Are you helping your direct reports think clearer? A major part of coaching and developing people is identifying the bias in their thinking.

Here are the top 3 biases that I look out for when I'm coaching people.

1. Confirmation Bias

This is the tendency to favor information that confirms a belief. I'm a big proponent of using the Scientific Method in problem solving and one of the core ideas is to disprove a hypothesis rather than finding evidence that supports a hypothesis. It is 100x more effective to explain why an idea is bad vs having a list of reasons why an idea is good.

Application: Listen to how people talk about ideas. Do they spend more time poking holes and finding gaps in knowledge or do they spend more time selling the idea? I'm pretty sure we've all been victims of being sold "great" ideas that were a waste of time.

2. Fundamental Attribution Error

This is the tendency to heavily attribute their own positive outcomes to character and their own negative actions to circumstances. The way it often plays out is if a person delivers a project with a positive outcome, they attribute it to their hard work and intelligence. But if they deliver a project with a negative outcome, they attribute it to the circumstances of the project such as bureaucracy or lack of leadership support. The truth is it's a combination of character and circumstances all the time. Another classic example is when two people on a team have a conflict, one party criticizes the other around character traits while they explain themselves with circumstances.

Application: The main problem with fundamental attribution error is it undermines one's agency, the ability to make something happen despite circumstances. Help people develop a sense of ownership of both positive and negative outcomes while keeping circumstances as neutral participants in a situation.

3. Curse of Knowledge

This is the assumption people can imagine not knowing something. Many presentations are created with the assumption that they can effectively build one for people who don't know about a topic when they are the expert. You cannot un-know what you know!

Application: People have to get feedback from others who don't know and determine the best way to communicate things. When you are communicating ideas to your team, take extra time providing context for your ideas. When trying to launch new ideas, create tests in the marketplace or customer base to see if the ideas resonate. This is a simple idea, but rarely or ineffectively practiced.

As with all coaching, you have to catch these biases in the moment so you have to be there when it happens and be on the lookout for these biases.

What biases do you look out for to help people think more clearly?

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Are you helping your direct reports think…