Avoid the “Anchoring Effect” with 1 Easy and 1 Difficult Step
Your team is reaching a consensus too early.
You are not taking advantage of working in teams due to the anchoring effect.
One of the greatest advantages of working in a team is the differing perspectives you get when making decisions, coming up with new ideas, and understanding the root causes of past issues.
However, if driving consensus is organically or intentionally happening too quickly in every discussion, it's very likely not every perspective is being voiced (or heard). You need to change your process.
The anchoring effect (or anchoring bias) happens when the first, or first few, opinions skew the rest of the team members' opinions. This is especially common when higher-ranked or leadership members state their opinion at the beginning of the discussion.
"If there's a quiet person at the table, they may not speak up at all, especially if their personal estimate differs significantly from the rapidly forming consensus"
— L. David Marquet, Leadership is Language
Having awareness of this effect is not enough to stop it from happening.
The Easy Step: Create a 2-phase process where the points of view and opinions are stated before the discussion.
Phase 1 — Everyone adds their opinions or choices beforehand.
The key here is that no opinion is shared before another. You get two options:
- They're shared at the same time, like a "3… 2… 1… vote!" situation.
- They're shared before, in written format, where you only have visibility of your own inputs.
Phase 2 — Opinions become visible to all members and the discussion starts.
Once everyone can see all inputs, you either go around the table to let each person share more or, depending on the group size or purpose of the meeting, ask folks with the most different perspectives to share more about their decision.
This conversation must be open to questions and genuine interest to understand all points of view.
This is quite common in Agile processes, such as planning poker and sprint retrospective. The team I'm part of has taken this process to other meetings, such as brainstorming sessions, project timeline agreements, and other types of retrospectives.
The Difficult Step: Create an environment where all points of view are respected and considered.
It doesn't matter if you have the process in place if people still fear giving their honest perspective.
Fear of retaliation, humiliation, or simply the belief that their opinion won't be considered (so why bother?).
If one person has an opinion that is opposed to all others, this is a moment to give that person the floor and invite that point of view to be explored.
Invite variability.
"When it comes to thinking and decision-making, variability is an ally." — L. David Marquet, Leadership is Language
If at this moment, this opinion is disregarded because "Seems like we mostly agree on this, let's move on", you're teaching your team that voicing controversial or unique perspectives doesn't make a difference.
It's not about implementing all ideas or saying that everyone is correct but allowing all concerns to be voiced and discussed. You'll only make the best decision when the opinions of all team members have been heard clearly.
Here are signs that the environment needs to be improved:
- Team members use hesitant, nervous, or self-diminishing language.
"Uhh… I think, maybe, there's another way… I don't know, just thought that we can maybe look at option X"
This shows they feel the environment will not accept their view well. They fear how they will be perceived and show that in their own communication.
- The share of voice is skewed towards higher-ranked members.
In environments where only the more senior members or leadership speak up, it sends a message to the other members that their opinions are not worthy.
Using the mechanism of the 2-phase process as a forcing function to address this and continuously, during the discussion phase, ask the opinions of all members.
- Few questions follow up the statements.
It's not enough to have each person voice their opinion if it's just a box to be ticked.
“Person A said what they think. Check, now let’s move on”
They need to be followed up with questions that genuinely consider that perspective — after all, it can be the one that changes the outcome.
"Person A said what they think, what information has lead to this conclusion? What is there that we haven't considered yet?"
Cultural changes, which are the basis of the difficult step, don't happen from one day to another. It requires building trust. Especially as a leader, you must lead that change by example. Start by making sure everyone gets a chance to voice their opinion and ask at least one follow-up question, build from there. People will follow and the value will soon be visible.
