The name of this blog comes from our mission at INFLUENCE: “To empower people with clarity and confidence.”
Our objective is to provide brief but meaningful topics (under 500 words) that inspire, educate and empower leaders through resources both inside and outside of INFLUENCE. This week’s edition is provided by David Salmons.
Last week we posted about two kinds of bias that affect leaders, and anyone for that matter. Here’s a little more along those lines to increase our understanding of biases and how to address them head-on.
First, let’s tune in to Carmen Acton, a leadership coach and process consultant, who tells an insightful story about overcoming a personal bias. (We share her story here because it’s a great example of how bias skews perceptions.)
Her story begins with the statement that, years ago, she had publicly committed to support her team as a manager in order to draw the best out of them. She was surprised then when one of her peers challenged her with the following question: Why was she consistently overlooking a direct report who’d been at the company much longer than her?
It turns out, since that individual had no college degree, she’d assumed he wasn’t a key player, so after taking over management of his group, she’d begun sidelining him from opportunities. Once she began honestly exploring available information however, she discovered he was the single most capable member on her team. He knew more, grew more, was trusted more by everyone, and solved more complex problems than anyone else. In fact, he had for years been the go-to problem-solver and his presence was central to team success!
How had she missed this? Having grown up in a family that judged an individual’s capacity by their educational level, she had a degree bias. She’d simply assumed he was less competent. Unchallenged, this would have had disastrous team consequences. Thankfully, she identified her bias, explored the situation objectively, and began supporting the non-degree’d employee instead of dismissing him.
While her story and its happy conclusion resolved a bias involving incorrect assumptions, of which we’re all guilty, we also need to be aware of biases that involve ineffective ways of processing information, often called cognitive biases. Here are a few examples:
- The Halo Effect. The halo effect happens when we judge a person’s qualities by other unrelated and often physical qualities. An example is that people who are naturally sociable and attractive tend to be seen as more trustworthy and capable – when they aren’t.
- Anchoring bias. This is the tendency to be overly influenced by the first piece of information we obtain, regardless of its reliability. This leads us to make decisions based on false or incomplete information.
- Availability bias. This is the tendency to rely on ideas or information that immediately comes to mind, these ideas being sometimes drawn from emotional moments. This contributes to reactive decision making instead of critical thinking.
Again, as Carmen points out, the key to addressing any bias is first of all to become aware of it. So, to expand on points made in the previous post, it’s good to ask ourselves:
- Am I limiting my team because of non-objective, unfounded beliefs?
- Am I seeking objective facts at all?
- Am I satisfied with shallow, surface information, or am I looking deeper?
- Am I overvaluing information that makes me feel good?
- Am I ignoring information that makes me uncomfortable or contradicts me?
- Am I open to – and inviting – different points of view?
To summarize, whether it involves ingrained but erroneous beliefs or ineffective information processing, biases lead to poor decision making. Seeking to become more aware of our biases through introspection, objectivity, additional information, and alternate points of view, provides a more realistic foundation for better decisions.