Why We're Biased and How to Become Less Biased

What kind of qualities make for a good leader?

Experience? Mental fortitude? Motivational speaking?

Take a second and rattle off the top three qualities that come to mind. What turns an average leader into an exceptional one?

Okay, do you have them?

Great.

Chances are, you just described yourself.1

For example, if you’re extroverted, highly opinionated, and punctual, you’re likely to think, “A great leader has good people skills, speaks their mind, and gets things done on time.”

But if you’re introverted, analytical, and strategic, you’re more inclined to answer, “A good leader takes alone time to recover, thinks through scenarios from every angle, and isolates the best route forward.”

Now, these qualities aren’t necessarily wrong—lots of them are exceptional leadership building blocks. Social scientists simply used this as a thought experiment to show that we all struggle to see reality as is.

Like the famous Babylonian aphorism goes: “We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”2 It’s why we tend to skew our perceptions in ways that flatter the self.

Truth is, we’re all far more biased than we give ourselves credit for. And even those who’ve heard that “we’re all more biased than we give ourselves credit for” a billion times are sadly not that much less biased than those who’ve never heard this news.

Even after all the research I had to do on the science of bias for my dissertation, I’m still wildly, surprisingly, and egregiously biased.

Which, yeah, there are probably bigger problems in the world.

But the danger isn’t just projecting biased leadership qualities; the danger is more so that whenever we encounter something that’s ambiguous, we subtly reshape it into our own image—and we even do this with God Himself.

But thankfully, there are some key tips and tricks—well, one tip and trick, technically—to help us see reality as reality is.

And even though that might not sound all that fun—because, you know, we prefer our cozy illusions—it’s far superior to become the kind of person who tastes reality as it is. Those who live in Plato’s cave forever can’t become radiant because they never step into reality’s shine.