Are Your Decisions Truly Your Own? The Top 3 Decision Biases

This is episode 280 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast, where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport, and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Welcome. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast. I'm your host, Kari Schneider, and this podcast podcast is Self Mastery for Leaders. And I call it the Empowered Team Podcast because even though we are looking at self mastery, there's always an involvement with other people. Other people influence where we're going. We work with others in order to get to where we want to go. And today's topic is one that affects our decisions. When we make decisions, we're usually making it for ourselves, our family, our businesses, our work environments. We're making these decisions all of the time. So today's topic is about the biases that we have that influence our decisions. Now, we're going to be making approximately 35,000 decisions in a day. That is a day, everyone. How many decisions in a day? 35,000. Everything from am I going to drink, drink the sip of water to. To what am I going to wear this morning? To how I'm going to brush my teeth? There are just so many decisions happening. It can be as many as 2,000 in an hour. That's a decision every few seconds. It's phenomenal how much our brain is working and going behind the scenes, and we end up going into a lot of default decisions. And these default decisions are very influenced by these default ways of being and thinking, these biases that we have that we don't even realize that we have. So we're going to go into those biases. So I have a question for you to ponder before we start. And it is, do you. When the pressure's on, when there's time pressure there, do you tend to go in quickly and make the decision fast, or do you tend to step back and analyze and take a look at everything and. And wonder and be careful and get our other information in? So what do you tend to do when the clock is ticking? Do you slow things down or you go fast forward? Ponder that. Because for me, it depends on the context. Another one that I've noticed with my clients is I'm often having them pause and take a look. Is this decision a reflection of your purpose, your mission, or is it a reflection of your mood? So think about that one. Is this decision a reflection of your mission or your mood? Because this. If your decision is a reflection of your mood, chances are it could go one way or the other. You could feel great one moment, feel awful the next. And you don't want your decisions to be fickle and, and not aligned with who you are and what your purpose is. So is your decision a reflection of your mission or your mood? So let's take a look at the biases. These biases that affect all of our decisions and have us really be impacted and our outcomes be impacted, our process of decisions being impacted, as well as our outcomes being impacted by these biases that we may not even realize are running below the surface. They're really driving what we're doing, they're driving how we're thinking, they're driving who we are, and we don't even realize they're there. So these biases are the top three, and I think I'm going to add a bonus one here, but the top three biases that affect our decision and our decision making processes. So the number one is our confirmation bias. And this one in some ways is, I find it very profound because of how polarized so many people tend to be right now. If they believe, if one person believes one thing about politics, the other person, if they don't agree with that, then they're completely the polar opposite. Instead of saying, yeah, I think that too, but I disagree on this part of it, or, or I think this could be better. So really trying to understand the other person's perspective and part of this issue of polarization comes from confirmation biases. What a confirmation bias is. It's, it's when we search for or interpret and remember information in a way that confirms what we already believe. We remember things in a way that confirms our previous perceptions of the situation. It's how we would already see it. And then we look for more evidence to support that. That's basically what a confirmation bias is. Now the impact, the thing that happens on our decisions is that impact. It leads to us overvaluing information that supports what we believe. Anything that's pre existing for our own belief systems, we're going to look for more of that. And then we undervalue information that contradicts what we already believe. Now this ends up being problematic because it doesn't allow us to expand our minds. It also doesn't allow us to see the bigger picture and what's also going on in that same context. Now the way we can mitigate this is actively seeking out that devil's advocate, seeking out the contrarian, seeking out the person that believes the exact opposite that we believe we want to hear from people who think differently than we do. When we hear from people who think differently from we than we do and we are open minded to it. That's when we grow, that's when we expand our minds, that's when we seek to understand others. And that's what mitigates our inability to see the bigger picture with when we have a confirmation, confirmation bias in our decision making. So when we consider the opposing view, then we want to challenge any assumptions that we already have. Now I think of this in terms of my viewpoints on the world environment leadership. I've got a lot of opinions, a lot of viewpoints. Especially as I get older I find that I they tend to get more and more deeply rooted. And that's the case I find for my parents, I find for certain people I might spend speak to and I noticed myself having a viewpoint but wanting to understand them and feeling the friction in the moment of, of not wanting to release my own viewpoint in order to understand them. That's what I experience. I experience this inability to really let go of what I already believe in order to go forward and understand them. And what I want to offer you is that you don't have to let go of what you believe. As soon as I realize that, okay, I could believe this thing and I can go and open my mind to whatever they think and I could even try on arguing for what they believe. So for instance, I had a person approach me at the Wycliffe Lodge site that I've been working on for the last three years and my husband was there, Paul was there and he was working, he was on a meeting or a call and a neighbor from across the lake who was from the US came over and was chatting with me and then he's like, oh, is your husband around? And I was like, no, he's busy in a meeting. And he clearly wanted to speak with my husband and it was clearly about, we're neighbors, we own the property there. But ultimately it's my business, it's my camp, it's my project. And, and my husband has been supporting here and there, helping out with projects, building a couple things. But when it comes to the major growth, the decisions, everything that's going on there, it's kind of my baby, it's my queendom, it's my zone, it's my business. And so this person asked a second and a third time for my husband Paul, and he'd never met him before. And I finally said, well, you know, if there's a decision that you need or if there's something you need to ask or something you Want to talk about? About I be the person to talk to and he's just not available right now. I'm sorry about that. And I realized that in the moment I was in the space of thinking that he was wrong, that he should just automatically be open minded to talking to me. And I really had to try on, well, what would it be like if he just wanted to talk to another man and he wasn't interested in talking to a woman about some of the things that he was talking about? And that was, that was the friction for me. Because my confirmation bias is that, well, he should want to talk to either me or him, he should want to talk to me, he should want to value my position or my opinion just as much as my husband's. And yet it took something for me to stay open minded and hold the space for my belief system while embracing where he might believe and what he might want want or his preferences. So that confirmation bias is likely going to show up as the top bias for any of your decision making. I invite you to explore trying on whatever the other position is trying on the things you think are not right or not valuable or not part of the conversation. Try them on no matter what, because it'll allow you to avoid your blind spots. Because the more we have a confirmation bias, the more we're looking for, for our own opinions to be validated and evidence to support what we already believe. The more we look for that, the more blind we are to other information or other evidence out there. So that is bias number one, confirmation bias. Bias number two is our overconfidence bias. This is one of my favorite ones because I like to make fun of it, because I like to make fun of myself and make fun of other humans, because I think we humans can be messy and crazy and all of the things. So the overconfident confidence bias can also be referred to as the Dunning Kruger effect. And this one is where we have the tendency to overestimate our own abilities, our own knowledge, our own influence. We overestimate what we're capable of and that is this overconfidence bias. And it's not arrogance. It's not believing that we're better than someone else. It's overconfidence. It's believing that we're capable of or better than what we actually are. So this overconfidence bias, or Dunning Kruger effect, which is the scientific term for it, it's been researched, is also affectionately known as being stranded on Mount Stupid. Because when you're stranded on Mount Stupid, you really can't see, you don't have perspective of what else is out there. So this impact on decision making specifically is that we underestimate the risks, we don't explore alternatives that are different from what we might think we're already capable of. And we end up making decisions on these flawed assumptions of our own abilities. So we could put ourselves in a situation that we really don't want because we've been overconfident about what we're capable of or what we're, what we can do, or our own influence. So this overconfidence bias can really affect us in our decision making. So what we want to do is, is foster what I like to call humble confidence. Confidence is one of the most positive characteristics of any leader. It is one of the most positive emotional states that we can adopt in order to go for our goals, in order to take action. So confidence is such a beautiful thing to have. It's the overconfidence that causes this problem or the self doubt, which is that opposite of overconfidence that causes this problem. The sweet spot in the middle is what I love to call humble confidence. Humble confidence is having confidence, knowing our own abilities, but staying in the zone of openness, of understanding that, you know, there's probably some things we don't see, there's some things we don't know about, and we want to stay open minded. So the beautiful thing about fostering this culture of humility and adopting this humble confidence is that then we're encouraged and we're reinforced to do a risk assessment because we know we're going to make mistakes. Confidence in knowing that we can do it is one thing. And humble confidence has the awareness that we can also make mistakes even though we know we can do it. So then we exercise this risk assessment and then we also seek external feedback, wanting to see the other perspectives, wanting to have some other viewpoints, because we know that we can do it. We know we might be good at something, and we also know that other views are going to add the value, add more information. We also know that we are able to make mistakes. We're human. So that is how we can mitigate that overconfidence. And that is, number two, the overconfidence bias. Now there's a third major bias called anchoring bias. This is one that really affects our decision making as well. And the anchoring bias is when we tend to rely way too heavily on the first piece of information. When we grab this first piece of information, then we anchor it and we Decide that it's more important. And we're doing this subconsciously, we're doing this unknowingly. So we've decided that this is more important, this first bit of information. And it has a big impact because this initial information could be irrelevant. This initial bit of information could be something that doesn't have any, any relevance for the decision that we're going to, we're going to make. And it can significantly influence that, that final decision. And this is very unfortunate because the second, third, tenth piece of information might be the most important bit of information that we need for the decision process. I know that for myself that this is, is a big one for me because I like to move quickly. And when I'm moving quickly then, and deciding quickly and processing quickly, then I may not have given myself the time to bring in other bits of information. And then I really am leaning heavily on that first bit of information. So for instance, I had a family member who went into, just for a brief hospital visit and. But it was, it was concerning, didn't know what was going on. And I was very aware in the moment that there was a previous instance and that previous instance was influencing how I was thinking of the current instance. And they had nothing to do with each other. But it was this anchoring bias that because something had happened prior, because that was an earlier piece of information, then it was causing my thinking to make some assumptions that weren't accurate. And I didn't want that. I wanted to bring in all the information and make sure that I had all the information before making any decisions to travel, decisions for support, decisions for someone, someone's life and, and outcomes. So the anchoring bias, it can be really, it can be well managed if we delay that initial judgment. And that's why I gave the example of myself and moving quickly because I don't like delaying. I do make decisions fast, I do move quickly. And it's for me specifically I would find that putting the context, if it is a health matter, a family matter, a bigger decision for business then those ones, I want to delay a little bit. I'm still going to move quickly. However, I want to just delay. Sometimes it's just 24 hours, sometimes it's a few hours. But that delay in decision can allow me to make sure that I'm not over emphasizing that first initial judgment, that first bit of information and then, then again, like the other ones, seek other viewpoints. Because our first bit of information in this anchoring bias is typically our own. It's information that we are giving ourselves from past experience. So our anchoring bias can be coming from a confirmation bias. Our anchoring bias can be coming from an overconfidence bias. So check that for a second, because your first bit of information that you're using to make a decision might be coming from yourself. And that first bit of information can be already pre biased by your confirmation bias and by your overconfidence bias. Go figure. So this is where seeking other viewpoints again can be fantastic. Now, it doesn't mean that you are going to default to other people's viewpoints. You may be the best person to make that decision. You may be the one with the best information information, and that's okay. But you do want to make sure that you can see another perspective besides just your own, because chances are your own perspective has some biases. And it's going to be far less likely to have these biases if you're aware that you're going to have these top three biases almost in every situation. So if you're aware there's going to be a confirmation bias, and you say, what is my confirmation bias in this? And you say, where am I overconfident in this decision? And you say to yourself, what is this first bit of information that I might be anchoring with and emphasizing too heavily? And if you've done that on your own, even when you've gotten all these other bits of information, then you've mitigated some of the biases that you're naturally going to have because you're a human being. All right, now we're going to go on to one last bias. And this one is kind of a bonus because I find that the clients that I work with and for myself, I find that this one is a very likely one for people who are achievers, goal setters, leaders, overachievers. This particular one tends to be a real. A real recurring one for me. And it's this. It's called an impact bias. It's also called achievement fallacy. But the bias is an impact bias. And what it means is that this is the tendency for people to overestimate the intensity and duration of their emotional reactions to future events, particularly achieving the thing, the goal, the milestone. And this is the belief that that certain goal or that milestone or that outcome that you've been going for will create this greater emotional impact than it actually does. So how many times have you felt like that? First, I don't know. Let's say you do a half marathon for the first time and you are working towards it for months in order to train, in order to reach that half marathon. And then finally you go through and you cross the finish line and you've done it and you feel amazing. But the amazing that you feel and the duration that you feel, it was less than what you built up in your mind. Or perhaps you get that role, that promotion in your, in your work and in your mind you believe that once you started the business or got the promotion, you believed that this was going to be the thing that felt so amazing that you've arrived, that you feel really good and it's going to be lasting the entire time you have that role. It's going to feel great. And maybe there's some level of that going on, maybe not as, as much as I've just exaggerated it. However, you've got some level of it. And if that's the case, and then you experience it and it's, it's really a step up, but it's not all you made it out to be. That is the impact bias, that is the arrival fallacy, the achievement fallacy. But what we want to do in order to mitigate that is actually what did the impact first on your decision making is that you'll have this inflated expectation. And if you have an inflated expectation of an emotional payoff, then you can be potentially neglecting other important areas. You feel like it's worth far more than it is. You feel like if you bought that home and lived in that place that it's going to be magical. Your whole life will be changed. When in reality, you buy the home, you live in the place, and it's awesome, and maybe it's a greater quality of life, but it's not, you know, this magical existence of the rest of your life. It's just a step up. That's what reality creates once you get there. So your mitigation is encouraging. Realistic goal setting and, and I want to be really, really careful when I say realistic goal setting. What I mean by that is, is that you're not inflating things. Things, because really we can make anything be whatever we want it to be. We can make any experience elevated or deflated. We can make any goal elevated, expansive, magical. We can make it anything we want it to be based on how we manage our own focus and our own emotional states. However, we want to make sure that we're not using an inflated imaginary outcome as our goal to get there. We want to actually be able to still experience the magic in the moment. We want to experience the magic in the process. The Magic in the journey, the incredible overcoming or whatever we have to do in the journey, we want to experience those things along the way. Because the reality is, is that what we're experiencing now is our lives. What we're experiencing in the moment is what's really valuable. And if we're giving the outcome, the goal, the achievement, if we're giving that a greater weight or more value, then we're doing ourselves a disservice in the now because what we're experiencing now really is the experience of our lives. So we want to really understand and have that perspective so that we're not giving some imaginary future the gift of what we could give ourselves now, this gift that we can have right in this moment. So those are four particular biases that I wanted to share with you because I know that for me I get caught after the fact. And if I'm more proactive and if I have a little more perspective and I'm asking myself, hey, where am I being biased in my confirmation? Where am I looking to validate the things I already believe? Where am I looking for evidence to support what I already think? Where am I being overconfident? Where am I thinking that I can do something that I haven't done before and thinking that I'm able to do far more now? I don't want to limit myself in any way. I believe I can figure it out. I believe that I'm capable. But I don't want to shoot myself in the foot by thinking of, of myself and my abilities in such a greater way that I'm of that I'm not mitigating for the mistakes that I could make? And then that, that anchoring bias, am I giving myself way too much of a narrow perspective because I've only been looking or focusing mostly on the first bit of information? And lastly, that arrival fallacy or impact bias that am I actually looking at the future and that goal as something so much greater than what I have currently right now. And if I am, I don't really want to do that because I love my now. I love what I have available to me right now. So on those impact biases, confirmation overconfidence, on all those biases, take a look at for yourself and see if they are impacting you. See if they are impacting your decisions and take moment, do that little assessment on your own biases. It will literally take seconds and it will literally offer you so much more relief from decision fatigue because then you're not going through back and forth, back and forth because you've made mistakes along the way. It'll allow you to make more effective decisions. It'll allow you to get in the habit of making more effective decisions. Decisions efficiently. All right, I know you are empowered. You are part of our community. You are listening in. And that means that you take care of yourself, you take care of others, you take purposeful action and you are up to something larger than yourself. So I know that that can be big in the world. You've got this. I believe in you. Keep going. Have a wonderful rest of your day everyone. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. 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