At your next meeting, take a moment to check whether there are a few invisible guests sitting around the table with you: cognitive biases.
They are mental shortcuts that the brain relies on to save energy and make decisions quickly. This mechanism is invaluable because, without it, we would become paralysed by every choice we face. The challenge is that these shortcuts can quietly turn into traps when decisions need to be made. They operate silently, like an app constantly running in the background, draining your battery without you noticing.
Let’s step into an ordinary meeting and watch cognitive biases at work in real time.
9:30 a.m. – The Anchor
The meeting has just begun. The team is discussing the budget for a new project when someone opens with: “We’ll probably need to spend at least fifty thousand pounds.”
From that moment on, the frame has been set. Every figure suggested over the next forty minutes will revolve around that number. Those who believe the budget should be lower may propose forty thousand. Those expecting a larger investment might suggest sixty thousand. Very few people will return to the original question: What is the investment actually likely to be?
This is the anchoring bias. The first number, the first proposal or the first piece of information placed on the table becomes an invisible anchor to which subsequent thinking remains attached. It gains influence because it arrived first, not because it is necessarily accurate. Once established, it quietly becomes the reference point against which every other estimate is judged.
Thirty Minutes Later – The Mirror That Reflects Back
By now the idea has taken shape. The group likes it, enthusiasm is growing, and there is that pleasant feeling that everyone is on the same page.
This is when selective information gathering begins. Evidence supporting the proposal starts to appear. Examples of companies that succeeded are enthusiastically shared. Reasons why “this time it will work” become increasingly convincing.
Information pointing in the opposite direction is softened, explained away or quietly pushed aside. If someone raises a well-founded concern, they may suddenly appear to be the person holding the team back rather than contributing to it.
This is confirmation bias, perhaps the most powerful of them all.
Once we become emotionally attached to an idea, our minds gradually stop searching for the truth and start searching for confirmation. We are not deliberately deceiving ourselves; we are filtering reality. Evidence supporting our beliefs appears sharper and more convincing, while contradictory information fades into the background. Ironically, highly cohesive and satisfied teams often provide the ideal conditions for this bias to flourish
Towards the End – Silence That Looks Like Agreement
The meeting is almost over. The decision has effectively been made.
“Is everyone happy with that?”
Heads nod, and the conversation moves on.
Imagine being able to step inside the minds of the people sitting around the table. You would probably discover doubts that were never voiced. They remained silent, not because people were dishonest, but because the group appeared so united and harmonious that introducing uncertainty felt like disrupting something valuable. Preserving harmony seemed preferable to becoming the uncomfortable voice in the room.
This is groupthink: the moment when the need to maintain cohesion becomes stronger than the need to make the best possible decision. The more connected a team feels, the more vulnerable it can become. Dissent starts to feel like disloyalty, and the most valuable objections often remain unspoken, particularly among those who fear criticism or social isolation.
Biases Cannot Be Eliminated Alone. They Must Be Made Visible Together.
Learning about cognitive biases is only the first step towards creating some distance from them. They cannot simply be switched off through willpower. They continue to influence our thinking even when we know they exist and actively try to avoid them. I experience exactly the same thing.
What we can do is make them visible and create an environment in which people have both permission and practical ways to name them.
Questioning an assumption becomes much easier when everyone shares an unspoken understanding that disagreement is part of a healthy conversation. The anchor of that fifty-thousand-pound estimate loses its power when someone feels comfortable asking where the figure actually came from. Confirmation bias begins to weaken the moment one person is explicitly invited to play the devil’s advocate.
This is why I often introduce cognitive biases to teams through serious games before explaining the underlying theory. Experiencing a bias first-hand creates a very different kind of learning. In a playful environment, making mistakes carries no cost. Instead, it becomes the gateway to genuine conversation. Theory builds knowledge, while experience connects that knowledge with emotion, creating lasting memories that influence future behaviour.
Cognitive biases reveal how the human mind naturally operates, as described by Daniel Kahneman in his work on fast and slow thinking. Once an individual begins to observe their own reasoning, or a team starts to examine how it reaches decisions, a new possibility emerges: the ability to choose with greater awareness.