The cognitive landscape is broader than people can imagine. Cognition, by itself, is the ability to recognize and act toward different behaviors. With the growing need for leadership behavior in every area of life and work environment, it becomes mandatory for people to find and react toward biases in leadership behavior. Although many biases can be found, this short article focuses on seven widely spread and accomplished situations in everyday life.
CONFIRMATION BIAS
Often wrongly named as arrogance and unwillingness to listen to others’ viewpoints, confirmation bias is usually demonstrated in leadership behavior as an action from the leader to search for additional information to confirm an already existing hypothesis. While being so focused on this activity, leaders often ignore apparent evidence that contradicts them. This may easily lead to missing or overlooking alternatives and different viewpoints. As a result, that decision-making process shifts to a flawed model with many missed opportunities. To fight this bias, the leader should encourage diverse perspectives, remain open-minded to other opinions and the variety of evidence offered, and actively seek dissenting options.
THE HALLO EFFECT
We all meet them. Leaders who see appearance often mislead others about their expertise in their field. Often, perceptions are just based on what others first see or experience as behavior toward personality and lead people to situations where traits in other areas are just minimized as perception. For example, personal charisma makes others blind to a low level of competence. Based on these misperceptions, leaders receive inadequate feedback that mostly pleases them instead of training them on the path of development and personal and professional change. Although the Hello Effect may threaten many leaders, there is a simple cure for this bias. Leaders must be evaluated based on predefined and aligned competencies with explicit content for each.
ANCHORING BIAS
A leader may have put a lot of effort into building credibility, but some qualities on a personal level may change that expression. Anchoring bias is entirely in action when it comes to that. It shows up in situations when the leader has to decide. Anchoring bias is easily recognizable in leaders who make decisions based only on the first information they get. Some call these leaders “hasty,” but the point is that they won’t be available to collect more information or produce some analysis. The first thing that comes as an obvious decision becomes the Decision. While not all data of this type of leader may be relevant, often their choices are seen as weak and produce skewing judgments. To deal with this bias, teaching leaders to explore multiple data points and avoid fixating on the first thing they hear is crucial. It mitigates the “anchor” and builds more reliable and winning solutions for everyone.
AVAILABILITY HEURISTIC
Now, all of us have experienced decisions based on what has happened in the past week or month or just with us instead of in the range of a broader context and time. Inexperienced leaders often show this bias in their feedback sessions when they recap a yearly performance. They make general conclusions based on behavior demonstrated in a particular situation or within a limited period. That not only sounds unprofessional but builds uncertainty and fades trust away. Often, this bias and actions based on it come from recent emotions or emotionally charged anecdotes or phrases rather than comprehensive data, covering the whole period and situations seen from different perspectives. There is a simple situation, but at the same time, we have to implement a solution. It turns to leaders changing their mindset and shifting from relying on emotions and recency to learning to seek diverse data sources over a more significant time and scope in the environment. Based on that, various points of view or conclusions need to be built to support the most equitable approach from the leader.
OVERCONFIDENCE BIAS
“The leader who knows it all doesn’t know many things.” With this quote, one of Peter Drucker’s last books started. Following the quote, he described overconfidence as one of the biases that leaders show. Based on the overestimation of personal abilities and competencies, this type of bias leads leaders to choose risky situations and behavior without analyzing the impact of possible courses of action. This type of leader does not seek advice or help. They act no matter the level of risk. Often, they ignore warning signs and underestimate challenges on the path to success. To mitigate the impact of the overconfidence bias, leaders must learn to foster their self-awareness and promote a culture of learning from mistakes.
GROUPTHINK
An inexperienced leader often still has not built critical thinking. When missing, this skill is usually replaced by a behavior when consensus becomes a technique the leader overly relies on. In the search for harmony, the inexperienced, critical-thinking leader tries to avoid dissent and makes decisions based on the harmonized behavior of the group. This may work in some situations, but in others, it leads to poor decisions due to a lack of diversity in the perspectives and independent and individual thoughts. While Groupthink may sound like a caring and family-oriented technique, it often hurts decision-making. To minimize the impact of Groupthink, leaders need to learn how to foster constructive debates, create and assign roles such as “devil’s advocate,” and put value on dissenting options and thinking. This may help leaders get closer to the best possible solution and minimize mediocrity.
STEREOTYPING
People often group others by gender, race, political beliefs, religion, etc. This is called stereotyping. On the other hand, leaders are not different but may need to deal more effectively with this bias. Like others, they may unconsciously or consciously apply these stereotypes to people without realizing they are hindering their judgment. Applying stereotypes may lead to limited diversity in teams and the company, unfair treatment of some groups, and even missed talent opportunities in the companies. But there is a cure to stereotyping, evolving from behavior and setting new standards within the company. It may be seen in actions such as promoting inclusivity in every area, structuring and providing bias training to help understand actions and act appropriately, and raising awareness for themselves and others to recognize this and other biases easily.
IN CONCLUSION:
Leadership biases are universal, but self-awareness and intentional efforts can mitigate their effects. As leaders, let’s strive for fairness, openness, and continuous growth. Outstanding leadership transcends biases and embraces the richness of diverse perspectives to help people and those leading them build the best possible environment in each situation or organization.
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