Sometime back, I was asked to deliver a session on Unconscious bias as a pert of a leadership skills training program. If you ask me, I’d say that’s a very interesting topic and one that most leadership skills training programs really need to look into.
Why? Because biases rule us without us even realising it. And influence are judgments and decisions to often disproportionate extents! So much so, that we may actually question later why we took a particular decision in the past.
Understanding Our Unconscious Biases
As human beings, we all tend to develop biases. And these are not just towards people. They could be towards, say; a country, religion or any topic under the sun. Anything that we like or is similar to us, we start getting biased towards.
For example, consider going on a holiday to a very beautiful country. You go there, love the place, love the people. Somewhere in your subconscious, there’s a heads up stored for anything to do with that country. So, in conversations that come up, you may praise the place and think that’s because you had a great vacation there. However, when a conversation or maybe some news comes up against the country; you will somewhere defend the country and won’t believe the news, even if it’s actually true! And the worst part is, you won’t even realise you’re doing that. Which is why it’s called ‘unconscious bias’.
How it Affects us as a Leader
Such biases also affect us and our judgements at the workplace. As a great leader, we need to be neutral to take good decisions. However, we are constantly operating under such biases, makin g it extremely difficult to take an unbiased decision.
This, in fact, can affect various spheres of our corporate lives. Whether it be interacting with a departmental head of a department you don’t like, working with team members you don’t approve of, taking decisions on subjects you are biased against, or even taking interviews of candidates who are not like you! Your unconscious biases could be at play everywhere and may prevent you from seeing what truly is.
Now the question is, is there a way to get out of the clutches of this automatic phenomenon that unknowingly keeps happening within us? And if we don’t even realise when and how it’s happening, can we really do something about it?
Well, the good news is you can. But is it that simple? No.
And how can you do this? By getting aware of it. And that, my friends, happens by increasing your internal awareness levels. Also talking to others and seeking their point of view as they may not be operating from the same bias. Which makes it extremely important, as a leader, to involve more people in decision making and to take feedback from others.
You know the best place to improve all of this? In a leadership skills training program where we can teach you how these biases operate and how you can catch hold of them. And of course, what to do after that too!