I get to facilitate a fascinating discussion on Explicit and Implicit Bias in a University setting next week. The focus is on implementing more diversity in hiring for tenured faculty positions – particularly in STEM subjects, which, over the last 20 years, have shown a whopping 5% improvement in populating University faculty with instructors other than straight white men.
So this means, despite all of our AWARENESS and Cultural Education efforts and Political Correctness…. that the actual numbers have not really changed at all. This is frustrating…..maddening….. and interesting.
I don’t know about you, but I have spent the last 20 years or so of my life feeling pretty satisfied with myself on my open-ness to diversity, my progressive attitude, my embrace of difference. I have friends – not just acquaintances, but friends, who are people of color, I worked for the Obama campaign, I never miss a Leonard Pitts column. I read Oprah’s Magazine cover to cover – you get the idea. But in preparing for this university work, I was encouraged to take the Harvard Implicit Bias self test. Which I did. And I am totally embarrassed to report that I scored very high on bias toward Traditional Gender Role expectations. OMG. Despite the fact that my house is historically and currently crawling with dust bunnies… I’m practically June Cleaver.
My first response was, predictably, “There’s something WRONG with this test!” But no not really – it simply measures the extent of influence, despite education, progressive politics, and my “O” subscription, that I’m still a product of the expectations and assumptions of my culture and my upbringing. As are you – as are we all. We can have a whole range of fascinating biases: racial, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic…. you-name-it.
Which brings me to:
Bias Buster number 1: Take 15 minutes out of your busy life, go to Implicit.Harvard.EDU, take the test and prepare to be shocked and awed.
Here’s the thing though, and it’s really irritating. Even when we identify our own level of bias and fully admit it, (this known as is EXPLICIT bias, by the way) this not enough to CHANGE them. And at this point, you might be asking yourself why you should change them anyway. It’s not like you are some crazoid out there shouting vile into the streets. (At least, I hope you are not). I’m sure you are a mostly reasonable, well meaning person just trying to get through your life as best you can, pay your bills and be all that you can be – just like the rest of us.
But whether we are aware of it or not, we are often in the position – in our daily lives – to make important, often behavioral decisions – that determine whether or not people we work with are truly seen and heard at important meetings, and get to contribute professionally to their best capability. And we have a responsibility to educate ourselves on the Implicit biases working within us.
Like the old refrain says: Be the Change you Want to see in the World. We can’t afford not to begin, consciously and intentionally, to change our response to the unknown….not when we communicate, often unintentionally, our biased, negative expectations of those we encounter in our daily lives, not when those biases determine decisions that will reinforce our own comfort at a cost to the continued positive evolution of our working community culture.
So accepting for the moment that we all have implicit biases operating within us. How do these biases get expressed?
Bias Buster #2 Familiarize yourself with Micro aggressions and their offspring: Micro-insults, Micro assaults, and Micro insinuations
Most of us are very aware of when we are on the receiving end of a micro aggression. You remember that time when Joe sideswiped you in that meeting with the CEO by bringing up that embarrassing gaffe you blurted out in an unguarded moment at the bar? Or maybe yesterday when you saw Rachel get patronized and shut down yet again in the team debrief? We can have similar reactions witnessing others going through the experience. We get defensive, hostile, or momentarily deer-in-the-headlights stunned if we didn’t see it coming. (By the way, did you say something to support Rachel in that meeting…? Me neither. None of us wants Mac the Knife to skewer us next. Hmmmm.)
It’s not hard to identify the micro aggressions launched by others. But are we as aware of the ones we ourselves commit?
At our most charitable, we could define micro aggressions as our immediate response to outside stimuli driven by unconscious negative bias. That’s all very scientifically accurate and academic – but here’s my true story about an experience that happened a number of years ago:
I’m in an office building in a large city. It’s around 6:30 PM. I’m alone waiting for the elevator. Tick Tock it’s taking forever as usual. Finally the doors open and I walk into the elevator and see that it is occupied by a lone black man in his twenties. I immediately stop breathing and back up. I mumble something about forgetting my key back at my desk and I get off the elevator. Fast.
OK what just happened? Fear and unconscious negative bias has taken control of me for just long enough to reinforce, through micro-insinuation, the negative assumptions of criminality associated with young black men – reinforced for both myself and for that most likely harmless black guy on the elevator.
This was an example of my own Implicit bias. I was not really conscious of this assumption of criminality in young black men. I thought I was an upstanding, highly evolved, card carrying liberal. But my reaction was instinctive, unconscious and required no time at all for me to react in that manner.
Bias Buster #3 Start tracking what influences your own decision making. Maybe you saw the article this past May in HBR titled “Outsmart your own Biases”? The authors focus on what they call “Choice Architecture”, and how these unconscious instinctive reactions, if not exposed and intentionally balanced, will result in decisions that simply reinforce the Known, the Comfortable, the easy, recognizable choice, the Status Quo. The autopilot decisions we make as a result of our implicit biases are what experts refer to as “System 1 thinking” – essentially information formed from past associations – some experiential, some cultural, and are largely the type of information we need in fight or flight situations. This is the survival response that allows us to get out of the way of that car speeding directly at us, or makes us stop and think twice about that get-rich-quick deal that looks way too good to be true. It is valuable to question our System 1 thinking however, when applied to situations not so life-and-death, because this kind of analysis, or really, lack thereof, is what we like to call our “instincts”, or “intuition”, our “going with our gut”. Turns out our implicit biases are very good at masquerading as intuition and what they are really about is keeping us safe, keeping things predictable, and keeping the status quo intact. By contrast, System 2 thinking is deliberate, logical, intentional and aligned with tracking and weighing factual evidence. This is the part of us that is capable of questioning our own judgement and looking outside the known for larger and more varied pools of information. Trouble is, System 2 demands much more of what most of us don’t feel we have much of to begin with: time. Time to seek out options, time to imagine alternative scenarios, time to analyze multiple decisions and average a variety of responses using a numerical rubric. You get the idea. I don’t know if there have been studies done on whether people who are good with time management are also proficient System 2 practitioners, but that data would be very interesting. Someday, I hope to seek out that System 2 information….but for right now, I’m going to have to first sharpen my time management skills. And allow myself just a little more time to question whether that new hire needs to be someone I’m “comfortable with”, or someone who could push my buttons just enough to help me and my company grow……
Intrigued by an interactive tool to help your team flesh out some implicit biases? Check out Shift/POV to learn more!