Leaders who aren’t careful quickly fall into a trap. They think they are the smartest person in the room. Why, because as they look around the conference table and everyone is nodding in agreement with them. ALL humans have bias and Leaders aren’t exempt [CC].
Don’t believe you have bias’s? When you open a search engine why does it seem it always has items you are interested in. Do you have a favorite color, food, vacation? When I ask Alexa to “just play some music” she plays a mix of what I have requested over time because she knows my bias’s in music. Do you prefer to watch certain sources for your news?
Most of us have heard of behavioral economics, behavioral finance, and behavioral marketing. These fields are based on yours and every other humans bias’s. You got’ m, I got’ m, everyone has them. They are not bad nor are they necessarily good. Whether you want to believe it or not, your bias’s influence every aspect of your business as a Leader, especially critical decision making.
You will probably admit to bias in your personal life but what about at work? Decision making and especially critical decisions are where your bias’s can get you into trouble. Why critical decisions? Critical decisions are uncomfortable because they are ‘new’ territory, or they have a high-risk factor. In either scenario you will tend to ‘fall back’ into comfortable territory (rely on your bias).
Remember when I started out, I made the comment about everyone at the table agreeing with you? My decision-making rule is always ‘the greater the risk of making the wrong decision the greater the probability everyone on my team will agree with me’. No one wants to be wrong, and NO ONE wants to be on the other side of the boss on a critical decision and be wrong. The safe bet is to be on the side of where you think the boss is going.
As a Leader you should be asking yourself some fundamental questions as it relates to managing your bias’s. Do I know my bias? Do I discount ‘the person who never agrees with me or the group? Do I seek out contrary ideas? Who is my ‘go to person’ to bounce off an ideas? The one who agrees with me or the one who seems to give me a different ‘slant’ on the subject?
Your decisions and actions are influenced by the information and people you pay attention to. The question then is, do you look for good information or people to confirm you bias’s?
I was working with an executive team of a merged company. The CEO said he was going to be late to the meeting and we were in a lengthy conversation about the role of the executive team and the value of differing opinions/outlooks on decision making helped the team and CEO make good decisions. I knew the CEO had the reputation as ‘King’ and felt the new group needed the discussion to decide how they would work together so they could bring the conversation forward and have the same conversation with the CEO. He walked into the meeting and quickly asked “are you talking about me”. That ended that conversation for eternity.
You can Google business leaders’ bias’s and read about all the ones that you probably have [VC]. But you won’t look until you agree you have them and want to learn how to manage them. The smartest person in the conference room is the one that understands their biases and how to manage them.