We’re all aware of the concepts of blind spots and biases. They are similar ideas, but they are also related to one another in an interesting way that is particularly relevant for leaders. Between them exists a kind of feedback loop — one which can hold us back if we don’t know how to spot it.
A bias inclines us toward one thing over another and is based on the past. We may be aware of a bias and believe it’s justified — I may drive only Toyota vehicles because the Toyota Tacoma I drove in high school was invincible. Or a bias may be inherent and outside of our awareness — my inexplicable soft spot for spaniels can be traced back to one my parents had when I was a baby.
Blind spots, similarly, keep us from seeing the full picture. If we’re not aware of blind spots, they can trick us into thinking we’re seeing the entirety of reality, because we don’t know what we don’t know.
Blind spots often contribute to biases, and biases likewise can lead to blind spots. They then amplify one another, causing a feedback loop.
And while they can each cause plenty of problems on their own, in tandem they make it especially hard to evaluate the present moment accurately and can be a real detriment to effective leadership.
As the new year sends us off on a new loop in time, we’re going to examine a few biases and blind spots that can be particularly consequential for leaders. We all want to reap the positive benefits of the commitments and resolutions that accompany this time of annual renewal, but they’ll only get us so far if they occur in the midst of a reality-bending bias/blind spot feedback loop.
Cause: The success bias
One of the toughest skills in life, let alone business, is recognizing when a behavior that served us in the past will no longer serve us. It’s difficult because human beings have a bias toward success — if it has worked for us before, we are inclined to believe it will work again. It’s a situation common enough to have its own name, The Einstellung effect. And we often don’t stop to examine our way of doing something until it fails us, often repeatedly.
The success bias blinds us to evolving conditions (just ask Blockbuster Video). What would happen if I ignored changing conditions and exercised exactly the same way I did when I was twenty? An injury, sooner or later. Repeating what has worked before might continue yielding success for a while, but like a game of telephone, circumstances eventually evolve too far, and what was once a good strategy becomes a bad one.
If we aren’t aware of our existing success bias, it can create a feedback loop with any number of blind spots, leaving us disconnected from the realities of the current moment. I want to highlight one such blind spot, commonly referred to as the “going it alone” blind spot.
Effect: Going it alone
As leaders, we may have found at times that the easiest path was to hoist a challenge onto our own shoulders and carry it over the line. Perhaps our organization was smaller then. Or the market was easier to maneuver. Undoubtedly, we’ve all taken this approach at some point. But eventually, changing conditions mean this is no longer a viable option for ourselves or for our teams. Organizations grow, the scale of operations increases, decisions require input from more stakeholders, market opportunities shift — but our success bias tells us it’ll keep working.
We typically go it alone for one of three reasons:
- We think we can do it faster.
- We don’t believe it will be done right unless we do it.
- We’re afraid to ask for help.
What’s especially tricky is that our analysis might be partially correct. We may be able to do it faster. We may be able to do it better. But we aren’t in a vacuum, and we aren’t in the past.
We have to make decisions within the context of the present moment, not according to what has worked before.
Hotwiring the feedback loop
If we find ourselves stuck in the success bias/going it alone feedback loop, we need to find a pathway out, and it starts with interrogating our reasoning.
If we believe we are better off going it alone, a possible factor is that we’re having trouble trusting our team. If we don’t trust our team, we probably haven’t equipped them with the tools they need. And in order to give them the tools they need, we must lead from a clear point of view.
This inevitably leads us back to the ground floor of leadership, and a topic we’ve covered in the past, which is the importance of carving out time to reflect and view the organization from a bird’s-eye view. This provides us with the opportunity to define and clarify our personal values, which in turn allows us to develop a clear viewpoint. Finally, we’re equipped to build strong and capable teams we can trust to carry out the organization’s strategy.
Without the key building blocks of a clear viewpoint and trust in our team, we revert to reactivity grounded in our biases and blind spots.
Our success bias takes over, and we instinctively return to what has worked in the past — in this case, going it alone, which starts the harmful feedback loop over again.
The goal is to become aware of harmful feedback loops before the same old strategy fails and that awareness is forced upon us. And we do this by regularly pushing ourselves toward new perspectives and experiences provided by engaging a separate, productive feedback loop — one that we should remain constantly engaged with in order to keep the foundation of our leadership strong, which looks like:
- Spending some time on the balcony.
- Clarifying our personal values.
- Communicating a clear point of view.
- Building relationships and trust within our teams.
- Repeat.
If we can do this, we will find ourselves ready when a pivotal moment arrives, to:
- Evaluate the current moment at face value, while recognizing both its similarities with, and differences from, similar moments in the past.
- Interrogate our rationale for leaning toward a given course of action, if we are.
- Seek diverse points of view to gain perspective.
- Trust our team to act.
We often find ourselves back at the start again, beginning a new cycle, hoping it will propel us forward in meaningful ways. As we begin another new year, let’s exit those destructive loops that are holding us and our organizations back, and engage with the constructive cycles that offer us clarity and growth.