To lead in a remote environment, you have to understand your own cognitive biases, the shortcuts your mind takes to manage the overwhelming amount of information you navigate every day. Here are the five cognitive biases you need to tackle head first as remote and hybrid work become the new normal.
Proximity / Distance Bias
Our brains want to feel in control, and physical proximity is one way we can have that control.
- To overcome this bias, try to replicate that physical proximity remotely: Turn off that virtual background, so you see each other’s real environments, have virtual walking meetings, etc.
Status quo bias
Be aware of your preferences toward how you’ve done things in the past
- What’s a process that made sense in person but may be holding you back?
- Who on your team would enjoy brainstorming ways to make remote work more fulfilling and productive?
Confirmation bias
If you don’t love remote work, you’re less likely to spot remote work successes and more apt to spot shortfalls
- Make it a practice to allow more of the unknown, mysterious, and uncomfortable to enter your work.
- Take risks and try tactics you wouldn’t otherwise
Similarity bias
We need to go out of our way to feel connected to everyone, not just people like us.
- Create shared experiences: see great magic, create a shared experience with a stranger, or host a performance for a group of people
- Be intentional about creating these experiences
Be aware of your biases
Consider whether each of these biases is preventing you from making the most of remote work, then manage them in constructive ways
- Go see a magic show. It’ll remind you how good it feels to not know, to be gobsmacked and not have an easy explanation
Anchoring bias
One trick our minds use to sift through everything thrown at us is to latch onto the first piece of information we get about a particular topic, decision, pattern.
- When the American workforce went remote in March 2020, it was sudden-and not necessarily smooth. People missed their Starbucks runs and free lunches, and parents had to figure out how to work full-time and take care of their kids.
