Avoid Cognitive Bias to Create Workplace Accountability

As we discussed in our January Newsletter, the first step to Accountability involves an examination of the facts/reasons underlying a specific event/result (accounting). In order for this process to bear fruit, it is important that we accurately and fairly evaluate the causes of the poor performance. To effectively examine the facts/reasons for a specific event/result requires that we understand how our biases could affect that evaluation. This is where Cognitive Biases can come into play. You may be saying to yourself…”I don’t have any biases. What are they talking about?”

Well, the truth is that we are all impacted by biases and much of the time for that matter.

What is a Cognitive Bias?

A Cognitive Bias is anything in our thought process that can distort the way we view things including the actions of another person.

There are a multitude of cognitive biases that have been identified and studied by psychologists, but there are two that directly impact accounting for the actions/results of another person.

Confirmation Bias

One of these is what is called Confirmation Bias or the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. In other words, we are predisposed to look for causes that confirm what we expect.

This means, for example, that if we are predisposed to view another person as competent, a hard worker and motivated, then we will tend to look for these types of behaviors in that person and also overlook behaviors that are in conflict with our preconception. Additionally, we would be more likely to account for poor performance on the basis of external factors such as lack of resources, lack of support, etc. rather than internal factors such as knowledge, ability or motivation. In other words, we would be likely to conclude that the failure was out of the person’s control.

On the other hand, if we are predisposed to view another person as incompetent, lazy and unmotivated, then we will tend to look for support of this preconception as the cause for failure and perhaps blame the person for the failure.

The Confirmation Bias is the underlying driver for a phenomenon commonly referred to as the Self Fulfilling Prophecy. This phenomenon has been demonstrated through research and personal experience in various environments and is notably reflected in the positive correlation between a supervisor’s expectations of a subordinate and that subordinate's performance.

Low, negative expectations tend to result in poor performance, whereas high, positive expectations tend to result in good performance.

Therefore, how we view an individual not only can color how we evaluate performance, but it can also determine how the individual actually performs. To fairly hold others accountable for failure we must be aware of our predispositions/biases regarding the individual and how we may have contributed to the failure in the first place.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The second Cognitive Bias related to Accountability is called the Fundamental Attribution Error.

Have you ever been driving on a three lane highway, going the speed limit in the right hand lane (left hand lane if you are from the UK) approaching an exit that you are not taking, only to have someone cut dangerously close in front of you to take the exit? What were your thoughts about the person doing the cutting? If you are like most of us you called the person a “jerk” or something worse and honked your horn or gestured “politely”.

You just attributed the other person’s actions to an internal attribute related to carelessness or some other bad motive. In other words, we view the other person as “bad” in some way.

Now, have you ever cut someone off in a similar circumstance when you were needing to get to an exit? If you are like us, and everyone else we have asked this question, then the answer is “yes”!

So why did you do it?

Probably because that “jerk” in the right hand lane wouldn't get out of the way and let you exit. In other words, your poor performance was due to external causes and not your carelessness or bad motive.

This is the Fundamental Attribution Error which says that we tend to attribute internal/motivational causes to the poor performance of others but not to our own poor performance. This cognitive bias can cause us to “jump to the conclusion” that the cause of the poor performance was due to motivation and thus interfere with our complete evaluation of other causes. Failure to accurately evaluate the “real” causes will most likely lead to consequences or corrections that will not lead to success in the future.

What's the Point?

Simply being aware that these two Cognitive Biases exist will help reduce or hopefully eliminate their impact on the accountability process.

As we will discuss in a future newsletter, starting your accounting of poor performance without “guesses” as to the cause(s) will almost always lead to a more accurate evaluation.

Why Rule Breaking Makes Sense

Complexity & Rationality Why do employees decide to break the rules?  Do it their way?  Resist change?  It doesn’t make any sense!

It can be frustrating, and often perplexing, when employees fail to adhere to company policies and procedures, especially when those policies and procedures are in their best interest. There is a useful way to think about this issue: What employees do makes sense...to them; but the complexity of work environments makes it hard to understand why it makes sense to them.

We live and work in complex environments. It helps to think of our environments as systems with overlapping and interacting components - including people, things, rules, values, etc. - which are, in turn, complex sub-systems. One of the principles of complex systems is that the “people” component tends to respond only to the limited information that they are presented with locally. We make decisions based on our knowledge of what makes sense at the local level, which is called “local rationality”.

The policies and procedures contained in the corporate manual are only influential if they are brought to bear on the daily lives of people in the workplace. If those policies and procedures only exist in the manual and are not made a part of the local workplace, then they don’t exist in reality and will not have an impact on performance. They will lack influence.

Companies have policies and procedures for a reason - to create good, reliable results; so it is the responsibility of supervisors to bring those policies and procedures to life in the workplace. By intentionally incorporating formal policies and procedures into the “local” work environments of employees - through conversation, feedback, modeling, etc. - supervisors make it “rational” to follow the rules.

Effective Organizations Tolerate Acceptable Risk and Learn from Success & Failure in an Attempt to Be Innovative

Risk is a natural part of life. Just about every decision that we make has some level of risk associated with it. Some risk is inconsequential, such as the decision regarding the color of the shirt that you decided to wear this morning. On the other hand, some risk can have significant impact on you and those with whom you associate, e.g., whether you ask a specific person to marry you or not. We start taking risks from a very early age and if we didn’t, we would probably never learn how to walk! Without some level of risk, things would never change or improve and effective leaders understand this.

Do You Value Initiative?

We often ask our Performance Management course participants whether they would rather have employees who show initiative or those who just do what they were told to do. They always respond with “I want employees who show initiative”.

But initiative is a form of risk-taking because the decision that the employee makes could be wrong and negatively impact desired results.

Clarify "Appropriate Risk"

Effective leaders are careful to clarify what they mean by “appropriate” risk taking and consistently encourage both initiative and innovative thinking while helping employees understand what is appropriate by helping them understand the potential results of both failure and success.

Understanding Context

We work with many organizations to help them improve performance and especially safety related performance. We know that the decisions that people make, both safety and non-safety related are driven by their understanding of contextual factors including themselves, others, the environment and the organizational systems.

Local Rationality

We have discussed before in other newsletters and articles the concept of “local rationality” in that our decisions make sense to us given our interpretation of the context and the associated risk. For example, we may make a decision to forego wearing safety glasses because we are being rushed by our supervisor to get the job done quickly and safety glasses are not readily available. We accept the risk of possible injury because the risk of displeasing the boss is seen as greater in the moment (local rationality).

Creating a New Context

Effective leaders attempt to create contexts that control factors (pressure to rush) that can lead to poor decision making (not wearing safety glasses) while increasing the chances of effective and even innovative decision making (coming up with a plan to both wear safety glasses and get the job done quickly).

They do this by encouraging active dialogue about the workplace (context) and ways to improve that context to encourage employees to take initiative (appropriate risk taking).

Contextual Analysis

Effective Leaders evaluate why both success and failure occur within the organizational context and do so without assuming poor motivation as a starting point. (See May newsletter for further discussion of contextual analysis and accountability).

What's the point?

Effective Organizations are filled with individuals who make good decisions about acceptable risk (initiative) because their leaders have created an organizational environment (context) that assists in that decision making.

A "Best Boss" Holds Himself and Others Accountable for Results

To start this series we asked you to evaluate yourself against the list of Top 20 “Best Boss” Characteristics. Let’s look in more detail at #2 -- A “Best Boss” Holds Himself and Others Accountable for Results.

People often associate accountability with negative consequences, but in our definition there can be either positive or negative consequences that follow action. It is important to notice that a Best Boss doesn’t just hold employees accountable for results, but also himself.

This is what we mean by accountability:

An examination of the facts/reasons underlying a specific event/result (accounting) Then application of appropriate consequences for the actions and results.

Accounting for Results

Many bosses (not Best Bosses) assume that failure (and success) is determined by the person’s motivation and they then “hold them accountable” by trying to motivate them to perform better in the future. Remember, motivation is only one aspect of the individual and may have nothing to do with the results observed.

Best Bosses understand that people don’t try to fail and that performance and the results that follow don’t happen in a vacuum. This means that results need to be evaluated and understood in light of a complex environment that includes Others, Surroundings, Sytems, and Self.

We have used the term local rationality in some of our other articles to describe why it makes sense for a person to do something that may not seem logical to someone (including the boss) who is either observing performance or evaluating the result after the fact.

Best Bosses begin with the “account” component of accountability and gather all of the facts/reasons why the person's actions made sense in the moment. They ask questions to evaluate each of the contextual components (self, others, surroundings, systems) that might have impacted the person's actions and led to the results observed.

Once they determine why the person performed this way, then they can develop a plan (we call it the “Fix”) to help the person succeed in the future.

Applying Consequences

Here is where the consequence part of accountability comes into play.

The purpose of a consequence is to either:

Weaken an unwanted behavior through negative consequences or Strengthen a desired behavior through positive consequences. Best Bosses understand this and apply consequences accordingly.

Success

When success occurs Best Bosses apply appropriate positive consequences. This may involve a simple “thank you” for the result, or it may involve some form of public commendation or reward. This should be determined for each result as appropriate.

Failure

When failure occurs, the form of negative consequence should also fit. Many times the process of accounting and determining a fix will be consequence enough to change performance in the future. If failure continues, then some form of formal discipline may be required. This should be determined in concert with your organizations policies and with guidance from internal Human Resource professionals. As we will discuss later on in the Top 20, Best Bosses are also fair and consistent, so make sure that the consequences you apply are both fair and consistent.

Best Boss Bottom Line

Finally, Best Bosses also hold themselves accountable for results. They are constantly evaluating the impact of what they do on those around them and on the organization. They question themselves to determine the impact that various contextual factors are having on their own performance and adjusting decisions as appropriate. If they fail, they are quick to admit that failure, determine why and step up to the consequences. When success occurs they are usually also quick to pass the positive consequences on to their team.st time we listed the Top 20 “Best Boss” characteristics and asked you to evaluate yourself against the list.

Complexity and Local Rationality

Why do people - like employees and children - decide to break the rules?  Do it their way?  Resist change?  It doesn’t make any sense!  Or does it? It can be frustrating and often perplexing when employees fail to adhere to company policies and procedures, especially when those policies and procedures are in the employees’ best interest. Filing a required document can legally protect managers, but they don’t file it.  Locking out a machine that is being serviced can keep a technician safe from pain, injury and even death, but he regularly services the machine without locking it out.  Your children “know” the rules, but sometimes break them anyway. There is a useful way to think about this issue:  What employees and children do makes sense...to them.

We live, work, play and make decisions in complex environments. It helps to think of our environments as systems with overlapping and interacting components - including people, things, rules, values, knowledge, etc. - which are, in turn, complex sub-systems. One of the principles of complex systems is that the “people” component tends to be driven by the limited information that is available to and impressed upon those people within their local contexts. We make decisions based on our knowledge of what makes sense at the local level, at any given moment.  We call this the principle of “local rationality.”  In other words, our decisions are rational to us because they are based on the information available within the local context (which includes knowledge residing in our brains) at a particular point in time.

As supervisors and parents, we observe behavior that is driven by the principle of local rationality, but we only have limited information about what factors the individual is using to make their decision.  Why did it make sense to the employee to do such a dangerous thing?  Why did it make sense to the child to break the curfew rule?  After all, they know the rules and we have rules to make it clear how they should behave, don’t we?

Rules are only one component of the complex environments that we live and work in.  There are also pressures from other people - including superiors, peers and even you - to make a decision to act in a certain way.  Knowledge of past successes and failures, availability of resources needed to be successful, time pressures, workplace layout and numerous other kinds of factors make it ‘make sense’ for the person. Consider for a moment the last thing you saw a person do that “irked” you.  What kinds of factors could have led the person to do what he or she did?  Why would it have made sense...or did you assume it was because the person was lazy, rude, selfish, or in some other way had poor personal motivation?

As humans, we have a tendency to assume that people do what they do because of personal motivation , and then we treat their “failures” as an opportunity to motivate them to change and make better decisions in the future.  Research shows, however, that actions are often the result of the person’s evaluation of complex input from the environment and may have nothing to do with personal motivation.  For example, we tell employees to work safely, but at the same time push them for productivity, sometimes beyond their ability. The trade-off for the employee is to “cut corners” to be productive because he thinks in the moment that safety is really not at risk and showing you how productive he can be is what is really important.  Your teenager decides to come home late because her date had a couple of drinks and she didn’t trust him to drive safely...and her cell phone was dead, so she didn’t call. It makes sense in the moment, given the information that she had at her disposal.  It doesn’t make sense to you while you sit at home worried sick and imagining all kinds of terrible things.  It doesn’t make sense because you aren’t making decisions in her context!

As parents and supervisors, we need to ask a simple question before we punish undesired behavior: “Why did making that decision make sense to the person making it?”  Why was the decision “locally rational”? If we find out it was motivation, then we can deal with that; but if it is some other factor or combination of factors, then simply motivating won’t work. Look for which contextual factors actually are at play in the decision before you try to change the person’s behavior, and you will be much more successful at creating sustained change.