When you want to be more inclusive: 4 unconscious biases to watch for
A few days ago, we celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD). IWD has occurred for well over a century, with the first IWD gathering in 1911 supported by over a million people. This event is a global day celebrating women's social, economic, cultural, and political achievements. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality.
The campaign for this year’s IWD was simply #InspireInclusion. While we focused on women this week, I started to think about how to be more inclusive at work. While many companies are cutting Diversity, Equity & Inclusion roles and programs, how do we move this forward without a keen focus on it?
Inclusion is not a fad or a training program. It isn’t an initiative or tagline. It is a way of working and a mindset. When we truly achieve inclusion at work, we are integrating these tenets into everything we do: hiring staff, developing people, staffing projects, mentoring, setting goals, innovating, collaborating, measuring, and rewarding performance, and more.
There are some simple things we can do to be more inclusive. Some are relatively straightforward and take a minute to think about them. It is far too easy to exclude people today in meetings, decisions, promotions, and the like. So, the main action item we can all take is to pause and think before we act with a lens of calling up some unintentional yet harmful biases.
The list of unconscious biases we can have includes a few; I am focusing on the four I see demonstrated most.
1. Recency Bias
We are all busy and we forget things. This is normal. One of the biases that can sway our opinion of someone, especially during performance review and/or promotion time, is recency bias. That is, one of your team members executed something awesome last month and maybe another team member excelled 6 months ago but you tend to reward the person who excelled most recently. This is the “what have you done for me lately” syndrome. The easiest way to combat this is to review the entire period when considering performance and promotions. This is also a strong argument for not focusing on annual performance reviews but rather on more frequent check-ins, such as quarterly.
2. Proximity Bias
If you are in a remote-only situation, this one may not apply as much. If you work in a hybrid or global model, this bias can creep in. We may tend to provide more attention, more rewards or even just share more information with those closest to us physically. Be mindful of what and how often you are sharing with or rewarding your team whether or not they are in the same office or region as you.
3. Affinity Bias
This bias can be a little sensitive. The reality is, we can tend to favor those who are most like us. This can be in age, gender, race, background, experience, previous work history, geography, preferences, styles, etc. This bias can come up at any time but we should be most conscious of this bias during interviewing and hiring. Many studies have shown that diverse teams can be more productive and innovative. The strongest solutions are usually those that have been debated and discussed by people with different perspectives. So, resist the urge to hire people just like you.
4. Stereotypes
Another sensitive bias is one many of us think we don’t do…stereotype. We are human and we can tend to make judgments about people based on demographic-type information, such as gender, race, or age. The important step here is to catch yourself and ask checking questions to make sure we are not stereotyping. This can be tough to do so having an accountability partner checking you is another way to go. Sometimes these stereotypes can be subtle, which is why they are hard to detect. Common examples can include you think a woman can’t make tough decisions or be assertive, an older person can’t learn new things, or a younger person just doesn’t have enough experience to do “x”. Challenge yourself to think about the person and not the person’s attributes.
There are more biases, like confirmation bias, seeking out opinions that only align with ours and support our hypotheses, and the halo effect, when a person does one amazing thing and therefore, can do no wrong ever, that can cloud our judgment. The key is to pause and check ourselves to make sure we are drawing the appropriate conclusions based on demonstrable behaviors in interviews or on the job.
Remember, we are human and there is a reason these are called “unconscious” biases. Step outside of yourself and ask checking questions to be sure you are unearthing these potential biases or find a partner who can check you. We need to make the unconscious conscious to avoid making exclusive decisions.