Beliefs and cognitive biases
In this five part mini series we’re going to take a look at how you can become an inclusive leader. We’re going to go deeper into each of the topics covered in my talk at Product Tank London. Each article in this mini series will contain self coaching exercises that you can use to understand and develop your own style of leadership.
What topics are we covering in this mini series?
Becoming an inclusive leader
Understanding your values
Beliefs and cognitive biases (this article)
Defining your principles
Privilege and power
If you would like to watch my talk that was the inspiration for this mini series, it’s available now on YouTube.
Introduction
In this third article in the mini series, we’re going to dive into understanding your beliefs and cognitive biases.
This article contains the following sections:
What are beliefs and cognitive biases?
The psychology of beliefs and cognitive biases
Working with beliefs and cognitive biases
Self coaching exercise: positive affirmations
By the end of this article you will understand how beliefs and cognitive biases can be helpful, but can also hold you back from achieving your full potential, and how to change your beliefs through awareness and practice.
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't – you're right.” - Henry Ford
Let’s dive in!
What are beliefs and cognitive biases?
Beliefs are repeated ways of thinking that you accept as true. They come from your thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and provide the fundamental framework that you use to understand and engage meaningfully with the world. You accept beliefs without question, even if there is little or no evidence to support them. Formed early in life, they shape your understanding of the world and guide your behaviour. Beliefs can be helpful, but they can also hinder you: limiting beliefs hold you back and prevent you from achieving your goals.
The good news is that as beliefs arise from your thoughts, it is possible to change them. Doing so requires patience, practice, repetition and storytelling in order to ‘rewire’ the neural pathways that support that habitual pattern of belief. More on this shortly.
Cognitive biases are systematic errors in thinking that restrict your ability to process information rationally. They cloud your judgement and affect how you perceive people, situations or risks. Some examples of cognitive bias include:
Confirmation bias: you pay attention to evidence that supports your beliefs and disregards information that does not support them
Anchoring bias: relying too heavily on one piece of information when making decisions, usually the first presented
Apophenia: the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things
Availability heuristic: the tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events you can more easily recall
You can learn more about cognitive biases in Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman - highly recommended reading for everybody working in tech.
Cognitive biases are harder to change. Like beliefs they operate on a subconscious level and don’t respond to simply providing more information. However, you can leverage some cognitive biases to your advantage if you want to change your beliefs.
The psychology of beliefs and cognitive biases
It’s estimated that you may experience somewhere between 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts every day. Many of these are processed unconsciously and automatically: you do not often examine your thoughts for their quality, impact or frequency. Your thoughts and feelings influence each other, regardless of whether you express those thoughts out loud or say them in your head, and this in turn affects your actions. You may also have repetitive or negative thoughts that can become problematic, giving rise to conditions such as anxiety and OCD.
In evolutionary psychology, it is theorised that beliefs developed as ways of processing information to help you make sense of your environment, anticipate events, and make decisions. Viewed this way, beliefs are probability models that were crucial for our survival as a species. The process involved creating a prediction about the world that influenced behaviour, then measuring the outcome: was the prediction useful? For example, a belief that there are predators in a certain area leads to cautious behaviour, and when that cautious behaviour is rewarded with survival, that belief is validated. That validation happens without need for hard evidence: survival may be because cautious behaviour avoids an area with predators; it may also have been possible because there were no predators in that area to start with (false belief).
These probability models become forecasting tools: the more frequently the prediction comes true, the more the belief becomes embedded.
But as with all probability models and forecasting tools, they are not perfect and they are not always right. What happens when evidence that contradicts that belief is presented?
This is where cognitive biases kick in:
Confirmation bias ignores the new data that shows that belief is wrong. It doubles down on looking for evidence that the belief is right
Anchoring bias activates when that prediction is right for the first time. You believe that because it was right the first time it’s always going to be right.
If you’ve had a strong emotional reaction to a prediction (you almost got killed by predators, but you survived) you will remember that more vividly. You will not go back to that area, even if it was actually low probability of predators being in that area and you got unlucky (availability heuristic).
Working with beliefs and cognitive biases
It’s important to note that all beliefs have a positive intention: keeping you safe or doing things in the right way. To give an example, some people believe they are no good at public speaking. The very thought of standing on stage and talking to an audience with all eyes on them is paralysing. And this comes back to a belief nesting in the ancient part of your brain (the subcortex), where drawing attention to yourself could impact your survival: all eyes on you could mean you’re about to be eaten! The trick is to help your brain understand what is a real threat to survival and what is not - this is where the prefrontal cortex (modern part of your brain) moderates those beliefs.
As this article mentioned earlier, it is possible to reframe unhelpful beliefs about yourself. The first step is to increase your awareness of your thinking process. Notice what you say about yourself: you may find it helpful to follow your thoughts for a week and write down the things you say that start with:
I am / am not
I can / cannot
I do / do not
I have / have not
Be particularly aware of generalisations and absolutes. Examples include ‘I am no good at stakeholder management’ or ‘I will never be able to influence this stakeholder’. These kinds of broad statements are rarely if ever true, and you may know that on a rational level, yet you feel they are because of beliefs you hold about yourself.
When you have developed awareness of the beliefs you hold, question if that is so very definite. What evidence is there that supports or contradicts this thought? Asking others for feedback can be a good way to challenge unhelpful beliefs.
To share a personal example, I used to believe I was rubbish at design. This stemmed from a conversation with a manager I respected and was keen to impress, telling me that I needed to work with my product designer to create mock ups. I interpreted that as my efforts were not good enough, and therefore I was rubbish. One interaction coupled with some self doubt was all it took for this belief to take hold. This belief held me back from creating mock ups for a long time: instead I would defer all work to the design team - which wasn’t always a helpful approach. Several years later I found myself in a job at a different company, and we didn’t have a design team. I had no choice but to create some mock ups to illustrate my idea. When I shared them back with others in the team they fed back my mock ups were great. I didn’t believe them at first: I had held that belief that I couldn’t do design for so long. Looking back now I realise that my manager who planted that seed wasn’t saying my mock ups were rubbish, but that is how I interpreted it, particularly as my self doubt created a bias in that direction. It took receiving lots of feedback from others and practice creating mock ups to overcome that doubt.
Once you have identified your beliefs, you can use them to drive your performance. The self coaching exercise below guides you through how to change limiting beliefs into ones that empower you.
Self coaching exercise: positive affirmations
Working with my clients I receive lots of feedback that positive affirmations are really powerful. Whilst being a fairly simple tool to use, they have the ability to change your beliefs and really empower you.
Before starting this exercise, you will need to have identified your limiting beliefs. You may have followed the steps in the previous section and written them down. You may also find it useful to ask people you trust to keep an ear out for the things that you say that start with I am / am not, etc, because it’s not always easy to identify them yourself.
Once you have these written down then you can proceed with this exercise. I recommend completing it when you have 30-60 minutes to yourself, free from distractions. Grab a notebook and a pen, and your drink of choice, and work through these step by step instructions.
(1) Reframe the belief
Turn the statement into a positive which you can move towards. This can be as easy as a semantic exercise removing any negative words. “I cannot use product data” becomes “I can use product data”.
You could use the statement as is, but sometimes our brains reject them at this stage. That’s because of confirmation bias that tells us there’s lots of evidence to the contrary and not any that supports this. That’s where the use of a qualifier can be really helpful. This looks like “every day I’m learning”, or a similar phrase that encourages openness and growth. “I cannot use product data” becomes “every day I’m learning how to use product data”. The brain will more readily accept this, particularly if you adopt a growth mindset which is open to possibilities forming.
Alternatively you may prefer to use action and learning oriented words to reframe the belief entirely. “I will never remember” can become “I’m writing things down”, “I’m challenging myself to recall”, or “I’m learning how to improve my memory”.
Whichever method you use, write it down - that’s your positive affirmation.
(2) Repetition, repetition, repetition
It’s not enough to say the new belief once and then expect that everything will change - your brain does not work that way. It won’t give up a belief so readily that you’ve had potentially for an entire lifetime. Instead, you need to repeat it many times over to reprogram the neural pathways.
Write the positive affirmation out on a piece of paper so it’s visible. Keep that somewhere close to you throughout the day. Say it three times in the morning and three times in the evening. Some people like to look at themselves in a mirror as they’re saying it. Feel it in your heart. I like to keep mine on a post it note on my office wall, so every time I stand up I can see it and recite it.
(3) Change your state
This can be used in combination with the other two steps. Neurolinguistic programming explores how changing your state - your physical state, your tone of voice - can shift your energy and therefore also your perspective, even when repeating the same old phrases. Try this for yourself.
First, reframe the tone of voice that you use to one that makes you feel different. Good examples include cartoon characters, comedians or famous actors. Now repeat the old belief in that new tone of voice. Imagining Mickey Mouse saying “I am rubbish at product data” is enough to make me laugh and see how ridiculous that statement is.
Alternatively, you could try a physical change of state. Stand up straight, shoulders back, head looking up to the horizon. You may like to imagine yourself as your favourite superhero. Now state your positive affirmation. “I am great with product data” suddenly sounds plausible!
(4) Questions to ask yourself
As well as these exercises, you can explore the following questions as journal prompts or self coaching:
What’s important to you about holding on to this belief?
How do you know this belief is true?
Describe a time when the opposite of this belief was true.
How is this belief holding you back?
If you no longer had this belief, what could you achieve?
On a scale of 1-10 how much do you want to change this belief?
Changing beliefs is possible, but it takes time and effort. If your beliefs are holding you back then give this a go. And remember: you don’t get what you want, you get what you believe.
