How is it that in their personal lives, employees can be trusted to buy houses and cars, but at work can’t requisition a $300 office chair without a manager’s approval? If we thought about it for a minute, we’d realize this is stupid. Autonomy correlates with initiative and innovation. Shrink an individual’s freedom and you shrink their enthusiasm and creativity.

A former managing partner at McKinsey & Company expressed this view when he advised executives to focus their attention on the “2 percent [of employees] who are really going to drive [results.]” “It’s a very small proportion of people,” he argued, “who drive a lot of value.” When pressed, he admitted his assertion had “no regression analysis or analytics behind it.” It was, in other words, an untested assumption or, to be more accurate, a prejudice.

This sort of disdain for the average employee mirrors the hauteur of eighteenth-century aristocrats—and has the same stifling effect on creativity and initiative. Stunted freedom and upside yield stunted commitment and performance.

I’m comforted by something I’ve come to believe more and more in recent years—that it’s not always good for one person to have too much power for too long. Even when a CEO is working productively and effectively, it’s important for a company to have change at the top. I don’t know if other CEOs agree with this, but I’ve noticed that you can accumulate so much power in a job that it becomes harder to keep a check on how you wield it. Little things can start to shift. Your confidence can easily tip over into overconfidence and become a liability. You can start to feel that you’ve heard every idea, and so you become impatient and dismissive of others’ opinions. It’s not intentional, it just comes with the territory. You have to make a conscious effort to listen, to pay attention to the multitude of opinions. I’ve raised the issue with the executives I work most closely with as a kind of safeguard. “If you notice me being too dismissive or impatient, you need to tell me.” They’ve had to on occasion, but I hope not too often.

Corrective experiences aren’t just a matter of luck, either. Opportunities to shift our view of the world are arriving all the time—most of them simply pass us by. We are often too tunneled into our own expectations and personal opinions to allow the subtle realities of these opportunities to penetrate. But there are a couple of simple (though difficult!) things we can do to encourage our ability to see what’s really happening, and thus be more likely to reap the benefits of corrective experience.

First, we can tune in to difficult feelings rather than try to ignore them. Part of leaning in to challenges involves seeing our emotional reactions as useful information rather than as something to be pushed away.

Second, we can notice when we are having experiences that are more positive than we expected. Maybe in the middle of that family reunion you were dreading for months, you can pause and realize that, against all odds, you’re having a pretty good time.

Third, we can try to “catch” other people when they are behaving well, just as we suggested you might do with a partner. Most of us are very good at noticing when people are behaving badly, but we’re not so skilled at noticing when people are behaving well. On the road, good drivers fade into the background, but bad drivers stand out. We learn to expect bad driving,

so that we’re prepared for it when it happens. The same is true in life. Occasionally, try to notice the good drivers, the good people.

The final and most powerful approach is simply to remain open to the possibility of people behaving differently than we expect. The more ready we are to be surprised by people, the more likely we are to notice when they do something that doesn’t match our expectation. This kind of noticing is especially important within our families.

It’s easy to underestimate the role ease plays in decision-making. Since behaviour follows the path of least resistance, a surprisingly successful approach is to add friction where you find yourself doing things you don’t want to do.