This post is an excerpt from a LinkedIn discussion. The author, Leland Russell, gave me permission to post this.  His blog is at:

Why do the “beholders” often see the “facts” so differently?

We are not the rational thinkers we sometimes imagine. Our thought processes are often flawed by common thinking errors caused by cognitive biases. A vast body of research has illuminated the fact that these common thinking errors can lead to bad or sub-optimal decisions.

While no one can rid his or her mind of these ingrained flaws, we can make a conscious effort to understand and compensate for them. There is quite a list to consider.

1. Selective Perception – Our brain fits facts into our established mental frameworks. We tend to remember something that is consistent with our worldview, and discount statements or unconsciously screen-out information that is not consistent with our current beliefs. We also tend to gather facts that support certain our worldview but disregard other facts that support different worldviews.

2. Information Distortion – We unconsciously delete, distort and generalize information to make it conform to our pre-existing beliefs. We also distort our memories of chosen and rejected options to make the chosen options seem more attractive.

3. Fundamental Attribution Errors – This is the well-documented human tendency to attribute better judgment, motives and morality to ourselves than we do to those we don’t like or with whom we disagree. We are inclined to judge their arguments to be untrue or irrelevant. We are equally inclined to accept a statement by someone we like and generally agree. We also tend to attribute our success to our abilities and talents, but we attribute our failures to bad luck and external factors. We attribute other’s success to good luck, and their failures to their mistakes.

4. Group Conformity Instinct – Social psychologists have found that individuals tend to lose their personal compass in group settings with either positive or negative consequences. The Group Conformity Instinct is most obvious in an organization’s culture. The prevailing mental norms (beliefs, values and underlying assumptions/mindsets) about how to do things exerts a powerful influence on individuals to conform.

5. Overconfidence – Most successful people tend to be overconfident regarding their:
Personal Performance. For example, a friend of mine who is atop executive development consultant asks senior executives to rate themselves against their peers and the vast majority rate (90%) themselves in the top 20%.

6. Wishful Thinking – We tend to want to see things in a positive light and this can distort our perception and thinking so we sometimes make non-rational decisions based on what is pleasing to imagine instead of making decisions based on objective evidence. Studies have consistently shown that holding all else being equal people will predict positive outcomes to be more likely than negative outcomes.

7. Comfort Zone – This is a range of thinking or behavior that is familiar or routine, a psychological space where we feel “at home” and comfortable. Most people have difficulty making decisions that are outside their comfort zone and, when faced with new circumstances, an unwillingness to change thought patterns that they have used in the past. Decision makers tend to display a strong bias toward alternatives that perpetuate the status quo.

While it is impossible eliminate all of these thinking errors, it is important for leaders to understand that they exist and try to compensate for them. The best defense is the leader’s awareness. Forewarned is forearmed.

We all have beliefs, values and behaviors that form our personality and shape our view of the world and our perception of reality. Some beliefs, more like opinions, change based on new information or experience. In contrast, there are many perceptions and behaviors that are deeply “grooved” into our brain. So deep and habitual are these thought patterns that they exert powerful influence over how we think, interpret and act. Some such grooves may be consciously chosen, like our preferences for art and music, or our religious beliefs. Still others are so automatic and unquestioned that we may not even be aware of them. For example, some people faced with a challenge automatically respond with curiosity and optimism, while others respond with worry and pessimism.

I once worked with a client, Jim, who was thinking about launching his own business. In our work we talked about roughly three alternatives:

1) Staying put in his job.
2) Quitting cold turkey so he could devote himself 100% to the new business.
3) Building “stepping stones” to transition gradually from his current situation to his new venture.

I once worked with a client, Jim, who was thinking about launching his own business. In our work we talked about roughly three transition strategies:

One day a friend of his approached him about a sizeable project in Jim’s general area of expertise. Jim met with his friend and the friend’s boss to discuss the project. At the end of the discussion, Jim suggested that as a next step they meet with the owner of his company.

After Jim related the story, my first question was, “Given your plan to start your own company, did it not occur to you that this project and client might be a great stepping stone to YOUR new business?”

Jim seemed stunned by this idea. It had never occurred to him. So “grooved” was he about automatically feeding prospects up the chain of command, that he was blind to a possible entrepreneurial opportunity.

This situation also revealed another one of Jim’s grooves. While he has powerful expertise in his field of knowledge, he had never worked in the prospect’s particular industry. So his knee-jerk (grooved) assessment was that he lacked the qualifications to handle the project. When he expressed this view I asked him if he knew anyone in his field with such industry knowledge. If so, they could have partnered on the project. Again, he seemed stunned. The idea had never occurred to him.

This is how it is with grooves. The really deep ones are more like ditches that prevent us from seeing the wider picture. The narrower and deeper the groove, the less flexibility we have for thinking and acting. On the bright side, we have flexible minds capable of creating new grooves.

For example, I sometimes work with executives who are “too nice,” which can create problems when a situation calls for stern, assertive behavior. A friend of ours is strongly conflict averse, but she found there are limits to her niceness.

One day while vacationing on a beach with her children, she saw a woman walk by with her St. Bernard. The dog stopped and did his business, leaving a heaping “dog pie.” The woman failed to “scoop the poop” and walked back to her nearby cottage. This flipped a switch in our friend. She scooped the dog pie into a grocery bag and marched over to the woman’s cottage. “You left something on the beach,” she reported when the woman answered the door. She promptly handed over the grocery bag to the surprised woman.

“I don’t want this,” the woman said.

“Neither does the beach,” our friend said. With that she stalked off and never looked back.

So, what are your grooves? Are they helping or hindering you in achieving your goals? Is it time to grow some new grooves?

I was sitting in a coffee shop recently trying to write a blog post. It wasn’t happening.

Then a couple sat down nearby. I could not help but overhear some of their conversation. Seems they have a middle school son who is shaping up as a bit of a slacker. All he wants to do is play video games. He’s not doing his school work, he avoids his simple chores like making his bed, and he has shown no interest in extra-curricular activities at school.

The father was pretty worked up about the situation. He was talking about carrots, and even more about sticks. He talked about rules, guidelines and other structures that might help eradicate his son’s bad habits and replace them with good ones.

Mom, on the other hand, openly declared that she was concerned but not alarmed. She agreed that they could and should explore some avenues to improve the behaviors, but she was more of the view that her son was just going through a phase and would work his way out of it.

The conversation went on for some time. What struck me most was not the content of the dialogue, but rather, the mutual friendly and concerned tone. I can so easily imagine other situations where two adults would escalate the heat of the conversation, becoming increasingly defensive and/or increasingly aggressive about their differences of opinion. Maybe one would steamroll the other into capitulation and acquiescence.

A take-no-prisoners, give-no-quarter approach dominates our competitive culture where the loudest, most insistent voices seem to win – at least when it comes to talk radio and cable news.

But this couple did not pursue their difference with conventional win-at-all costs ideology. To the contrary, at one point I heard the mother say something like, “Although I’m not as worried about this as you are, I am curious about why you feel the way you feel.” A bit later she asked her husband what he was like when he was 13 years old. Still later she really won me over by saying, “Even though I’m not worried about this like you are, I will support whatever you want to do.”

The husband, for his part, did not try to convince his wife that she was wrong and he was right. He didn’t get louder or more insistent. He listened to her. He addressed her questions thoughtfully. He seemed grateful to be able to express himself fully without it turning into a tug-of-war.

Let’s look at a parallel conversation in the business world. One of my clients is a director, and one of her employees, a manager, has been on loan to a senior VP. When it came time for the company’s managers to provide preliminary ratings on their direct reports, my client gave her manager grades of As, Bs and Cs on various performance goals and attributes. Her evaluation was based on both firsthand observations and comments, sometimes complaints, from others in the organization. After submitting her rating through channels, it was bounced back to her. The SVP wanted the report card to read straight As. When she sought an audience to compare and contrast their different perspectives, the message was unambiguous: there is no debate; change the ratings.

What is the impact of this style of dialogue, or better put, lack of dialogue? First, the director feels disempowered and alienated. Second, she has already been approached by colleagues who learned of the top grades assigned to her manager. (It’s hard to keep a secret in any company!) They were steamed and blamed her, placing her in the difficult position of either accepting their scorn or throwing her boss under the bus. Third, and perhaps most unfortunate, a precedent has been set or reinforced that holds a VP’s opinion as sacrosanct.

Unfortunately, this director’s experience was not unusual; in fact it is probably the norm in most companies to accept without question the authority of the higher ranking executive.

Engaging in true two-way dialogue is not easy. It takes time. It goes against our competitive, litigious, right-wrong cultural sensibilities. It requires that we have BOTH the confidence of our own convictions AND the willingness to tolerate, even embrace, conflicting or alternative views. It requires that we set aside our ideas of power and politics and engage in true collaboration.

It’s not easy, it’s not common, but oh what a difference it can make.