Embrace your bias – just don’t let it control you

In some organizations, the word “bias” has the same status as many other four-letter words; you need to avoid it in polite company. After all, leaders are supposed to be objective and data driven in their decisions and actions.

But bias is essential to decision making. In his book, “How We Decide”, Jonah Lehrer, tells the story of a man who struggled with simple decisions such as the color pen he should use or the radio station to which he should listen. The man’s problem stemmed from surgery where a part of his brain had to be removed. Interestingly, this was the same part of his brain that controlled his emotions. In other words, this man’s decision making ability became quite limited without bias/emotion. Lehrer concludes that we need both rational and an emotional (biased) thinking to make decisions. Trying to make decisions simply on facts comes nearly impossible. You can always gather more data or run more analyses. At some point, you need to make a choice – that’s where your bias comes in.

Instead of trying to remove bias, I believe that leaders should embrace it. This doesn’t mean that they should blindly act upon it. Instead, leaders should learn to use their bias to drive questions rather than answers. This is important for two reasons

1) A leader’s value comes from his or her bias. A leader’s bias is based on his or her experience. Experience and judgment is what sets leaders apart. If that shouldn’t be a part of decision-making, then every new employee would be equally qualified to lead.

2) Even if we wanted to, we can’t control our bias. Recent research on the brain shows that our brains operate too fast; often filtering information before we’ve even become conscious of it. The best we can do is learn to mitigate our bias.

So, what does a good “biased” leader do? He asks a lot of questions. He uses his bias as a basis for exploring his business and organization. He creates hypotheses and data experiments to confirm or refute his biases. That last part is important. A good leader doesn’t just look for data to confirm. A good leader is willing to recognize when the data does not support his view.

Good leaders also put their bias on the table. That’s different from what we are taught. We’ve been taught to not show our bias. But, since bias is unavoidable, most leaders wind up just masking it rather than removing it. As a result, analysis, decision-making, dialogue become inefficient and dysfunctional as people are working against forces that they can’t see or process. Instead, leaders can be upfront about their bias and invite their teams to provide opposing data. Some leaders take this even further and require that someone on the team provide an opposing view and data before they make a decision. That’s strong leadership.

Finally, good leaders surrounded themselves by people with opposing biases. This creates an appropriate level of checks and balances.

Your bias is probably what has gotten you to where you are today. If you continue to use it wisely, it will take you much further. Don’t shy away from your bias. Instead, use your bias to help make sense of data.