The First Step to Overcoming Your Cognitive and Emotional Biases is Asking Yourself One Key Question

The following is adapted from Mind Knots.

Have you ever witnessed behavior that seemed to make no sense? This happened to an individual whom I was coaching. He was among a large group of invited guests attending a talk given by the CEO of a global company.

Toward the end of the CEO’s talk, the individual spoke up inappropriately in reaction to a particular comment the CEO made. The room went silent. The CEO paused and responded to the challenge with grace and character, providing a valuable learning moment for everyone in the room, particularly for the individual who reacted instinctively.

Following the meeting, the circling question was, “What was he thinking?” The answer to that question: he wasn’t. Instead, he was under the control of what I call mind knots—cognitive and emotional biases that hijack our thinking and often create negative consequences. The mind knots that roped him were overconfidence and ego. And the consequences of those mental kinks were, among other things, embarrassment and loss of respect.

We all have mind knots. Not a single one of us is immune. However, we can all take intentional steps to transform these knots from things that tie us down to things that move us forward. The first step to doing this is to ask yourself—and answer honestly—“Who am I practicing becoming?”

Defend Yourself Against Your Mind’s Missteps

This question has extraordinary power to help defend you against your mind’s missteps. Because while the question is future focused, its true answer is revealed in actual responses in present situations. This question taps into your human instinct of self-consistency. It urges you to behave in ways that validate your concept of self—present or future. The prospect of behaving in a way that is inconsistent with your self-vision creates cognitive dissonance, which will make you uncomfortable. This in turn will motivate you to maintain consistency with your self-vision and to be a clear-eyed leader who demonstrates good judgment and thoughtful decision-making.

Asking yourself this question every day can serve as an intervention and thinking tool that can steer how you approach and respond to situations, because it will prompt you to pause and think ahead of your response. When you do, ideally, you’ll thwart an unmanaged reaction influenced by a mind knot.

Along with asking yourself this key question, it’s also important to understand your own mind knots. That’s because mind knots affect the decisions we make and the actions we take. When we are aware of them, it can bring focus and foundational insights to our view of leadership capability, including strategic thinking and judgment, operating style and communication, instincts, competencies, acumen, values, performance drivers, and emotional intelligence.

When the Self Becomes Dominant

Mind knots create a form of tunnel vision in which the leader—let’s call him or her the captain, as in the captain of a ship—perceives everything through a personal lens. The self, consisting of all the beliefs, memories, and preconceptions held by the captain as a result of the mind knots that live in the captain’s subconscious, becomes preeminent.

Let’s say a ship is on a long voyage across a vast ocean. It has no GPS—the captain must navigate by dead reckoning. For a highly trained individual, this challenge is not so difficult. In ancient times, Polynesian navigators piloted their oceangoing canoes by using a navigation system based on keen observations of the stars, ocean swells, bird flight patterns, and other natural signs. Navigators living within a group of islands would observe and learn the effects various islands had on the shape, direction, and motion of the currents, allowing them to correct their sailing path in relation to the changes they observed.

In such a system of keen observation, there is no self. Yes, of course there’s a high level of practical training. But extensive training and mind knots are two different things. You can be untrained and have massive mind knots. On the other hand, you can have multiple degrees and years of industry experience and also have massive mind knots.

In both cases, the self and its various needs and desires color your perceptions. Your cognitive biases dominate. You see what you want to see and make your decisions according to what aligns with your preconceptions, often to your detriment.

A Lack of Awareness = Big Problems

Mind knots bring the self to the forefront during critical decision-making events. Allowing the self to dominate means that new, objective information is likely to be either ignored or distorted. This is a problem in any position within an organization. But let’s be honest: it’s a bigger problem at a leadership level. When a captain is unaware of the mind knots that cloud their judgment, they’ve got a significant problem.

A leader has sway. This means the leader has authority and influence over others. He or she can make billion-dollar decisions. They can hire and fire top executives and managers. How they lead sets the tone of the culture of the rest of the company.

Take John Sculley, for example. The name might not ring a bell, but in 1983, the board of Apple hired Sculley to serve as CEO. Because of his significant business experience and marketing acumen, the board hoped Sculley would be “the adult in the room” and channel Steve Jobs’s restless genius.

In 1985, Sculley abused his power and convinced the board to strip Jobs of all managerial responsibility, effectively firing one of the greatest product designers and marketers of all time. Unfortunately, Sculley’s marketing skills did not compensate for his poor product management and judgment. Lacking sufficient technical background to be a product manager for Apple, during his tenure he invested heavily in several failed ventures, including Apple’s Newton (an early PDA-like device), cameras, and CD players. 

In 1993, Apple’s board fired him.

To be fair, Sculley had great success in many other ventures. His experience with Apple was a case of his skills and mental lens being a mismatch for what the company needed. In some cases, a leader’s cognitive biases aren’t relevant to the tasks at hand and may cause no harm. But in other cases, such as the combination of John Sculley and Apple, the match was ineffective, and worse, Sculley's mind knots resulted in some very bad decisions.

Unlock a Key Leadership Lens

Understanding cognitive biases unlocks a key leadership lens that can bring focus and foundational insights to inform both leadership selection and a leader’s journey. Ignoring their existence sets the course for big problems. Yet, the risk these cognitive and emotional biases pose goes largely unnoticed because this lens is not typically applied in a leadership assessment and selection process.

The takeaway? Many organizations and leaders place a lot of emphasis on cognitive capabilities. However, it is just as critical to understand mind knots, which cause cognitive liabilities and hijack rational leadership.

Leaders and their biases are a package deal. And cognitive biases cannot be eliminated, only managed. To ignore them is to turn a blind eye to one of the greatest risks in leadership.

Remember, cognitive and emotional biases are in play every day, swaying the decisions we make and the actions we take. Unmanaged, problems occur and usually compound. Understanding how your biases can sway and deceive you gives you the opportunity to identify signals and pick up clues that suggest you may not be seeing or thinking as clearly as you think you are.

Bottom line, you own your mind knots. Either you lead them, or they will lead you—potentially head-first into disaster.

For more advice on how to identify and unravel your mind knots, you can find my book Mind Knots, Understanding the Cognitive and Emotional Biases That Prevent Rational Leadership here on Amazon.

Managing Partner Tromba is founder of Leadership Intelligence Services, LLC and founder of Lisa Tromba Associates – Executive Search (formerly Luisi Tromba Advisors, of which she was co-founder). For more than 25 years, Tromba has guided companies from mid-market enterprises to Fortune 100 powerhouses in searching for and selecting their executive leadership.

Today, she caters to lower- to mid-market companies in search of executive leadership. Her high-touch, high-impact, solution-oriented approach includes assessing the impact of psychological bias on leadership.

Tromba is the best-selling author of Mind Knots: Understanding the Cognitive and Emotional Biases That Prevent Rational Leadership. She has spoken on leadership topics to corporate, trade, and academic audiences, including Executive MBA participants. Publications featuring her work include Chief Executive Magazine, the AMA Quarterly, and she is quoted in the book From Cinderella to CEO.