How to recognise your cognitive bias and see where its impacting your leadership
Jul 13, 2023
Open mindedness. We all like to think we have it. The fact is that we don’t all the time, and its not that easy.
If we followed what is in our subconscious mind, we would have plenty of areas where we engage in bias that keeps us closed minded, we just wouldn’t be aware of it. Bias can be sneaky, we need self awareness and the ability to constantly check in with ourselves to keep it from affecting our decision making.
Cognitive bias is a system in our brain whereby we compare, categorise, filter and interpret our experiences in ways that provide evidence that reinforces what we think is right.
For example, I have identified a person in my team that should be promoted to a vacant position, I start to see all of the reasons why they should be the one to get that promotion. In other words I see the things that support my view.
Once I have formed a belief on the original evidence presented to me, am I able to challenge that belief with evidence that comes later? Or do I disregard it and stick to my original view, looking for all the reasons why its still the right one.
The problem with cognitive bias in our leadership is that it can create situations where what we view as being a good outcomes, can be interpreted by others as favourtism, being closed off to new ideas (my way is the only way), being resistance to change (everything I see point to why we should keep doing things the same way) and having low self-awareness.
To recognise and challenge our cognitive bias we need to be able to ask ourselves 2 questions:
What assumptions am I making?
What are my beliefs in this situation?
If we can understand what is really happening in the background of our decision making, we can see where we are looking for evidence that supports our own internal narrative. And at the same time look for the opposing side of the conversation.
Going back to our earlier example this would be asking what are the reasons this person is not right for this role right now. If you cant think of any straight away keep going, they are stored in our brain, it may just take time to access them.
Actively looking for and engaging our thought process in evidence that supports both sides of a decision and giving them equal weight to the decision-making process is how we can overcome our cognitive bias and ensure it doesn’t impact our leadership.
There is not only one way and there is no right way. Having the ability to openly look at both sides and hold opposing views enables you to get the best outcomes for people and projects in your team.
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