Episode 21: Overcoming Cognitive Bias

Future Directors Podcast

The latest instalment of Boardroom Hustle has co-hosts Paul Smith and Anna Byrne discussing something that affects every single one of us. Something that many of us aren’t even aware of…...cognitive bias.

Our episode is a sort of follow-on of the fifth episode of Boardroom Hustle, The Elephant in the (Board)room, where we talked about cultivating clearer decision-making, but focusing on how cognitive biases affect our decision-making, not just as directors in the boardroom, but as people in life!

But first, what is a cognitive bias? Simply put, it refers to the mental shortcuts our brains take when we make decisions. The brain is an enormously intelligent piece of machinery that has created a way to jump to conclusions rather than spend precious energy trying to sort through the never-ending stream of information that is constantly being downloaded. While cognitive biases often have a bad reputation, they’re actually quite useful – to a point. We live in such a rich, complex, stimulating environment that, in order to be more efficient, our brains collect a number of cognitive biases (or shortcuts) about a wide aspect of topics in order to help us make decisions faster.

So, how can we make our cognitive biases work for us? Have a listen to the episode to find out. Anna and Paul also discuss things like:

• The biggest thing that impacts cognitive bias
• Are biases infectious?
• How can a boardroom environment influence individual biases?
• One particular bias that can be hugely detrimental to the boardroom
• Following the peanuts; how our emotional elephants encourage us to jump to conclusions and how we can train them to make better, more effective decisions
• The different types of biases we experience, such as social, information, confirmation and anchoring, and how we can make them work for us rather than against us
• The best strategy you can implement in your boardroom/s, to unpack cognitive bias and create a more powerful method of decision-making
• How integrative AI may eventually be able to assist us in recognising and deleting any bias from our decision-making
• The five killer questions you can ask yourself and your board to discover any existing biases you might have and begin to overcome them

Links:Future Directors Website: https://futuredirectors.com/ NeuroPower Website: http://neuropowergroup.com Paul Smith LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/futurepaulsmith/Anna Byrne LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-byrne-13901262/