Unconscious Bias Workbook - Cook Ross

1 cook Ross InC. 2011 Page 1 Unconscious BIas Workbook Unconscious Bias WorkbookA REINVENTING DIVERSITY PUBLICATION cook ROSS INC. cook Ross InC. 2011 Page 3 Unconscious BIas Workbook HOW YOU CAN USE THIS Workbook You can use this Workbook both individually and with a group: To develop a deeper understanding of the filters through which you view and interpret yourself and others To identify patterns in your own ways of evaluating, assessing, and working with other people To begin a dialogue for reflection of organizational values and norms, where those values and norms come from, and how they impact the quality of your business and talent management cook ROSSCook Ross Inc.

2 Is a nationally recognized, certified woman-owned consulting firm. We provide diversity, inclusion, and cultural competency solutions in training, consulting products, and excellence of service to hundreds of organizations across the United States, as well as ten countries around the methodology is built around a transformative approach to Diversity and Inclusion Consulting, and ReInventing Diversity for the 21st Century. This approach creates sustainable change in organizations by replacing race-based, , us versus them diversity training with a systems model that explores globalism, cultural intelligence and cultural flexibility, inherent human tendency toward bias, and Unconscious organizational patterns that exist that impact the way employees, vendors, and customers from different cultures, ages, and backgrounds all relate to each IS THIS Workbook FOR?

3 This Workbook was written for both individual contributors and members of management teams. The process of education, exploration, self-analysis, and strategy is potentially transformational for all individuals and for the entire spectrum of talent : Why Should Effective Organizations Be Exploring Unconscious Bias? ..1 About this Workbook ..9 Key Concepts of Unconscious Bias ..10 Individual Exploration ..11 Identifying Unconscious Bias ..11 Self-Assessments: Uncovering My World View ..11#1 Individual Learning ..11#2 Social and Institutional Learning ..12#3 Take the Implicit Association Test ..14#4 Application ..17#5 Journaling Exercise ..18 Cultural Exploration.

4 21 Cultural Competence & the Unconscious Mind ..21 Journaling Exercise #1 ..21 Culture and the Unconscious : A Self-Assessment ..36 Leaders Exploration ..39 The Unconscious and Decision Making ..39 Performance Management Assessment ..41 Performance Management Self-Assessment ..43 Talent Management Decision Aid ..44 Action Item ..48 Creating a Consciously Inclusive Organization ..49 General Areas to Consider about your Organizational Culture ..50On the to Inclusion ..51 For Further Exploration Studies in Unconscious Things You Can Do To Manage Unconscious Bias ..58 Endnotes ..60 CONTENTS Unconscious BIas Workbook cook Ross InC. 2011 Page 6An awareness of Unconscious bias invites us to fundamentally rethink the way we approach Talent Management, Strategic Decision Making, Inclusion and Organizational Culture on a number of different cook Ross InC.

5 2011 Page 1 Unconscious BIas Workbook Imagine if an interview subject was rated higher simply because the interviewer had a warm drink in his or her hand rather than a cold one. Or if the subject was rated lower because he or she was sitting next to someone in the waiting room who was perceived to be overweight. Imagine if people were less likely to believe factual information if it happened to be communicated by somebody with an accent different from theirs or if the same resume was perceived to be more valid if the name sounded more mainstream than ethnic, or more White than Black ? What if ideas were listened to less if they came from a woman instead of a man or somebody from an older or younger generation than the mainstream in the organization?

6 Most of us would probably say that an organization that makes talent management decisions in this way is doomed to mediocrity. And yet, all of these behaviors have been widely demonstrated in substantiated research, and they are but a small sampling of the hundreds of ways we make decisions every day in favor of one group, and to the detriment of others, without realizing we re doing this: Less than 14% of American men are over six feet tall, yet almost 60% of corporate CEOs are over six feet tall. Less than 4% of American men are over six feet, two inches tall, yet more than 36% of corporate CEOs are over six feet, two inches Is this rational? It seems not only unfair but patently absurd to choose a CEO because of his height, just like it is unfair and absurd to give employees lower performance evaluations solely because they are perceived to be overweight or to prescribe medical procedures to people more or less often because of their race or to treat the same people different ways because of the clothing they are wearing or even to call on boys more often than girls when they raise their hands in school.

7 Lately the concept of Unconscious bias has come to the forefront of our work as diversity advocates because the dynamics of diversity are changing as we enter the 21st century. Our traditional paradigm has generally assumed that patterns of discriminatory behavior in organizations are conscious: that people who know better do the right thing and those who don t cause bias. As a result, we have developed somewhat of a good person/bad person paradigm of diversity: a belief that good people are not biased but inclusive and that bad people are the biased ones. Consequently, one of the core drivers behind diversity and inclusion work, almost since its inception, has been to find the bad people and fix them; to eradicate bias.

8 There is good reason for this. If we are going to create a just and equitable society, and if we are going to create organizations in which everybody can have access to their fair measure of success, it clearly is not consistent for some people to be discriminated against based on their identification with a particular group. And we also know that clear examples of conscious bias and discrimination still what if, more times than not, people make choices that discriminate against one group and in favor of another, without even realizing that they are doing it, and, perhaps even more strikingly, against their own conscious belief that they are being unbiased in their decision-making?

9 And what if we can make these kinds of Unconscious decisions, even about people like ourselves?The problem with the good person/bad person paradigm is two-fold: it virtually assures that both on a collective and on an individual basis we will never do diversity right, because every human being has bias of one kind or another. Secondly, it demonstrates a lack of understanding of a reality: human beings, at some level, need bias to survive. So, are we biased? Of course. Every one of us: toward some thing, some body, or some group. INTRODUCTION: WHY SHOULD EFFECTIVEORGANIZATIONS BE EXPLORING Unconscious BIAS? Unconscious BIas Workbook cook Ross InC. 2011 Page 2 THE BARGH STUDY3 What impacts your decision-making when you are conducting an interview?

10 Could it be things that you don t even think about? Yale University researchers evaluated results from interviews that were conducted by people holding cold and hot drinks and found that those holding hot drinks were more positive about the interviewee than those holding cold drinks. Rational? No. But what does a warm smile indicate? Or a cold heart ? We are influenced in ways that we don t even realize!The concept of the Unconscious was of course Freud s primary gift to the science of the mind. It drove the development of modern psychology. And yet, as behavioral psychology moved into the forefront during the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the study of the Unconscious became de-emphasized.