better?
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I'll spruik you a little bit.
You have you're doing a unitedyouth ministry with the Next
Door Parish, yeah, and I assumethat they did some things really
well in their youth ministry.
You did some things really wellin your youth ministry.
You did some things really wellin your youth ministry.
As you both get together, Iassume that the noise issues
those things that neither of youdid well, or one did well and
(20:37):
the other one didn't do well.
You're actually able to getcloser to the mark.
Do you want to tell us a bitabout that?
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it was about how to end
it.
Well, I mean, what drove us todo that, to run a combined youth
minute?
Neither of us felt me and DavidO'Mara down the road.
Neither of us felt that we werequite getting what's the word.
(21:05):
We just didn't have a quorum,you know, didn't have the
sufficient quorum to just makeit feel viable for the number of
high schoolers that we wanted.
And, in the kindness of God,over time it's taken us four
years of working together butover time we're definitely well,
we're probably quadruple what,well, certainly what we were,
(21:26):
quadruple what they were.
So it's doubled over the fouror five years and now there's
actually a viable quorum.
Do I think that they'veparticularly well?
Probably there would have beenareas we might have brought more
(21:47):
strategic thinking to the tableand they might have brought
some other skills to the table.
Yeah, yeah, I think thatprobably has happened.
I'm sure that has happened.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, yeah, it's definitely happened.
Yeah, I think that's the sortof thing that we don't see the
noise because you don't seenoise.
Somebody else who's outside ofthe system actually can see some
of the noisy things that aregoing on, like the table that
you just mentioned, at the backcorner of your church.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
So I want to say that noise is serious.
Canam and his mates here aresaying it really affects the
decision-making that you do,because we have blindness around
it and because it's not likebias that you can see there's
something that's not quite rightand so we've got to correct
(22:35):
that.
Because it's all over the place, you tend to ignore it and tend
to not see it.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
If I could just go back to something you said
earlier, you spoke about, I'vegot to make a decision.
I tend to go to the algorithmor the system of what I've seen
before.
What's the other way of doingit?
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Well, that's a slow thinking is to take the data.
And really this is so, kahneman, it's an extension of
Kahneman's early work.
So, thinking fast and thinkingslow, he said, what you do is,
rather than just going to thething that is closer to what
you've experienced, you go andlook at the data, look at the
evidence that is closer to whatyou've experienced.
(23:11):
You go and look at the data,look at the evidence and see
what is the truth of what'sgoing on.
And so he gives the example ofthe Israeli Air Force.
He and his mate, aaron Vertsky,were.
When the Seven Day War came on,they went back to Israel and
(23:31):
signed up and he said that hesaw the Israeli military and air
force are brilliant, theirpilots are brilliant and they
were doing a training run andone of the pilots didn't perform
as well as he could and whenthey landed, the man in charge
of the group just tore him toshreds in front of everybody.
(23:52):
And Kahneman said why did youdo that?
And he said well, when I dothis, they do better next time.
That's fast thinking.
Kahneman said do you think thatthey were all really good
pilots?
And he just made a mistake thistime and what you saw next time
was a reversion to the norm,him going back to being really
good.
So that's the slow thinkingthat Kahneman speaks of.
(24:14):
And that's slow thinking islook at the evidence, look more
widely than just what youimmediately think.
Where he goes now with thenoise, one is to say now let's
think of what else is confusingthings that might be causing us
(24:35):
not to see what's really goingon.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Thank you so much for coming in.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
It's my pleasure, it's great to see you again, Don
.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Great to see you and everyone else Archie Poulos has
been my guest.
The book we've been chattingabout is Noise, a Flaw in Human
Judgment by Kahneman, siboneyand Sunstein and I mean the
Sunday Times says monumental,gripping book outstanding.
Noise may be the most importantbook I've read in more than a
decade.
A genuinely new idea soexceedingly important.
(25:03):
You'll immediately put it intopractice.
That's Angela Duckworth.
My name is Dominic Steele.
You've been with us on thePastor's Heart.
We'll look forward to yourcompany next Tuesday afternoon.
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