7 Overlooked Biases That Creep Into Your Work (And Undermine Its Success)

... specifically cognitive biases, are your unchecked tendencies to make decisions or take actions in an irrational way. 

Instead of making decisions based on facts and data, you are more prone to base your decisions on unconscious errors that lead to a distorted judgment of the world. These biases ultimately affect your relationships, work, and worldview.

The brain creates shortcuts in order to make fast decisions when it hits information or inspiration overload. 

These shortcuts form unconscious biases so it’s easier for your brain to categorize information and make quick judgments over and over again.

This means that when something good happens, you take the credit, but when something bad happens, you blame it on external factors.

Self-serving bias may manifest at work when you receive critical feedback. Instead of keeping an open mind, you may put up a defense when your manager or team member is sharing feedback or constructive criticism.

It's our tendency to concentrate on the people who end up winning  —the survivors—and mistakenly assume that ambitious goals led to their success while removing from pur view all of the people who had the same objective but didn’t succeed.

When you solely focus on success, survivorship bias comes out to play and causes you to think that something is easy because you only hear stories of people who triumphed. 

This is why it pays off to be the first one to offer a bolstering range instead of a firm number when negotiating your salary. The first offer will establish the possibilities in each person’s mind.

It occurs when you adopt a belief just because more people hold that belief. This bias can lead to groupthink, which is the tendency for group members to over-conform to a leader.

Many work meetings become unproductive due to bandwagon bias and groupthink because team members don’t feel comfortable challenging collective agreement or don’t even realize their level of conformity to the group’s beliefs. 

On top of it, instead of accepting your own fault, you place the blame on outside factors such as delayed start dates or sick days.

This is the failure to recognize the impact of bias on your own judgment.

Despite the extensive research and data supporting the existence of our cognitive biases, many of us disagree and even ignore the effects of bias in our lives even when we’re fully aware of it.