Chris Graham is the Fred Rogers of public speaking. Empathetic, charming and one of the most engaging public speakers I've ever seen. I've attended several of his talks over the years, including most recently his "No one knows how toilets work" seminar at IDS in Toronto.
The talk is aimed at explaining why we have the tendency to overestimate the accuracy of our own knowledge and provides an actionable toolkit to help us understand and overcome these barriers, even when we face people who wouldn't change their opinions in the face of undeniable evidence.
To illustrate his point, he uses the widely publicized (and still ongoing) story of Theranos as a cautionary tale of what can happen when people are too close to the subject matter to remove their blinders. To make a long story short, there were multiple instances in the sad story of this firm where people rang the alarm bell on things they witnessed that smelled bad, but upon reporting to their bosses, they were dismissed without a second thought.
Apparently Elizabeth Holmes was a master saleswoman and extremely effective at getting people on board. The lesson is: when people ring the alarm bell, don't dismiss them out of hand because you could be suffering from cognitive bias.
On the other hand, the good news is that if you're being dismissed when being the bearer of bad news (or trying to convince people of anything for that matter), Chris has very effective tools that can help break biases. All you gotta do is find out where his next seminar will be.
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