#ThinkfullyHabit: Turn from the sun
Think back to your team deliberations or those discussions that take place in the groups you are part of – who generally speaks first? When in a team or group setting, the best discussion usually happens when the most senior person or leader (assigned or self-appointed!) speaks last.
The reason for this is that it helps to tackle the “sunflower bias”. Just like the sunflower turns to the sun, so too, do people in a group who have a tendency to follow the most senior person’s views, even if they are different from their own. The bias can be so powerful that the effect can be seen even if the views of the leader are not made explicit.
“When the boss speaks up first, the likelihood that anybody who’s not the boss will speak up with a dissenting opinion is much lower than if you, for example, have a conscious rule that the bigwigs in the hierarchy are the ones to speak up last, and you listen to all the other evidence before their opinion is offered. ”
WHY?
Once a group of people start adopting a certain opinion, it becomes harder for people that haven’t yet spoken to share alternative thoughts or have other opinions from those already expressed.
When German electric utility company RWE set about investigating biases in their working practices, which lead to them overhauling their decision-making processes, they found that the sunflower bias went through all levels of the organisation. It wasn’t just an executive level issue*.
Researchers Boot, Thakor and Milbourn also confirm that hierarchy gets in the way, particularly when it comes to evaluating an outcome. They found that when those in a team were asked to evaluate an assessment completed by someone more senior, people had a tendency to agree with the more senior person’s prior assessment, even when their own analysis said otherwise**.
It's easy to see how this bias can lead to far poorer outcomes. Reducing the sunflower bias is critical for enabling the full diversity of viewpoints to be aired, allowing issues to be more fully explored and evaluating the best ideas and outcomes properly, without crucial information being overlooked or missed.
There’s a very simple specific technique that is highly effective at overcoming this bias. Before discussion and interaction commences, ask people to jot down their own views and conclusions. These views are then shared and discussed in turn. Simple. The act of writing down individual views goes a long way to being able to share the real range of ideas. When views are shared that have been written down they are more likely to be closer to what was originally thought. If the leader of the discussion is also the last and not the first person to speak, and they make it clear that they are open minded to hearing ideas, it supercharges the effectiveness.
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