INSIDE BRIEFINGS
Acid reign
The spectre of unconscious bias
has ruled decision-making for too
long, imperceptibly eating away at
companies’ attempts to introduce
diversity, says Angela Peacock
O
Do we have any racist,
sexist, ageist
homophobes in the room, or is
it just me? Let’s not get all coy
about this – the reality is that
we are all riddled with bias.
Pause for a moment and take
a look at the people around you.
If you don’t know them – and
even if you do – as you look at
them you will already be making
assumptions about who they are,
the sort of job they do, the car
they drive, how hard they work…
and guess what? They are making
the very same assumptions
about you, both consciously and
unconsciously.
To begin to understand
unconscious bias, we need to be
willing to explore our hidden
beliefs. Beliefs buried so deep in
our minds that we may go to our
graves and never become aware of
them. But they affect our choices,
and could be the reason that the
logical approaches to diversity
have not had the impact we had
hoped for.
At the current rate of progress,
in the majority of Fortune and
FTSE companies it won’t be my
daughter that stands the same
chance as my son of becoming
the next CEO or managing
partner; it’s not my granddaughter
either – it’s actually my greatgranddaughter.
And in Europe and North
America, that only applies to
those who are Caucasian and
heterosexual. Anything different
in either regard could well
move the dial back yet another
generation, and that can’t sit well
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with any of us in the 21st century!
We know that nobody goes to
work every day to deliberately
keep women out of the senior
ranks in our organisations,
and yet it happens. It’s time to
recognise the impact of our
hidden unconscious biases on the
decisions that we make every day,
and the impacts that they have on
our talent, our performance and
our customers.
We are conditioned to talk about
how great diversity is for business
– unfortunately that’s not always
the case. We can bring the most
diverse group of people to the
table – black, white, young, old,
man, woman, introvert, extrovert
– but here’s the reality: If what
is going on around them is toxic
they won’t perform, they won’t
give their best and we will wear
slowly away at their self-esteem.
Some will check out their brains,
often years before they check
out their bodies. There can be an
unseen, unheard, imperceptible
drip of micro-behaviours that, like
acid rain, go unnoticed… until the
nose falls off the statue.
You may be wondering if I am
making a case to undermine
pure diversity. Absolutely not!
And, indeed, statistics show that
positive intentions have led to
progress – it’s the rate of that
progress that we should no longer
tolerate.
Conscious intent to create
diverse organisations by
improving processes or asking
workforces to appreciate difference
O Continued on page 74
73
INSIDE BRIEFINGS
O Acid reign
every smell, every hoarding
that you can read, every single
facial feature on another human
being, all register in your brain as
individual pieces of information.
And in reality, our brains can
consciously process no more
than 40 things at a time – the
rest go flying straight into our
unconscious mind.
Despite what we might lead
ourselves to believe, our conscious
bias is not the problem. For every
conscious bias that we know
that we have, there is a plethora
– hundreds, possibly thousands
– of unconscious, ridiculous,
illogical biases that are constantly
Continued from page 73
has not made the inroads that we
expected and needed. We have to
cause a change in our beliefs, to
alter our behaviour significantly
enough to impact our decisions,
before that change can happen.
What we do know works is a
culture of inclusion – the space in
which anyone can excel, in which
anyone can be fantastic. Leaders
who are prepared to jump inside
their brains, look at what their
fears are and address what their
unconscious has been telling them
for years are the leaders that create
more inclusive workplaces.
Bringing together a group of
people that think differently, have
different life experiences, and see
through different lenses, in an
environment where everyone can
be heard, will deliver the most
robust decisions that stand the test
of time.
Imagine your brain as a
continuum – at one end it holds
biases that you are absolutely
aware of and recognise. Think
about areas that you yourself
may have a bias against – tattoos,
bikers, shaved heads maybe? We
all know the things that we have a
personal problem with. At the other end of the spectrum
are unconscious biases, which are
sometimes buried deep within
our psyche. The problem here is
that while we may not know that
they are there, they are constantly
whispering at us in our every
waking moment and in every
decision that we make.
The fantastic piece of
engineering that is the human
brain has stood us in phenomenal
stead. It’s got us to where we are
today, it’s kept us safe and out of
danger – except now there’s a bit
of a problem. At any one time
your brain has 11 million pieces of
information flying at it.
Imagine taking a walk through
Times Square: everything you
can see, everything you can hear,
74
“For every conscious bias
that we know that we
have, there is a plethora of
unconscious, ridiculous, illogical
biases that are constantly
pushing their way through”
O Angela
Peacock is chair
of the People
Development
Team
pushing their way unseen into our
conscious mind.
Bias isn’t just about the
stereotypical groups that we
imagine when we start to talk
about diversity. It’s absolutely
everywhere. Take, for example, the
difference between introvert and
extrovert behaviour.
Research points to the fact that
an introvert brain in this century,
with all its distractions, will think
more deeply and focus more
thoroughly on an issue than an
extrovert brain will.
And yet, we are much more
likely to promote the extrovert
into leadership positions than we
are the introvert.
Think about every meeting you
attend. The person who’s speaking
loudest, shoots from the hip, uses
all their – and everyone else’s –
available airtime, makes decisions
quickly, that’s the person that
gets noticed, the one who gets
promoted.
The person in the corner who
is processing the information
at several levels deeper than
everyone else, who is likely to
come up with a far better riskassessed and broader decision for
your business, is very likely to be
excluded rather than included.
How much might overlooking
that brainpower ultimately cost
your business?
Pause again and think about
the leaders in your own business.
What does your cultural
unconscious bias dictate that a
leader might or might not look
like, sound like or behave like?
We need to turn on its head
everything that we think works.
The meetings when we expect
instant decisions are, at best, not
robust enough. At worst, they
don’t work at all when applied to
other cultures such as those in
Asia.
Unconscious bias impacts
every part of our organisation –
the selection of our talent, our
assessment centres, right through
to how we pitch for business with
our clients. It impacts who we
assume has the power, and who
we overlook.
To be truly authentic 21st
century leaders, we need to be
able to look at every human being,
and then look again and think
about what we could know, what
we should know, and not rely on
just what we do know.
We cannot afford to walk past
talent in our own organisations
just because it doesn’t dress like
us, speak like us and walk like us.
Take a moment to tune into
your assumptions and biases –
listen to the whispers – who are
they counting in? Who are they
discounting?
And is it just me who could
admit to at some level being
a sexist, ageist and racist
homophobe? Or potentially is it
all of us?
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