Six Cognitive Traps That Leaders Must Avoid

In the process of screening and interpreting external information, we often have illusions and illusions in the process of perception, which directly affect the accuracy of decision-making and judgment.

In the process of strategic decision-making, the accuracy and objectivity of leaders' cognition of things have a profound impact on the outcome of decision-making.

Over the past 10 years, China's economy has made tremendous progress, and a large number of successful enterprises have emerged.

Practice has proved that the right decision of successful entrepreneurs is based on correct cognition, while the decision of failed entrepreneurs is usually influenced by personal cognitive judgment errors of leaders.

The premise of correct cognition is personal perception.

Perception is a process that endows the situation with meaning, and it is also the process of people's selection, organization and interpretation of external information, and ultimately forms the cognition of individuals to the external environment.

Because people are influenced by many factors such as biology, physiology, intelligence quotient, intelligence quotient, motivation, value, demand, emotion and so on, in the process of screening and interpreting external information, we will have illusions and hallucinations in the process of perception.

Such illusions and hallucinations directly affect the accuracy of our decisions and judgments.

In the theoretical analysis of organizational behavior, leaders usually produce cognitive errors in the following 6 aspects:

* basic attribution errors.

People tend to overestimate personal and internal factors while underestimating external environmental factors.

For example, when a company sells badly, managers often attribute their reasons to their inactivity and lack of initiative in the year-end summary, rather than attributing to changes in the market environment and the impact of competitors' new products.

Managers at the end of the year to sum up the achievements of a year, usually also emphasize the overestimation of the internal factors and motivation of individuals, ignoring the objective factors such as heaven, earth, interests and others.

The gap between actors and observers.

The spectators are clear.

Actors tend to emphasize the influence of situations and external environment on their behaviors, while observers emphasize internal attribution, inner activities and internal motivation.

There are deviations between the two types in judging the objective things.

For example, Chinese people who work overseas often are highly sensitive to their attitudes towards others, but rarely check their behavior and performance.

Foreigners who are concerned about China seldom pay attention to the influence of local culture and legal environment on Chinese people's behavior. They focus on observing the Chinese words, deeds and actions.

Halo effect.

People usually tend to sum up the comprehensive quality and level of a person with a certain characteristic of a person, and turn the characteristic of this person into the overall evaluation of this person.

For example, when we talk at the end of the year, we sometimes make a wrong judgement on a person who is good at speaking, expressing and communicating.

In a job interview, a beautiful gentleman or woman often gets the favor and appreciation of the interviewees, and their scores are also very high.

But in fact, there is no direct correlation between human appearance and human ability.

Contrast effect.

When evaluating a person, he often compares them with different people who are in contact with each other before and after, so as to enhance their feelings.

For example, two speakers with very different levels make speeches successively, and the contrast before and after will make people infinitely enlarge the horizontal difference between them.

For example, in the process of employee interview, a good looking candidate is a poor looking interviewer. The appearance difference between them will impress the interviewer immediately, thus affecting the objective judgement of the interviewee's comprehensive quality.

Projection factors.

In the process of cognition and decision making, people often use themselves as benchmarks, assuming that others feel similar to their feelings, needs and interests and take this as the basis of attribution.

The more familiar you are, the more familiar you will be, and the more you will like it. This will also affect your accurate judgement of the person's overall quality.

A leader who works overtime often thinks other employees will work overtime and work hard. Most employees do not like to go to work at 9 and leave work at 5.

In the United States, Chinese people are always willing to spend their time with their local colleagues to exchange, communicate and laugh, but Americans usually separate colleagues from friends, work is work, life is life.

Communication between colleagues is superficial.

Stereotype.

If we judge a person based on the group and organization of a person, it is easy to enter the misunderstanding of stereotype.

For example, in the eyes of foreigners, a Chinese student will think that his mathematics is very good, but in fact, because of the liberal arts and science division of China's college entrance examination, many liberal arts students have very poor mathematical foundations.

For another example, the world tends to think that the Germans are rigid and inflexible, but in fact, many Germans are very concerned about philosophy, literature and Social Sciences, and do not die when dealing with people.

Most people believe that the Japanese are loyal to the enterprise and never betray. But when they arrive in Japan, they find that there are also many people who are self-conscious and full of personality.

The above 6 cognitive problems are problems that exist in everyone. Leaders must be very vigilant.

Cognitive errors inevitably lead to errors in decision-making and judgment.

As an international leader, we should keep a clear mind in the process of cognition, do more empathy, strengthen reflection, reduce mistakes, improve leadership and management efficiency.