A colleague is short with you and you immediately think it is about you. You rate your own idea higher than someone else’s. You mainly remember what confirms what you already thought. Everyone does this, all day long, mostly without noticing.

Almost two hundred shortcuts in your brain

The Cognitive Bias Codex is a circular chart of 188 cognitive biases. Designer John Manoogian III drew it based on the list on Wikipedia. The grouping comes from Buster Benson.

Benson explains that all these biases are solutions to four problems our brain struggles with every day (Buster Benson):

  • Too much information. So our brain filters. We mainly notice what confirms what we already thought.
  • Not enough meaning. So our brain fills in the gaps itself, with assumptions and stories.
  • The need to act fast. So our brain opts for what feels familiar and for what we have already started.
  • Too much to remember. So our brain stores simplifications instead of the whole reality.

Benson points out one more thing: we notice flaws in others much more easily than flaws in ourselves.

You cannot see your own biases

Daniel Kahneman, Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony describe the same thing in Harvard Business Review. Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for his work on how we think. He distinguishes two ways of thinking: fast and intuitive (System 1) and slow and deliberate (System 2). Most of the time, fast thinking determines what we think (HBR).

The tricky part is that you do not notice when your fast thinking leads you astray. According to the authors, knowing that biases exist helps very little. You cannot remove your own biases. In a group it is different. We do see other people’s biases, so we can help each other. According to research the authors cite, organisations that worked deliberately at reducing bias in their decisions achieved returns up to seven percentage points higher.

Taking things less personally

Berd Warmelts of IMPACT on the Job is convinced that the better we understand how our brain works, the less we relate the world around us to ourselves. “And the less seriously we take ourselves,” says Berd. “Then we can work together much more effectively.”

You can see it in many situations we have described before. A colleague who is short with you because he is sleeping badly, while you think he is angry with you (Your team feels how you slept). A team that clings to its own idea because it has put time and energy into it (Too nice to be good). Or a manager who mainly pays attention to whoever complains, because that stands out most (Why people really leave).

Understanding it together works better than alone

In leadership teams, Berd sees that it helps when people work this out together. “The more a team understands about some of these biases, and the more it discusses them together, the greater the chance that people stay alert to them and take them into account,” Berd says. “Then collaboration and engagement increase.”

That fits with what Kahneman and his colleagues advise. Your own biases stay with you. A team can spot them in each other.

How to get started as a team

  1. Look at the codex together. Put it on the wall or on the screen. Let everyone pick a few they recognise, in themselves.
  2. Choose a handful. You do not need to know all 188. Start with the biases that come up most in your team.
  3. Give them a name in the team. Once everyone knows the term, you can refer to it with a smile: “Isn’t this our IKEA effect?”
  4. Ask fixed questions for big decisions. Kahneman and his colleagues suggest, among others: were there dissenting opinions, and were they explored properly? Have we fallen in love with our own proposal? Are there real alternatives on the table?
  5. Ask yourself whether you are taking it personally. When someone reacts sharply, first ask what is going on before you take it personally.

How does your team work together?

With the Employee Engagement Survey (MBO) from Leiders.nl, you can see for each team how engaged your people are. With the Responsible Leadership Scale (VLS), you can see how employees experience the leadership. That puts facts on the table, and leaves less room for assumptions.

Sources