additional content
Why our brains
fall for false expertise
and how to stop it
Once we are
aware of the
shortcuts our
minds take
when deciding
who to listen
to, we can
take steps to
block those
shortcuts
by Khalil Smith
At the beginning of every meeting,
a question hangs in the air: Who
will be heard? The answer has huge
implications not only for decision
making, but for the levels of
diversity and inclusion throughout
the organization. Being heard is a
matter of whose ideas get included
— and who, therefore, reaps the
accompanying career benefits — and
whose ideas get left behind.
Yet instead of relying on subject
matter experts, people often pay
closest attention to the person who
talks most frequently, or has the
most impressive title, or comes from
the CEO’s hometown. And that’s
because of how our brains are built.
The group decision-making process,
rather than aligning with actual
competence, habitually falls for
messy proxies of expertise, a
phrase coined by University of Utah
management professor Bryan Bonner.
Essentially, when our brains are left
to their own devices, attention is
drawn to shortcuts, such as turning
focus to the loudest or tallest person
in the room. Over time, letting false
expertise run the show can have
negative side effects.
“The expert isn’t heard, and then the
expert leaves,” Bonner said in an
interview with the NeuroLeadership
Institute, where I head the diversity
and inclusion practice. “They want
to realize their potential. [If] people
80
world monitor
can’t shine when they should be
shining, there’s a huge human cost.”
If the people who offer the most
valuable contributions to your
organization aren’t appropriately
recognized for it, they won’t stay
long. Or, possibly worse, they will
stay and stop trying. As my mother
was fond of reminding me when I
got my first management role: “When
people can’t contribute, they either
quit and leave or they quit and stay.”
One of the most important assets a
group can have is the expertise of
its members. But research indicates
that even when everyone within a
group recognizes who the subject
matter expert is, they defer to that
member just 62 percent of the time;
when they don’t, they listen to the
most extroverted person. Another
experiment found that “airtime” —
the amount of time people spend
talking — is a stronger indicator
of perceived influence than actual
expertise. Our brains also form subtle
preferences for people we have met
over ones we haven’t, and assume
people who are good at one thing
are also good at other, unrelated
things. These biases inevitably end up
excluding people and their ideas.
In recruiting, management scholars
have found that without systemic
evaluation, hiring managers will
favor and advocate for candidates
who remind them of themselves.