11. The #1 Mindset Hack for Leaders - And It’s Not What You Think
There is one mindset hack that, if you can master it, will make the biggest difference in your leadership career. You may have heard of cognitive bias. This is an error in thinking when we process and interpret information in the world around us, which is pretty important, so it’s time to get a better understanding of how it happens.
Did you know that our brains love a shortcut? Our brain simplifies the processing of information to save precious thinking energy, but we generally don’t realize we’re doing it. We like to think we’re objective, logical, and capable of absorbing important information, but we’re all subjective beings, and we interpret everything based on our perceptions of the world. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it’s important to be aware of.
Tune in this week to discover everything you need to know about cognitive biases, what they are, why they happen, and why they matter. There are a bunch of different types of cognitive bias, so I’m discussing the top five, and we’re taking a deep dive into the most important one: confirmation bias.
You want to become more confident in your new leadership role like, yesterday, but all those courses you want to take and books you want to read are still on your ever-growing To do list… I mean, you have deadlines to meet. That’s where I come in. I currently have a few spots open for 1:1 coaching to help you meet your goals, faster. It’s like having your very own personal trainer for your brain. Apply here to work with me.
What You’ll Learn From This Episode:
Why every single person has some level of confirmation bias.
What your cognitive biases look like as you operate in the world.
How your cognitive bias can affect the effectiveness of your leadership.
Why understanding your cognitive biases and other people’s will make you better at negotiating.
How our cognitive biases sometimes serve us in our lives.
What you can do to start understanding your bias and leverage this understanding in your leadership.
How to start consciously challenging your cognitive biases.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Today, I'm going to be sharing with you the #1 mindset hack that, if you master, will make the most difference in your leadership career.
Welcome to The Confident Female Leader podcast. A space for ambitious women stepping into leadership, who are ready to take control of their circumstances and own their magic. If you're ready to start shedding your self-doubt, come into your new identity as a leader, and stop consistently undervaluing yourself so you can feel more confident in your role, this show’s for you.
I'm Annie Framand; Psychologist, Certified Feminist Coach and Master Trainer. And I'm on a mission to help women just like you stop overworking, overthinking, and overpleasing, so you can start creating success on your terms. Ready to create your dream life? Let's go.
Hola amigas, how are you? I am so good today. I've had an amazing week. And I am so happy to be here talking to all of you. I've been getting some really good feedback on the podcast; very happy that it is landing with all of you ladies. Today, we're going to be talking about cognitive bias. Some of you may already know what that is. If you do not, we're going to take a deep dive into what they are, why they happen, and why they matter.
We're going to also be talking about the different types of cognitive bias. Now, there are probably about 15 or 20; I’m going to be exploring probably the top five. And then, we're going to take an even deeper dive into the cognitive bias called the “Confirmation bias,” which everyone has. And is the single most important thing that you need to know as a leader.
All right, so let's dive in. What is cognitive bias, and why is it important? It is a systematic error in thinking that happens when we process and interpret information in the world around us. And what does that mean, exactly? And why does it happen?
The reason that we have cognitive biases is that our brains like to basically simplify information processing, okay? So, it's basically a shortcut. And the reason that we do that is that if we did not have cognitive biases, we would be spending so much of our precious thinking energy, having to constantly interpret and reinterpret the information around us.
Kind of like if you woke up in the morning and you kind of forgot what a bed looked like, you'd be like, “Oh, this is interesting. Here I am, sitting on this piece of furniture.” Actually, your brain probably wouldn't even know what furniture was, right? “It's square; it looks like this. I wonder what this is?”
Because our brains want to save time and precious brain resources, we like to take shortcuts, right? Oh, this is a bed. There you go. So, it gets a lot more complicated than that, but that's kind of the foundation of why we have biases. And this concept was actually introduced, at first, by Amos... Hopefully, I'm saying his name well; Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winners in 1972. So, it's been a while since we've known about this concept.
And the thing is, every single person has cognitive bias because every single person has a brain. It's a lot easier to see these in other people than in ourselves, which is why we have coaches, right? Because it's a lot easier for someone to spot it in someone else.
Now, I'm going to give you a few examples, and then we're going to take a deeper dive into each one of these. So, it could look like only paying attention to news stories or any stories that confirm your opinions. Right? It could be blaming outside factors when things don't go your way, thinking like it's not my fault that the project didn't go as planned.
It could be thinking that other people are successful because of luck. But you are successful because of your own personal merit. Right? “Kelly was really lucky to get promoted. But I worked really hard, which is why I got the promotion.” It could also be assuming that everyone else shares your opinions or your beliefs. So, everyone agrees that Bob is lazy, which could be an example of that cognitive bias, and so on.
We all like to think that we're objective, logical, and capable of taking in all the information that's available to us. But truly, we're all subjective beings. When you think about it, we interpret information based on our own perceptions of the world that are different from Bob's or Arpita’s. We all have different biases showing up at different times based on how we interpret the information.
A couple of the top biases that I have seen in my career so far, in my 25 years in corporate, either being a business psychologist doing assessments on leaders, or corporate training, or having my own team, I also did recruitment at the beginning of my career. So, some of these biases showed up as well, very much in the recruitment process. I'm going to give you a few examples as we go.
The first one I want to talk about is Confirmation bias. And we're going to be spending more time on this one because this is really, really key. It's basically favoring information that confirms our existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not confirm them. Okay? More on that later.
Then we have the Anchoring bias. That's the tendency to rely too heavily on the very first piece of information that we learn. It's kind of like when we go to the movies or we watch Netflix these days. I haven't gotten to a movie in years. So, you watch a movie on Netflix, and you are looking at the beginning of the movie. The beginning of the movie is probably going to inform how you're going to watch the rest of the movie.
If at first, for example, you're like, “Oh, this looks really interesting. Look at these characters,” and the plot seems really interesting to you. Then you're probably going to watch with a lot more intent than if you're like, “Well, I don't really like these actors. And this is pretty boring,” right?
This often is a bias that heavily impacts salary negotiations. If you look at even average negotiations, if you learn the average price for a car or a house, for example, or something of a certain value, you're going to think that any amount below that is a good deal. And you're going to think any amount over that might not be okay. So, anything that you learn as kind of your first piece of information will anchor the other information that you're going to get, basically.
When we look at salary negotiations, for example, if you tell your leader when you got this position, “This is the salary I want,” that's where kind of the salary negotiation starts. And anything above that will be seen as too high of a price to pay, and anything under that, the leader is going to think, “Oh, I'm gonna get a good deal if I give them this salary,” for example.
And the same thing when you're negotiating with the people that you hire, or when you're looking at maybe promotions down the road, or where you’re looking at yearly performance reviews. It's the same thing, right? You're going to look at whatever number is the first one that you see, and you're gonna compare everything else to that.
Now, another bias that we have is something called the Halo Effect. Now, that is the overall impression of someone, which influences how we feel and what we think about them. Now, these are things like their personality, their physical attractiveness, and all of the qualities that we see in someone else, right? And why it is called the “halo effect” is because that overall impression will influence the rest.
For example, in recruitment, I saw this over and over again. Someone who showed up as confident in the interview was often seen by the hiring managers as someone who would be competent in the role, sometimes regardless of the answers that they gave, just because they show up a certain way. They look a certain way. They present themselves with confidence, and so therefore, they are seen as someone who would be a good fit for the job because they probably know how to do the job.
Actually, they know how to do an interview. Okay? So that's why we have behavioral interviews and ask questions about, “Tell me about what you've done in the past,” so that we can counter that bias.
And conversely, someone who shows up at an interview, maybe they're nervous, maybe they're shy, they are perceived as someone who lacks confidence. Often, they are perceived as someone, or in my experience, as someone who might not be the best fit for the role. They might have been perceived as someone who did not have competency for the job.
So, you need to be really mindful of a halo effect, right? How the other person presents themselves will influence how you feel and think about them. Think about people on your team; how does this halo effect influence you in your decisions? Someone who is perceived as being a hardcore worker, for example. Do you interpret that person as being more competent because they're working hard? What are the characteristics of the people in your team that present more positively or more negatively for you?
Then we have something called the Optimism bias, which is definitely something that I have suffered from and still do. It leads us to believe that we're less likely to suffer from misfortune and more likely to attain success than our peers. Now, I would say that, for me, the way that this shows up is that I tend to be relatively optimistic about most things in my life. And I will think that good things will happen and bad things are not that likely to happen.
Not that I haven't had bad things in my life happen; I’ve had plenty. But I always have this hopeful nature. Now, what that leads me to do, for example, is that I won't tend to plan a lot of buffers in my day; I have learned to do that. But that's definitely my natural tendency; it’s going to be like, “Everything's going to work out.” And so I don't have a lot of extra time if issues do arise, and they will.
I just actually transferred my email; I went from Outlook to Google Workspace. And I was like, “Yeah, this is gonna take a day or two max to do,” and it basically took a week for the person who was helping me to help me figure that out. Because as you're transitioning your email, there are a few little glitches that are going to pop up. And what is your email connected to? And are the servers talking to each other? So, I will tend to overestimate.
Ask yourself if you have an optimism bias, if that is the case for you. And also, you can maybe tend to underestimate the time it's going to take for your people to do a job, and that will impact your delegation.
Then there's something called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. And that's when people believe that they're smarter and more capable than they really are. Those are individuals that have trouble recognizing their own incompetence. Now that we've looked at different biases… Oh, and by the way, the Dunning-Kruger Effect will come into play in performance management conversations, in yearly performance reviews.
For example, when you have individuals that do not see themselves very clearly. And obviously, this is all perception, but when you have data to present to them, that shows that maybe their performance is average or lower than average, and they're still not believing it. They're like, “No, I had a great year.” That's when those kinds of biases will tend to show up.
All right. The most important one, I would say, is the Confirmation bias. Now, what we need to keep in mind, is that biases will actually sometimes serve us because they allow us to reach decisions quickly. And the way that we've evolved as humans, is to basically scan the environment for danger.
For example, if we're walking down a dark alley, and we spot a dark shadow that seems to be following us, a bias might lead us to assume that it's a mugger or someone who wants to steal from us. And it will lead us to exit the alley as quickly as possible, right? That dark shadow may have just been caused by a flag waving in the breeze, which we don't know about.
When we look at our mental shortcuts, they're keeping us out of danger, so that's why they're there. But what we want to keep in mind, is that they're not always helping us. And that's where we want to challenge these beliefs. So deeper into the Confirmation bias, sometimes we have what we could call Positive Confirmation biases or Negative Confirmation biases.
It's basically the tendency to listen more often to information that confirms our existing beliefs. For example, Right when I was moving to Mexico, my thought around that was, “This is easy.” And so, my brain was looking for evidence of how easy it was to move to Mexico, in all of the different steps that I had to take, like immigration, etc., and finding my apartment and all those things.
And so, I made it easy for myself, right? Because my brain wanted to prove itself right.
That's the reason why we have Confirmation bias. It helps to protect our self-esteem, by making us feel that our beliefs are accurate. And also, when we think something like, “This is hard,” for example, if you're thinking it's hard to have a performance conversation, then you're likely going to make it hard on yourself.
You're going to overthink it. You’re going to obsess about it. When you're meeting with the person, you're probably gonna be really awkward about it. So, you're gonna make it hard for yourself. Again, we're always proving ourselves right.
And sometimes what our brain does, is we're going to be looking for evidence that confirms what we think. So, for example, we might follow, on social media, only people who share our viewpoints. We might listen to the news that only confirms what we think, for example. That explains why we have different people that might have different interpretations of the same event, just because they see it differently.
Alright, so what do we want to be doing when we see that we have a bias and that it’s not giving us the result that we want? First of all, we want to be really aware of it. I've given you a few examples of biases, and if you recognize yourself in some of my examples, likely you are also having those biases.
I'll give you a few more examples, just to kind of give you an idea of what that can look like, and how that can show up at work. And you might want to experiment with these, this week. Just really, taking a moment to observe as you go through your week with your staff or maybe even at home, how these show up.
And then, the second thing you're going to want to do is, once you've realized that they're there, awareness is half the battle, you're going to want to challenge your biases. Two ways to do that. The first one is seeking out opposing points of view for the Confirmation bias. Instead of looking for evidence that you're right, you're going to want to look for, actively, evidence where you could be wrong. And then, you're going to want to challenge those beliefs.
A few examples here: “You have to work hard to be successful.” What happens, if you have this belief and this bias, is that you are going to be creating a lot of hard work for yourself. You’re going to be looking at evidence of people who are successful, and who have worked hard.
And so, when you realize that you have this bias, you're going to want to look at evidence of people in your environment that you know of, maybe your closer environment, maybe people out there that you may not know, that have been successful without working hard. Maybe they've had other qualities that have made them successful. Maybe they're great at sales, or maybe they're great at marketing, right? Maybe they didn't hustle, but they're still successful.
Things like, “I have to find the solution.” And so, therefore, you're putting all of this pressure on yourself to find solutions, right? And an opposing point of view could be, “Well, what if there are people on my team that have the solution?” Now, of course, this bias has served you well when you were an expert, but now you're a leader leading experts.
And another thing that you can think of, as you're challenging your biases, is could there be what we call “a thought ladder?” Another belief, that is higher on the ladder, is helping you challenge that belief. So, for example, “I'm learning how to lead a team,” could be a good belief, if your initial thought is, “I'm not a good leader.”
Because, of course, if you're thinking I'm not a good leader, you're going to seek and create evidence for the fact that you're not a good leader. Right? And then, you're going to find that evidence. You’re going to have people telling you that you're not a great leader. And what does a good leader even mean? You can even challenge, “What do you mean by a good leader?” What does that mean to you?
Things like, “I never get a break,” I hear often, right? And that means, for example, that your brain is going to be constantly looking for how hard you work, and how you never have a break. So again, you want to be looking for where did you actually have a break? Where were you able to take a break?
Something like, “I have a lot of work to do,” right? What is “a lot”? And is it possible that there's actually not that much to do?
So, this week, start looking at which beliefs that you have, which biases are holding you back, and start challenging them. That's your experiment for this week.
I've been getting so much positive feedback on the podcast. So, if this is resonating with you, as well, I would love for you to rate and review it. And then, share it with the women who know who are new to leadership. That helps to get the podcast out there to women who need it.
Thank you so much, everyone, and have a wonderful week.
Maybe you're thinking, “How did I get here? I have no idea how to do this.” And you don't have time to read all the books and get all the training on how to do this leadership thing; you have deadlines to beat and goals to crush. That's where I come in. I currently have a few spots open for one-on-one coaching. It's like having your very own personal trainer for your brain.
In just three months, I help you become more confident in your leadership role faster, and with less drama. We work on mindset to help you stop drowning under all of the tasks you have to do, and stop worrying about every email and conversation. We also work on skill sets like, “How, exactly, do I delegate this task to Sally? How do I tell Bob about all those mistakes he has been making?”
Go to www.AnnieFramand.com to book your free 30-minute consult to see if we're a good fit. See you there.
Thanks for listening to The Confident Female Leader podcast. Ready to dismantle the patriarchy with me? Come say “Hi” at annieframand.com to learn more about how you can take this work deeper and apply what you're learning.
Welcome to The Confident Female Leader podcast. A space for ambitious women stepping into leadership, who are ready to take control of their circumstances and own their magic. If you're ready to start shedding your self-doubt, come into your new identity as a leader, and stop consistently undervaluing yourself so you can feel more confident in your role, this show’s for you.
I'm Annie Framand; Psychologist, Certified Feminist Coach and Master Trainer. And I'm on a mission to help women just like you stop overworking, overthinking, and overpleasing, so you can start creating success on your terms. Ready to create your dream life? Let's go.
Hola amigas, how are you? I am so good today. I've had an amazing week. And I am so happy to be here talking to all of you. I've been getting some really good feedback on the podcast; very happy that it is landing with all of you ladies. Today, we're going to be talking about cognitive bias. Some of you may already know what that is. If you do not, we're going to take a deep dive into what they are, why they happen, and why they matter.
We're going to also be talking about the different types of cognitive bias. Now, there are probably about 15 or 20; I’m going to be exploring probably the top five. And then, we're going to take an even deeper dive into the cognitive bias called the “Confirmation bias,” which everyone has. And is the single most important thing that you need to know as a leader.
All right, so let's dive in. What is cognitive bias, and why is it important? It is a systematic error in thinking that happens when we process and interpret information in the world around us. And what does that mean, exactly? And why does it happen?
The reason that we have cognitive biases is that our brains like to basically simplify information processing, okay? So, it's basically a shortcut. And the reason that we do that is that if we did not have cognitive biases, we would be spending so much of our precious thinking energy, having to constantly interpret and reinterpret the information around us.
Kind of like if you woke up in the morning and you kind of forgot what a bed looked like, you'd be like, “Oh, this is interesting. Here I am, sitting on this piece of furniture.” Actually, your brain probably wouldn't even know what furniture was, right? “It's square; it looks like this. I wonder what this is?”
Because our brains want to save time and precious brain resources, we like to take shortcuts, right? Oh, this is a bed. There you go. So, it gets a lot more complicated than that, but that's kind of the foundation of why we have biases. And this concept was actually introduced, at first, by Amos... Hopefully, I'm saying his name well; Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize winners in 1972. So, it's been a while since we've known about this concept.
And the thing is, every single person has cognitive bias because every single person has a brain. It's a lot easier to see these in other people than in ourselves, which is why we have coaches, right? Because it's a lot easier for someone to spot it in someone else.
Now, I'm going to give you a few examples, and then we're going to take a deeper dive into each one of these. So, it could look like only paying attention to news stories or any stories that confirm your opinions. Right? It could be blaming outside factors when things don't go your way, thinking like it's not my fault that the project didn't go as planned.
It could be thinking that other people are successful because of luck. But you are successful because of your own personal merit. Right? “Kelly was really lucky to get promoted. But I worked really hard, which is why I got the promotion.” It could also be assuming that everyone else shares your opinions or your beliefs. So, everyone agrees that Bob is lazy, which could be an example of that cognitive bias, and so on.
We all like to think that we're objective, logical, and capable of taking in all the information that's available to us. But truly, we're all subjective beings. When you think about it, we interpret information based on our own perceptions of the world that are different from Bob's or Arpita’s. We all have different biases showing up at different times based on how we interpret the information.
A couple of the top biases that I have seen in my career so far, in my 25 years in corporate, either being a business psychologist doing assessments on leaders, or corporate training, or having my own team, I also did recruitment at the beginning of my career. So, some of these biases showed up as well, very much in the recruitment process. I'm going to give you a few examples as we go.
The first one I want to talk about is Confirmation bias. And we're going to be spending more time on this one because this is really, really key. It's basically favoring information that confirms our existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not confirm them. Okay? More on that later.
Then we have the Anchoring bias. That's the tendency to rely too heavily on the very first piece of information that we learn. It's kind of like when we go to the movies or we watch Netflix these days. I haven't gotten to a movie in years. So, you watch a movie on Netflix, and you are looking at the beginning of the movie. The beginning of the movie is probably going to inform how you're going to watch the rest of the movie.
If at first, for example, you're like, “Oh, this looks really interesting. Look at these characters,” and the plot seems really interesting to you. Then you're probably going to watch with a lot more intent than if you're like, “Well, I don't really like these actors. And this is pretty boring,” right?
This often is a bias that heavily impacts salary negotiations. If you look at even average negotiations, if you learn the average price for a car or a house, for example, or something of a certain value, you're going to think that any amount below that is a good deal. And you're going to think any amount over that might not be okay. So, anything that you learn as kind of your first piece of information will anchor the other information that you're going to get, basically.
When we look at salary negotiations, for example, if you tell your leader when you got this position, “This is the salary I want,” that's where kind of the salary negotiation starts. And anything above that will be seen as too high of a price to pay, and anything under that, the leader is going to think, “Oh, I'm gonna get a good deal if I give them this salary,” for example.
And the same thing when you're negotiating with the people that you hire, or when you're looking at maybe promotions down the road, or where you’re looking at yearly performance reviews. It's the same thing, right? You're going to look at whatever number is the first one that you see, and you're gonna compare everything else to that.
Now, another bias that we have is something called the Halo Effect. Now, that is the overall impression of someone, which influences how we feel and what we think about them. Now, these are things like their personality, their physical attractiveness, and all of the qualities that we see in someone else, right? And why it is called the “halo effect” is because that overall impression will influence the rest.
For example, in recruitment, I saw this over and over again. Someone who showed up as confident in the interview was often seen by the hiring managers as someone who would be competent in the role, sometimes regardless of the answers that they gave, just because they show up a certain way. They look a certain way. They present themselves with confidence, and so therefore, they are seen as someone who would be a good fit for the job because they probably know how to do the job.
Actually, they know how to do an interview. Okay? So that's why we have behavioral interviews and ask questions about, “Tell me about what you've done in the past,” so that we can counter that bias.
And conversely, someone who shows up at an interview, maybe they're nervous, maybe they're shy, they are perceived as someone who lacks confidence. Often, they are perceived as someone, or in my experience, as someone who might not be the best fit for the role. They might have been perceived as someone who did not have competency for the job.
So, you need to be really mindful of a halo effect, right? How the other person presents themselves will influence how you feel and think about them. Think about people on your team; how does this halo effect influence you in your decisions? Someone who is perceived as being a hardcore worker, for example. Do you interpret that person as being more competent because they're working hard? What are the characteristics of the people in your team that present more positively or more negatively for you?
Then we have something called the Optimism bias, which is definitely something that I have suffered from and still do. It leads us to believe that we're less likely to suffer from misfortune and more likely to attain success than our peers. Now, I would say that, for me, the way that this shows up is that I tend to be relatively optimistic about most things in my life. And I will think that good things will happen and bad things are not that likely to happen.
Not that I haven't had bad things in my life happen; I’ve had plenty. But I always have this hopeful nature. Now, what that leads me to do, for example, is that I won't tend to plan a lot of buffers in my day; I have learned to do that. But that's definitely my natural tendency; it’s going to be like, “Everything's going to work out.” And so I don't have a lot of extra time if issues do arise, and they will.
I just actually transferred my email; I went from Outlook to Google Workspace. And I was like, “Yeah, this is gonna take a day or two max to do,” and it basically took a week for the person who was helping me to help me figure that out. Because as you're transitioning your email, there are a few little glitches that are going to pop up. And what is your email connected to? And are the servers talking to each other? So, I will tend to overestimate.
Ask yourself if you have an optimism bias, if that is the case for you. And also, you can maybe tend to underestimate the time it's going to take for your people to do a job, and that will impact your delegation.
Then there's something called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. And that's when people believe that they're smarter and more capable than they really are. Those are individuals that have trouble recognizing their own incompetence. Now that we've looked at different biases… Oh, and by the way, the Dunning-Kruger Effect will come into play in performance management conversations, in yearly performance reviews.
For example, when you have individuals that do not see themselves very clearly. And obviously, this is all perception, but when you have data to present to them, that shows that maybe their performance is average or lower than average, and they're still not believing it. They're like, “No, I had a great year.” That's when those kinds of biases will tend to show up.
All right. The most important one, I would say, is the Confirmation bias. Now, what we need to keep in mind, is that biases will actually sometimes serve us because they allow us to reach decisions quickly. And the way that we've evolved as humans, is to basically scan the environment for danger.
For example, if we're walking down a dark alley, and we spot a dark shadow that seems to be following us, a bias might lead us to assume that it's a mugger or someone who wants to steal from us. And it will lead us to exit the alley as quickly as possible, right? That dark shadow may have just been caused by a flag waving in the breeze, which we don't know about.
When we look at our mental shortcuts, they're keeping us out of danger, so that's why they're there. But what we want to keep in mind, is that they're not always helping us. And that's where we want to challenge these beliefs. So deeper into the Confirmation bias, sometimes we have what we could call Positive Confirmation biases or Negative Confirmation biases.
It's basically the tendency to listen more often to information that confirms our existing beliefs. For example, Right when I was moving to Mexico, my thought around that was, “This is easy.” And so, my brain was looking for evidence of how easy it was to move to Mexico, in all of the different steps that I had to take, like immigration, etc., and finding my apartment and all those things.
And so, I made it easy for myself, right? Because my brain wanted to prove itself right.
That's the reason why we have Confirmation bias. It helps to protect our self-esteem, by making us feel that our beliefs are accurate. And also, when we think something like, “This is hard,” for example, if you're thinking it's hard to have a performance conversation, then you're likely going to make it hard on yourself.
You're going to overthink it. You’re going to obsess about it. When you're meeting with the person, you're probably gonna be really awkward about it. So, you're gonna make it hard for yourself. Again, we're always proving ourselves right.
And sometimes what our brain does, is we're going to be looking for evidence that confirms what we think. So, for example, we might follow, on social media, only people who share our viewpoints. We might listen to the news that only confirms what we think, for example. That explains why we have different people that might have different interpretations of the same event, just because they see it differently.
Alright, so what do we want to be doing when we see that we have a bias and that it’s not giving us the result that we want? First of all, we want to be really aware of it. I've given you a few examples of biases, and if you recognize yourself in some of my examples, likely you are also having those biases.
I'll give you a few more examples, just to kind of give you an idea of what that can look like, and how that can show up at work. And you might want to experiment with these, this week. Just really, taking a moment to observe as you go through your week with your staff or maybe even at home, how these show up.
And then, the second thing you're going to want to do is, once you've realized that they're there, awareness is half the battle, you're going to want to challenge your biases. Two ways to do that. The first one is seeking out opposing points of view for the Confirmation bias. Instead of looking for evidence that you're right, you're going to want to look for, actively, evidence where you could be wrong. And then, you're going to want to challenge those beliefs.
A few examples here: “You have to work hard to be successful.” What happens, if you have this belief and this bias, is that you are going to be creating a lot of hard work for yourself. You’re going to be looking at evidence of people who are successful, and who have worked hard.
And so, when you realize that you have this bias, you're going to want to look at evidence of people in your environment that you know of, maybe your closer environment, maybe people out there that you may not know, that have been successful without working hard. Maybe they've had other qualities that have made them successful. Maybe they're great at sales, or maybe they're great at marketing, right? Maybe they didn't hustle, but they're still successful.
Things like, “I have to find the solution.” And so, therefore, you're putting all of this pressure on yourself to find solutions, right? And an opposing point of view could be, “Well, what if there are people on my team that have the solution?” Now, of course, this bias has served you well when you were an expert, but now you're a leader leading experts.
And another thing that you can think of, as you're challenging your biases, is could there be what we call “a thought ladder?” Another belief, that is higher on the ladder, is helping you challenge that belief. So, for example, “I'm learning how to lead a team,” could be a good belief, if your initial thought is, “I'm not a good leader.”
Because, of course, if you're thinking I'm not a good leader, you're going to seek and create evidence for the fact that you're not a good leader. Right? And then, you're going to find that evidence. You’re going to have people telling you that you're not a great leader. And what does a good leader even mean? You can even challenge, “What do you mean by a good leader?” What does that mean to you?
Things like, “I never get a break,” I hear often, right? And that means, for example, that your brain is going to be constantly looking for how hard you work, and how you never have a break. So again, you want to be looking for where did you actually have a break? Where were you able to take a break?
Something like, “I have a lot of work to do,” right? What is “a lot”? And is it possible that there's actually not that much to do?
So, this week, start looking at which beliefs that you have, which biases are holding you back, and start challenging them. That's your experiment for this week.
I've been getting so much positive feedback on the podcast. So, if this is resonating with you, as well, I would love for you to rate and review it. And then, share it with the women who know who are new to leadership. That helps to get the podcast out there to women who need it.
Thank you so much, everyone, and have a wonderful week.
Maybe you're thinking, “How did I get here? I have no idea how to do this.” And you don't have time to read all the books and get all the training on how to do this leadership thing; you have deadlines to beat and goals to crush. That's where I come in. I currently have a few spots open for one-on-one coaching. It's like having your very own personal trainer for your brain.
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Go to www.AnnieFramand.com to book your free 30-minute consult to see if we're a good fit. See you there.
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