Stop Negativity Bias From Limiting Your Success
By: Costas Andreou
Tags: Leadership, Productivity, Programming, Psychology, Management

How to Make Negativity Bias Work for You

Growth mindset

A considerable number of the negatives that one could be dwelling on would be about personal interactions. It’s a vast category indeed, but the list could include:

Criticisms or feedback received from someone else

An argument or disagreement with someone

An action taken or not taken

An interaction with someone that could have potentially been done better

Whatever the action that took place, remember to approach it with a growth mindset. That is, play the scenario again in your head and figure out how to better approach it next time; look for iterative and continuous betterment. Then stop! Try not to think about it anymore, and simply move on.

Limit your exposure

Negativity bias, unfortunately, is not limited to your personal interactions only. Any information that is negative that reaches you could have this effect.

In this day and age, we are constantly bombarded by breaking news, and regrettably (as the age-old adage goes) if it bleeds, it leads. That is, taking advantage of negativity bias, the news outlets are strategically choosing their headlines and the topics to maximise the chances of grabbing your attention.

If you’re finding this to have a negative effect on you, then consider limiting your consumption of not only news but also social media, where news can easily be shared.

Relationships

Negativity bias is, of course, also relevant to relationships. That is, both personal and professional relationships can suffer because of it.

It has been thought that to have a successful marriage, there needs to be a 6:1 ratio of good to bad. In other words, make sure to highlight all the sweet and beautiful things that you observe. It takes six compliments to undo the one sarcastic comment you made in the heat of the moment.

The same goes for professional relationships. As noted in the Harvard Business Review article, it was found that the highest-performing teams gave a 6:1 ratio of positive to negative feedback to one another. For medium-performing teams, the ratio was 2:1, and low-performing teams were making more negative comments than positive.

At the same time, when someone was seriously underperforming, it was found that direct negative feedback was the most effective way to drive performance back to par.

Take a risk

The negativity bias is also responsible for what is known as loss aversion. That is, most people will play to not lose rather than play to win. In other words, there is once again an asymmetric relationship between the enjoyment we get out of a win and the pain we experience out of a loss.

This would immediately highlight why a lot of people are risk-averse in their decision-making. The knowledge of the existence of loss aversion, however, should empower you to look into what risks you can safely take on for an extra boost.

Tell your story

Finally, with negativity bias affecting how people see results, it’s easy to imagine how your management team may not be seeing things the same way as you.

It takes one bad thing to happen, one missed deadline, to completely overshadow all your hard work and continuous overperformance. So, how do you deal with it? Easy!

Make sure to tell your story. Capture all your successes and all the value that you add. Clearly articulate the benefits you have brought about. Ensure that by the time you are done telling your story, the negatives are simply a parenthesis. Explain what you have learnt out of them and how you will avoid them next time.