Six Mind Traps and How To Escape Them...

Welcome to the leadership channel, where we share insights and tips on how to lead teams effectively and avoid some common pitfalls. Today, I want to talk about six psychological tendencies that can affect team performance and how to overcome them. These are:

Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek, interpret, and remember information that confirms our preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.

The risks here being that we may unknowingly exclude team members with diverse perspectives and ideas, opposing views and miss the benefits of true inclusion. We can also delude ourselves saying we are fact checking when we are confirming our own bias or view. 

Escape Tactics:

·       Question your motives, your initial tendencies, or beliefs, truly see it from opposing views, find the common ground, examine how each view supports the best outcomes.

·       Poke holes in your own views and theories, create distance between you and your conclusions or theories. Argue for both sides of ever argument then examine your stance.

Halo effect: the tendency to generalize a positive impression of a person or a thing based on one favorable trait or aspect.

Risk: when we let preconceived notions, existing biases manifest as favoritism as in all cases we also lose objectivity.

Escape Tactics:

·       be aware of your affinities, separate the message from the messenger, ignore the fact you like or dislike, identify or do not identify with person, truly weigh in the facts, information, stay fair this way, truly seek to understand. Judgements are placed on hold.

·       Separate persons from their behaviors is another example of a similar approach. 

Sunk cost: the tendency to continue investing in a project or a decision even when there is unmistakable evidence that it is not working or profitable.

Risks: Suppose your team has invested a significant amount of time and resources in a particular software solution. Despite encountering numerous glitches and inefficiencies, team members might downplay these issues to align their beliefs with the substantial investment already made – a classic case of cognitive dissonance.

Escape Tactics:

·       To avoid falling in love with or hating the processes remain focused on evaluating effectiveness, efficiency, result outcomes and initial intent for process in the first Place.

·       There is excellent value in the experimentation and inherent learning from innovation and it is as valuable to abandon ship when it is sinking. 

Cognitive dissonance: the mental discomfort that arises when we hold two or more contradictory beliefs, values, or attitudes at the same time.

Risks: If someone values health but continues to engage in unhealthy behaviors, they may experience cognitive dissonance. To alleviate the discomfort, they may either change their behavior or downplay the importance of health.

Escape Tactics:

·       Again, remaining objective, being aware of bias and affinities to remain objective, when are we justifying, creating excuses to protect a tightly held belief that may no longer be serving the best outcomes or the whole team.

·       To counter cognitive dissonance, we need to acknowledge the discrepancy between our beliefs and our actions, explore the reasons behind it, and align them with our values and goals.

Bystander effect: the tendency to be less likely to help someone in need when there are other people present who could also help.

Risks: Failure to act because others may have, will, have been trying to. In the workplace and within teams this can create bottlenecks getting in the way of progress and solutions. 

Escape Tactics:

·       A great approach can be a culture of ongoing feedback, continuing improvement, and accountability.

·       When everyone feels ownership greater collaboration occurs, synergy starts to bring about the strength of each for the improvement of the whole and achievement of goals. 

·       To counter bystander effect, we need to assign clear roles and responsibilities, encourage participation and collaboration, and reward individual and team contributions.

·       Assess our own competence realistically, seek feedback and learning opportunities, and appreciate the competence of others.

Dunning-Kruger effect: the tendency to overestimate our own competence and underestimate the competence of others.

Risks: Poor decisions, premature or delayed actions can lead to severe impact and damage on the team, the company, and individuals. It is important to be aware of key characteristics and stages along the way to achieving mastery in any role or even task. 

Escape Tactics:

·       Situational Leadership and Development models allow us to learn effective ways to manage ourselves and others moving through distinct phases of development and distinct roles.

·       Knowing when to reach out for help, guidance, trust but verify that you have taken the steps and done so correctly, know how you move in and out of competency levels and at which tasks even in a familiar role.

·       Great references are the Dreyfus Model (Novice to Expert 1-5) and the four stages of competence. Unconscious, Conscious Competence and Incompetence. 

By being aware of these psychological tendencies and applying these strategies, we can enhance our team performance and achieve better results.

I hope you found this post helpful and interesting. I would love to hear from you. Thank you for reading!