ilrhr527 transcripts - s3. · PDF fileAnd I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a ... it's because I'm Asian. And isn't that why, ... and then the cashier said you know what,

ILRHR527: Countering Bias in the Workplace for HR Cornell University ILR School

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ILRHR527 Transcripts

Transcript: Welcome

Have you ever wondered why despite all that we know about diversity

best practices, and despite the fact that companies have been adopting these diversity best practices for quite a while now, companies continue to face significant challenges related to diversity? I'm Lisa Nishii and I'll be teaching this course on diversity and inclusion, where I'll be focusing on the role that unconscious bias plays in perpetuating these problems where it related to diversity. And I'll talk about how HR practices can be designed to reduce the role of unconscious bias, and also provide tips for how everyday managers and HR managers alike can counteract the negative outcomes associated with unconscious bias.

Transcript: Defining Diversity

So, as we start this course, we want to begin by asking the question,

what do we mean by diversity? If you look at corporate diversity mission statements, there's actually a bit of a range in how companies define diversity. And there are two main sets of characteristics that might be included. One is what some people call surface-level or demographic characteristics, such as gender and race, ethnicity, age, national origin, religion, disability status, and sexual orientation, and then there are other, what some people call deeper level characteristics, such as people's personality and their values, and the things that they're passionate about. Perhaps their personal interests. And both sets are assumed to influence the way that people approach their work, and the perspectives that they have about work and life in general. In this course, though, we're going to be focusing primarily on that first set of surface level, demographic differences. There are a few reason for this.

So the first is that they represent social identity groups that are both

culturally and socially distinct in meaningful ways. The assumption is that people have different experiences as they go through life depending on which of these groups they belong to. Another reason, that perhaps is even more



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important, is that these are the different identity groups that are associated, have been associated historically, with differences in status, and access to opportunities and to privilege within society. And we refer to these as arbitrary status hierarchies, and the word arbitrary is in there because the status differences are not based on actual differences in competence or ability, but are based on what somebody happens to be born as, and yet they influence the assumptions that people make about competence and potential. And this is a really big issue in organizations and something that we'll be focusing on.

So, if you were to think about doing a mental exercise, and you were to

walk down the street, and pick any random sample of people. And ask who has higher status in society, men or women? And in the US we would ask whites or non-whites? And you can ask this about other characteristics like disability status and sexual orientation and religion. And if you can expect that you're going to get pretty consistent responses about which membership is associated with higher status, then we're talking about an identity dimension that is probably also impacting the way that people experience their work, and therefore, is one that we should be focusing on in our conversations about diversity. In the U.S., the social identity groups that would pass this kind of exercise include gender, and race ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability.

But diversity is often seen as a buzz word for gender and for race

ethnicity here in the U.S. And so, why is that the case? Because it's broader than that. There are a few likely explanations. It's easy to see, it's salient. We have more data and numbers related to gender and race probably because it's easier to count and see. The historical context of slavery is obviously important here in the U.S. And managing race and gender continue to be really big challenges for organizations. So as a result there's a lot of research. Lot more research related to race and gender in the US. And so you are going to hear me use examples, more examples related to gender and race ethnicity in this course. But please keep in mind that it's important not to equate diversity with those two dimensions alone. It is broader than that and the dynamics that underlie a lot of the examples that I'll be giving you do extend to the other dimensions of diversity that are also associated with these arbitrary status hierarchies.



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Transcript: Caveats to Keep in Mind

I wanted to say a few more things about this definition, working definition, of diversity that we'll be using in this class. I'd like you to keep in mind that in the U.S., the groups that are protected by equal employment law tend to align with those about which there is this unambiguous evidence about historical discrimination. So the surface level demographic identity groups that I spoke about. But it's also important for you to keep in mind that just because of a particular identify group, is not protected by law in your country or by law in your state within the US, does not mean that it might not be a dimension about which you need to be mindful within your organization. And sometimes these dimensions of difference, are really not the kinds of things that we usually focus on when we talk about diversity.

So an example is in an organization that I recently worked with a

dimension of difference that was really important in influencing dynamics within the organization had to do with whether or not an employee was kind of home grown internally or a mid-career hire from the outside, and it really impacted the access that they felt they had to voice and the information and the way they interacted with other employees within the organization. And was of critical concern to the company but it is also important for you to be aware of major differences across countries.

So, for example, although race-based issues really kind of take center

stage here in the US, this is not the case in Japan where I grew up, because the population is ethnically almost completely homogenous. But there continue to be much more serious issues related to gender in Japan, as compared to the US. And there are also dimensions of diversity that are important in other parts of the world, in other countries, that might not come to mind for people who have grown up in the U.S. and work primarily in the U.S., for example issues that organizations deal with in India that are a result of the historical caste system, or in China, there are a lot of issues related to regional differences and language differences. So it's just important to be mindful about the types of differences that are really important within the particular context in which you are working.



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Transcript: Understanding Privilege

So in discussions of diversity and inclusion, the most common tendency is to focus on systems of disadvantage and bias within society. But in order to really develop a full understanding of diversity, it's important to also talk about systems of privilege. So what do I mean by privilege? A famous scholar by the name of Peggy McIntosh defined privilege as any visible package of unearned assets which one can count on cashing in each and every day, but about which one is largely oblivious.

So I'll give you four examples that she's written about, of privilege that

white people in the US can count on. So, one, I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race, most of the time. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing a house in an area in which I can afford and want to live. And I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me. And then the last one, whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color to not work against me and my appearance of financial reliability. And these are things that whites in the US maybe don't even notice that they get to count on. It's not until you hear the experiences of people who cannot count on similar privileges that you start to be able to see these different systems at play.

So it's important to develop an awareness of the social identity groups

to which, you belong that are higher in status within society, and which therefore afford you with certain privileges. But it's also important to be aware of the social identity groups to which you might belong, that might be associated with lower levels, of status, and therefore might result in a lack of access to certain privileges. Most people belong to—maybe all people belong to—both sets. It can help give us really important perspective. The point here is that there are structures that are larger than ourselves, such as structures of power and influence that really have an impact on our daily interactions with others. Transcript: What Is Unconscious Bias

So I imagine that a number of you have probably heard the term unconscious bias, as more and more people are talking about it, both in organizations and also within the media. But to try to get a sense for whether non-psychologists understand what unconscious bias is, I asked my husband



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if he knew what it was. And he joked in the beginning. He said it's the bias you feel against students that fall asleep in your class. And then he said, well did I tell you this story the other day about my experience at the supermarket? Of course, I'm thinking, wait a minute, we're not done talking about unconscious bias but I let him go ahead and tell the story.

And he said that he was checking out and there was this really

energetic, engaging, young African-American cashier who was checking him out at the supermarket. And he said to my husband do you work at Cornell? To which my husband said yes, in fact I do. And the cashier said I can always tell the Cornell people. And my husband then said well, it's because I'm Asian. And isn't that why, why else would I live in Ithaca? And so they joked about it a little bit, and then the cashier said you know what, I wish our races interacted more. I feel like our groups are sometimes kind of more segregated or separated than they need to be, as if there's this assumption that our groups don't have a whole lot in common.

So as it turns out that by telling me this story, he was actually

demonstrating that he knew what unconscious bias was, and that it refers to the attributes that we really quickly assign to people based on their social categories. And so the cashier had a mental model so to speak of what a person who works at Cornell is like. And so he typed, in a spilt second, he typed my husband as somebody who works at Cornell. And the cashier also said that he's concerned about the two different groups not mixing as much as he would like. And this too is related to unconscious bias in that it has to do with the fact that both sides have certain assumptions about what members of the other group are probably like, and that they are dissimilar.

So you see, unconscious bias impacts how we see people and, as a

result, also how we interact with people. But what's really important to understand is that we all have—everyone has—unconscious biases. And having an unconscious bias does not make somebody a bad person. The reason we all have unconscious biases is because they result from the way that our brain is structured. They represent neural connections within our brains. So scientists estimate that we're exposed to as many as 11 million pieces of information at any time, but our brains can only consciously process about 40 bits of information. That means our brains can only consciously process 0.00001% of the information coming in. So, what does that mean? That means that our brains evolve to help us survive by automatically filtering information that seems familiar. Using, kind of, preexisting knowledge structures in our brain, or short cuts that are related to those knowledge



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structures about what or who is likeable, that we can feel safe around, is valuable, right, or competent. That these shortcuts mean that we don't have to keep figuring that out every time we interact with a person, a thing or an event.

And the problem, though, is that our brains have become so good at doing this, they're so efficient at interpreting this incoming information, and it happens so quickly, and it happens below our level of conscious awareness, that we believe that what we see is objective, and we rarely realize that what we see has been impacted by the way that our brains have interpreted that incoming information for us using those shortcuts. So the importance of attending to unconscious bias has emerged at the forefront of a lot of cutting-edge diversity and inclusion practices, based on the recognition that the effectiveness of even the best HR and diversity practices can be undermined by unconscious bias, and that left unchecked, unconscious bias represents a really significant obstacle to inclusion within organizations. Transcript: Explore How Unconscious Bias Affects Us

Okay. So I'd like to give you a general overview of how unconscious bias works, but first, a little bit on how unconscious biases form. So they form through early socialization and everyday exposure to cues in our environment. So for example, parents and teachers are an important source of information about how certain things are, or how certain types of people may be. But also the media and advertising are important sources of information. It turns out that these unconscious biases are already pretty well formed for a lot of categories among children who are quite young. I'll give you a couple examples.

So, there's this study of over 1,000 elementary school students who

were asked to describe what it would be like if they had been born a member of the opposite sex, and the majority of girls said that life would be better. That they would have better jobs, they would have more opportunities, and they would get more respect from other people. Elementary school students already had expectations about what it would be like as a woman or man in their lives. And about 95% of the boys said that there would be no advantage to being a girl. Pretty clear-set ideas.

So the way the unconscious bias works, when we initially see

somebody we categorize them, and their cues help us to sort people into categories. Once someone is put into a category, then all the traits and



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characteristics and attributes we have as part of that category get assigned to the person. And we assume that that person represents all of these attributes and traits that are part of the category, and so it influences what we expect to see about that person, and in fact, can override objective facts about the person. We tend to notice information that confirms our expectations and our brains tend to discount information that dis-confirms our expectations. And these ideas that we have about what somebody is likely to be like then influences, and these are sometimes distorted perceptions, right? These then influence in how we interact with the person and can actually result in self-fulfilling prophecies.

So I'll give an example, a positive one, and I'll give you a negative one.

So, if there is a person whom about you have positive assumptions, that is that you think you're going to like the person and you can assume to experience some level of psychological safety around that person, the way in which you approach that person, probably in a warm way, is likely to then beget the kind of warm response that confirms your original assumption, that you're going to have a positive interaction with this person.

But there can also be negative self-fulfilling prophecies, so for example,

if a woman in a workgroup is assumed to be less competent than the men in the workgroup, perhaps given the work that they do, the kind of gender-type of the work, then she's more likely to be talked over by men, and she may have a number of other kinds of negative experiences for example where she feels somewhat passed over for different assignments and responsibilities because of the assumptions that people are making about her relative lack of competence. And these negative experiences can then lead her to withdraw and maybe not contribute as much in the meetings that they have as a team because she doesn't want to be talked over anymore, or because she feels misunderstood. And then that just confirms the original expectation that this woman has less to contribute to the group. So unconscious biases really can help, they shape what ends up happening when people interact with each other based on these assumptions that they have of different groups. Transcript: Microaggressions

So we've been talking about how unconscious bias influences the way that we perceive other people. Now I want to shift gears a little bit, and focus on how unconscious biases can influence the way that we behave towards



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others or interact with others. Perhaps some of you have heard this term called microaggressions. This refers to the subtle differences, the subtle ways in which we interact with members of one group that might be different from the way we interact with members of another group and that that difference is quite telling.

So there are two key types of microaggressions that I want to tell you

about. So, one is that women and members of other kind of lower status groups, are more likely to be interrupted while they're talking. And they're more likely to be talked over. Right? Other people finishing their sentences. Not having an opportunity to finish what they want to say. And this is actually quite apparent even among young children. You see that boys will interrupt girls much, much more than is true the other way around.

The other type of microaggression that we see quite a bit is that women

and members of other lower status groups are less likely to get credit for their ideas. And the other people are less likely to kind of pick up on their suggestions, kind of take up those suggestions, and then give them credit for it. And I saw this recently in a meeting with very kind of high-level executives, where a woman made a suggestion, and you know, in a meeting then somebody else then provides another idea or suggestion, and about three ideas later, that woman’s idea was then suggested by a man, and all of a sudden it was this great idea and it was a topic of conversation. And if you tell this kind of story you'll see that women will be nodding, like, "oh yeah, I've seen that happen, that happens". And it's important to think about the implications of that in terms of, how it confirms who has competence. Who has leadership potential, and who does not. Transcript: How Unconscious Bias Leads to Different Evaluation of Equivalent Behavior

I'd like to talk a little bit about one of the key ways in which unconscious bias can disadvantage women and members of other minority groups within organizations, and this has to do with how it relates to assumptions about competence and leadership potential. Some people refer to this issue as role congruence or incongruence depending on what group you belong to. So the idea is that we have stereotypes about jobs--what certain jobs are like and the kinds of traits and attributes that are required to be successful on the job. And when that stereotype of the job overlaps with the attributes that are part of a



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stereotype about a group of people, then people who belong to that group are assumed to fit the job quite well.

The problem is that women and members of other historically

marginalized groups often suffer from role incongruence, that is, the types of characteristics that are assumed to be necessary to be a leader, in particular, don't overlap with the attributes that are often associated with women and members of these other groups. And so as a result, they're less likely to be seen as competent and less likely to be seen as having leadership potential which then also means that organizations are less likely to hire and promote and invest in the careers of women and members of other minority groups.

So let me give you a few different examples. There's a lot of research

on this. And basically what you'll see from this research is that this notion of success and competence is scrutinized a lot more carefully for women and members of minority groups. In a way, the bar is set higher in order to dispel any doubt about whether or not the person actually is fit for a particular role. So there are a lot of things that you can do with experimental research. So for example, there are a lot of studies that have been done where the exact same resume is sent out to be evaluated. And just a few cues on the resume are changed, so that it's obvious to the evaluator whether or not the applicant is male or female, white or non-white, likely to be a mother versus not have children and what the research shows pretty clearly is that women compared to men and non-whites compared to whites and mothers compared to non-mothers are less likely to be hired, they're offered lower salaries, and they're seen as having less promotion potential. And in fact another, related study showed that if you have a white-sounding name, you're 50% more likely to get a call for an interview.

There are other studies that show similar things. A really well known

one has to do with orchestras, which historically were primarily dominated by men. And if you ask conductors why there are so many more men than women on orchestras, they would say, well men are just better at music. So then they decided to try blind auditions where people would audition behind a screen so that the people evaluating them couldn't tell if they were men or women, and what do you think happened? Indeed, the chances of a woman being hired onto the orchestra increased by over 30%. And so when you take away the role of the bias, we ended up with very different outcomes. And this is true.



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These trends are also true within academia unfortunately. So we see that in order for reviewers to equally rate women and men in terms of excellence, women need roughly 20 more journal publications than men. And to be considered for endowed chair positions which are really prestigious positions, often women need to have almost double the number of publications as men to prove that they are worthy of that position. I recently collected some data that I think is also noteworthy that shows that women are much less likely to be placed in stretch assignments.

We know that from other research that stretch assignments are critical

for accelerating your advancement from within an organization. The very notion of a stretch assignment is that you're doing things you haven't done before so it stretches you, so you learn faster. But it also involves risk because you're putting somebody in a position, in a role that they have not yet done before. And so because of assumptions, better assumptions of competence for men, men tend to be placed in these stretch assignments more than women, and that helps to accelerate their careers and they end up with different trajectories than is the case for women. So, overall, what this research shows is that the success of women and members of other minority groups really is scrutinized a lot more carefully than is true for members of the dominant majority group. Transcript: How Unconscious Bias Influences the way that People Interact

So another way in which unconscious bias impacts people's outcomes at work is that they're associated with assumptions about how members of a social group ought to be and these norms for how people should behave influence how others react to those behaviors that they see. The very same behavior gets evaluated differently based on who engages in it. So let me give you some research-based examples.

So, men, who speak up more than their peers and offer ideas and

suggestions for how current practices can be changed or improved, are rewarded with a 10% increase in their ratings of competence. Whereas women who do that, who speak up more than their peers, tend to be punished with approximately 14% lower ratings because doing that is counter-normative for women whereas it's expected of men to be assertive in this way.



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Also, we see from research that success is associated with being liked for men, whereas for women, success is associated with not being liked. This is what some people refer to as a double bind. So what this means is that women who engage in the equivalent leadership behaviors as men, tend to elicit a rather strong negative reaction in other people. So often they're disliked, seen as cold or maybe pushy, or aggressive, when the same behaviors don't elicit the same kind of negative reaction if a man does them. So there's this famous case where a woman named Ann Hopkins was turned down for a partner in her firm, despite having worked more hours than her peers and having brought in more than $25 million. Because her evaluators thought that she overcompensated for being a woman, and needed a course at charm school. That is, she wasn't feminine enough, that this success was counter normative.

Another way in which equivalent behavior gets evaluated differently is

that success for men is attributed to ability whereas failure tends to be attributed to situational factors, right? Unfortunate things that happen. While success for women is attributed to the things like luck and other situational factors, whereas failure is attributed to a lack of ability. And this difference is really significant since ability and confidence are obviously expected to be more enduring and reliable than the lucky existence of facilitating factors within the environment. So men end up getting more of the benefit of the doubt.

Finally, another robust effect that we see in the research is that

communal behaviors, which are expected of women are not expected as much of men. What this means is that when women engage in helping behaviors, helping coworkers, or service activities like volunteering and participating in task forces, for example, within an organization, they receive no extra points for doing that because it's expected of them, but are viewed negatively if they say no. However the research shows that men tend to gain points by engaging in those same kinds of communal activities and are not penalized if they say no. Transcript: Examples of Great HR Practices Formalize Structure: So there are a number of ways that HR practices can be designed in order to interrupt the role of unconscious bias in decision making. Perhaps one of the



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best ways of doing this is to formalize decision-making processes. So the more formalized evaluation standards are, and the practices for how people will be evaluated, the less room there is for individuals to rely on their more subjective, unconscious biases in the decision making process. So here are two examples of how this is done. This is why structured interviews are preferred over unstructured interviews. So structured interviews involve predetermined interview questions, ideally ones that have been identified based on a job analysis in addition to predetermined evaluation criteria that the interviewers will then use to evaluate how good people's responses were to those structured interview questions. And the second way is to use behaviorally anchored rating scales when evaluating employee's performance. So rather than allowing managers to decide what it means to have engaged in good versus average versus poor performance, behaviorally anchored rating scales provide specific examples of behaviors that represent good versus average versus poor performance. So you take the ambiguity out of it, and you make the process a lot more objective, thereby reducing the role of unconscious bias. Increase Accountability: Another way to reduce the role of unconscious bias is to increase accountability in decision making. When people know that they're going to be held accountable for the quality of their decision making, they're more likely to take their time to carefully consider the pieces of evidence that are available to them so that they can engage in decision making that is not biased. People do not want to appear biased in their decision making. There are a number of ways that this can be done. So, one obvious way is for organizations to monitor the various HR-related decisions that are being made. So look at the patterns of hiring and pay and promotion decisions to see whether or not there may be evidence of bias in the way that these decisions are being made. If managers feel that the decisions they make will be evaluated, then they will be more careful so that they're able to kind of defend the pieces of information that they used to make those decisions. Another way is to utilize panels rather than individuals when interviewing people or when talking about the overall competence of various employees within the organization, because if people are engaging in the exercise with



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other people, again, they are more careful in what they say and how they justify the decisions that they're making so that they appear to be fair and objective, people generally are motivated to appear fair and objective. One last way in which this can be done is simply to tell people that they will receive feedback about how well their engaging in objective and fair decision-making. If people feel that they're being watched, once again, they're being held accountable, they will be, on average, more objective and fair. Open Hiring and Promotion Process: Another important way of reducing unconscious bias is to open up the hiring and promotion process, rather than give the hiring managers full discretion in choosing who will fill an open role, because what happens when managers have that discretion is that they'll rely on their unconscious biases about what somebody who fits this role looks like, and they're likely to overlook all the different kinds of people who might also be fit for the role. And so the solution here is to openly advertise positions that people can then self-nominate themselves for. And when you do that, you tend to increase the diversity of the applicant pool, and make it more likely that you have people who don't necessarily fit that traditional norm about what a person in this role looks like. And you start to be able to really consider a much wider range of capable people for the job. Increase Motivation: In addition to designing HR practices in ways to interrupt unconscious bias, it's obviously also very important to motivate decision makers to be non-prejudiced just because it's a better way to be. So when people are personally motivated they tend to be the most mindful of their actions, and they tend to be more consistent about the mindfulness. That is, they're less likely to be doing something because there concerned about being monitored this is the accountability piece, but instead because they personally are motivated to do it. And we tend to see this in research that's emerging right now, that the benefits of getting managers to really believe in the importance of all these diversities initiatives, the better the outcomes associated with those initiatives. And so there are kind of two main ways in which this can be done. The first is to highlight the benefits of being open minded and non-prejudiced, and being open to learning from diverse perspectives. And that that's good for the manager and for the overall business. And the second way is to highlight the



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costs associated with bias and exclusion so that managers become internally motivated to avoid being prejudiced in any of the decisions that they make. Greater Representation: Although it might sound silly to say that a good way of increasing diversity is to increase diversity there's some truth to this. This is the idea that the more you have people of a particular group a minority group represented, the more fair any decision making is related to members of that group. Again, this has to do with this notion of role congruence and role incongruence that I spoke about earlier. But if women, for example, make up only less than 5% of an applicant pool or a job category, then they continue to be seen as an anomaly for that job. That the female stereotype just doesn't overlap with people's stereotype for the job. But once they start to move out of that token status and are more represented with in applicant pool or among job incumbents, the less of an anomaly they are and the more people get used to thinking, oh yeah, women too fit my stereotype of this job. And in fact, their research does support this idea. The threshold seems to be at around 20 or 25%. When representation gets above this threshold, then we tend to see fewer biases. And in fact, biases can even be eliminated completely in the evaluation of men versus women. And this happens both in the evaluation of applicants for jobs, as well as the evaluation of people's performance once in the jobs. So the more you increase representation, the more you kind of reduce the salience of these gender-based stereotypes. Transcript: The Double-Edged Sword of Numerical Goals

I'd like to say a little something about having a strong focus on representation or numerical targets. It really is a double edge sword. So sometimes there's no question that in order to push real change you need to have very clear goals and, hold organizations accountable for meeting those goals. A great example that we can see happening right now, is that in a lot of European countries, companies are being held accountable for having a certain percentage of their boards be women. And this started in Norway and in a lot of these context, companies are fined if they don't reach the goal of say having 30 or 40% of their board be women by a certain time, by a certain year. And as a result of this we're seeing a huge change in representation on these boards.



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Many companies have internal representation goals also, although they may differ in kind of the level of formality in which they track progress against goals, and the way that they talk about these goals. But, a lot of companies still do have representation goals, which can be very helpful. The benefit of having these goals is to ultimately get to a point where you're increasing representation through this target so that, as I stated previously, you have members of historically marginalized groups comprise enough of a part of the overall population that the negative outcomes associated with being a token start to decline, and the unconscious biases that used to be a lot more negative against those groups, also start to weaken. And this starts to lead to real changes in people's assumptions about the types of people who fit various jobs and roles.

However there's also research that shows that if people have reason to

believe that somebody was hired into a position or promoted into a position because of some aspect of their social identity, then they also tend to assume that the person must not have been hired or promoted because of their competence. And this could end up becoming a vicious self-fulfilling prophecy, because people tend to expect less of people who they assumed were hired because of some demographic characteristic. They tend to then provide fewer opportunities for those individuals to excel. And they also tend to interact with these individuals in a way that the minority members, themselves, start to internalize these negative perceptions about competence. Which, of course, then, impacts their level of engagement and performance. And so the very people who were meant to benefit from this focus on increasing representation can end up being the people who are harmed by it. So it's a double-edged sword. It needs to be handled, managed, very very carefully. Transcript: Bias Interrupters for Perceptions of Competence

So in addition to designing HR practices in a way that help to interrupt the role of unconscious biases, there is a lot that can be done to help managers be aware of how their everyday behaviors can also impact unconscious bias. So in order to help counteract negative assumptions about competence and leadership potential among women and other minorities, leaders can do the following.

So first, they can offer the floor whenever possible to women and

members of other historically marginalized groups. Get people used to hearing from women and minorities. Help them get used to seeing them



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contribute in meaningful ways. In 2014 President Obama held a conference, a press conference. And he called on 8 reporters, and all 8 of them were women, and this made headlines around the world. But had only men been called on, it would not have been news. It would have just been another ordinary day. And so actions like this, giving people the floor, can really be a powerful bias interrupter.

A second thing that leaders can do: they can publicly acknowledge the

accomplishments of women and other minorities to help invalidate doubts that other people might have about their competence. So for example in one study, a professor introduced a female teaching assistant to the class just by using her name, whereas in another section of the class, she introduced the teaching assistant by outlining all the ways in which she was qualified for this role, so about all her expertise. And it turns out that when the faculty member introduced the female TA, by focusing on her competence, she received much higher ratings of competence from the students.

Another thing leaders can do is push back when people say that a

woman or a minority isn't ready, or isn't qualified enough for a particular position. Remember that people are consistently more willing to take risks on a man based on their potential. And so what leaders can do is either point out that other people being considered also don't have the expertise, they haven't previously done the job, or point out reasons why the particular candidate might be good in the role.

Related to that, leaders, and actually everybody, should focus on

counteracting negative stereotypes about competence with at least three specific reasons for including somebody, for considering somebody for a role. And the purpose is to balance out the gut instinct that people have about excluding a particular individual, based on their assumptions of competence. And when you focus on reasons to include somebody rather than reasons to exclude them, you end up with a very different outlook. And the last thing to keep in mind is to be very mindful of the attributions that are being made for the success and failure of employees. And to make sure that success is attributed fairly, and to ability, just as much for women and members of minority groups as it is for men. Transcript: Bias Interrupters for Evaluating the Same Behavior Differently



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Okay, so here are some tips on how to counteract the way that unconscious biases lead to differential evaluation of equivalent behavior. So one, it's really important to be specific about what constitutes excellent performance, and make sure those criteria are set in advance, because the research shows that if there is agreement ahead of time about what we're looking for in a candidate, then the bias tends to disappear.

Second, hold decision-makers accountable for their evaluations, and

they will be more careful. Third, recognize that in an effort to avoid negative reactions due to

norms about how they ought to be, women are less likely to advocate for themselves. So this means that just because a women isn't tooting her own horn, doesn't mean that she lacks confidence about her ability to do something. So, what this suggests for managers is that it's a good practice to invite them, give them explicit permission, to advocate for themselves.

A fourth thing that managers can do is listen very, very carefully for the

likability penalty. So particularly when making performance evaluation ratings or making hiring decisions, it's important to see whether or not people are expressing concern or support similarly, for the same behavior cross groups. And so, for example, you hear bias language like so and so is bossy, or pushy. You can ask for a specific example and then ask, well would your reaction have been the same if a man engaged in that behavior, for example.

And the fifth thing that managers can keep in mind is to audit who's

doing what we might call office housework. That is, all that kind of communal service-oriented and support work which is really important for making an office function well. And make sure, that some people aren’t doing additional work without also receiving some form of additional reward for the investments that they are making. Transcript: Ask the Expert: Tiffanie Boyd What practices do you have in place as a company to ensure that women and other minorities are adequately represented and considered for key positions?



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At General Mills we have a long history of promoting diversity and inclusion and we feel it's important to have structure and programs that support the advancement of women and people of color.

One of the most important things we do, is we have a diversity score

card process that's integrated into our succession planning process. An important part of that diversity scorecard vehicle or tool is leaders have to commit to the representation outcomes that they expect to achieve in their part of the business.

And they also have to commit to behaviors and involvement and advancing our work environment. So it may include things like sponsoring or mentoring high-potential women or people of color in their part of the business, or being an advocate for one of our affinity groups, which is a really important part of how we advance the culture. But that idea of holding leaders accountable for not just the outcomes but also the kinds of activities that we want them to model for others in the organization is a really important component. What type of training and/or coaching do employees receive related to diversity and inclusion? How about related to unconscious bias specifically? Is training recommended or mandatory? There is some mandatory training that we require of all employees, things like respectful workplace training, which is all about how to make sure we're treating people fairly, no matter what their background is. We also make sure that we build diversity components into other training that we offer throughout an employee's career. And it includes things like efficacy, for people of color, or women, which helps them really learn to bring their full selves to the work place. It also includes our coaching model, where we teach managers how to be effective coaches, another key important component of that coaching is, coaching others who are different than you. So those are couple examples that the types of diversity trainings that we have.

With regards to your question about, how do we deal with unconscious

bias? One of the things that we're working on as a future evolution in our diversity programs is having real conversations about race. You know, given things that are going on in our political environment, given what people see in the media. We know that this an important topic for people at home. And we've started having discussions in the workplace about how do those things happening outside of the four walls of General Mills impact how people behave and treat people within our company.



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We've done that through sponsorship and partnership with our affinity

groups, and we've invited some select leaders to be a part of that conversation and we're working through plans now for how to take that, not just to our senior leadership, but to all managers of people across the company. Are there some areas or functions within the company where diversity and inclusion issues are more of a concern? If so, what do you think accounts for the challenges faced within these areas/functions? I believe there are two areas in our company that I've had more of a challenge with advancing diversity, and those are sales and supply chain. I think there are a couple of reasons for that.

The first is, just the history of those functions. If you look back, 20 years,

you didn't have as many women, or people of color, frankly, going into those professions. And as we think about building leaders over time in our organization we didn't have the pool of talent to draw on. And in the engineering space, availability of talent continues to be a challenge for us.

The second reason is mobility. Those are the two functions that are the

most mobile, that require people to move, to advance their career. Often times, we've seen that women and people of color are a lot more choicely about when, where, and how they do that. There are different things that happen in life that cause people to make different choices around whether or not mobility is something that they're willing to participate in to advance their career, and that's been a real challenge for us.

And as a result, we've had to come up with lots of different work

flexibility programs in order to ensure that we're meeting our business need, but also balancing that with getting top talent and allowing them to contribute in a very meaningful way. Transcript: Bias Interrupters for the Ways People Interact

Okay, so there are also a number of tips that I can share for how to interrupt how unconscious bias influences the way that people interact. So earlier I talked about how women tend to be talked over more often than men,



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and also that they tend to receive less credit for their ideas. And so here are a few tips.

One, it's important to set a no interruptions rule while anyone, male or

female, majority or minority, is pitching an idea. And there's a company in Silicon Valley called IDEO that has institutionalized this by having somebody wear one of those bells you see on the lobby counter when you check into a hotel late at night. Ding. And so, the person who wears the bell, does a little reminder ding when somebody talks over another person so that you're kind of re-training people to listen more carefully rather than interfere with their colleagues.

A second tip is to practice bystander intervention. So don't remain silent.

You can stop an interrupter in his or her tracks by saying, "wait a minute, wait a minute. Let the person finish". And that can go a long way.

Third, it's important to think proactively about engaging in

microaffirmations as opposed to microaggressions. So this involves things like nodding your head and listening carefully, showing support while somebody else is talking. Look interested, and that makes a really big difference.

A fourth is to give credit where credit is due. So be aware of stolen

ideas, and look for opportunities to acknowledge the individuals who first proposed a particular idea. And related to that is support your female and minority colleagues. If you hear an idea that you think is good, back it up. Help bring attention to that idea so people get more accustomed to hearing these good contributing ideas from women and minorities.

And the last one is advice given by Tina Fey, who's a famous comedian,

and she says that two of the most important rules—and they're more for a successful improvisational theater where you have to be open to what the other person is saying and respond and keep the conversation going—is to respond to what somebody else by saying yes. By saying yes you're signaling that what that person has said is important, and you're open to hearing about it. However, the second step is that you have to follow yes with "and" because saying "yes, but" is pretty much the same as saying no. It's pretty much the same as shutting down somebody else's idea. But if you say "yes, and", what that does is it changes a framing in your mind so that you're building on what somebody has said rather than talking over what somebody has said. And I've talked to executives that have actually tried this in an executive meeting that



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might last an hour, and they were surprised at how often they stumbled, how often they had to catch themselves from saying "yes, but".

So challenge yourself to try that, to see how much you might actually be

able to contribute to opening up conversation and providing more people in the group with voice.

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