The Leader's Guide to Unconscious Bias

How To Reframe Bias, Cultivate Connection, and Create High-Performing Teams

Pamela Fuller, Mark Murphy, Anne Chow

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781982144333
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Leadership

A "profound" (Cynt Marshall, CEO of the Dallas Mavericks), timely, must-have guide to understanding and overcoming bias in the workplace from the experts at FranklinCovey. Unconscious bias affects everyone. It can look like the disappointment of an HR professional when a candidate for a new position asks about maternity leave. It can look like preferring the application of an Ivy League graduate over one from a state school. It can look like assuming a man is more entitled to speak in a meeting than his female junior colleague.Ideal for every manager who wants to understand and move past their own preconceived ideas, The Leader's Guide to Unconscious Bias is a "must-read" (Sylvia Acevedo, CEO, rocket scientist, STEM leader, and author) that explains that bias is the result of mental shortcuts, our likes and dislikes, and is a natural part of the human condition. And what we assume about each other and how we interact with one another has vast effects on our organizational success—especially in the workplace. This book teaches you how to overcome unconscious bias and provides more than thirty unique tools, such as a prep worksheet and a list of ways to reframe your unconscious thoughts.According to the experts at FranklinCovey, your workplace can achieve its highest performance rate once you start to overcome your biases and allow your employees to be whole people. By recognizing bias, emphasizing empathy and curiosity, and making true understanding a priority in the workplace, we can unlock the potential of every person we encounter.

Part 1: Identify Bias

Everybody’s biased. The truth is, we all harbor unconscious assumptions that can get in the way of our good intentions and keep us from building authentic relationships with people different from ourselves. By becoming more self-aware, we can control knee-jerk reactions, conquer fears of the unknown, and prevail over closed-mindedness. In the end, our central message is that you are not the problem—but you can be the solution.

—Dr. Tiffany Jana, author, CEO, and social entrepreneur

The data around bias can be daunting—they’re macro numbers that feel beyond our control. But we must remember that those big numbers are the accumulation of many individual actions, and we can affect those.

While I can’t personally plant a billion trees to combat carbon emissions, I can recycle and ride my bike more often. Likewise, we can implement small behaviors to impact bias, specifically as it relates to enhancing our own possibilities and those of our team members, colleagues, and clients. The cumulative impact of all our changed behavior can make a huge difference.

A colleague of mine who works in film once told me that if a camera operator shifts the lens by just 5 degrees, it completely reframes the shot. Likewise, our exploration of bias is not focused on the monumental shifts. Instead, we will focus on the power of meaningful and possible small changes to fundamentally impact our results. Each part of our Bias Progress Model will begin with a frame/reframe statement to shift our mindset by a metaphorical 5 degrees.

Frame/Reframe

Frame:	Reframe:
I am not biased. I view things objectively.	Bias exists in everyone, including me. I actively think about how bias is at play in the choices I make.

The frame assumes we are each infallible. Even the smartest, most capable, most decisive of us have bias. It’s part of our internal programming. The reframe just acknowledges that reality and allows us to expand our behavior, reactions, and decisions to account for our biases and enhance our performance.

The Principle of Self-Awareness

Each component of our four-part framework is also associated with a principle. The principle of Identify Bias is self-awareness, that uniquely human capacity for introspection. The word “self-awareness” may be overused, but it involves more than just deciding you’re an introvert or an extrovert or taking a general personality assessment.

For the purposes of this book, we define “self-awareness” as the intellectual pursuit of introspection. Increased self-awareness can enable us to identify our biases. Building this muscle of self-awareness, in this context, means that we can pause between receiving information and responding to it emotionally. We can take a step away from those feelings to understand why we’re feeling that way and examine if the feelings are productive.

One of the reasons our minds work against self-awareness is because it’s hard to admit that we have areas where we could improve. But when we practice self-awareness, we are constantly becoming more knowledgeable about ourselves. When we build self-awareness, we stop acting automatically and start making better decisions.

So how do we shift from the frame to the reframe and tap into our ability to become self-aware in order to identify bias? The four chapters of Part 1 are a guide to doing just that. We begin by exploring our own identity. Then we attempt to understand the neuroscience involved. The next step is to recognize when we are in one of the three bias traps. Finally, we embrace mindfulness as a strategy for continuously honing that principle of self-awareness.

Chapter 1: Explore Identity

Identities come, first, with labels about why and to whom they should be applied. Second, your identity shapes your thoughts about how you should behave; and third, it affects the way other people treat you. Finally, all these dimensions of identity are contestable, always up for dispute: who’s in, what they’re like, how they should behave and be treated.^I

—Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law, New York University

The first step in identifying bias is to know ourselves and examine how personal identity influences and is influenced by bias.

Our identities are comprised of everything that’s been poured into us over our lifetimes. These shaping influences come from everywhere, a multitude of sources our brains aggregate to develop a particular sense of self for each of us, and in some ways, a decision matrix for how we interact with the rest of the world.

In FranklinCovey’s Identity Model, the sources that comprise our identities include:

• Information. What we listen to, what we read, what we hear, what we watch—all of that information shapes our world views, perspectives, and biases. With the use of artificial intelligence and algorithms in social media—plus our brains’ inherent confirmation bias—we’re getting more and more information thrown at us that affirms our existing beliefs, rather than taking in a wide swath of information.
  
• Education. An attorney thinks about things differently than someone who went to school for criminal justice does. A scientist looks at everything through the lens of the scientific method; an MBA is trained to solve strategic problems. Our level of education (be it a high school diploma, a trade degree, a bachelor’s degree up through a doctorate or other certification), our field of study and the specific educational institutions we attended contribute to our sense of self—and our preferences and biases.
• Context. Identity can change as our situation changes: where we live, our religious practice, our situational contexts at work—for example, moving to a new organization or team. My identity today as a professional and a parent is certainly different from my view of myself when I was a college sophomore. Veterans and others who serve in uniform often experience this sharp change in context. The uniform can form a core part of their identities, an indication of the service they’re performing for their nation and their role as warriors. Moving into civilian contexts can challenge that identity, for example.
• Culture. This could be race, religion, ethnicity, or geography. Those cultural elements can have significant bearing, whether you’re from a state with a big, bold personality like Texas or from a relatively small ethnic group like the Hmong Americans.
• Innate Traits. Some of us are risk-takers; some of us are cautious. Some of us are nurturers; some of us aren’t. As an introvert, I usually order room service and go to bed after a long day of interacting and consulting with clients, and that, as a result, impacts my experiences of travel for work. We have innate preferences that also can contribute to bias and to the way we see circumstances and situations.
• Our Experiences. How many stories have you started with “Remember the time when…”? Our experiences stay with us, leaving a lasting impression. The experience of relocating across the country or traveling to a new one, of completing an ultramarathon, or of working for an incredibly inspirational leader—these varied experiences influence how we see fu...