How to recognize an imbecile (and learn to live with them)

A conversation with Juan Carlos Cubeiro. In every area of life -business, society, family or community- there appear people whose attitude, way of acting or lack of judgment ends up affecting everyone else. They are not always easy to identify: sometimes they hide behind job titles, appearances of authority or even behind a comfortable mediocrity that lets them go unnoticed.

To reflect on this phenomenon, we spoke with Juan Carlos Cubeiro, an expert in leadership, talent and people development. With him we tackled a question that all of us, at some point, have had to face: how to identify certain behaviors that hinder coexistence and the smooth running of teams and communities.

Macarena Perona: Let's define what seems obvious, but let's see what he tells us. Before we can recognize certain behaviors, it's worth clarifying concepts. In everyday language the word 'imbecile' is used freely, but what is really behind that term? How would you define an imbecile from a human and professional perspective?

Juan Carlos Cubeiro: From a technical point of view, it's the definition of a person with a low intelligence quotient. According to the Royal Spanish Academy, we are talking about a fool, and in its second meaning, about an insult.

Sometimes it is used as a synonym for the word idiot, although an idiot is really a person with little interest in political and public life. Colloquially, an imbecile is really a cretin.

We will see later why this definition that JCC gives us makes so much sense.

Macarena Perona: The disguises of toxic behavior: on many occasions these attitudes do not appear in an obvious way. They show up camouflaged in seemingly harmless forms, or even forms accepted within organizations. Under what disguises do these profiles usually appear? Do they hide behind mediocrity, professional inadequacy or even behind a false sense of security?

Juan Carlos Cubeiro: Indeed, three brains coexist within a person: the visceral, the emotional and the intellectual. Scientific reality shows us that we can come across different types of imbeciles. Those who do not know how to manage their impulses, who are not fit for social coexistence, who let themselves be carried away by their reptilian brain. Second, those who are poor managers of emotions, and who therefore emotionally mistreat the people around them. And lastly, the ones I call the 'donkey-brained', plainly the ones who are asses, because they are people of little intellect.

In all three cases, living with them will only give you the option of their trivial notions. At the same time, their own darkness will shed light on your day-to-day, since you will be able to see that your own thoughts are better.

The most significant thing about living with these people is that their notions are absurd. That is all there is to it, honestly. The best thing is not to fool ourselves.

Macarena Perona: Telling them apart from other difficult profiles. Not all complex people follow the same pattern. In teams we find everything from weak leaders to insecure profiles or poorly prepared professionals. How can we distinguish an imbecile from other complex profiles such as sub-leaders, the insecure, or the circumstantially incompetent?

Juan Carlos Cubeiro: The first thing is not to make value judgments, because facing a mediocre person is not the same as facing an imbecile who is mediocre. In other words, not all mediocre people are imbeciles, although the reverse is true. The same happens with psychopaths, with toxic people: they don't all necessarily have to be imbeciles. Their foolishness leads them to think they are smarter than everyone else -what the Judeo-Christian world calls, basically, pride. They always believe they are smarter than the rest of humanity.

From what JCC himself warns us, we could say that imbeciles recognize one another as part of the group, but they are incapable of seeing their own incompetence in themselves.

From what Cubeiro lays out, everything stems from the capacity to be humble, to want to learn and improve -as he put it during this curious interview, to have a 'Hallelujah'. That is, an awakening. It reminds us of two films that could be related to the subject: Barden's film 'The Good Shepherd', and the film 'Groundhog Day'. In both cases we see the inability to break out of the circumstance, for lack of drive, of humility. He tells us that, beyond being able to change, another premise must exist: that of wanting to change.

Macarena Perona: The unavoidable coexistence. In real life we cannot always avoid living alongside this type of person. In companies, communities or even family settings, it is common to have to deal with them. How can we learn to live with these profiles without letting them condition our own development or well-being?

Juan Carlos Cubeiro: That is a good point you raise, Macarena. The best thing is to minimize your relationship with them -that is the only key we have for managing it well. If we start from higher up, we should begin with talent management, from personnel selection in a business organization, looking for good people: humble, generous people with potential. And then the management of imbeciles in a professional environment will shrink. Obviously, in personal life it is harder to limit access, when we generally have to deal with the usual know-it-all brothers-in-law ('cunaos') that we all have.

Dealing with certain attitudes requires emotional intelligence, but also clear limits. What kind of treatment should we give them? Is it better to confront, to ignore, or to establish clear rules of engagement?

Juan Carlos Cubeiro: I like to use a Russian proverb that goes: 'Don't teach a pig to dance the tango, because it might get dizzy and smear everything with mud.'

The approach to an imbecile is clear: limit your relationship with them. We cannot give them any more time in our lives. If that alternative is not possible, we have to take the circumstances from a place of self-confidence -that is, with a sense of humor, knowing that what they say cannot have any logic. And thirdly, from the dissatisfaction of not being able to help them, because in most cases they do not want to change their minds. They do not want to stop being imbeciles. They do not recognize themselves as such, although it does hurt them to see themselves as inferior in intelligence.

You must isolate yourself from an imbecile, whether in your personal life -in a marital relationship, a friendship- or at work.

If we go back to where we were: when an imbecile sees himself as inferior to a more intelligent being, and confirms that he has been isolated -that is, that the toxic thing he tried to apply to the other person has no effect- he tries to attack maliciously on a more personal level, and to cause harm to those around him.

This is when we must apply the rules of interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligence. That is, knowing that we should not be affected by the comments of a fool, nor let ourselves be infected by his foolish thinking.

Because in business organizations, corporate culture is, at the very least, biological and, above all, the expression of a shared cultural intelligence. In other words, if we are in a brilliant environment, my intelligence will improve thanks to my surroundings; but if I develop in a mediocre environment, my thinking will not evolve, it will level down to the ground. We are more culture than biology.

The problem gets worse when these behaviors are found within organized structures: companies, schools, associations or residents' communities. When these profiles hold positions within teams or hierarchical structures, how should one act to prevent them from generating dysfunction in the group?

Juan Carlos Cubeiro: As I was explaining, the antidote for imbeciles can only be the island: leaving them isolated with their own thoughts. The opposite will spread the virus.

Macarena Perona: The psychological impact of tolerating them. Allowing certain behaviors to become normalized can have significant effects on an organization's climate and on the mental health of those around them. What consequences can it have for emotional well-being and mental health to live for a long time with this type of person without setting limits?

Juan Carlos Cubeiro: Of course it affects our mental health; it generates anxiety and stress, because we are unable to keep coherence between what we think, express, want and can do, since it is very hard to hold a dialogue with an imbecile. That is why it affects our mental health. The remedy to look after our well-being is to be AUTHENTIC, to reinforce our self-confidence and to know that my thinking will always be better than that of someone less influential, intellectually speaking.

Macarena Perona: The final key. Beyond identifying them, the real question is how to know whether we ourselves are the imbeciles.

Juan Carlos Cubeiro: If after 15 minutes we are unable to identify the imbecile within a group, the most likely thing is that it is us. Just like in a poker game. The 80/20 rule bears on the team's growth. If 80 percent of the company is imbecilic, my tendency will be toward zero growth, and therefore toward decline.

If my company is 80 percent intelligent staff, even if I belong to the other group, by culture I will tend toward growth. If, and only if, I am willing to have a humble attitude, I want to learn and improve, and my attitude is that of a winner. Wanting to change out of aspiration or out of desperation.

Choosing to stop being an imbecile, and working on it. I think we must stop equating it with an insult and start being aware that it is a capacity we should be able to improve in people -not as an imposition, but as part of each individual's personal growth. Because, as I have already mentioned, either an imbecile transcends through their own awakening, or there is little we can do. In the end, the best thing is to leave any organization where our team has a Pareto of 80% imbeciles.

It is impossible for this interview to leave anyone indifferent -about how to spot the imbeciles who live among us, or perhaps about realizing that for a long time we have been the imbeciles of our own pack. What I find most enriching is knowing that, as the plastic brains that science says we are, we can change, if we set our minds to it: from the ecstasy of the light of intelligence, perhaps upon reading this interview, perhaps in the hopelessness of our life's lack of change, or because, like Saul, we fall from the horse. The only thing left to us, after the leadership Juan Carlos Cubeiro shows us, is to know that things are not only bad, but rather that they hold the lights and shadows of one and the same reality.