Embrace Different: How to Connect With Others at Work

How schemata and confirmation bias impact relationships at work.

Reviewed by Margaret Foley

Key points

• In a global economy, we must make connections with customers, suppliers, and colleagues from around the world.
• Our ability to build relationships is impacted by our own beliefs, called schemata, which shape our worldview.
• Our worldview leads us to interpret information in a way that confirms our beliefs (confirmation bias).

The world of work has changed enormously, even in the last five years. More of us work remotely, completely or partially, than ever before. Many of us will work in multiple companies over the course of our careers. And some of us have turned side hustles and hobbies into small businesses. In the United States, there have been 430,000 new business applications per month in 2024, 50 percent more than in 2019. That’s possible mostly because digitalization and globalization enable us to work with and sell to people all over the world. We have to build connections with people unlike us. Whether you are trying to attract a customer, work with a colleague, or impress your boss, we need to connect. But two things, schemata and confirmation bias, can limit our ability to understand each other.

Understanding schemata and confirmation bias in the workplace.

Schema is the mental framework that helps individuals organize and interpret information. In the workplace, schemata (the plural of schema) shape our perceptions of others based on prior experiences, social cues, and cultural conditioning.[1] For instance, we expect certain behavior from a police officer or a rabbi or a postal worker based on our prior experiences, their representation in the media, or our community’s narratives.

Schemata are not necessarily bad. We use these cues to operate within our society. When someone stands “too close,” what we really mean is they are “breaking the rules” of our specific community. But different parts of the world have different expectations about what is appropriate social distance. Too far away and you might seem uninterested. Too close and you might seem threatening. Schemata allow efficiencies: If we all expect the same behavior, we can do certain things without explaining them.

Stop trying to make the unfamiliar fit into your normal. Instead, try to abandon your idea of normal altogether.

In America, it’s “normal” to walk into a restaurant and wait near the door until approached by a restaurant employee. But that is not true everywhere. Years ago, I lived in Budapest. The first day I arrived I entered a restaurant and stood by the front door. No one spoke to me. Frustrated, I walked out and tried another restaurant. The same thing happened. At the third restaurant, an employee finally asked if I was OK. I said I wanted to order food. Surprised, they said to just take a seat anywhere and someone would come over.

In Hungary, you need to go into the restaurant, pick your own seat and sit down. Lingering by the front door didn’t mean anything to them. (And lingering by the front door with a hangry face and no working knowledge of Hungarian didn’t encourage conversation.) Meanwhile, I had convinced myself that they didn’t like me. When their behavior didn’t align with my expectations, I came up with a new narrative that accounted for their “abnormal” behavior. It didn’t occur to me that my behavior was wrong. This is the risk of schema when confirmation bias comes into play. Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out and remember information that aligns with our existing beliefs. Once we’ve formed an opinion about someone, confirmation bias makes it more likely that we’ll notice behaviors that support our view, while dismissing actions that contradict it.

When I didn’t get served In Hungary, I took it as a personal insult because doing so confirmed my bias about how to enter a restaurant. I wasn’t wrong; they were mean. But my schema itself was unhelpful in that context. I didn’t enter a restaurant the right way in Hungary. They weren’t being rude; they were confused about what I was doing, just clinging to the doorway.

Imagine how powerful those mixed signals could be in the workplace. When we work with people from a different background, we have to be incredibly mindful that much we take as “normal” is not universal. Even within our own country or local communities, increased diversity means schemata continue to change and what is normal evolves. We have to recognize the schema that informs how we behave as well as the confirmation bias that makes us want to explain away unexpected results when that schema doesn’t align with our situation.

Expanding your worldview is a mindset, not an objective.

The reality is that we can never fully appreciate someone else’s actual experience. You can’t begin to learn all the schemata of another group or place or community or even an individual. What is more important is being aware of that: realizing that we all have schemata that shape what we expect from the world. In addition, our confirmation bias means that we tend to take new information and reshape it to fit with what we believe to be true.

In a work setting, schemata can lead to snap judgments and stereotypes, impacting how we interpret our colleagues' actions and assess their abilities. Even if we are aware they do things differently, we might try to shorthand their behavior into something we recognize. Consider my restaurant visit: I understood that I wasn’t getting service, but I didn’t adjust my expectations about what is normal restaurant behavior. I widened my lens in theory, but I didn’t change out my camera, so to speak. My interactions grew more hostile, and I was inadvertently pushing away the very help I sought.

To make authentic connections in the modern workplace, we have to develop a broadened perspective. Be aware that your confirmation bias and schemata create challenges because it is much easier to reshape what is happening into the familiar rather than to stand in the unknown. But when you stretch your view, you will be enriched by the vastness of different perspectives. And you’ll probably get your food faster.