This famous triad, incorrectly attributed to Hegel and even called by his name, was actually developed earlier, in the late eighteenth century, by the Neo-Kantian Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It's an absolutely brilliant concept:
The thesis is an intellectual proposition. The antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis, a reaction to the proposition. The synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths and forming a new proposition.
This statement reflects the reality of human consciousness with a remarkable precision and can be easily illustrated with human relations. We come to every moment of our life with some expectations of what reality around us is (thesis). When people, for one or another reason, act in unexpected way, a gap between our expectations and reality opens (antithesis). Our impulse is to react to this gap in such a way that it closes: we catch up to the new reality and act accordingly (synthesis). Now, the new understanding of reality is formed (new thesis) – and so on, and so forth.
Understanding this dialectic helps to deal with unexpected changes of our environment as well as seemingly unpredictable and unexplained human actions. Giving into an automatic reactions without understanding their reasons frequently results in regrettable consequences. Reconciling the thesis and antithesis must be a thoughtful process.
Fichte's primary philosophical interest was self-consciousness as a social phenomenon. He argued that people can come to know that they exist only through reaction of others to them. This is another fascinating subject of human relations. If we move from philosophical sense of self-consciousness to the narrower psychological meaning of the word, we can say that people don't become self-conscious in isolation – it's the presence of others that makes us unduly aware of our appearance, behavior, speech and actions.
Careers of many financial executives have suffered from acute social ineptitude rooted deeply in painful self-awareness. The pervasive image of accountants as dull and uninspiring professionals, does not help the situation either. Recognizing that it is not the people around you, but your own fear of them that cripples your advancement, may help you. Alternatively, you can try what all acting teachers tell their theater students with performance anxiety – just pretend that everyone in the audience (or people around you) is a human-size chicken.
The Frustrated CFO 