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Leadership has its own set of unique challenges during times of crises; Luiz Zorzella provides a post that identifies a few of the common obstacles faced and how to overcome them.

During a crisis, we are all pushed to make strategic, life-changing decisions. Often we need to make these decisions under a lot of uncertainty and with incomplete and faulty information.

Below, I review some of my favourite cognitive biases with a couple of examples of how they may be influencing your and your counterpart’s decisions.

You can print this list and keep it in your drawer as a checklist on how to survive yourself and the other survivors during this period.

In the early days of a crisis, there is a lot of uncertainty: at the macro level, questions like how long the crisis will last, how effective the solution will be and, what will be the direct and indirect impact of this on your business, your clients, partners and competitors are very troubling questions.

On top of these, micro questions like how will these change the demand for your products, what emerging business models will be successful and what implications all these changes will have to your risk profile; and individual questions like what is the impact on the your health, your team’s and your loved ones and what is the impact on your job security, growth prospects and personal investments.

Areas covered in this article include:

• The need to hide vulnerability & overconfidence
• Ambiguity aversion
• Availability heuristic
• Group think
• Belief bias, confirmation bias & outcome bias

Read the full article, 5 Demons Who Flourish During Hard Times, on the Amquant website.