REMOVE YOUR LEADERSHIP BLINKERS (2)
Last week I explored six biases to which leaders can succumb and be detrimental to their leadership capability. They can adversely impact decision-making, hiring, recognition, promotion, and situational assessments.
This week I explore some more biases, how to avoid them, and how to overcome them.
When leaders do not recognise their cognitive biases, it can be extremely dangerous to them, the team, and the organisation.
Leaders must remove their blinkers and be aware of their biases, how to avoid them, and how to overcome them. In total, I will have explored 10 biases that leaders can succumb to. According to the Cognitive Bias Codex, there are an estimated 180 cognitive biases. The list is frequently updated. Have a look – it is fascinating.
So, I am just looking at the tip of the iceberg.
This week I will explore:
· Recency bias
· Optimism bias
· Conservatism bias
· Fundamental attribution error
Recency bias
Recency bias is an unconscious tendency to consider events that happened recently, or information received recently, to be more important than those that were less recent.
This is important for leaders to recognise, as this bias restricts them from seeing the bigger picture and considering all the information including what has happened in the past.
This could have an adverse impact on performance reviews where you consider an incident that happened recently rather than the commendable track record of the employee. It can also have the reverse effect when you give a good review to an employee who performed well recently, even though they have not in the past.
It also has an impact on employees' willingness to innovate, experiment, or try something different. Despite having delivered excellent outcomes over the past months, they are concerned that one mistake or setback will be what you remember rather than everything they have achieved. Their focus is staying on the right side of you as opposed to being creative and innovative.
Recency bias can influence decision-making when more weight is given to recent data over long-term trends. You may be considering investment in a new technology platform and have looked at several options that are worth discussing. Some of them could be better than others ( based on the supplier, the platform performance, the customer base, and the ability to scale), but the one encountered most recently will seem the best because of recency bias.
It can impact your perception of your own performance. You may have had a great week and outperformed, but Friday was the day for challenges and problems to get in the way. At the end of the week, you feel dejected, disappointed, and defeated despite the week being a good one. This will adversely impact your mental well-being.
Optimism bias
Optimism bias is when we overestimate our likelihood of experiencing positive outcomes and events and underestimate our likelihood of experiencing negative events. People with this bias are sometimes quite unrealistic about what might go wrong when making a business decision. When your subjective confidence in your own judgments is regularly greater than the facts would suggest, failure could be imminent.
Employees may find it difficult to follow you if you are always seeing things as having positive outcomes rather than assessing the facts.
Optimism bias is when you believe you can achieve stretch targets, year on year, even though the competitors are failing. You may believe you can deliver a huge transformation program even though the timeframes, available resources, and current climate say otherwise. Whilst we want leaders with a “can-do” attitude, we don’t want leaders who commit to something that is not achievable.
Conservatism bias
Conservatism bias is like affinity and confirmation bias. It is when you favour familiarity. Conservatism bias is favouring existing information over new information that threatens to change your preconceptions. When you get new information, you tend to value it less or dismiss it, while you give more weight to information supporting a previous belief.
You are resistant to changing your opinion, despite the new information you may be presented with. Conservatism bias means inaction. Conservatism bias leads to risk aversion which is not always a good thing. Conservatism bias is why Blockbuster turned down the acquisition of Netflix for $50 million. The executive found it easier to do nothing than take a risk.
Fundamental attribution error
Fundamental attribution error refers to our tendency to believe that what people do reflects who they are. It also means you attribute your own behaviour to external factors outside of your control.
You overemphasise personal characteristics and ignore situational factors when judging others’ behaviour. You make fast and often incorrect judgements of others without considering contributing factors.
If someone is late for a meeting, you may consider them unprofessional, when in fact they are rarely late and, on this occasion, they were late due to a medical emergency at home. If you are late for a meeting, you will have an excuse for your behaviour.
This bias negatively impacts your relationships with others. You do not give them the benefit of the doubt, you do not see the bigger picture, and you use inadequate information to make judgements.
Avoiding and overcoming cognitive biases
When I started writing last week’s newsletter, I was going to discuss how to avoid and overcome each bias as I wrote about it, but I found that there would be a lot of repetition in each bias. Therefore, I decided to keep the tactics to avoid and overcome all the biases to the end of this newsletter. I will call it out where they do have a specific relationship to a particular cognitive bias.
Self-awareness
Seeing the bias is the first step to avoiding it or overcoming it. Recognition leads to remediation. You can fix it.
Accept the fact that you may be susceptible to cognitive biases.
Feedback
Intentionally ask others for feedback. Ask them to call it out if they think you are exhibiting a cognitive bias. The important thing is you must act on the feedback.
Encourage everyone to call it out when they observe a cognitive bias at play either in you or one of their colleagues. Make it part of the team charter and value system.
Leadership development
Recognising cognitive biases in yourself and others must be part of leadership development in your organisation.
When we accept that our behaviour may be influenced by an often unconscious bias, learn to identify the bias, and put in place tactics to avoid or overcome it, we can be better leaders.
Trust
You must learn to trust others. You employed adults so treat them as such. Trust them to do the right thing.
This is particularly needed if you are subject to proximity bias or productivity paranoia. This is when you believe that a person will be less productive if you cannot see them.
Research has shown that generally remote workers are more productive than their in-office colleagues, so there is no justification for the concern.
Measure the right things
You must measure performance on outputs, not inputs. You must measure performance based on outcomes and value-added, not hours spent at a desk.
When you do this, you can avoid proximity bias because you are measuring outcomes regardless of an employee’s location.
Regular conversations
You must have frequent and regular conversations with every one of your team members, regardless of where they are located. This should include a conversation about their performance as well as yours.
Regular performance conversations help avoid recency bias, affinity bias, and proximity bias.
Diligently record these performance conversations so you can look back at an employee's track record and not just the past week.
Seek employee feedback on your performance in these conversations while ensuring you have created an environment of psychological safety so there is no fear of repercussion following the conversation. Check whether you are perceived to be subject to a cognitive bias.
Challenge others
Get others to challenge your thinking and your decisions. Make it safe for them to do so.
Make questioning decisions an inherent part of teamwork, meetings, and collaborations. Create a culture where no one ever assumes that the leader’s decision is the right one. Get everyone to play the devil’s advocate to provide debate and test the strength of an argument.
This avoids or overcomes bandwagon bias, confirmation bias, conservatism bias, and status quo bias.
Diversity and inclusion
Intentionally invest in building a team with diverse backgrounds, experiences, capabilities, and competencies. Ensure that everyone feels included and has a sense of belonging.
A diverse team helps avoid bandwagon bias, confirmation bias, recency bias, and conservatism bias. Diversity of thinking can uncover and challenge many biases.
Use technology
Technology can be used to reduce subjectivity and expose cognitive biases. For example, artificial intelligence can be used to filter irrelevancies out of a decision-making process. It could find the best candidates for a role out of a heap of resumes, without any chance of affinity bias creeping in. It can then guide you based on what is objectively best rather than what you have done in the past (recency bias, confirmation bias, status quo bias.)
Be brave
You must be brave, strong, and confident to admit you were wrong. It is not a weakness to succumb to a cognitive bias, but it is a weakness not to do something about it. Admitting a mistake is making yourself vulnerable but you must remember that vulnerability is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of courage.
Conclusion
Cognitive biases are defects in your thinking. They can cause you to make bad decisions, draw wrong conclusions, and focus on the wrong things.
You must be self-aware and recognise when you may be exhibiting a cognitive bias. You can then work to remove it and avoid it in the future.