Understand the Role of Cognitive Bias in Communication

In this episode, Ricardo talks about the most common cognitive biases that may be present in our daily communications, and how can we learn to handle them in negotiations, meetings and presentations. Learn about other biases in this infographic published on Business Insider: http://rvarg.as/bias

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Episode transcript

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Hello everyone. Welcome to the five minutes BM party, the guest Today. I like to talk to you about Cognitive Bias of course you may ask me what, what is this? Cognitive its what is, this is related to my work. So I want to explain to you one thing that you may not know, people are not Roberts, so people are not so predictable. As you think people are surrounded by very complex human interaction.

And every single person says the word through his or her own lenses. It's very important to understand that the way I see the world as Ricardo does not mean that its the same as you see the word So, it's very, very important that you won't understand this because this will change dramatically your own. The ability to communicate and be understood. So one researcher called Ken. The man wrote in 2012 nautical talking about the four common BS to Communication and I wanted to discuss each of them with you today.

So we can try to improve our ability to communicate the first one it's called confirmation bias. What is it? A confirmation bias is a tendency for people to pay attention only and only do information. And that confirmed their beliefs. Everything else, they just ignore it. So I will pay attention on the piece of Communication you send to me that I want to see that I believe everything else I will just disregard.

So it's a very, very important kind of Bias because I need to understand this because I need to see how I can communicate things that they do not believe. So I need to explain a lot, the reasons I need to explain why we are doing the project. I need to engage people in discussions. So they have the opportunity to reframe their beliefs and move towards success. This second Bias he's what is called.

Start to school. Bias this, the name and all of us. We know that people intrinsically hate change. So this is the Bias where people just avoid any kind of change. So they, one thing to be the same, even it, the things that are not so good, but that at least they know when they have a predictability on that. So it's very, very important. So these are the people that every time you present anything about a project, they say, Oh, I don't know why this project is needed.

I don't know why everything is good. So why we are moving this? I don't like this. So it's very, very important. These people, they have a very strong inertia and it's very important that you understand. It takes a lot of energy to put someone that is not moving to start moving and it's much higher than to keep someone moving that is already moving. So it's a very, very important. So you need to measure this and create just the strong Communication process on the good size practical, next steps.

So people can start moving and avoid this perception that I don't want change. The third one is availability bias. It's the tendency that I have to perceive the most memorable, the most easily available, that piece of information. And then I translated as the most significant, for example, if your business failure, its very common in Eazy, you can say, Oh, the government does not support my business.

So I'm in trouble because the government is not supporting me. And this is not necessarily the root cause, but the easiest one because its in all newspapers, it's in all the websites, a news website. So it's a very common, so it's an easy, it's a memorable reply to a challenge. So you need just to understand that. So it's very, very important that we do not get trapped that buy this very simple and basic conclusions end the last but not least Bias is what we call bandwagon effect.

And this is, I know each of you can tell me a hundred examples of that. It's the more people come to believe in something they're more orders wants to hoop on the bandwagon. So if it's something like, Oh I don't move until I know that some people are moving. So you are never the front runner, but you go with the group. So it's a very common and this is good. In some times when you have some front runners that are leading them, but if you have a as a front runner that is completely agree, the opposite and reluctant in your project, then you have a big, big problem because there's will drive people to a group think and process that can create all sorts of challenges because they always wait So they always weight for a larger group to decide.

And then they go with the larger group. It's something like which NBA team do you cheer for? And then I weight or other people to mention. And when they say X, then I cheer for X. So I go always with the largest group and why you need to know all this form because this, we will allow you to tailor your communication, your project Communication in the meeting in the report to understand that each individual we'll read this information in a different way and how you can understand this better in order to promote.

One of the key aspects is to receive feedback because if you receive a lot of feedback, then on the feedback, you can get some hints, some tips of which kind of bias are you handling with. So depending on the reply you receive, you can not understand, is it a confirmation bias that I need to reframe or it's something a bandwidth we can buy a house that I need to get more people engaged up to that. And this will help you frame your strategy's to conduct your project too. The success thing, or he says about that project is above and beyond scheduling and cost.

It's a much, much more than that. Think about this and see you next week with another five minutes PM. Podcast.

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