Turning Unconscious Bias into Conscious Thought #3
Phil Claybrooke, President/CEO People often ask why we believe understanding unconscious (implicit) bias is so critical to organizations and individuals. Why is it such a key factor in recruiting, attracting and retaining high talent individuals?
Our response is simple:
High talent individuals come in many different shapes, sizes and flavors, and
High talent individuals normally have considerable choice in which organizations they choose to join or work for, and
If they don’t feel that your organization is a comfortable fit for achievement and success, they will find an organization that is!
Implicit biases are a part of each of us in some way, shape or form. These biases are primarily created by beliefs and filters developed through the environments we grow up in and our experiences with others. Let me explain implicit biases by sharing one that I need to continuously convert to conscious thought. This stemmed from my own upbringing (early environment) and my experiences as they relate to others.
As a young person, my experience with obese people was through an Aunt who was extremely obese. Based on my exposure to her, and her lack of energy and physical activity, I unconsciously determined that obese people lacked initiative and were very lazy. I know today that that is not true. However, what if I had not recognized this implicit bias in my adult years?
How would it interfere with me identifying, recruiting, attracting and retaining high talent individuals, who happen to be overweight?
How would it affect my decisions for promotion for that person?
How would it affect the performance evaluations I gave to that individual?
How would my relationship with that person differ from my relationship with his/her co-associates?
This is just one of many implicit biases that I, personally, had to turn into continuous conscious thought. There are many other implicit biases related to race, ethnicity, sexual preference, religious beliefs, pessimistic people, mental and physical impairments, etc. that we may need to identify for ourselves and apply continuous conscious thought.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have been the recipient of actions by others who have not had the opportunity to consider converting their implicit bias into conscious thought. In a recent example, I was golfing with three Caucasian/White gentlemen. One of the golfers was anxious to share an online video that he described as “really funny”. The video depicted two African-Americans/Blacks having a conversation as they stood, chained, on a slavery auction block in early America. At first both slaves were deeply troubled that they were being treated like animals and with little regard as humans. As the video progresses many slaves are sold, but they remain unpurchased. The “really funny” part of the video is a change in their conversation to how much better slaves they would make, and they can’t understand why any slave owner wouldn’t have purchased them first.
There is no doubt in my mind that the person that showed us the video was not out to intentionally harm our relationship; even though he did. Oh, by the way the other two gentlemen were embarrassed, and happened to be his clients. In this example, a person of color may not have been the only individual offended. Right or wrong, sharing this video in the environment that he commonly exists would be acceptable. This individual happens to be a mid-level manager in a corporation. What effect do you think similar unconscious actions might have on the individuals reporting to him?
In summary, it is so critical to understand the critical nature of turning our unconscious bias into continuous conscious thought. High-talent individuals normally don’t leave organizations; they leave their immediate leadership. The training of leaders in understanding implicit bias and the impact on Team Members/Associates can be the differentiator in identifying, recruiting, attracting and retaining the best of the high-talent individuals.
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