Judging Judgment

There’s an old saying: we judge others by their actions, we judge ourselves by our intentions. For example, we might assume an employee who’s late for work is lazy or unreliable, without considering that there might be a valid, unavoidable reason for their tardiness. Such “attribution errors” are among the most common causes of conflict on teams. Listen and learn to identify and avoid unfair judgments.

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*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors

Bill Berthel: Welcome to the Get Emergent podcast, where we discuss leadership team and organizational topics and better practices. We like to provide concepts and ideas that you can turn into pragmatic experiments to help you develop your higher potential in your work and in your leadership. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone: And I’m Ralph Simone. And I’m almost coming out of my chair over the title of today’s podcast because I’m judging why you have me on as a guest.

Bill Berthel: Stop.

Ralph Simone: So, the title. You got to tell people the title. Bill, what’s the title of today’s podcast?

Bill Berthel: Well, Judging  Judgment.

Ralph Simone: Oh, beautiful. Beautiful. So, it’s my wheelhouse. Making judgments, Right. Wrong. Good. Bad.

Ralph Simone: Let’s go. What are we even talking about here?

Bill Berthel: I knew you’d be able to contribute  to today’s conversation

Ralph Simone: Maybe more so than you would like.

Bill Berthel: Never.

Bill Berthel: Never. No.

In social psychology, it’s known as the fundamental attribution error

Bill Berthel: Come on. Really want to talk about this concept that. Honestly, Ralph, I think we’re all attuned to. unless you’re a saint, I think we’re all doing this. In social psychology, it’s known as the fundamental attribution error. Let me give you an example. Instead of the fancy title.

Ralph Simone: That sounds fancy, though, I kind of like that.

Bill Berthel: It’s rooted in our bias. It’s an attribution effect.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: Examples help me.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: An example of this fundamental attribution error would be, attributing a coworker’s lateness. They’re tardy for work. To the fact that they’re unreliable rather than they got stuck in traffic.

Ralph Simone: Unreliable. Flaky.

Bill Berthel: Yeah, whatever, right.

Ralph Simone: I get this. Right. Okay.

Bill Berthel: The adjectives are coming out.

Bill Berthel: Right?

Bill Berthel: So, in turn, one, would give themselves grace if they were late.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: Because we’d know what happened, perhaps.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: What’s the old saying? We judge others by their actions. We judge ourselves by our intentions. That’s really the heart of this attribution error space.

Ralph Simone: So the attribution error becomes an ungrounded assessment. We’re actually drawing a conclusion without all of the information.

Bill Berthel: Absolutely. And particularly in the social psychology place, which this is really important for leaders to think about because we are leading people. It’s typically a judgment about that person’s character or personality is where we make the attribution error.

Bill Berthel: Right.

Bill Berthel: So the example of that person was late. They’re unreliable. All of a sudden, we&