Confirmation Bias Is Killing Your Results.

There’s a quiet poison that shows up in every business. It doesn’t sit in your financials. It doesn’t show up in your CRM. It shows up in the stories your team tells themselves.

It’s called confirmation bias — the human tendency to take a handful of facts and build a narrative that conveniently supports what we already believe.

And if you’re leading people, you’re dealing with confirmation bias every day whether you realize it or not.

What Confirmation Bias Really Is

Confirmation bias isn’t lying. It’s not even intentional. It’s a mental shortcut your team, your customers, and even you take. You see an outcome — a missed goal, a bad month, a frustrated customer — and your brain races to explain it with a story that feels true, even if it’s not.

The problem?

Those stories quickly become someone’s reality.

And if you don’t challenge them, they become your reality too.

How It Shows Up in Your Team

Recently, a good friend of mine — the founder of a highly successful software company — told me about one of her salespeople who blamed a terrible month on the product.

“The product is crap. Nobody wants it.”

That was her explanation.

Never mind that the company has years of glowing client reviews.

Never mind that support tickets are almost nonexistent.

Never mind that they’ve issued fewer refunds in total than most software companies issue in a month.

The salesperson missed their goal. Their brain needed a narrative that made failure feel acceptable.

So they manufactured one.

That’s confirmation bias.

And if left unchecked, it becomes contagious.

You’ve seen versions of this in your own business:

“No one is buying because of the economy.”

“Patients just don’t want high-value procedures right now.”

“Everyone’s overwhelmed — that’s why the work isn’t getting done.”

Sometimes these statements feel reasonable.

But reasonable isn’t the same as true.

What Happens If You Don’t Manage It

If you allow confirmation bias to linger, it becomes the accepted explanation for poor performance, weak results, and stalled growth. It becomes the unofficial company policy:

“This is just the way things are.”

And once that belief settles in, you lose momentum, standards, and the potential of the people sitting right in front of you.

Your Job as a Leader

Your job isn’t to fight people.

It’s to fight the story and lead your team.

Sometimes you counter the bias with data.

Sometimes you sit down and show someone how to do the work so they can see a different outcome.

Sometimes you replace the person so the role gets the performance it deserves.

But always — always — you need to demonstrate that a different result is possible.

Because once you show what can be done, the story they were clinging to falls apart instantly.

The Real Challenge

The biggest threat to your future is not the competition, the economy, or market conditions.

It’s the old beliefs your team (and you) still carry from yesterday.

So here’s the question for you:

Are you ready to create a new future by challenging the stories that have been limiting your team — and limiting you? If you’re serious about changing the trajectory of your business, let’s talk.