Is unconscious bias training the silver bullet leaders think it is?
I hear so many companies talking about it and thinking it will be the answer to all their diversity challenges (and when I say challenges what I really mean is recruitment KPI’s!).
This is why I want to unpack the reasons it might not be the “one size fits all” answer you want it to be, and how to move past surface inclusion and get into the “ick” of our own mindsets.
So pop the kettle on (I’ll wait for you, don’t worry), and let’s get cracking…
What is unconscious bias?
Put simply, a bias is a tendency, inclination, or prejudice toward or against something or someone. The term unconscious bias refers to how these prejudices can influence our process of decision making, like quick, mental shortcuts.
You see, we process millions of pieces of information every day, and if we did each of these consciously, we’d simply never cope. So, our brain has created these shortcuts to help with that. Think about our primitive brain and our fight, flight and freeze responses. If we stuck around too long trying to process if that rustle in the bush was indeed a lion and not simply a bird, we may not live as long as we’d like to!
But often, and especially when it comes to people, the biases we created to protect ourselves have long outlived our need to hold them. The brains pre-disposition to surround us with “people who are like us” is what used to keep us safe, when everything was a potential threat. But this is simply not the case anymore, and yet we still allow these ancestral neural pathways to influence our thinking and, most importantly, our behaviours.
Because once our biases stop being thoughts, and influence our behaviours, they are no longer unconscious, they are unchecked. And unchecked biases are what we have when become aware that biases exist, but we let them continue to influence our behaviour anyway.
Unconscious bias training. Does it really work?
There has much debate over the usefulness of unconscious bias training in recent months. What once felt like an organisation’s “go-to” tool for improving workplace inclusion is now under fire for having little impact in changing our thoughts and behaviours. At least not outside of our early recruitment processes at least!
My view on this is that understanding unconscious bias can be a useful tool to open conversations about assumptions we all make in our daily lives, at home and at work, and allow us to begin collectively challenging ways of working we have previously taken as “the norm”.
Sadly, where many leaders may come unstuck is treating unconscious bias as a one-off training initiative, without taking the time to understand and address other issues that will likely be present in their organisation. This might include problems with racism, sexism, or ableism at a systemic level, which won’t be addressed by unconscious bias training alone. Academic understanding doesn’t do anything to change our behaviours.
This is a lot like attending a session on healthy eating and exercise and expecting from that point onwards you will eat a nutritionally balanced diet and take regular exercise. We all know we should, but in reality our behaviours rarely change in the long term.
Unconscious bias has also become a term that we are all too familiar with in our business language now too. Which on the one hand is great, as we’re talking about it more openly and examining our processes to eliminate it. But, in my work as an EDI specialist, a lot of the time I hear it used as a catch-all term applied to businesses as whole, like “what will we do to prevent our unconscious biases in this process?”. Instead of asking “how are we taking steps to prevent our individual biases from influencing our personal behaviours?”. And there is a significant difference here.
Somehow, we have created a “get out of jail free” card that prevents us from really examining what is going on in our own thoughts, words and actions. When we speak academically about unconscious bias we allow ourselves to be distanced from the actual bias that may occur, and subsequently distanced from our own responsibility in correcting it.
So our behaviours don’t change and we have language to distance ourselves from being part of the problem. Uh-oh.
Why do we do this?
Because accepting our biases and acknowledging we might be causing harm to others is really uncomfortable and unpleasant. It’s human nature to want to be liked, and to avoid doing anything that might see us labelled as “bad” or cause us to be isolated by our peers. The trouble with this is that we will never be able to make real change happen if we don’t face up to the discomfort and shame that comes with true self-reflection and personal growth. Moving the conversation away from this, and to a safer distanced place of comfort centres only ourselves and our own needs, and not the needs of those who will ultimately be impacted by our biases.
The eagled eyed of you might also notice that by now I have stopped using the unconscious part of unconscious bias — there are no flies on you!
This is because our biases are only “unconscious” when they remain within us. As I said before, soon as they influence our behaviours or action, there is absolutely nothing unconscious about them, they are our biases. Using the term unconscious is another effective way that we distance ourselves from the impact we may have on others around us and make it more comfortable for us to accept them. Something which I feel we all need to sit with and consider for a while.
So, what’s the solution?
Well, too much distance from our biases will prevent us from engaging in the vulnerable self-reflection required to change. Unfortunately, spending too much time focusing on our shame as a result of our actions will tip us the other way, and prevent us from engaging in the conversation at all. What we can do though is reframe our bias to help us confidently face up to them.
You see, when we think of our biases not as something we are, but as something that, if left unchecked, will influence our actions and behaviours, we can begin to view them from a position of learning and growth. By this I mean, I can acknowledge that my behaviour in past instances was biased and will have caused harm to others. When I examine my behaviour, I can identify what, specifically, was biased and I can choose to do something differently next time to be more inclusive and prevent harm to others.
For example, when I worked in HR many years ago, I created a Maternity policy that referred to “mothers” specifically. Because at that time I was socialised to accept that gender was binary, and that only women would get pregnant. This was biased in favour of gender binary norms. I understand now that gender is a spectrum, and that non-binary, gender fluid or trans men are equally capable of becoming pregnant. Therefore, when I find myself asked to advice on policies of this now, I use a more inclusive term, such as “pregnant person”. It takes nothing away from women and mothers, and it provides equal consideration to pregnant people who do not identify this way. Win — win.
So, does unconscious bias awareness improve inclusion in organisation? Yes, absolutely. But not as single one-time solution, and only when we take the time to embrace the discomfort of stepping into our personal growth zones to stop the unconscious becoming the unchecked.
