Leadership lessons from Twelve Angry Men – lesson 10

Lesson n°10, “Beware of prejudices”, comes from the tirade by juror n°10, a stalwart of the “guilty camp”.

This is a very powerful scene, where, even those “on the same side” as juror n°10 slowly take their distance by either moving away or turning their backs.

After his tirade, juror n°8 is the first to speak; he could easily have criticised juror n°10 for being bigoted, instead he simply says, “It’s very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this, and no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth”

I would reformulate the last part of the quote to say “prejudice obscures doubt”; there is often no “one truth” and prejudices often stop as seeing alternatives or possibilities that, when combined, could lead to a collective truth.