What Gets in the Way of Creating and Leveraging an Inclusive Culture? Bias

Welcome to Part Two of our series that takes you “Behind the Scenes in an Executive Training Session.” In my last post, I discussed inclusion, sharing a summary of SHAMBAUGH’s framework from our executive training sessions about how to help people feel more heard at work through an integrated approach to creating an inclusive culture.

Now let’s shift gears to focus on how companies and leaders can effectively manage bias, since bias is a chief impediment that commonly blocks a leader’s ability to create and leverage an inclusive culture. One key point that I highlight when training leaders in an executive session or meeting with leadership teams is that we see things as we are, versus how they really are. What that means is that our own background experiences can impact and influence how we view and interpret people and situations.

Researchers have found that through our five senses, “the human body sends 11 million bits per second to the brain for processing, yet the conscious mind seems to be able to process only 50 bits per second,” according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. The implications for this are profound when you think about the fact that our brain gets bombarded with many more pieces of information than it can effectively manage. This shortfall in our neurological processing capacity can cause our brains to take shortcuts, which can result in a biased way of thinking.

What is bias, anyway? SHAMBAUGH defines bias as an inclination toward one way or style of thinking that’s often based on our own background and experiences. This type of bias can lead to a lack of a neutral viewpoint on a situation, topic, person, or group of people. An implicit bias is shaped by attitude and social stereotypes that inform our subconscious and dictate the process by which we take mental shortcuts.

Think you’re free from the pernicious effects of bias? Not likely—everyone has some degree of bias based on our own unique pattern through which we have trained our brains to take these mental shortcuts. Some common examples include performance bias, affinity bias, maternal bias, likeability, racism, misogyny, homophobia, and double discrimination, to name a few.

Behaviors Matter

While you may initially think that our organizations and leadership teams have largely moved beyond these types of biases and “isms” as we approach 2020, the fact is that they’re still pervasive, if sometimes more subtle than before. SHAMBAUGH often coaches executive teams to be able to identify one clear indicator of bias that often flies under the radar screen: “micro-inequities.” These are subtle, seemingly small events are so common that even Wikipedia has an entry on them, describing them as “ways in which individuals are either singled out, overlooked, ignored, or otherwise discounted based on an unchangeable characteristic such as race or gender,” noting that these are ways that people “send subtle messages negatively.”

Micro-inequities are often hard to prove yet somehow diminish or exclude a certain person or group. Some examples of micro-inequities include:

• Interrupting someone in mid-sentence.
• Expecting women to take notes or do other “office housework.”
• Taking credit for someone else’s work or idea.

 

How can teams counteract micro-inequities? By taking steps to create micro-affirmations instead. These help give everyone a voice and reinforce their work, to help people feel like they matter. Micro-affirmations include:

• Giving credit where credit is due. When someone shares an idea in a meeting, it’s important to acknowledge that person by name as the ‘owner’ of what has been expressed.
• Practicing active listening. Tune in to the person who is talking to show respect for his or her message.
• Equal speaking time. The goal of a leader when speaking to a group should be to encourage everyone to participate. Work toward giving each person in the room an equal chance at the “mic” and roughly equal “air time.”
• Non-verbals. Demonstrate non-verbal communication signals — such as eye contact — that reinforce the fact that you are engaged and listening to the person who is speaking.

 

To help build on the spirit of micro-affirmations, companies and leadership teams can take a closer look at their behaviors to determine whether they are encouraging a culture of “bias management” to support inclusion. Gaining awareness of bias—and the types of micro-aggressions that can result from bias—is the first step toward greater inclusion. With this in mind, leaders should be very intentional about demonstrating daily behaviors that SHAMBAUGH covers in more detail in our executive training sessions such as:

• Empowering people at all levels to voice their opinions and contribute to decision making
• Build cognitively diverse teams
• Ask about and listen to the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of people who don’t share your viewpoint
• Remember to support the success of all by crediting people with ideas

 

Taking steps like these will prepare your teams and company to troubleshoot bias and facilitate inclusion.

At SHAMBAUGH Leadership, we’re on a mission to develop high-performing and inclusive leaders who transform workplace cultures so everyone can thrive. As experts on building inclusive and high performance cultures, we partner with companies and executives to address the whole system of an organization, unlocking and leveraging the full potential of the entire company. Rebecca Shambaugh is an international speaker on how to disrupt traditional mindsets and create a roadmap for driving greater levels of innovation and performance through a unified voice for leadership. Rebecca is Founder of Women in Leadership and Learning, a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, and blogger for the Huffington Post. She is author of the best-selling books It’s Not a Glass Ceiling, It’s a Sticky Floor and Make Room for Her: Why Companies Need an Integrated Leadership Model to Achieve Extraordinary Results. To learn more about SHAMBAUGH Leadership’s trainings and customized programs in leadership development that help create inclusive, high-performance cultures, contact Rebecca at info@shambaughleadership.com.

 

Find out more about us at: www.shambaughleadership.com

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