One of the Hardest Skills to Learn? Realizing It's Not All About Me (or You)

In this series, professionals describe the skills they’re building this year. Read the stories here, then write your own (use #SkillsGap in the body of your post).

Recently, one of my employees quit. We’d worked hard to recruit her, and she’d only been with us a few months, so I was understandably upset. I wondered what we’d done wrong and if she didn’t like working with us. I also wondered if she’d gotten a better offer somewhere else. Of course, a few days later I found out that that she had a personal reason for leaving that had nothing to do with her job at all. She had a backstory that I knew nothing about.

There is a name for my mistake. It’s called availability bias. It says that we tend to come to decisions based on whatever information is readily available, without considering what we might not know. Among other things, psychologists use this concept to explain our reaction to tragedies. For example, whenever a plane crashes, we tend to think flying is more dangerous than we did before. That’s not because it is; it’s because crashes are vivid, tragic events that are readily available to us. If everyone is talking about them, we overreact. 

On a personal level, availability bias can be a big source of stress. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself how many times the following has happened to you. Someone you work with is suddenly brusque with you. As a result, you rack your brain to think of what you might have said to make him or her mad. Then, a few hours later you learn that her cat has pneumonia (or something like that), and her negative reaction to you had nothing to do with anything you’d done. She was upset for a completely different reason, a backstory that you knew nothing about.

Businesses have backstories too. Whenever we interview for a job we really want, for example, the company’s response can never come quickly enough. In the meantime, we agonize over everything. We wonder if we were too casual or too buttoned up. Did we say something they took the wrong way? We can even come to the conclusion that the company giving us the runaround. Of course, it’s much more likely that they’re slammed with work or have other priorities. Or that the hiring process simply takes a long time. We just don’t know, but it’s very hard not to jump to negative conclusions based on what we do know. 

For another example, if you’re in a service business like my agency, you never know exactly how well your clients’ businesses are doing. Or what pressures are causing them to cut (or increase) budgets. Businesses make decisions and allocate resources for any number of reasons, many of which have nothing to do with a vendor’s performance. But time and again, I’ve seen that we always think it’s us. Our work. Our creative or strategy. Our making or breaking deadlines. Not their improved operations or difficulties in financing. This kind of thinking can kill your confidence or inflate it beyond where it should be. 

If I have one personal gap I’d like to close, I’d like to listen for backstories better. To imagine what other things beyond what I know could be influencing the moods and actions of my friends, colleagues, and business partners. I’d like to ask the right questions to round out the true picture for myself.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Availability bias is pretty hard wired — it has been repeated in experiments. But before having a negative reaction to a personal or business decision, it’d be great to be able to just stop and think a few minutes first. Does it have anything to do with us? Or might something be going on that we know nothing about? In most cases, I’d guess it turns out to be the latter. And it’d sure save a lot of stress to come to that conclusion instead. Let me know what you think.

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