Debiasing Leaders - Essay Example

Debiasing Leaders Due Debiasing Leaders The, relatively, unbiased leader promotes trust and confidence among the employees and ensures that employees are more open to their leaders in terms of sharing their views and feedbacks on various organization matters. Therefore, in any organization, the importance of debiasing their leader’s management staff can have a direct correlation to improved employee productivity and morale couple with the success of the organization as a whole entity. Furthermore, the ability of a leader to conduct himself/herself in the set standard codes of behavior and professionalism is an indicator of his/her merit. This means that a person who is able to combat cognitive biases is not only ethical but a strong leader. The impact of cognitive biases in organization leaders can result in sub-optimal decisions and can sometimes impact negatively on both inter and intra-group human relationships. Furthermore, these biases can at times be worsened by the coterie surrounding the leader. The coterie may use manipulation in order to further their own selfish interests which may misinform and misdirect the leader from making optimal decisions based solely on actual facts. Additional disadvantages of the biases include hindering fundamental workers/employees from contributing towards the decision-making process of the organization, which could result in decreased organizational productivity and success. Organizational leadership and management is to some extent a function of management policies and a leader’s personal cultural-cognitive biases play a big role in the development and implementation of such policies. Therefore, a leaders’ biases have an impact on the quality of decisions, meeting organizations goals and can as a result obscure rational organizational decision-making, resulting in sub-optimal performance or even organizational failure. Introduction Recent studies have demonstrated that debiasing is effective to some degree and the paper explores the methods that would be more effective for a leader. The research aims to explore whether debiasing can be a helpful tool in aiding organization leaders make better decisions (perform better), coupled with the cost effectiveness of specific debiasing techniques. In order to accomplish the research goals, a few debiasing techniques and their corresponding biases have been selected and an examination of the potential barriers to work efficacy conducted. In the discussion, debiasing confirmation biases is given priority and is ranked as one of the most pressing issue in organizational management leadership biases. Other matters discussed include improving decision making at system 1 level rather than change a decision makers thinking from system 1 to system 2. Lastly, the paper tries to discuss the future direction for research on the topic of debiasing. Psychology has continually emphasized on the efficacy of using debiasing techniques in overcoming inter and intra-group conflicts. However, despite its continued attempts, it has made little or no progress in developing methods of preventing cognitive biases from overcrowding rational judgment in humans. In fact, this remains one of the field’s biggest failures. Instead, psychology has made far more progress in cataloguing the impact of cognitive biases in combating rational human judgment, rather than developing ways of overcoming cognitive biases. Therefore, there is a major gap not yet studied relating to the efficacy of debiasing as a tool of overcoming the negative implications of cognitive biases in the field of psychology. This gap has largely to do with the fact that there previous researchers have failed to adequately focus on how debiasing can be effectively applied in organizational leadership and management to open avenues for rational decision-making within organizations. While psychology has recognized the negative impacts of cognitive biases on human relationships, it has overlooked how the same can affect organizational management and leadership. The lack of information in this area raises a crucial research question; can debiasing organizational leadership promote productivity and success? Even though current research material does not fully answer some of the questions pertaining to impact of cognitive biases on organizational leadership management and how the information gathered can be used to improve decisions making among leaders, a few steps can be undertaken to correct the misgivings. They include developing a more comprehensive conceptual framework that will be used to judge the quality of corporate culture and its impact on improving the decision making skills of organizational leaders and changing incentives and adopting new training methods to reduce bias. Other methods including using collaboration as a mitigating tool for combating cognitive biases, teaching and learning self-awareness especially during decision making and thorough establishing an interactive environment channeling the opinions and ideas of various people. According to Sunstein et al., there are two systems of thinking (system 1 and system 2) but the area that needs emphasis is system 1 as research indicates that the impact of improving system 1 thinking offers greater hope for overcoming cognitive biases while improving decision making for organizational leaders. In recent years, a new general strategy for improving biased decision making has been proposed that leverages a person’s automatic cognitive processes and turns them to an advantage. Rather than trying to change a decision maker’s thinking from System 1 to System 2, this strategy tries to change the environment so that System 1 thinking, which research shows is more effective (Sunstein and Thaler, 2003). There is need for improvement on how system 1 works, however, for greater results to be achieved. Although system 1 works mostly in the subconscious, Chugh (2004) asserts that the distinction between deliberative and spontaneous behavior is not merely guided by an already established taxonomy. Some verbal and non-verbal behaviors can be controlled, e.g. leaning forward, and the fact that some deliberative behaviors can be immediately regretted, shows that available control over the actions is not always exercised. It is therefore, important, for any decision maker to act express some level of control over their actions under the system 1 of thinking, to avoid the negatives implications that come along with poor decision making, which may lead to undesirable results (Sezer, Zhang, & Bazerman, 2013). Alternatively, we could improve on eliminating bias in the decisions we make by shifting from System 1 of thinking to system 2. Shifting to system 2 of thinking is a strategy that is possible, coupled with promising other strategies that have been found effective in the elimination of bias in decision making (Milkman, Chugh, & Bazerman, 2008). One proven strategy for moving from system 2 thinking depends on the replacing of intuition with the formal analytic processes. While those are some of the ways to improve decision making, they are not the only ones. Through interpersonal role, direct interactions with others as well as the informational role through the interpretations of information about others are important in improving the decisions we make (Chugh, 2004). Also, Hilton (2001) confirms that psychology can be applied to decision decision-aiding and an array of other functions in the organization that require decision making. Research questions 1. Why do good people also do bad things? What is the role of behavioral ethics in the decision making process? 2. What bearing does Behavioral ethics have on our moral judgement? Reference List Sunstein, C., & Thaler, R. (2008). Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Chicago. Chugh, D. (2004). Societal and Managerial Implications of Implicit Social Cognition: Why Milliseconds Matter. Social Justice Research, 203-222. Hilton, D. (2001). The Psychology of Financial Decision-Making: Applications to Trading, Dealing, and Investment Analysis. Journal of Psychology and Financial Markets, 37-53. Milkman, K., Chugh, D., & Bazerman, M. (2008). How Can Decision Making Be Improved? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 379-383. Sezer, O., Zhang, T., & Bazerman, M. (2013). Overcoming the Outcome Bias: Making Process Matter. Academy of Management Proceedings, 13403-13403. Read More