Avoiding Group Think

Uncover the hidden forces shaping your decisions as a leader, as we delve into cognitive biases. Expect to arm yourself with the knowledge to identify and counteract these mental shortcuts that often lead us astray, especially when under pressure. We'll tackle the pervasive Dunning-Kruger effect, illuminating how it can obscure our judgment, and we'll arm you with strategies to enhance your emotional intelligence—crucial for leading with insight and empathy.

By better understanding these psychological undercurrents, you'll be poised to steer your team away from the rocks of overconfidence and flawed assumptions, navigating through the fog of leadership challenges with a clearer vision.

In this episode, we discuss the following:
1. Recognizing and addressing cognitive biases within leadership teams.
2. Building emotional intelligence to facilitate open and honest conversations.
3. Approaching meetings with the awareness that biases exist and influence decision-making.

This episode is sponsored by LucidPoint
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CONNECT WITH SUSIE:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/susietomenchok/

CONNECT WITH JAMES:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/capps/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

Welcome to the Quick Take Podcast, the show where you get targeted advice and coaching for executives by executives. I'm Suzy Tominchuk.

Speaker 2: 0:24

And I'm James Capps. Give us 15 minutes and we'll give you three secrets to address the complex topic of issues that are challenging executives like you today.

Speaker 1: 0:35

Hey Quicksters, welcome. I'm Suzy Tominchuk, along with my great co-host, james Capps. How are you, james?

Speaker 2: 0:42

I am fantastic.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Awesome. So glad that our Quicksters decided to be here today, because this is a good one. I know it's going to be, I don't, you know. I'm just saying, I'm forecasting that this is going to be an over the top.

Speaker 2: 0:55

but I have a cognitive. I have a bias towards our episodes being better.

Speaker 1: 0:59

I like that Foreshadowing Okay, so maybe you're not supposed to throw that out, so I have. I just have to say one of my really good friends that I respect deeply she is a rockstar executive coach for some major logos and I just respect her opinion so much. And we were talking about influence and how influence can cloud our ability to see ourselves, and so we were talking about how can we talk to executives about when you're walking into a meeting or walking into a situation that you're sure you know about, to ask yourself are you sure about what you're sure about?

Speaker 2: 1:41

Oh, yeah, that's so good. I love that, the way that's put. Yeah, I think you know everybody. Uh, we get overconfident, we get um, we get lazy, we get uh, comfortable, um, and and. While those things are all true, there is a biological, emotional and measured issue that we as humans have, that we get these biases, and I think that they come into play in numerous ways and leaders struggle with it all the time.

Speaker 1: 2:16

I think they're accentuated in a time when we're really busy because our, our biases make it easier to move through in some ways, because we or we ignore them. We ignore them even more because we're in a go as fast as we can, get as much done as we can. Let's move on to the next thing.

Speaker 2: 2:35

Well, as humans we are. We are, our brains are designed to find patterns right, and that is the foundation of bad things like, um, you know, prejudices and um making assumptions about people. That that's the foundation of that Um, but it also allows us, as leaders, to, you know, assume that this situation is like another one I have and give the, give us the opportunity to maybe be successful again. But that that same muscle, you know um is, is, is a challenge, and I think, um you know when, when we, uh, as leaders, don't recognize the fact that we are being manipulated by our own brains, um that that we are not as effective as we can be and can fall into some traps.

Speaker 1: 3:20

Absolutely, and I think it is important to take time to separate yourself from the day-to-day so that you can analyze those. So I'm sure you have a couple tips, maybe two or three.

Speaker 2: 3:30

Yeah, I think that first. Yeah, I can probably come up with three. Yeah, I think so, you know. The first one I think is is really just accept and understand that this is a real thing. Um, one of my favorite HBR, you know we talked about a Harvard business review quite a bit. One of my favorite HBR articles is the leader's brain. How cognitive is cognitive biases? Um, influence our decision making. It's a real thing, and so often we hear about boards that will green light a project based on the previous successes of similar projects will preclude them from looking at this one with the interrogative eyes that they should. And I've know, I've coached a couple leaders who were, you know, known as captain confidence and they ignored the data driven insights that were really looking them in the face and that anchoring bias, you know, really forces them to look at maybe outdated models or outdated assumptions and, and without the recognition that this is happening, you're never going to get pushed through it.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Yeah, and if you are showing or illustrating to your team that you're just gonna push through it, they're less likely to push back. Oh yeah, because you already they can tell you've already made that choice.

Speaker 2: 4:50

Right, right, and I think that that's you know. You, as a leader, need to be really effective in your acknowledgement of that. And I think you made a really great point, susie, there about the stress behaviors that so often. You know. Every leader has a stress behavior and you all of our listeners know that. There are certain things that we do under stress. Some of us go out and find energy in crowds, some of us want to go read a good book, some of us want to take a bath, some of us work out, but those behaviors are based on stress and when teams and boards are under stress, they oftentimes will revert to or hide within those biases. So it's more accentuated under stress, but it's a real thing.

Speaker 1: 5:32

Yeah, it is really true to even be able to identify. I am under stress.

Speaker 2: 5:44

What do I need to look at To your point? Right, exactly right, exactly right. And I think that leads to my second point is you really have to up your emotional intelligence of yourself and your team? Yeah, you know, I worked with a really smart individual who was an avid parachutist Gosh Dave I hope that's an accurate phrase but he jumped out of planes on purpose on the regular, and we talked a lot about the Dunning-Kruger effect, which is, for those of you who don't have Google in front of you really that's the theory that people who have a limited amount of knowledge about a topic tend to think they are the biggest or the most expertise, tend to think they are the biggest or the most expertise, and so, early on in your understanding of a situation, of a skill or a capability, you quickly believe you're an expert.

Speaker 2: 6:29

Oh, interesting and then over time, as we know, you know, you get into the room and we say you know, the smartest man in the room knows he's not the smartest man in the room, or the smartest man thinks or knows he has lots to learn. And that bias of individuals forces us and causes us to make some interesting decisions. Dunning-kruger is an example of that. But as leaders, we need to up our emotional intelligence. We need to give our staff and teams the ability to raise their hand and say hey, you know what. Can we talk about this from a different point of view? Hey, you know what this is. Can we talk about this from a different point of view? Can we have an honest dialogue? I think you know this is not just about biases. It's about just having a healthy team. But this is a really key element to addressing the biases that happen in a boardroom.

Speaker 1: 7:13

Yeah, and it makes me think just about the techniques of that is not having an agenda that you just kind of pose on everybody to get you to the end. Absolutely Think about yourself as a facilitator of discussion. So it's up to you to pull in those opinions and those perspectives and when you do that, you're forcing yourself or hopefully you're forcing yourself to listen, to understand what they're saying.

Speaker 2: 7:41

You know, and that makes me think of, you know, the early days of Google. They were doing some amazing things because I think they were very much cognitive, aware of the cognitive elements of of the ecosystem, and it was the heyday of this, of the Valley, and we're, you know, I think our hearts were bigger than our brains. And you know Google's, you know share or, I'm sorry, they had a mantra of search, learn and share, and and that they had a mantra of search, learn and share and that, as a foundation, and along with you know, do no evil. That approach towards how you operate really creates an open environment for you to have, you know, that empathy bridge, if you will, to ensure that your team is able to work together and address some of those biases when they see them.

Speaker 1: 8:24

You know it goes back to what you said about we have patterns. So when you have a framework like that that you kind of have to check the box to say that's a great way to say we've done share, whatever the next two are.

Speaker 2: 8:38

I didn't remember well, but that's a great framework to use.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Search, learn, share, but then that pulls out. We need to follow this. That's such a great example.

Speaker 2: 8:49

Right, right, I love it. I love it. It keeps people. You know, I think that's it's got to be the foundation, and you know, my third piece of advice is, you know it's not quite as pithy as you know. Are you sure about what you're sure about, but it is. You know, go into a meeting with a bias bias, knowing that there will be biases on the table knowing it's literally impossible for us not to see things through the lenses that we have.

Speaker 2: 9:15

And so if you can be a little meta, a little objective, a little out of the dialogue and see people, for, you know, looking at the lens that they're looking things through, you can really be very valuable.

Speaker 2: 9:30

We bring in outsiders to our meetings and to our companies for that very reason, where they are looking at it through a different set of biases. You know, one of the companies that I work with had an incredibly difficult exit of some leaders and it cost them dearly financially due to a brain drain they essentially had. And so when we moved forward with that, they were all really wounded from that experience and there was really no way for everyone in the room to not look at the next situation through that lens of the previous situation. And so it took me and a couple other folks a lot of effort to say, all right, let's, let's put that other thing aside and not, you know, let's put the PTSD aside if you will, and not have that bias that comes with it. And so if you as a leader that was an extreme example but if you as a leader, can go in knowing that there's going to be a lens through which folks are working. You can usually move the needle and really make a difference when you're working with a team.

Speaker 1: 10:31

Yeah, and I think one really good question to even ask, to just put it out there to get people to think about it kind of like right in front of them, is to say what biases do we have before we jump into it, let's all identify what are the things and maybe that people say we've we faced this before and this is how we did it before, so we might lean on that and being able to put kind of those biases on the table.

Speaker 2: 10:58

Yeah, I think that you know this really ties into the first one as well, which is, you know, when you have an educated team and you guys do some reading and understand the biases that you as people have, it's easier to put a name to it and say, hey, I think you're having a. You know this is a confirmation bias. You walked in with this opinion and now we're all stuck to it. Maybe can we take it and can we do a pros and cons of that. Brains are, and you know there's plenty of. You know, hack your brain, let's, let's find ways to to use it. You know, use our tools to to make it, to address those issues.

Speaker 1: 11:32

I think that's a bonus option too is to really think about have a meeting that's not related to a specific agenda item and just talk about the biases that you have and just have a conversation around it because you're right, if you could label them in the moment. You've already talked about it. You've made it safe. You've talked about not safe, but you've made it just open. You've made it psychologically safe to say I have this.

Speaker 2: 12:00

Right, and it gives you the language to talk about it, right. I mean, how many off sites and events have we done? I know you and I've been to a couple where there's some weird phrase that the facilitator comes up with and then we carry that on for two years. You know, because it just does resonate, and maybe it's a phrase like you know go in with a bias, bias or maybe it's are you sure about what you're sure about? But those things you know. When you have a language to talk about it with your team, it goes a long way.

Speaker 1: 12:26

Yeah, and I just to add one more do you need to zoom out on that? Do you need to look at it from a different perspective? I mean, even just having that visualization of being able to look at it from a lot of different sides is powerful for our brain to be able to be curious. Allow curiosity Cause when you that that closed mindedness is really what bias creates, and so anything you can do to expand that to get people Well, I think, yep, I agree, and I agree, and I think that's part of the emotional intelligence.

Speaker 2: 12:58

So, yeah, I think those are. Those are all great points.

Speaker 1: 13:02

All right, so what are the three?

Speaker 2: 13:05

One, educate your team. You know, have a meeting, like you said, susie, get everyone on the same page. Talk about biases, talk about the concept. Understand that this is a part of the fabric of your leadership group, of your staff, of your board. This is how you need to have the language around this and be able to talk about it in an intelligent way and not in a comical way.

Speaker 2: 13:26

I know that happens quite a bit where people like to, to, to take these things to a place where it's not as effective. But, you know, be educated, take it seriously and have have a dialogue. Second, you know, build the emotional intelligence of your team so they can have these hard conversations, so you can, without recriminations and negative feedback, you know, you can call somebody out on something. A team that's more honest with each other and can work in those challenging situations is going to be more effective in the long run. And then the third one obviously is you know, go in with a bias, bias. Understand that these are there. If you can have that perspective, you can look at it through a rose color, no lens. If you will, you can be more effective and really help your team.

Speaker 1: 14:15

Such good tips and so important to continue to reverberate on that concept.

Speaker 2: 14:22

Yep, yep, it's a good one. I think this is something you can do all the time too. There is no done on this. You should do this annually. It could be part of your annual planning period. Where are we? Did we fail here? Did we forget to do this? Did we have a confirmation bias on this program? Yep, this is a true muscle that you can continue to grow.

Speaker 1: 14:40

That's exactly that. That was a better way of making my point. Thank you for, james, for really articulating that well, woohoo, all right. Thanks, james.

Speaker 2: 14:50

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 14:54

Hey, James, I was wondering if your team were a band, what instruments would they play and what would be their signature song?

Speaker 2: 15:04

What instruments? Now I'm not going to answer that question, but I'm going to answer it in a different way, because what I thought you were going to answer and I already answered in my head, is if my team was a band, what band would they be?

Speaker 1: 15:16

Okay, you're going to amend the question. Let the record show that you're amending.

Speaker 2: 15:23

I immediately thought we would be Fleetwood Mac, and let me say that why? For those of our listeners that don't know who Fleetwood Mac is, it's a band from the seventies I think before our time as far as but they're legendary and that they were full of drama. They fought constantly and then got along famously have. A lot of their songs are about the inner workings and challenges, but they managed to make all of that interpersonal anxiety, the stresses, the different personalities and made it work in a way that resulted in amazing product.

Speaker 1: 15:57

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:57

And so I always think of that band as one of the most truly human groups of people who I think they all dated each other at one point or another. They were all probably married to each other at one point or another. Each one has gone on record saying they all hated each other at one point or another, yet they still managed to put out some albums that were amazing, and I thought that that dichotomy was very human and very real.

Speaker 1: 16:21

Love it, love it. I think that's a great example. Dichotomy was very human and very real Love it, love it. I think that's a great example. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Quick Take, where we talk about the questions that are on the mind of executives everywhere. Connect with us and share what's on your mind.

Speaker 2: 16:35

You can find us on LinkedIn, youtube or whatever nerdy place on the internet. You find your podcasts. Our links to the show are in the show notes. We appreciate you.