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Autopilot versus manual control

How the part of your brain that creates shortcuts can hinder better decision-making

By Jenni Marsh, LCMHC

Positivity bias happens when your brain creates a shortcut based on a positive past outcome and then applies that shortcut to a new, similar situation. This can lead you to believe that there could be a positive outcome with the new situation, even though you haven’t necessarily investigated the details. I know this from experience.

In the programs I facilitate at Truist Leadership Institute, I share this example of positivity bias: I once worked at an independent hospital that was purchased by a larger healthcare system. That acquisition was a great experience for me. I forged new professional contacts. I was promoted. I had greater responsibility.

When I experienced the next merger/acquisition in my career, I applied that positivity bias. The last merger was a good experience; this one will be, too.

My brain took a shortcut. That second merger proved much less enjoyable: My position was eliminated. Because of my positivity bias, I failed to notice the cues that preceded the elimination and I was caught off guard when it happened. 

Self-care for your brain

A leader’s brain needs care. Listening to a leadership podcast or going to training is important, but your ability to execute on the skills you get from those tools really depends on how well you’re taking care of your brain and body.

Using these skills is challenging. If you’re tired, hungry, or unwell, you lack the energy to pause, ask yourself questions, and do what you’ve learned to do for better decision-making.

Some leaders might say: “I know the skill, but it all happens so fast. Putting forth the effort to do it is harder.”

Being a conscious leader who pauses and makes the shift to ask questions, to elicit an opinion that’s different, takes energy. Energy comes from meditation, exercise, eating right, sleep, practicing mindfulness, and any other self-care that works for you. 

The lesson for leaders is not that you should always assume the worst. (That’s a different bias, called negativity bias, where you tend to believe the outcome won’t be successful.) Instead, the lesson is to know that your brain can take shortcuts based on biases. At Truist Leadership Institute, we teach that leaders can develop the ability to prevent or interrupt those shortcuts and improve their decision-making.

To explain this more fully, we need to examine a bit of neuroscience. 

Getting to know your neocortex and your prefrontal cortex

The part of the brain that lies across the top of the head is called the neocortex; it’s the autopilot center. It helps us do things like get ready in the morning — to automatically pick up the toothbrush and brush our teeth, reach for the coffee and brew the first pot, and so on. Our neocortex helps our brain gain efficiency by doing things the same way each time without much effort from the other main centers of the brain.

This is a comfortable, efficient way to operate. It’s as if our brain is on autopilot.

But sometimes we fall into autopilot when we shouldn’t. We feel we have all the information we need to make a decision, to collaborate with another person, to anticipate other dimensions of a scenario. Instead, we should be engaging the prefrontal cortex more.

The prefrontal cortex sits at the front of the brain, and it provides executive control. It helps us weigh the pros and cons of a decision, order steps in a project, or gather in-depth information and opinions from our teammates. 

Staying off autopilot

It’s very comfortable to be on autopilot and use our neocortex. In this mode, we say to ourselves, “I think I’ve got it. This is clearly the right direction for our team.” But if you consider the example I shared of working at an organization undergoing acquisition, my autopilot mode of positivity bias meant I missed asking myself important questions:

  • What might I have missed about this situation?
  • Does somebody have a different view of the situation than I have? What is that view and how did they form it?
  • If I’m feeling a strong urge to act in just one way, why is that? Is a bias at play here?
  • This is what I think, but what would I hear from somebody who sees it differently?

Our biases obscure the additional information that would give us a fuller perspective and enable us to see things more clearly.

It’s not necessarily that we see situations as bad or good. We just don’t see them completely because either we’re on autopilot and we think we know, or our conclusions are clouded by emotions. To engage the prefrontal cortex, we have to constantly catch ourselves if we slip into autopilot, pause, and then prompt ourselves to ask questions. By doing this, we can take the time needed for our brains to attempt to get as much information as we can about what is actually happening. 

Working toward better decision-making as a team

Engaging the prefrontal cortex, the executive center of a leader’s brain, can be a team process, as well. It starts when the team is aware of the neuroscience in play. They can then work together to employ individual and group strategies for asking questions, pausing on the road to decisions, and hearing others’ viewpoints.

Anything we can do as individuals or as teams to reveal that information that was hidden by emotion, get more perspectives flowing, or hear from people who don’t see situations the same way has the potential to help our organizations reach goals and thrive day to day and year to year.

Read more about the brain and leadership

In addition to the two parts of the human brain Jenni Marsh has written about in this article, leaders can benefit from knowledge about the limbic system, which plays a key role in human emotions. Marsh’s colleague Jeremy Spidell writes about the limbic system in “An awareness of self.”