By Jeff Bell.
Our interactions are full of bias. It’s an inescapable characteristic of the human heart.
There is the bias borne of politics and religion and location. Not to mention sport.
We recognise bias instantly in others, but often fail to see it in ourselves.
For the leader of any diverse group of randomly selected people, being alert to these biases is all-consuming. We need to understand it in all the parties before us because they will be the source of many a conflict. We need to analyse, detect, educate, guide and if possible, mollify and rebalance.
Above all, we need to be aware of the bias in our own views and behaviours. Failure to do so will bring our leadership undone.
And then there’s the bias in our heads.
Cognitive bias is a systematic error in our thinking process, often connected to a heuristic (mental shortcut) which we may subconsciously apply to difficult situations. For instance:
- Dunning-Kruger Effect. If we know little about something, the concept seems simpler than it actually is.
- Confirmation bias. We favour ideas that confirm our existing beliefs and what we think we know.
- Self-Serving Bias. We attribute successes to our own doing but, failures to other people or external factors.
- Hindsight Bias. Once we have information about an event, it seems obvious that it was going to happen.
- Sunk Cost Fallacy. After irretrievably losing effort, time or money, we cling to the idea of getting it back.
- Negativity Bias. We irrationally weigh the potential for losing as more important than the possibility of winning.
- Decline Bias. We constantly favour the past over the present: things are “never as good as they used to be”.
- Backfire Effect. We hold on tighter to an idea even though, or because, we have been proven wrong.
- Fundamental Attribution Error. We make excuses for our failures but blame other people or their characteristics for their failures.
- In-Group Bias. We unfairly favour someone from our own family, team, group or type.
- Barnum Effect. We force a new concept or situation into what we already know and ignore what doesn’t fit.
- Pessimism bias. We overestimate the likelihood of negative outcomes, particularly if we’re feeling down.
- Optimism bias. We overestimate the likelihood of positive outcomes, particularly if we are in good humour.
Daniel Kahneman writes in Thinking, Fast and Slow that among these, optimism, so pervasive among leaders, may be the most significant bias:
“Because optimistic bias can be both a blessing and a risk, you should be both happy and wary if you are temperamentally optimistic.”
As a blessing, optimism is the force that drives superior performance, innovation and progress. It inspires followers and raises morale.
In an earlier post I wrote that Martin Seligman, in his book Learned Optimism, coined “explanatory style” to describe the way we habitually explain to ourselves why events happen. An optimistic explanatory style stops helplessness and even depression, whereas a pessimistic explanatory style spreads it.
The unshakable belief that you can succeed may be more important than what the facts, the logic, indicates.
Seligman says that there is ample evidence to suggest that an optimistic mindset also leads to a boost to our immune system and therefore better health, can fast track our potential to success and lead us to a happier life.
But optimists (nearly every leader I have met) often underestimate the obstacles and the risks. Even having done a risk assessment, they may proceed with a blind expectation of success. If it comes off, they are vindicated, taking the credit and basking in the admiration of the beneficiaries.
And if the crash-through becomes a crash, the optimist may put it down to bad luck and get up again. In fact, the greatest advantage of optimism may be that it provides enough of an illusion to overcome some obstacles and to recover from the falls.
But we have a problem when we keep on at the impossible task—we go down the sunk cost trail. We expose ourselves and those we lead to greater risks and higher costs.
Optimism may create success .
And it’s still a bias.