Cognitive bias: What are you hiding?

There are over 100 cognitive biases that have been recorded, but that list is still growing. Our biases affect our decision-making, sometimes in good ways and sometimes not so good. We talk a lot in the agile community about how important diversity is for teams and companies to thrive, but when we all bring our different biases to the table, we need to be mindful that they exist so that we can have meaningful collaboration rather than disagreements. This workshop is designed to help people understand what cognitive biases are, how they affect our thinking, and how we can use our knowledge of their existence to create a more collaborative space for discussions in the complex world we live and work in.

This is for a 60 min interactive talk. It can be expanded to a 90 min workshop.

Intro - Introduce who I am and why I’m doing this talk.

Introduce the 12 biases we’ll be discussing: 

*Ostrich Effect

*Illusory Truth Effect

*Optimism Bias

*Status Quo Bias

*Bandwagon Effect

*Law of the Instrument

*Social Desirability Bias

*Dunning-Krueger Effect

*Sunk Cost Fallacy (aka Escalation of Commitment) 

*Planning Fallacy

*Authority Bias

*Blind Spot Bias

Split participants int groups 

Ask participants to think of two or three they think might cloud their personal judgement

Ask several participants to share what they discovered.

Ask participants to think of two or three they have and two they see in the workplace from co-workers or leaders

Ask several participants to share what they discovered.

Remainder of timebox - Q&A

Final Powerfull Question:

What will you do to stop help bring biases to light in your workplace?

Participants will:

• Identify what cognitive biases you have and create a plan to surface them with their teams
• Recognize ways to surface their biases so they can establish better communication with their teams
• Summarize why an understanding of biases is important to know
• Present ways to uncover biases within their teams
• Question whether their own biases play a part in their work interactions
• Reflect on where they’ve seen biases in their workplace
• 
  

RSG Beijing 2024