The Uncanny Valley

According to Wikipedia, the uncanny valley (Japanese: 不気味の谷 bukimi no tani) is a hypothesized relation between an object’s degree of resemblance to a human being and a person’s emotional response to the object.

The concept suggests that humanoid objects that imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny feelings of uneasiness and revulsion in observers. “Valley” denotes a dip in the human observer’s affinity for the replica, a familiarity that otherwise increases as the replica’s becomes increasingly human-like.

I believe this uncanny valley can also exist in the leadership domain.

Specifically, leaders that act disingenuous will “provoke uncanny feelings of uneasiness and revulsion” in the people they serve. Because, you know, people pretty much have an underlying superpower that gives us the ability to detect subtle inconsistencies. We may not be able to exactly pinpoint what is triggering the feeling, but our subconscious is saying, “Something doesn’t feel right. What is the hidden agenda? What am I missing?”

Interestingly, we enter the uncanny valley when we get closer to the real thing but recognize that it is still not genuine. For instance, I wouldn’t feel a strange sense of uneasiness when a leader acts as if they care when I know they don’t. However, I enter the uncanny valley when a leader’s words and actions closely resemble the real thing (care/concern, in this example) but deep down there is this uneasy feeling that something is off.

The best way to keep our people out of the uncanny valley is to ensure our deeds consistently match our words. We need to be the real thing.

Blog originally posted August 2, 2023 by Jat Thompson

The Uncanny Valley was originally published in Horizon Performance on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.