Thinking traps

I was reading an interesting blog post by Litemind about thinking traps. A lot of them have to do with our natural bias:

• Thinking we are better than we are (overconfidence in our abilities, memory, intuition or gut)
  
• Trying to confirm decisions we already made (shopping for confirmation, protecting our status quo or sunk costs)
  
• Unquestioning our thoughts and assumptions

We can avoid some of the traps by talking to people who hold different points of view. This article reminded me why it is important to have diversity in our teams. Our teams can protect us from some of the traps. There is one trap that is not in the article and that is intrinsic to groups: the "group think" trap. This trap makes the team assume one position or opinion and none others are considered (from wikipedia: groupthink).

To avoid falling into "group think" we have to make sure that dissenting opinions are heard, that timid or softspoken team members get a change to talk, and that critical thinking is always on the table. As a team lead or member, we all share that responsibility. Remember that this trap can make a team behave like lemmings and jump off the cliff.