KNOW THE PEOPLE.

AVOIDING ENTREPRENEURIAL AND MENTORING BIASES THAT LEAD TO MISTAKES

Accelerate your business with these expert tips on "Knowing people. Avoid the biases of entrepreneurs and mentors that lead to mistakes". Analyse and discover this TIP!

What are entrepreneur and mentor biases?

Entrepreneur and mentor biases are biases or cognitive tendencies that can influence the way they make decisions, evaluate opportunities or interact with others. These biases may be unconscious and may lead to wrong decisions or a failure to consider viable alternatives.

Some common examples of entrepreneur and mentor biases include:

• Confirmation bias: the tendency to seek information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs and discard information that does not.
• Anchoring bias: the tendency to give more weight to the first information we receive when making a decision, even if that information is not relevant or accurate.
• Availability bias: the tendency to give more weight to the most readily available or memorable information, rather than actively seeking out more complete or accurate information.
• Optimism bias: the tendency to be overly optimistic about the success of an enterprise or project, underestimating potential risks or problems.
• Self-centredness bias: the tendency to think that our own perspective is the only valid or relevant perspective, and to ignore other people's perspectives.
• Conformity bias: the tendency to adopt other people's opinions or decisions rather than thinking independently and making decisions based on our own judgements.

TO CONNECT PEOPLE AND AVOID THE BIASES OF ENTREPRENEURS AND MENTORS, IT IS IMPORTANT TO KEEP THE FOLLOWING TIPS IN MIND:

• Ask open-ended questions: Instead of asking closed questions that may generate the answer you are looking for, it is better to ask open questions that allow the other person to talk about themselves and express their thoughts and opinions. This will help you get to know the person better and avoid prejudices.
• Active listening: Pay attention to what the person is saying and ask follow-up questions to better understand what they are communicating. This will allow you to understand their perspective and avoid bias.
• Avoid making snap judgements: It is important to avoid making snap judgements or prejudices about a person. Wait to get to know them better before jumping to conclusions.
• Learn to recognise your own biases: We all have biases, and it is important to recognise them in order to prevent them from influencing our decisions.
• Seek the opinion of others: It is useful to seek the opinions of other people who know the person you want to meet. This can help you get different perspectives and avoid bias.

To avoid the biases of entrepreneurs and mentors, it is important not to blindly follow their advice and to do your own research. Be sure to analyse all relevant factors before making any decisions. Not all advice is applicable in all situations, so it is important to evaluate the information critically and make your own decisions.

Practical examples of entrepreneurial and mentoring biases that lead to mistakes

IN THE FIELD OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND MENTORING:

• Confirmation bias: An entrepreneur or mentor may have a preconceived idea of what works and what doesn't in a given market, and seek information that confirms his or her opinion while ignoring information that contradicts it.
• Anchoring bias: An entrepreneur or mentor may base his or her judgement on an initial value, which may be arbitrary or irrational. For example, setting a price for a product or service based on the cost of production, without considering the value it can bring to the customer.
• Availability bias: An entrepreneur or mentor may make decisions based on readily available information, rather than seeking more complete and accurate data. For example, taking the opinion of a small group of friends or family as representative of the market as a whole.
• Overconfidence bias: An entrepreneur or mentor may overestimate his or her ability to predict the future and make risky decisions without adequately considering the risks.
• Hindsight bias: An entrepreneur or mentor may believe that a decision was right simply because it has worked in the past, without considering the specific circumstances that led to that outcome.

It is important to note that These biases are not exclusive to entrepreneurs and mentors, but can affect anyone in any walk of life.

However, In the world of entrepreneurship and mentoring, these biases can have significant consequences for the success or failure of an entrepreneurial project.

Perceptual biases are systematic errors judgemental mistakes we make in assessing our own and others' behaviour. 

"Helping our entrepreneurs improve and making them aware of their limitations when judging something requires enormous doses of humility, self-criticism and a pinch of ability to laugh at oneself and realise what a lousy interpretation of reality we sometimes make".

• A:

  • "Your analysis does not conform to my preconceived notions".

  • "So my instinct tells me you're wrong".

• B:

  • "When your instinct speaks to you; what does it use for a mouth?"

In order to interpret all the information that comes to us, we take "shortcuts", we bias and simplify what we perceive in order to respond quickly. 

Some types of biases are:

• Projection. 
• Attribution error. 
• Complacency bias. 
• Selective perception. 
• Halo effect. 
• Similarity. 
• Stereotype. 
• Prejudice.

CONFIRMATION BIAS

INFLUENCE OF BIASES:

Assuming that situations are a certain way (according to our distortion) leads to responding in an unhelpful or counterproductive way.  By distorted assessment, adaptive capacity and thus efficiency and well-being are lost. It is necessary to be aware of the influence of biases on both the mentor and the entrepreneur. 

KNOWLEDGE OF BIASES:

WHY IS IT ESSENTIAL FOR THE MENTOR TO KNOW HIS OR HER BIASES? 

Discovering and becoming aware of the biases that our entrepreneurs show is both necessary and complicated, you have to take notice every time a bias appears!!! It's not easy, but sometimes it's a good idea to put your brain into "debugging mode", and look at yourself dispassionately, as if you were a third party... this is the best job a mentor can do to "keep an eye on you".

1. Avoid prejudices about entrepreneurs which can hinder empathy and can have a negative influence on the development of the process and the entrepreneur. 
2. To be in a better position to know, understand and support the entrepreneur. 
3. Helping the entrepreneur to detect his or her biases and to break out of them, encouraging a change of observer and opening up possibilities for action. 

FAVOURING THE POSITIVE EXPECTATIONS OF OUR ENTREPRENEURS:

WHAT CAN YOU DO AS A MENTOR TO FOSTER POSITIVE EXPECTATIONS IN YOUR ENTREPRENEUR?

To make the entrepreneur set his or her own goals. 

• That the entrepreneur designs his or her action plan. 
• Establish a Socratic dialogue with the entrepreneur. 
• Failure to respond to the problems it raises. 
• Delegating.

LET'S DIFFERENTIATE THE MENTOR BIASES FROM THE TYPICAL ENTREPRENEUR BIASES:

• In people's perception and assessment (+).
• Of perception of mentors (+).
• Perception of entrepreneurs (+).
• Impostor syndrome in entrepreneurs (+).
• Entrepreneur's optimist (+).
• Confirmation in entrepreneurs (+).
• Sunk cost fallacy in entrepreneurship (+).
• Anchoring in entrepreneurship (+).
• Curse of knowledge in entrepreneurship (+).
• Excessive security in the entrepreneur (+).
• Illusion of control in the entrepreneur (+).
• Empathy gap in the entrepreneur (+).
• Conservative in the entrepreneur (+).
• Conformity in the entrepreneur (+).
• Grouping illusion in entrepreneurship (+).
• False consensus effect in entrepreneurship (+).
• Entrepreneurs' blind spots (+).
• Entrepreneurial drag (+).
• Error (+).
• Mental filters (+).
• Disqualify the positive (+).
• Thought reading (+).
• Labelling (+).
• Availability (+).