Promotions Aren't Fair (But You Can Harness the Biases in Your Favor)

If you're waiting for the corporate world to be fair, then you'll retire waiting. Most people experience this as injustice and as a result of that, they disengage. But here's the thing, fairness is a moral concept. Promotions are a market concept. The moment you stop judging the system for being biased and you start understanding why these biases exist, then you no longer are a victim of the game. Today, I'm going to talk about the biases behind promotional decisions and how you can create career impact by ethically aligning with these biases without betraying your integrity. You're listening to career revisionist. The podcast where ambitious professionals pursue mastery, break through invisible ceilings and accelerate into leadership. And now to guide you on the journey. Dr. Grace Lee, neuroscientist, executive mentor, and your trusted voice in career leadership. Every organization is a human system because organizations are made up of people and when something is made up of people, then you're dealing with cognitive economics. That's what governs it, cognitive economics. It involves a human brain. Cognitive involves the human brain. In the human brain does not want to expend a lot of energy. In fact, it is an energy-conserving machine. And as a result of that, it cannot afford to utilize the energy to be able to analyze every single data point. And as a result of that, it needs to take shortcuts. And these shortcuts are what we call heuristics, which are really rules of thumb or mental models, or they could be examples that we use to make decisions as quickly as we can. And so, biases are the consequences of using these shortcuts because biases create errors. And that's exactly what biases are. It's the error condition of a heuristic. So if biases, you can see from this, is that biases are inevitable. So if they are inevitable, then how can we utilize them ethically and align with them to create greater career impact? Let's start with the first bias, which is cognitive fluency. Put very simply, cognitive fluency means that things that are easy to process are pure true and safe. But on the other hand, things that are complicated or ambiguous appear very risky. So if your communication is not coherent, if your contribution is very hard for you to explain, then you're increasing cognitive drag, and therefore the bias of cognitive fluency kicks in and it appears very risky. And the thing is, and the reason why this exists is because leaders need to expend a lot of mental energy just to understand your value. So that's where the bias kicks in. Leaders gravitate towards people with a particular type of fluency. Fluency in their thinking when their thinking creates a narrative that is very grounding. Fluency in their communication when where their speaking is easy to understand and also easy to be remembered. And fluency in decisions where they are decisive and they have understanding of the decision at hand and therefore they can be trusted. And this really is a process of development. Developing this type of fluency requires something that I call conditvistics of influence. It's a new discipline that I created that integrates thinking with communication with embodied presence to really shape leadership influence. And this is important, you need all three thinking speaking and presence. You need all three because number one, communication, your language is the architect of thought. In other words, how you think really translate to how you speak. And most of the time when clients come to me, they desire to increase their communication skills. They know they need to develop more persuasion, they need to develop more influence when they speak, they need to have more diplomacy and more fluency there in their speaking. And that's what they come for. And time and time again, as I work with my clients, I identify that you know, you don't have a speaking problem, you have a thinking problem, because it originates there. So if you're here trying to improve your communication skills by studying vocabulary or by pronunciating your words differently or getting rid of your accent, you're only scratching the tip of the iceberg. Thinking is really the architect of how you how you deliver your message and how their message lands and how you articulate your own ideas. If your own ideas aren't quite organized themselves or they're not deep enough or they're not broad enough, then your words will reflect the same. And every single month, I train my leaders on how to communicate and how to think effectively and taking all that together, how to embody executive presence. So it includes all three. If you want to be involved in it, then I invite you to have a communication with one of my trusted career advisors. Click the link below this video and book a call to have this conversation. If it's the right fitting, you come in, then I look forward to working with you and you can have my eyes on your situation. You can have me and my team behind you, my coaches to assess your progress as well and to track your progress. And of course, to answer any question you might have and to support you and coach you in your career challenges. So click the link below and I look forward to working with you on the inside. The second bias is narrative rigidity. Once a leader forms an impression of you, their brain will seek evidence to confirm it, and they may not even notice evidence that contradicts it. And their whole narrative around you is a rigid label. Now, on one hand, if you, if the impression they have of you is someone who is a good helper, then any idea you put forward, they will see it as, you know, that's a helpful suggestion. On the other hand, if they see you as the leader, well, any mistakes you make, they're going to see it as, well, that was a bold, risky decision. I once had a client who came with me and she was a senior executive in a big tech company, a world class tech company. And there was one mistake she made a long time ago, years ago. And she's been with that company since then. And for some reason, that one mistake just stuck in the minds of her leader. And no matter what she did to erase that mistake, it just, that was the impression they had of her. And as a result of that, she noticed that senior leaders were not giving her certain opportunities. They weren't coming to her for consultation. They were very cautious when she was talking on that subject. I mean, that was the whole impression, the whole narrative. And it was rigid for a very long time. So she came to work with me and I gave her the steps, well, how do you change the narrative? And it's not about proving yourself harder. And just to give you a hint, it's also not about trying to change their narrative at all. You see, most people try to fight this bias by working harder, but you cannot work your way out of a rigid narrative. You need to shock the system. What you need is a pattern interrupt. A pattern interrupt is a high visibility moment where you act or you do something so out of character that the brain is forced to recategorize you. If you are the quiet implementer, lead a controversial presentation that sparks a lot of the discussion. If you are the technical expert, speak about a very important business strategy. Force them to rewrite the internal code on your identity, but you can't just do it once, which leads to the second bias within this bias. And this secondary bias is that leaders are biased towards things that they see consistently instead of things that they see occasionally. Have you ever had this experience where you gave an exceptional presentation? So much so that your boss praise you. And afterwards you got a few emails saying that was a great presentation, the skip level manager even was included in that praise. And for that week, maybe, you know, people were patting you on the back and you felt that energy. And then it just fades away. And then it's all back to normal. Because one exceptional delivery is not enough to outweigh the rigidity of a narrative. You got to do it more than once. In neuroscience, perceptions are shaped less by perfect signals and more by repeated signals. Neurons that fire together, wire together, and that's essential rule in neuroscience because the brain builds reality based on patterns, not based on singular events. And organizations behave the same way. Now that you know the principles of this bias, you can leverage it ethically in your favor. And your impact will grow when your pattern interrupts signal is dense enough and stable enough so that it becomes the default interpretation of who you are. The third bias is fishery and runaway selection. Sometimes we look at the person who gets promoted. And you know, sometimes it looks like it's the one who looks and acts confident but lacks substance. To understand why that sometimes can happen, I'm going to talk about fishery and runaway selection. That is an evolutionary concept that came from Ronald Fisher who was a mathematical biologist in the 20th century. And to talk about it, I'm going to use the example from a peacock. I have in my hand one feather from a peacock's tail. And in nature, a peacock's tail is heavy and it's very elaborate. The feather that I have is about 10 inches long. But in nature, a peacock's feather can grow as long as 12 to 16 inches. The feather I have in my hand is relatively light. But if you can imagine, you have a lot of these put together on the tail of one bird and it becomes heavy. So it's heavy, which prevents the bird from flying easily. And it's very elaborate and colorful, which means that it can be seen very easily by predators. So in all sense of the word, these heavy elaborate tails are a handicap. So, as a result of that, only the strongest and the healthiest birds can survive. Their predators and survive the environment. And they've evolved to develop this tale. They've evolved because of selection and because female peacocks choose male mates with more elaborate longer tales. So, what does this tell you? It tells you that by fishery and runaway selection. It tells you that the bird has an evolutionary advantage. In fact, by having such a burden, a handicap like this heavy elaborate tale, it's really signaling that it has superiority. It's an unfakable signal of superiority. It's saying that I can afford to waste this energy on something that is such a burden. So, in nature, nature selects for the creatures that have surplus energy. Translate that to an organization. An organization selects for the individual that has surplus capacity. When you consistently look very busy and you're running around putting out fires, you also look stressed and maxed out your nervous system is in fight or flight, fawn or freeze. Over time, this impacts your health on one hand, but it also affects the way others see you and how they experience you. The executive brain sees essentially an organism that's struggling to survive in this environment. And what you are communicating with your actions and the appearance on the outside, which you're communicating, is that you don't have energy for the higher level and you don't have surplus capacity. The people who are getting promoted are those who display surplus energy. And by the way, it's costly to do so. For example, one way to display a surplus in energy is to have composure in a crisis. Being composed is very costly to you as an organism because really what you're really displaying is that your internal processing is much stronger than your external stresses and your external emotions. And it requires a lot of energy to stay composed in a crisis. Another example is in crediting and being able to give other people the credit. And this is very costly to you as an organism because as individuals, we desire to take credit when credit is due and it's very difficult to give away credit. But insecure people are trying to hoard the credit, but people who are abundant on the inside, they give it all away. And it's costly to do so, but it demonstrates excess energy because really what you're saying is that I'm so full of value creation that I can afford to enrich others. I'm so rich in value creation that I could afford to enrich in other people instead. And the third example of demonstrating a surplus in energy is delayed gratification. Think about how costly that is to you as an organism. You have a goal. You have something that you really desire and you have the choice of whether or not to have it right now or to have it later. You are delaying that gratification. You are choosing not to fill the void Russian and fill the void right away because your inner working is your internal is not desperate. You're not seeking that validation. So this is a costly to end as an organism, but the display of that and the perception of that is one of surplus capacity and surplus energy. And you cannot fake this. I mean, if you fake composure, but you're actually panicked on the inside, you're going to burn yourself out. And that's why it is wise to cultivate the kind of internal infrastructure that allows you to carry the burden of leadership. The fourth bias is perceived trajectory. Most professionals believe that a promotion is a judgment of what happened previously. In reality, promotions are a judgment about what will happen next. You see, performance is retrospective versus trajectory, which is prospective. Investing merges because leaders are not rewarding the past. They are managing risk, future risk, and they are biased towards momentum. You see, when someone gets promoted, the organization is really making a bet on them. They are betting that this individual is going to grow into a larger role. And this bet cannot definitively made by metrics. It is inferred. And that's where the bias comes in. It is inferred based on how that individual thinks, how they talk about themselves, how they talk in general, how they show up, how they relate to complexity, the way that they relate to their teammates. So the inference is how we experience the bias. Leaders tend to promote the person who feels like or looks like they're moving towards something larger, even if the evidence can be very subtle or even unconscious. And that's exactly why performance decisions can really feel unfair, because you could outperform someone else, but still lose their performance, their promotion decision, because maybe your performance looked like an endpoint while theirs looked like the beginning. And once you understand this, hopefully you'll realize that promotional decisions are not something personal, and they're not personal verdicts or moral judgments. And you'll also realize that they aren't judging effort, but they are judging movement, because they want to see momentum, and movement is always biased towards the future. The fifth bias is called the halo of proximity. And it really comes from a primitive logic in our brains, where we look at a situation, and we see individuals, and we say, well, if you're standing next to power, it must mean that you have power. Like have you ever noticed on social media that there's a lot of celebrity influencers? And people who tend to meet us celebrity or who are meet someone who's highly influential, they take the picture with them, and they post it all over their social media. Why? Because it works. If you, who you are seen with, and who you are associated with, it does go a long way in terms of how you are perceived. If you are consistently seen associating with individuals who have power, then the natural perception and the natural conclusion, even if it's an assumption, it is, well, you must be somewhat of power yourself. If your natural circles are, you're consistently seen around people who are highly influential and famous, then again, the natural assumption means, wow, you must be somebody, and somebody famous yourself, right? It's an effect. It's an association effect that is worthy of noticing. It is wise to engineer your proximity. And you have proximity to the right people, you elevate your visibility. Invisibility is unwise, because if you're invisible, your work is more easily discounted. Now picture this. Picture a series of concentric circles. The middle circle is the individual you are there with the individuals that are zero degrees of separation. They are things like your parents, your partner, your children, your close friends, direct contact. And then there's one concentric circle, one remove from that, and this like an arm's length. So they could be acquaintances. They could be people that are on your contact list. You could phone them up, but you don't have an understanding of them and a close enough connection with them that you can call them up anytime. So that's like the next circle. And then another circle out from that, now it's like two degrees of separation. You may not even have their phone number. You might have met them once, but they may or may not remember who you are, and even if they remember you, they may not be able to place you or remember your name, right? And you keep thinking about how those concentric circles keep expanding. I made it a rule in my life very early on during my PhD to engineer my proximity. When I was in my PhD, my circle was purely academics. In other words, graduate students and professors that I was in their classes. That was my whole social circle. And I knew that I wanted to make an impact and I wanted and the career was very important to me. So I started to go online and at that time, you know, social media was huge. And there was LinkedIn, there was YouTube, there was Instagram, and I started to notice and see posts from influential people. And sometimes these people would have books, they would have their own YouTube channels and things like that. And sometimes I would go and consume their information, but I wouldn't stop there. The goal is to bring these individuals to the closer concentric circles. So if there was someone I knew had content, I would very quickly reach out. However I could and I would work with them. I would want to have a face to face. I would want to build a relationship or I would pay to enter their world to be their client or to work with them in some way or set up a partnership. And therefore, all the, I would be very selective of individuals that were important to be in my proximity to halo. I would say halo, halo of proximity. And I brought them in closer, the closer that you bring these people in and the closer the more your inner circle fills with engineered proximity, people that you've engineered proximity with, you'll notice that your whole perspective changes, the way that you operate changes, because you know, you've heard the wisdom before, who you are is the sum of the five closest people you spend the most time with. So that's another reason why it is wise to engineer your proximity. Who you're seen with is a large part of what builds your personal brand. And I encourage you to be in rooms where decisions are being made, not just where the work is being done. For example, just by being in the halo of high impact initiatives, you get to absorb the prestige of the initiative. of itself, and therefore you're harnessing the bias that conflates presence with importance. You can call the system broken if you want, but it definitely is imperfect and it is human. As long as you see these biases as a bug that needs to be fixed, you're going to remain frustrated. These biases are part of the operating system of a human hierarchy. The good news is that you don't need to be manipulative to manage it and navigate it, but you do need to respect your value enough to translate into language that the human brain can process and stop playing the game that you wish existed. Instead, start mastering the game that already exists.