Managing Fundamental Attribution Error as a Leader
Build high performance teams by recognising cognitive biases in the workplace
đ Hello, Iâm Gaurav! Iâm a PM, entrepreneur and investor. I write about innovation, product management, culture and VC. My interest lies in building companies and high-performance teams. In this newsletter, I research and share ideas that improve our human experience.
Ray Dalio, in his book Principles, narrates the story of when his company Bridgewater began to scale to dozens and then hundreds of people it became more important and difficult to maintain a stable culture, team cohesion and high productivity. At one point, he initiated the creation of Baseball Cards for each person that intended to summarise their style and strengths, that would improve coordination and assignment of responsibilities and increase mutual understanding.
This was initially met with resistance from employees not used to the new concept, thinking the cards would be inaccurate and would pigeonhole them unfairly. However, gradually there was a build up of trust from knowing that it was ok be yourself and vulnerable at work, where this information was available for everyone to see. This led to a realization that appreciating individual traits would ultimately increase productivity and enhance the culture.
Bob Keegan, a Harvard behavioural psychologist who studied Bridgewater quoted the following:
âBridgewater is a form of proof that the quest for business excellence and the search for personal realization need not be mutually exclusive â and can, in fact, be essential to each other.â
â Bob Keegan, Harvard Psychologist
Trust is a key attribute of high-performance teams.
When organizations grow from small startups of 10-20 people to larger companies, one of the hardest things to retain is the strong working relationship exists between the early founding team. Founders and managers donât scale as organizations grow, so it can be hard to forge that feeling of connection with larger and larger teams.
Over time the initial culture, a shared purpose, and âone team spiritâ can be lost. Mis-interpretation arise, people are less willing to ask questions or show their vulnerabilities, and conversations become less open. This has an impact on business outcomes and innovation as new employees have to navigate different personalities in the workplace slowly over time.
A bias that contributes to the fragmentation of culture and human connection over time is called the âfundamental attribution errorâ.
The fundamental attribution error refers to an individual's tendency to attribute another's actions to their character or personality, while attributing their behavior to external situational factors outside of their control.1
This is a cognitive bias where we use external factors to rationalise (and sometimes justify or forgive) our actions, whereas we attribute the actions/behaviour of someone else to their personality.
Here are some examples â
Personal Life
Take city driving - Youâre in a hurry, running late to a meeting. You just dropped off your toddler at school after he spilled breakfast cereal all over the kitchen. In this example, as you cut someone off it is easy to rationalise your behaviour. However, if this happens to you, it was because the other person is a callous driver.
At Work
You assign a person highly creative work, expecting innovation. However, they are more skilled at driving projects and being analytical. You donât get the results you want, and the person is doesnât get a high performance rating.
You judged work as shoddy because someone didnât have a perfectly design PowerPoint presentation. When faced with time pressure and deadlines, your presentation looks the same?
Or, perhaps, you believe asking critical questions helps align projects to organisational strategy, but sometimes interpret others as being negative or having frustrating behaviour when they do the same?
As a manager you assign your fixed-size team an increasing numbers of projects. You have high quality expectations but did not validate the time allocation needed. Your team canât keep up with the workload, and you see their poor performance as lack of attention or ability. Ultimately this shows up in team burnout and attrition.
It is easy to rationalise our own behaviour in the best possible light. However, we can often be lax in taking the time to understand the circumstances and situation of someone else. At challenging times at work, we can sometimes forget that others also have positive intentions and are doing their best.
As a manager, awareness of this bias can increase your level of empathy for other colleagues and your employees, deepening trust and strengthening relationships. Seeking to understand the other personâs working style, family circumstance and experience is key to improving overall team health. It can also boost your team performance by allowing you to tailor your working approach to the strengths and style of individual team members.
This awareness and empathy can also have tremendous impact on business outcomes by increasing your the ability to influence across teams and negotiate joint outcomes, especially in complex circumstances that require multi-disciplinary or cross-functional teams to work closely together.
The concept of âradical candorâ that has been much espoused recently, helps to provide guidance on how to approach challenging conversations. However, to be done right, it is essential to understand the underlying reasons for our preconceived judgement of others. Without this empathetic self-reflection we may try to adopt the concept of radical candor but instead still come across as âbrutally honestâ by missing the key ingredient of âcaring personallyâ.
Here are a few ways to improve your understanding and create a better working environment.
Discovery Questions
When faced with frustration, it is best to use Discovery questions to understand the approach of others. This is often practiced by Doctors to understand patient behaviour without seeding an idea.
Here are some ways of framing these:
In ______ situation, could you walk me through your thinking, where youâre coming from? What would be the benefit if we followed your plan?
I noticed you mentioned ___this problem___ in a conversation. Could you help me understand what issues you are facing with the project?
It is best to be specific about the situation without bringing up emotions you are feeling. You want to give the person room to open up and expand on their context and rationale.
Increase your Self-Awareness
Getting to know your own style, strengths, weaknesses and biases is critical as your influence grows. It will allow you to evaluate your judgement with a third party objective view, to see yourself and others as actors in light of the circumstances. You can use systematised behavioural testing such as Myers Briggs or the Working Genius methodology developed by Patrick Lencioni.
Another way of increasing your self-awareness is asking your colleagues for anonymous 360Ë feedback on your strengths, weaknesses and what you can do better. Some leaders have access to coaches who observe them in their day-to-day interactions, and conduct interviews to ascertain how their team perceives them. In many cases if you donât have access to a coach, the survey is a good starting point.
Sharing Your Style
As a leader the next step is sharing your personal working styles, values and biases with your colleagues, while continuing to seek feedback on your hidden biases. You can do this as the manager of a small team to create better team cohesion. However, to create wider organisational change and impact, leadership need to be role models by sharing their working style, decision process and values.
This helps establish cultural norms and permission for others who can in-turn share their own style confidently. The increased adoption of sharing your working style can engender a transparent and fairer working culture that increases trust and reduces conflict amongst colleagues.
Create a User Manual
Some leaders write a Leadership User Manual to short-circuit the learning curve for employees to get to know them. The âUser Manualâ was prompted by Adam Bryantâs NYT article âWant to know me? Just read my User Manualâ who interviewed the CEO of QuestBack, Ivan Kroghrud, about how this document helped onboard new employees. Employees were able to open up and be themselves, resulting in better conversations of issues created by the safety that discussing diverging viewpoints was acceptable. For business leaders, the user manual distils your style to make you more approachable and reduce second-guessing of your thought process.
As Patrick wrote in his book âFive Dysfunctions of a Teamâ
âTrust is knowing that when a team member does push you, they're doing it because they care about the team.â
â Patrick Lencioni
By sharing our own style and seeking to understand other peopleâs personality, intention and circumstances, we can be more effective managers and leaders, not falling victim to falsely attributing personality flaws on others.
Getting to this evolution of shared understanding, values and culture in an organisation can be a powerful and transformative force for any company.
â
I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Please feel free to leave a comment and share.
Sincerely,
Gaurav đđ»