Harvard Business Review features Breaking Bias
We can address fear about the upcoming elections by acknowledging—and breaking—unconscious bias!
Fear about the elections is in the air. It might seem like fear is unavoidable, something outside our control that happens to us. It might seem like the fear and anxiety surrounding the elections has nothing to do with breaking bias, but the two are intimately connected.
For me, FEAR is False Expectations Appearing Real. Fear is about living in the future, but this takes us away from the most important moment there is: now. It makes us lose ourselves in the coulds, woulds, and shoulds of our own minds and prevents us from acting now. Mindfulness is the key to noticing, acknowledging, and accepting things as they are—and acting to create a different future.
This week, Harvard Business Review featured my work on Breaking Bias. I connected it to the ongoing backlash against DEI, but my PRISM Toolkit is also the key to transforming our own consciousness when it comes to election anxiety.
The Root Cause of DEI Challenges: Bias
As a lawyer and a social scientist, I became a DEI professional accidentally. Early in my legal career, I conducted a cross-industry study at the Vera Institute of Justice and identified the root cause of identity-based challenges across sectors: bias. But contrary to popular beliefs, my research uncovered that biases are not inherent. We weren’t born believing that men are better at math than women or that white people are better leaders than people of color. Rather, these stereotypes, like all biases, are learned habits that take two forms: conscious biases, which are learned false beliefs, and unconscious biases, which are learned habits of thought. Both forms distort how humans perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions.
These habits are not personal, rather — as science demonstrates — they are how human brains have been trained to associate false concepts with traits such as skin color, hair texture, accent, tone of voice, and gender, among others. Neuropsychologist Donald Hebb named this process: “neurons that fire together wire together.”
To address conscious biases in the workplace, businesses often rely on corporate HR policies, trainings, and legal remedies. However, unconscious biases, which are more difficult to detect and address, are at the root of most DEI challenges. They include obstacles in diverse hiring, retention, advancement, and compensation, as well as miscommunications that may be perceived as microaggressions and inequities reflected in performance assessments. Additionally, unconscious biases can affect customer service, product development, and advertising strategies.
Unchecked unconscious biases also create workplaces in which managers lack the skills to deal with conflict, disagreements, and misunderstandings, which create numerous costs such as attrition, litigation, and poor performance. Furthermore, such biases fracture trust, hinder psychological safety, and result in less effective and poor-performing teams. According to one study by SHRM, racial bias alone costs American businesses up to $54 billion annually and lost productivity due to such biases cost an additional $59 billion annually.
Regardless of the future of DEI, in today’s business environment, managers are more accountable than ever to build and lead teams to combat unconscious biases. This brings me to some good news: Just as unconscious biases are learned, they can be unlearned thanks to the phenomenon known as neuroplasticity. There are five science-backed tools in particular that I collectively call PRISM that can support teams in unlearning unconscious biases.
Unlearning Unconscious Biases with PRISM Tools
PRISM is an acronym for five tools that have each been shown to be efficacious in measurably reducing bias with regular practice. It stands for Perspective-Taking, pRosocial Behavior, Individuation, Stereotype Replacement, and Mindfulness. The practice of PRISM begins with Mindfulness and we work our way up to Perspective-Taking.
With PRISM tools, managers train their minds to notice and mitigate the interference of false assumptions and stereotypes in their decision-making. In addition, leaders can introduce these tools within the workplace in subtle ways to help teams unlearn the habit of bias and replace it with what makes work rewarding: collaboration, curiosity, creativity, empathy, joy, and skillful communication.
Having trained over 80,000 professionals at over 300 organizations in these tools, the promise of them lies in their simplicity and ability to be practiced at any time, anywhere to yield transformative results. Here are some ways managers and leaders can implement these tools in their workplace.
Curious to learn more? Read the full article in the Harvard Business Review. I would also love if you would get your copy of Breaking Bias to take a deep dive into the origins and history of bias – but also to get hands-on tools you can use to break bias today!
Attend My Upcoming Book Events
Thursday, 11/14, 6–7 pm: Author Talk with Anu Gupta, BOSTON
If you’re in the Boston area, I’d love for you to join me at the historic Boston Athenaeum for a public book talk and discussion. Register here.
You can also watch recordings from some of my past events! Check out my talk at the New York Insight Mediation Center, where I was joined by Leslie Booker, Guiding Teacher at New York Insight, in conversation about my book. Watch the recording.
I was also recently in conversation with the Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, Senior Minister at Middle Church in New York, where we talked about transforming consciousness from exclusion to inclusion. Watch the recording.
Some Terms from the Breaking Bias Glossary
Bias: Learned mental habits that distort how we perceive, reason, remember, and make decisions.
Diversity: The authentic representations and expressions of humanity.
Inclusion: Ensuring that humans who’ve been historically excluded because of their secondary identities have equal, equitable, and fair access to activities, opportunities, protections, resources, or rights.
Resources and Reflection
Breaking Bias featured by Harvard Business Review. Amid the DEI backlash, shifting consciousness is still the most important thing that leaders can do to foster belonging in their teams. Read here.
Time shares my insights on how bias could impact the Harris/Walz Campaign. Social desirability bias will likely be a key factor determining the outcome of the election. Check out the story to learn what this means—and what you can do about it. Read here.
Breaking Bias with Mindfulness. I recently spoke with the Unmistakable Creative Podcast about how unconscious biases influence our behavior and decision-making, as well as actionable tools we can use to unlearn internalized bias. Listen here.
Mindfulness: Reminders for this Week
People think of revolutions as changing state leadership, but that’s not enough. We have to recognize that we are responsible for the evolution of human consciousness.
– Grace Lee Boggs
Some housekeeping…
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