What if the youngest person in the room had the clearest mental map !

Have you ever noticed, in a room full of professionals with experience levels ranging from 2 to 20 years, we instinctively turn to the senior-most for insights and seek questions from the newcomers?

It’s a habit shaped by respect for wisdom, but sometimes, this very habit blinds us to fresh perspectives that can shift the way we think.

In a recent Delivery Excellence session for a IT services company focused on Oil & Gas sector, we examined a project through a role play, where the customer’s behavior had turned aggressive,demanding, harsh, even borderline abusive.

As experienced professionals, the conversation quickly steered toward the tried-and-tested & established escalation protocols, robust governance mechanisms, and creating support systems for employees facing hostility. The conversation was practical, comprehensive, and, honestly, what I expected.

Then the youngest participant, Charan Raju, all of two years into the profession, offered a calm but provocative thought. The youngster did seem to have his head and heart in the right place.

“Why do we need to address the behavior? Can’t we just acknowledge the emotion, keep ego out, and focus on resolving the issue?”
Those two lines changed the energy in the room.
But here’s where it got even more interesting and a message we were trying to drive home all the time.

The participants took a step back and asked:
What triggered the customer’s outburst in the first place?
And that’s when the blind spot revealed itself.

We had been reacting to the behavior (our map)
…not exploring the cause (the territory).
And the territory told a different story:
A missed update
A delay in handover
A communication gap that created anxiety for the customer.

As Alfred Korzybski famously said: “The map is not the territory.”

And often, emotion is a clue to something real.
But ego? That’s just noise on the signal and has no place in the workplace.

The trick isn’t to exclude emotion and ego, but to manage and channel them constructively.

The youngest in the room didn’t just offer a point of view, he showed us a better way to see.

Recognize emotion.
Detach from ego.
Fix what’s real.

When was the last time you caught yourself reacting to the map, not the territory?