Remote Work Series - How to Overcome Proximity Bias

Hi there. This is Rich Bello and I want to welcome you to the Enrichment show by Aruta. Each week we'll be bringing you some personal and professional inspiration. We hope you enjoy the show. Hi, welcome to the Enrichment Show. I'm Rich Bello and I'm really excited about our topic today. It's about what I believe is the preeminent issue of our time, remote work. We're clearly in the midst of a transition period of a major transformation about how we work. Some would even call it a revolution. In any transformation of such magnitude, there are all kinds of psychological and practical challenges to overcome. Additionally, there are literally unlimited opportunities to take advantage of. All of these are directly in our wheelhouse of expertise here at Arutas. So I'm really excited to provide you with some great value today on this topic. I guarantee that if you listen closely, you'll get a tremendous amount of value, not only about remote work, but about life as well. So let's get after it. So what are some names when you work outside of your main work location? Virtual company. Officeless office. Optional. Telework. Remote office. I'm not going in anymore. Distributed company. Yeah, distributed company. I like the term distributed company. A distributed company is one in which the vast majority of employees work from wherever they are comfortable and productive. Perhaps most importantly, communication and culture are moved outside the boundaries of a physical location so that everyone is able to be included wherever they work. Now, some time ago, I hired a nice young lady to be our project manager. The whole team was excited for her to join us as she had the reputation of being a wonderful team player and cultural leader. Literally her first day on the job, she starts working on me to allow her to work remotely. I thought she was joking, but she wasn't. She loved the firm that we were creating, and she also wanted the flexibility of being able to work remotely and not just working from home, but working while traveling the world. Right? She wanted to go to Greece, all over the place. So from that day on, we hold the most daily friendly debates on this issue. She would preach to me about all the pros of working remotely, sending me emails, books, right. Having this be a topic at our lunches. And I would return the favor by providing her with my own books and articles and all the cons of remote work. The biggest con in my mind was culture. I mean, we were a growing team and I wanted her to collaborate with the others. Also, even though we had a rigorous recruiting process, you don't really know where you're getting in an employee in terms of work ethic, I mean, I could trust her to work, right? I could trust her to work while she was out of the office, right? What about technology? Then in early January, she takes a vacation to some city in China. I believe it was called Wuhan or something like that. And before she leaves, she says, rich, when I return, mark my words, you'll be converted to seeing things my way. She was sort of joking, but this made me a little nervous because she was very good at getting her way. Well, when she came back, she weirdly, somehow did get her way. Not only was she able to work remotely, and not only everybody in our firm got to work remotely, but the whole world had to work remotely. She was a true visionary. Now, I'm kidding about the destination of her trip. You know that it was Wuhan, right? But everything else is pretty much true, right? I had to do a 180 and turn this crisis into an opportunity quick. Coincidentally, I had just written a book called Crisitunity how to Turn Any Crisis into an Opportunity. So I felt that I was already an expert on this topic and was ready to apply it. What I didn't realize at the time was that I was already an expert in remote work as well as I just didn't realize it. The question was, and still is, how can we take the fact that we and our employees are working from remote locations and turn it into the best thing that has happened to our business, fully recognizing that there are significant challenges to doing so. And was I wrong about my bias against remote work? Hopefully I was, because we're about to find out. And if I was right, wouldn't be good for our company. If I was wrong, it was good for our company. I actually love it when I realize that I'm wrong about something, especially something that I felt really strongly about. Why? Because that means I've learned something important. I've improved my mental model of the world. Now, my ego, on the other hand, doesn't always love it, but luckily it's not in charge. The major challenge when it comes to remote work is that there's usually an inherent bias against it, at least from an employer or manager's perspective. To really understand the issue and how to overcome this challenge, we need to dig in a bit as to what a bias is in the first place. A cognitive bias is a programmed thinking pattern generally thought of as irrational. Right? An irrational thinking pattern that has an impact impact on our judgment and therefore on our decisions. Cognitive biases have a direct impact on how we perceive the world. These Thinking patterns of beliefs and mindsets are almost always based on information that is incomplete and possibly even erroneous. As such, they often lead us to poor judgment, which means that we will make poor decisions based on those faulty judgments. There are many different documented cognitive biases, but in general, we as humans tend to have a predisposition towards negative biases. Why would the Great Architect program us in this way? Cruel joke? No. As usual, when we look. Usually when we look at our inherent programming, the answer inevitably comes down to survival, right? We're programmed to survive. We're programmed to constantly be on the lookout for dangers to us so that we can stay alive, right? So furthermore, we needed to make decisions quickly in a life or death situation. Finally, it's important for us to conserve energy, for us to use that energy in the most efficient and effective manner, right? To meet the prime directive of staying alive. So if we had this programming or cognitive biases to rely on, we wouldn't have to expend the energy to think about the pros and cons of each individual situation each time. So we grouped situations into categories. We would think about or act in a certain way each time that situation occurred. Now, these biases may have served us well in the old days when there were lions and tigers and bears all around us, but that's not the case today. At least for most of us. Our programming hasn't kept up with our environment. We now have more time to make decisions utilizing more information. And when we have the luxury of time, we should indeed use it to gather the information that will allow us to make the best situation considering the circumstances. Let's take a look at some common cognitive biases and how they may apply to our attitudes about remote work. While humans develop countless biases, here's a few that can affect a remote work workforce. Number one, confirmation bias. It's the tendency to surround ourselves with people who agree with us, and we only seek information or evidence that confirms our viewpoints, information we, direction we want to take, et cetera. In my case, when I was debating my colleague about whether remote work was better or worse for a root, I realized that I didn't really read the articles or books that she gave me, at least not fully. I did, but as soon as I found something that conflicted with my belief, I put the book down or the article down. However, when I found an article or book that agreed with my position, I would read it vociferously and drafting an aha email to boot. I was clearly giving more weight to the views that remote Work didn't work. Also, when you are the boss, unless you trained staff well and let them know there are no ramifications for disagreeing with you, your team will tend to agree with you even if they think you're wrong. I've learned this one over the years and I tell my employees that you will actually be rewarded for disagreeing with me. As I always want to make the right decision. Don't worry about my ego. If I make the wrong decision about our company, that hurts us all, me included. Right? So the key is ensuring that they understand that disagreement and healthy debate is actually encouraged. To get to the truth, there have to of course be rules of engagement. Right? For instance, no personal attacks. When the debate is over, it's over. No grudges. All that said, I did have more people, not just employees, but outside advisors, agreeing with me than not. Now that I was essentially forced to look at this issue in unbiased critical thinking fashion, I realized that there were far greater benefits to remote work than office work if it was set up properly for success. Now, another cognitive bias is negativity bias. We sort of talked about this one. This is a global bias whereby people tend to focus more or solely on the negatives of a situation as opposed to examining the positives Here too. I was guilty thinking all of the downsides of working remotely, like cybersecurity issues. Oh my God. Collaboration, trust, productivity. Not only were some of these wrong, but there was a lot of positives in each of these issues if it was handled properly. This was also a little personally disappointing to me is one of my favorite mindsets is crisis opportunity. So I had already trained my mind to find positive situations in any crisis. Positive opportunities. Number three is the status quo bias. Most people generally like things to be the same, really to stay the same. And they have an aversion to change. They view change as risky and requires energy to change. Right. They have already put time and energy into what they're going to do and what they're doing. And they have a great reason to keep doing that right? Now, another one, a similar bias to that is the sunk cost bias. People have a tendency to give more weight to the option that they have invested more time, energy or money into something other than other options. Right. Even if the other option makes more sense in reality, it doesn't matter how many resources you sunk into an option. Logically, you should choose the option that makes the most sense for you and your business. Right. Going forward. Right. These are just a few of the cognitive biases that apply to remote work. There are many more. If you really want to dig into this, you can check out our other episode on cognitive biases. I find the topic fascinating and so important because we can have the tendency to make the wrong decisions, those that are not in our best interest if we allow these biases to remain blind spots. Hey, thanks for listening to the show. At Aruta, we want to help you to apply the knowledge. Did you know that we offer life coaches to get you on track? And you can also sign up to be a beta tester for our accountability app. To learn more, go to aruta.com now let's jump back in. So in light of all this, what we should practice is critical thinking. Critical thinking is the skill that we should all seek to aspire to. You want to remove all biases, beliefs and emotions from the equation from your decision making process. Now, while you may be thinking, oh, now that I understand these, I'll just make sure not to make decisions without thinking more deeply about them anymore. Right? And that's a great start. But remember, these biases are usually unconscious. That's why cognitive biases are also called blind spots. So it takes some training of your mind to do it. This is a good area to get curious about. Get some training. If you don't, many times you won't even realize about these cognitive Realize you have a cognitive bias until it's too late. So how do you overcome the challenges of cognitive biases? As with most challenges, the first step is awareness. Be mindful that you have them right. They're natural. We all have them. Get curious about them so you can learn about them. Learn the different types of common cognitive biases. Be especially mindful when you're making important decisions. Think about the factors that you're utilizing to make the decision. Explore whether any of the criteria you are considering can lead you to clues about any of the common and cognitive biases in making your decision. Be open to challenge your biases. Have processes for challenging your biases all the time. Encourage healthy debate. As I said before, on your team, look at other options. Challenge each decision. At our hedge fund, we'd have people present the bull and the bear case for any stock idea. We wanted to know the case for buying a stock, what was good about it and the case for selling it, what was bad about it. Have somebody take both sides of an issue and get to the truth. We also have a framework for a mindset in our culture that we call Strong Opinions Weekly Held. It was a framework developed by Stanford University professor Paul Safo this framework allows you to make decisions with incomplete information. First, develop a strong opinion or hypothesis about a decision that you need to make. Then actively gather information that either supports or refutes the hypothesis. The key, though, the key if you come upon information that refutes your hypothesis, you need to change your hypothesis. Don't cling to your ideas in the face of conflicting information. Don't let ego get in the way. Right in my firm, I actually take the other side of the position I strongly believe in. Much to the surprise of my colleagues, they scream out, how can you actually believe that? And I would say I don't. But we don't have anybody else taking that side of the debate. So I well, I want to get at the truth. So we need somebody to take the other side of the debate. You can also have fun with this by role playing. If you have a particularly stubborn team member, have that member roleplay and take the other side of a debate to present the conflicting, conflicting view. Those that are able to do it effectively often are able to identify their cognitive biases. We once had an attorney that we work with that was very smart, but every once in a while it was clear that he was wrong about a particular issue. Everybody on the team saw it and was perplexed that he couldn't see it. I was sure he knew he was wrong, but he just couldn't admit it. I once asked a colleague of his about this. I said, how could this be? He's so smart and he doesn't seem to even have a big ego. His colleague said to me, rich, he's a former criminal defense attorney. He's trained never to give in to an argument, even if he's wrong. I got it. Now. The first thing to realize about remote work, emphasizing the word work, is that, weirdly, it's not that much different than what we've already been doing for the past 15 or 20 years. The bottom line is that with technology, we were already working remotely in our own offices in large part anyway, but just not recognizing it or calling it that. Because we also came into an office where there were mostly other remote workers beside us. This is the biggest bias buster of them all. How much of your day do you spend on emails? The average is five hours per day, according to a recent Adobe survey. Does it really matter where you're emailing from? Your home office or your office on Madison Avenue? Some days my business partner and I would send 20 or more emails to each other, even though our offices were a few feet down the hall. We would say Good morning, go to our office, email away, grab lunch together, and then retreat to our respective offices, sometimes even to eat our lunch and then say good night at the end of the day. I was basically commuting over two hours each day to say good morning and good night. I lived an hour away from the office. He lived right down the block, so no big deal for him. Now, I'm being a bit facetious, but I think you get the point. So if you're lucky enough to get your own office, maybe you socialize briefly for a few minutes prior to entering your office. But it's also likely that you and your colleagues worked much of the day right from your own office without much social interaction other than some meetings, many of which were likely on the phone with somebody outside the office anyway. Right? So did it really matter if your office was in your home or in the city? And if you dare to step outside your office, get ready for the distractions. Right? People are just clamoring to get your attention. And what about work that we outsource to our vendors, such as our lawyers, accountants, brokers, maybe even outsource technology department? The work they do is crucial to the functioning of our business, yet we don't seem to have the same psychological issues that we face when we think about our own trusted employees working outside of our own office. Cognitive biases are more global in nature. It's a good idea to get down to the specific beliefs that make up these cognitive biases. Let's look at a few common beliefs and see if we can bust them. So, erroneous belief, number one, right? Remote work was going to be an entirely new experience. The facts I have been working with remote teams for almost 30 years. I'll bet that if you think about it, you too will find that you've been working with remote teams. I'd work with teams and people from New Zealand, China, England, the Philippines, Pakistan, Japan. I don't mean just one offs here and there in many cases. I've managed teams for years overseas. Now, granted, there's a difference between being in an office environment versus being home. But even there, I realized that the most significant relationship I had was working remotely, even with other top members of my team. Right? And I was actually working from my home too. Another erroneous belief is distractions from home will certainly keep my employees and even myself from being as efficient and effective as they can be in the office, where distractions are minimized, heads down, focused on their work. Right? The facts. Oh boy, is that one erroneous. Right? Studies show consistently that people are even more distracted from work than they are at home. But even more important than that is that the antidote to distraction is to find something that find a career and find the work that people are interested in fulfilled. Right? That pretty much eliminates distraction. If you hate your job, you'll constantly be seeking things to be distracted by. You also want to set your people up for success with training about distractions. We have a separate course just on that topic. It's a topic called it's on Focus. We have a webinar on Focus. You should check it out. Another erroneous belief. If I can't see people working, I won't know that they actually are. And this will cause a tremendous amount of stress. Fact. The fact is that what you should be focused on is not seeing them work, but on getting results. Right? And results are something that you can't see. If you're worried that they're going to be on social media all day, I've got news for you. They were almost certainly doing that anyway, right? There are lots of studies that show that if you're worried your employees need somebody watching over them to be working, then that's called babysitting, not managing. And you know what? That will be the case for some employees. Right? But the key is to remember that the problem is not with remote work. It's with your hiring practices. Right? You hired an untrustworthy employee. Bottom line, right? We'll discuss this in more depth in the trust episode. The bot line is that you need to either trust the people you work with or find others whom you can trust. Okay, so now I've thrown a lot of great stuff at you. But remember, knowledge does not apply itself. You must make the application. How many times have you gone to a seminar or watched a webinar and said, that's great stuff, I'm going to do it tomorrow. Then tomorrow comes and you know what happens, right? Then next week comes, I'm still going to do it, and you just lose it. So I'm going to give you some good ways to take action on your remote work policy. First, a little about Aruta, though. You know, at Aruta, our mission is to provide executives and businesses with whatever it takes to get the job done, to become the best version of themselves and their businesses. Our entire focus is on getting results. We do this with business consulting, executive coaching, and life coaching. We also do webinars, seminars, workshops, master courses, speaking engagements on various topics like executive function skills. I believe that we've got 45 topics on this, go to our website. Check it out. Things like decision making and time management. We love customizing our engagement to provide our clients with what they need to get results. We're all about results. We're especially focused now on remote work on the remote work leadership space, which is why I'm talking to you about it. You check out our website@rudh.com and you can find all kinds of value added products there and all kinds of services. Oh, also, you can take a free assessment. I just wrote a book on this topic that has much of what we just talked about. There's also a Remote Work Policy handbook. We're doing a training course on remote work leadership in September. Thanks and we'll see you next time when we discuss the biggest psychological issue of remote work leadership and how to overcome it. And that's trust. Can you trust that your team is really working? Find out in the next episode. And finally, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us@areuta.com and remember to make some thoughtful comments to contribute to the greater good. Hey, thanks for listening. Remember, knowledge does not apply itself. You must make the application. Visit aruta.com for more information and to sign up for a complimentary coaching session today.