A few weeks ago, in our Sunday School class at church, a friend, Greg Duke, commented, “Many people seek their own echo chambers.” When he said that, I thought, wow, what a strong leadership thought, and figured I could get a blog out of it… So, here goes…

When I think of an echo, I hear the Ricola cough drops commercial. I also think about someone standing on a cliff over a canyon and shouting, hearing their voice reverberate over the distance. 

But what about people in general? Have you ever been around that person that all they said was I and me and my? Self-inflating their status or so-called value to meet a conversation head-on and make it all about them? Well, that echo chamber sounds great to them. However, it makes me quickly throw up a deaf ear and sometimes just throw up. 

People, and I would say leaders mostly here, who create their own echo chambers seem to distrust everybody on the outside. The chamber wall they made is so thick they will not allow anyone with an opposing idea in. If all a person hears is their own thoughts, their trust of and in others becomes a negative value and, most likely, nonexistent. Especially when the truth they perceive is not the real truth with supporting evidence.  

An echo chamber isolates, protecting only the self-interest of a person. All lines of defense are cut off because that chamber wall cannot be penetrated. It seems that the only lines of communication that can break through are the “yes” people. Those who usually bow down and cower, so afraid that they will not be in the fold that all they do is go around agreeing. The only information an echo chamber person hears are the words that support prior or preconceived notions.

It seems to me that an echo chamber is nothing more than a trap. Sir Walter Scott wrote, “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” That’s the person in an echo chamber. Deception of others and eventually themselves; creating a bias that only affirms their ideology with narrow-mindedness wearing horse blinders.

I’ll close with this statement from Enrique Dans, Senior Advisor for Innovation and Digital Transformation at IE University, “Echo chambers are a complex phenomenon, the result of many factors. But as a society, we have a duty to fight them: personally, analyzing how we inform ourselves and what our level of risk is; and collectively, who we talk to, who we work with or which groups we belong to. Understanding and internalizing the concept of the echo chamber and how it may affect us is a fundamental part of living in society.”

Let’s go fight the good fight of leadership. Someone has to… 

Go be a great educator and leader today… Our future needs it…

Remember… Think Leadership and Be For Others…

©2022 J Clay Norton

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