Overcoming Bias in Teams: Smarter Decision- Making Together
In our last blog, we explored how learning together as a team strengthens leadership development and enhances collaboration in real-world settings. But learning together isn’t just about building capability - it’s about challenging the way we think.
Too often, teams make decisions that feel right but are subtly shaped by cognitive biases—ingrained mental shortcuts that influence judgment, reinforce the status quo, and make change harder. These biases operate beneath the surface, limiting innovation and adaptability.
When teams actively reflect, challenge assumptions, and learn together, they become better equipped to identify and navigate these biases—learning not just faster, but smarter.
This article explores the hidden biases that prevent teams from embracing change and how we can actively help teams recognise, navigate, and overcome them.
The Invisible Challenge: Bias in Team Decision-Making
Cognitive biases affect individuals, but in group settings, they can become even more pronounced. When teams collaborate, certain biases subtly shape conversations, limit diverse perspectives, and lead to poor decision-making.
Some of the most common biases that hinder learning and adaptability in teams include:
- Status Quo Bias: A preference for familiar strategies over new approaches, keeping teams locked into old ways of working.
- Groupthink: A tendency to prioritize consensus over debate, leading to less rigorous decision-making.
- Confirmation Bias: Seeking information that reinforces existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence.
- Authority Bias: Over-reliance on senior voices, stifling fresh ideas from newer or quieter team members.
- Loss Aversion: Fear of potential downsides outweighs potential gains, discouraging necessary risk-taking.
Left unchecked, these biases create blind spots, making teams resistant to change—even when it’s needed most.
How Learning Together Helps Teams Challenge Bias
When teams build habits of reflection, debate, and challenge, they create an environment where biases are surfaced and addressed. By working together, they become more adaptable, improve decision-making, and strengthen their ability to navigate complexity.
Here’s some of the thought exercises we use in teams to help mitigate bias:
- Encouraging Constructive Dissent
- Encouraging teams to justify their decisions from an alternative perspective helps challenge biases like groupthink, ensuring that diverse perspectives are heard and evaluated.
- Structured debate techniques (e.g., Team Optimism/Team Prudence exercises) challenge initial assumptions and prompt deeper analysis.
- Assigning a rotating "devil’s advocate" ensures dissenting voices are heard and explored.
- Breaking the Status Quo Bias
- Working together to explore multiple possible solutions prevents teams from defaulting to familiar patterns and opens up new ways of thinking.
- Scenario-based learning challenges teams to rethink assumptions in changing environments.
- Premortem exercises ("Look into the 'crystal ball of doom' and imagine this decision failed—why?") help teams confront weaknesses before they become real risks.
- Balancing Diverse Perspectives
- Team decision-making exercises ensure all members contribute, reducing authority bias and amplifying fresh ideas.
- Encouraging team members to "try on" less familiar perspectives, exploring the value in these alternative ways of viewing situations.
- Encouraging teams to defend opposing viewpoints strengthens critical thinking and reduces confirmation bias.
- Training Teams to Identify Their Bias in Real Time
- Mapping team preferences in the moment to understand the biases in the room.
- Behavioral nudges (e.g., prompting team members to consider "What are we missing?") become second nature, leading to stronger everyday decisions.
- Over time, teams develop the muscle memory to challenge biases in real work settings—not just during training.
From Learning to Lasting Change
Bias is an unavoidable part of human decision-making. Every team has a bias, but the best teams recognise and correct for it.
When teams intentionally reflect on how they work, they develop active habits that refine their thinking, decision-making, and collaboration over time. This helps them to become:
✔ More adaptable in fast-changing environments.
✔ More effective at making balanced, evidence-based decisions.
✔ More open to new ideas and perspectives.
In today’s world, where complexity and uncertainty define the landscape, learning together isn’t just about knowledge - it’s about shifting mindsets, challenging assumptions, and shaping how teams think, adapt, and make better decisions, together.