Are you sure they agree?

Have you ever confidently expressed your opinion, believing everyone was in agreement, only to later discover you stood alone? This phenomenon is known as false consensus effect, a cognitive bias causing us to mistakenly assume others share our perspective. False consensus effect permeates workplaces, leading leaders to assume unanimous consent from their teams.

I recently worked with a leader who learned this lesson the hard way, confidently leading his team in one direction, only to discover they weren't on board. The key? Before forging ahead, take a step back. Engage your team in meaningful conversations, asking open-ended questions that invite genuine feedback.

Let's explore how to navigate this common pitfall and ensure alignment before charting the course forward in this video.

• Read the video transcript

  I was recently at a dinner event with my husband and some friends and I started to share my opinion on something at the table that I thought everybody else pretty much agreed with.

  But guess what happened? As I started to share, I got one of those leg bumps under the table from my husband, essentially, "Whoa, pull back. "You should probably stop sharing what "you're sharing right now because not everybody agrees."

  And so what happened in that scenario was I experienced a cognitive bias called false consensus effect. This is where we think that others share in the same opinion, belief system as us, and we assume they're on the same page with us, when in fact they may not be.

  This impacts us in the workplace all the time. Leaders will run in one direction thinking everybody's on the same page, everybody's on board, when in fact they're not. Or we assume everybody wants to approach work and schedules in the same way we do. We assume everybody wants to show up on time to meetings in the same way that we do. Assumptions, they kill everything, right?

  Recently, I was working with a leader who was driving his team down in this one direction, and he was fairly certain that they were all on board with this tactical direction, and he was pumped about it. Well, after moving the team down the path a little bit this way, it came to his attention that actually they weren't on board. And it felt so hurtful at that point because he thought he was taking them in the right direction and that they were all on board.

  What needed to happen was go back a couple weeks before heading that direction and truly pause, slow down, and facilitate a conversation to get good feedback from your team before marching forward. And that doesn't look like just saying, "Hey, here's "where we're heading. "Do you agree?" If we ask something like that, then most folks are just gonna say, "Yep, we're on board."

  Instead, it takes more thoughtful question-asking. So maybe you share your thoughts on something, you share a direction you want to take the team, and then you ask things like:

  • "What about this resonates with you?"

  • "What are you excited about in terms of what I just shared?"

  • And then you ask, "What's surprising you?"

  • "What's catching you off guard in this?"

  • And then, "What questions or concerns do you have?"

  These open-ended questions will truly give them the space and the prompts to offer you genuine feedback so that you know what they're thinking and how they're feeling before you march them down a certain direction that they may or may not be on board with.

  Don't let false consensus effect take a hold of you and steer you in the wrong direction.