I deliver Unconscious Bias training, though it’s not my bread and butter. Yet, it regularly gets the strongest response of any training.
How?
When people take the Harvard IAT test for Unconscious Bias, they find out that bias is not only about race, though this is vitally important. There are also many other measures including gender, age, disability, and even body shape, which shows that we can all hold multiple partialities.
The test isn’t diagnostic.
For instance, it doesn’t label a racist, xenophobe, or misogynist. Furthermore, you can even get a different result if you take it more than once. But, if you are questioning its validity on these grounds, you should know Unconscious Bias Training is not about getting a diagnosis or finding a cure.
Instead…
It’s about how to improve our decision-making, how to think critically and question thought-processes. Shortcutting bias makes us more effective at our jobs and hones valuable skills. Using our prefrontal cortex instead of firing-up our limbic response leads to better teamwork, collaboration, and innovation.
So, what does Unconscious Bias training do?
Firstly, doing the IAT test proves fairly quickly that bias (whether conscious or unconscious) exists in all of us. There are arguably over 180 cognitive biases.
Key Biases in the Workplace
UB training provides the opportunity to explore some key areas which impact work. Like the danger of hiring “just like us” (affinity bias). Looking for evidence to back up how we feel about someone and ignoring all other information (confirmation bias). Feeling threatened about meeting someone from a background unknown to us (safety bias). Chiming in with the groupthink because we don’t want to be the lone voice (conformity bias). Taking decisions for those around us because we think they’re vulnerable and excluding them as a result (benevolence bias).
Information Processing
We also jump to conclusions in milliseconds. Daniel Kahneman demonstrates that we have 11 million pieces of information to take in at any moment. Yet we have the capacity to process between only 40 and 60 (if we have all our senses available to us). So, the unconscious is a mechanism to shortcut information and to help us process in an ever more transactional context.
“We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events…we can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our blindness.” ― Daniel Kahneman
Thinking Fast and Slow
Social Media
Add in dopamine hits that we are now regularly unconsciously reacting to (social media, etc.) and there is even greater potential for bias to creep in. Take for example the occasions when you suddenly find yourself disliking a person, merely from one bit of information in the press or from the fact that you’ve just seen too much of them? (Jameela Jamil thank you for your insight). Or watch this fun representation of what social media might be doing to our brains from ASAPscience.
Unconscious Bias training demonstrates that even when we consider we are being rational and reasonable, our evolutionary and psychological makeup means we are most likely not.
How can it add value?
UB training should prioritise change and not simply awareness. It can:
- provide pointers for what can you take away to improve what happens to your department, your organisation, your team.
- enable people to question how authority, or the majority, can disadvantage others and what that detriment looks like.
- show how implementing change is good for productivity, motivation, innovation and thus business (as just “doing the right thing” is not always incentive enough.)
- couple knowledge with action plans, create a collective momentum for change and provide a roadmap that fits with the organisation.
Why?
There is ample business case evidence for why truly inclusive organisations are thriving.
UB training enhances our understanding of ourselves to make better, more rational decisions.
It kickstarts insight into cultural awareness, psychological safety, effective communication.
It challenges discrimination by documenting the harm.
Plus, if leaders consider UB training is a waste of time or money, it is perhaps worth asking whether it make sense to have people prevented from meeting their full potential at work? Or feeling unable to bring their ideas and talent to the table? Having to battle for the recognition which others take for granted? Or to put obstacles in the way of just getting the job done?
Where next?
It is fair that the division, frustration, and anger caused by the much-criticised Sewell report is also asking questions of the need and intention of UB training and who should be at the forefront of action on equity. What is not in doubt is that we can still learn and that there is a way to go yet.
Why me?
I have often been asked what makes me equipped to deliver on bias?
Answer: I had to learn. If you’re talking about wellbeing, you cannot ignore inclusion, equity and justness. Yet my motivation also comes from the research which highlights that being in a disadvantaged or minority group of any kind can make life harder, sometimes a lot harder, within organisations. Which apart from being wrong, actually just makes no business or economic sense. So, starting the the process of change makes sense, adds value and offers a unique opportunity to learn and keep challenging ourselves.
And, if you still want to find out a bit more, feel free to make contact or message me on Linked in. Or comment if you disagree – its ok to do that too!
