Imagine a line manager in a fast-paced company: customer complaints spike, and they rush to address them. Meanwhile, early signs of team burnout such as increased sick days, disengagement, and declining morale go unnoticed. Why do some issues grab a manager’s attention while others slip through the cracks?

This is salience at work—the phenomenon that determines what stands out, what gets prioritized, and ultimately what drives decisions. The salience definition refers to how certain factors become more noticeable or influential based on their visibility and relevance, shaping decision-making in ways we don’t always recognize.”

The Power and Pitfalls of Salience in Management

Salience bias explains why we notice some things immediately while others fade into the background. Rooted in the work of Kahneman and Tversky, it shows how our decisions are shaped not by all available information, but by what is most visible, striking, or cognitively accessible. For managers, this means:

• Recency bias in performance reviews – Overemphasizing recent events instead of evaluating an employee’s full contributions.
• Crisis-driven leadership – Constantly reacting to immediate issues instead of building long-term resilience.
• The visibility trap – Paying more attention to vocal employees or urgent emails while missing strategic blind spots.

How Salience Impacts Leadership in the Workplace

🔹 Crisis Response vs. Preventative Planning

A team starts missing deadlines due to low morale, but the manager focuses on urgent client complaints instead. The result? Turnover spikes, and productivity drops. Because customer dissatisfaction is immediate and visible, it takes precedence—even when employee well-being is the real issue.

🔹 Performance Reviews and the Salience of Recent Events

Managers often assess employees based on what stands out most in recent memory, leading to inconsistent evaluations and missed opportunities for top talent. Research from MIT Sloan Management Review highlights how traditional performance management often misaligns measurement with improvement, reinforcing biases like recency bias.

🔹 The Visibility Trap in Decision-Making

A corporate leader might fixate on reports and KPIs (because they’re constantly in front of them), while overlooking the slow erosion of company culture or innovation issues that are less obvious but critical for long-term success.

How Can Learning & Development Teams Help Managers Overcome the Salience Trap?

Salience is a natural cognitive process, but organizations can equip managers with the right tools to ensure smarter, more strategic leadership decisions:

✔ Introduce Evidence-Based Decision-Making
Training managers to recognize cognitive biases helps them make more balanced, informed choices.

✔ Develop Leaders Who Think Long-Term
Encouraging managers to balance short-term urgency with long-term strategy improves organizational resilience.

✔ Provide Practical Frameworks, Not Just Theory
Real-world applications of behavioral science can help managers immediately apply insights to their roles.