INsight/ Three Leadership Biases

Photo by Rogério S. on Unsplash

Manila, 16 September 2020 — Which bias is putting your leadership at risk?

Leaders are passionate about change. What’s the positive change that are you influencing in your workplace?

Leadership, then, is all about driving change. In most situations, you’re not in control of the people and the outcome, so you have to work as an influencer of change.

That sets leaders apart from managers. And in our complex and hyper-connected world today, it means that you will communicate with lots of people about the change without, in most situations, being able to simply tell them what to do.

For leaders today, dealing with the complexity of people and situations you encounter in the workplace is your main challenge to get the results you want.

However, to make a start at cutting through that complexity, you need to first see and respect the complexity. As Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom used to say, “complexity and context are essential for operating in many different situations.” 

Ostrom’s words help us shine a light on three common and debilitating conditions that stop many leaders from getting started and making progress. I call them leadership biases.

Here are three such biases that my coaching clients and I frequently observe in the workplace. I have given them names that are easy to remember.

First Bias: The Naive Leader

This can be you if you believe that all, or most, people think like you.

The reality, of course, is that they don’t. There is a lot of diversity in how other people think and see the world. That means that most of the people you work with to influence a positive change will think differently than you. 

Chances are that when you read this you will say No, that’s definitely not me because I know that people are different. Well, keep that in mind the next time when you pitch a project idea to your boss, team, partners, or clients. 

As a leader, be wary of the assumptions you make, often subconsciously. And make sure that you are aware of your own default worldview coming into play, coloring your world and your words in that way. And keep in mind that your worldview is likely to be wider when you’re at ease and more narrow when you’re under pressure.

Most of that plays out in your subconscious. That’s why we refer to biases and blindspots.

You can learn more about The Naive Leader by exploring the consensus bias, sometimes also called the false consensus effect. This is known as a pervasive cognitive bias, so it’s worth paying attention. There is a high risk to think that other people are ‘on our wavelength’ when they’re really not.

Second Bias: The Oblivious Leader

This can be you if you frequently find yourself full of your own ideas when you’re in a meeting.

Or you find it hard to focus on what the meeting is really about, or you are regularly surprised by the way the discussion goes and what gets decided.

What this points to is a lack of situational awareness, which is an essential ability for leaders. Leaders can easily get passionate about what they think is most important, and end up with a low level of awareness or concern about what is happening with the other participants and the chair. Can you picture that?

You can learn more about The Oblivious Leader by exploring the confirmation bias, and discover how being too self-centered can result in being out of touch with the situation you’re in, and therefore unable to determine what the situation calls for, and how you can best contribute to the best outcome for all concerned.

Again, you might want to assure me that this is not you. And my response will be to make sure you’re expanding your situational awareness as much as you can and all the time.

Don’t be satisfied with a superficial understanding of the meeting or other situation. Ask yourself the meta-question: what is really going on here? And as you work that out, spot what different worldviews are showing up and playing a role.

Third Bias: The One-Trick Leader

This can be you if you have a favorite solution that you tend to apply and recommend for most, if not all, situations.

Contrast that with what effective leaders do, which is to select from their toolkit of approaches and strategies to find the one that best fits the situation at hand.

You don’t have this bias either, right? I hear you.

Yet it’s not for nothing that the metaphor of a one-trick pony keeps being used in the English language. Politicians are frequently accused of this failing. Non of us are immune to it.

In your case, it might be that you speak the language of your default worldview whenever you work on influencing your colleagues in your team and the workplace. It’s ‘your way’ of dealing with situations.

We all have such a default mode, and as I mentioned above, a second one for when we’re under stress.

What About You?

So which of these three biases is putting your leadership growth at risk?

All of us have biases and blindspots to work on as part of our leadership development. I certainly know I do, and I vividly remember when I discovered the wisdom, languages, and developmental psychology of worldviews. 

Furthermore, I found that in the heat of the moment, when I feel enthusiastic about a problem and solution, it’s easy to get blinkered and suffer from a narrower focus (a bias) than I would like to have and need to have to be an effective leader.

In Grow3Leaders we explore together how to clear up these biases in ourselves and in people we work with, to improve communication and build stronger teams.

Our September theme is about the skills to spot different worldviews in workplace discussions, and then to learn to communicate effectively in each of those worldviews. We use the Work In All Colors method to help us.

Without the ability to spot different worldviews in the workplace and the skills to speak in these different worldviews, there is, in my experience, no way to become a versatile leader who can effectively deal with the workplace complexities we face today.

Beware of the three leadership biases and start clearing them up!