Ever find yourself behind the wheel watching all the other cars go by and think to yourself, “Man, I’m a much better driver than all these clowns on the road?”
It’s a funny thing about this question. Pretty much everyone reading this is likely to say “yes.” It seems we all think we’re better drivers than the next guy.
In a landmark 1981 study, psychologist Ola Svenson asked people in the U.S. and Sweden to rate their driving skills compared to the average person. The results? Around 80–93% rated themselves “above” average—statistically impossible—with an eye-popping 93% in the American sample doing so.
Psychologists call this “illusory superiority,” the human tendency to think we are better than average at pretty much everything. We think we are smarter, kinder, more generous and even funnier than other people. And it turns out, this unbecoming bias sneaks right into how positively we think we show up for the people we lead.
Research shows that leaders who consistently act as a genuine positive force build deeper trust, stronger commitment, greater resilience, and higher team performance—yet most of us overestimate how effectively we do it.
Which leads to a question worth pondering: Would you consider yourself above average as a positive force for the people you lead? If your answer was “yes” (and let’s be real—most leaders consider themselves exactly that), the research has a gentle but eye-opening reality check coming.
The Ratio That Separates Thriving Teams from Struggling Ones
Renowned psychologist John Gottman, who spent decades studying successful marriages at the University of Washington, discovered something remarkable: thriving couples maintain roughly five positive interactions for every negative one. He called this the “magic ratio.”
