How to manage our own biases, and biases others subject us to?

Last week, I followed a training about managing unconscious bias, which is a mandatory training for all Facebook employees. Prior to the training, the nerd in me was complaining: I have 100 other things to do at work and now I have to follow these two hours of blablaing about bias. Two hours later, I did not want to stop the conversation and leave the room. This training was definitely the BEST training I have followed in my entire professional life. The rest of this blog will explain why.

The training exposed me to some uncomfortable facts about the world we live in: our world is hugely biased and, yes, this includes a lot of people with high ethics and very good intentions. When we talk about unconscious bias, we are not talking about that colleague, manager, association, or company that took a conscious well-thought decision of discriminating against one person or a group of people for little or no valid reason. We are rather talking about people of value and meritocratic institutions which strongly believe that they are immune to bias but actually are not. Bias in this context is not intentional and largely goes unnoticed by those who perpetuate it.

We always hear that life can be unfair but mapping numbers to the unfairness and bias of life is another story. Let us start with some facts (based on data from IAT tests done by millions of people worldwide):

1. 76% of the test population more readily associates males with careers and females with family (females contributed to this percentage)
2. 70% of the test population associates males with science and females with the arts (females contributed to this percentage)
3. 75% of the test population have an implicit preference for white people over black people (black people contributed to this percentage)
4. 76% of the test population have an implicit preference for able-bodied people over disabled people (disabled people contributed to this percentage)

Unconscious bias comes in different shapes and forms. Here are the most common ones:

1. Performance Bias: performance bias occurs when members of a majority group are judged by their expected potential, while members of a minority group are judged by their proven accomplishments. In other terms, selection criteria are applied very rigorously to members of minority groups but more leniently to majority groups
2. Performance attribution bias: This form of bias causes two people with very comparable achievements to be perceived differently by people around them: while one person’s success is attributed to talent and hard work, the other person’s success is attribute to plain luck (latter person is usually a woman or member of an underrepresented group)
3. Competency/likability trade-off: Research shows that the more successful a man is, the more he is liked. The exact opposite is largely true for women
4. Maternal Bias: This bias has to do with how we view the traits of good mothers as being in conflict with the traits of good employees. In other terms, a woman cannot be a good mother AND a good employee. Working fathers are not exposed to such bias

Throughout the training, I was easily able to recall situations when I was exposed to each of the above forms of bias, excluding the last one (for the sole reason that I am not a mother). From times when I had to work twice as much as my other colleagues in my first months of work to prove that I am a good engineer, despite being a woman, to being told by another woman in tech that ‘I got very lucky’ 5 times in the couple of minutes that followed me naively and happily announcing to her a career-related promotion (this woman happens to be an advocate for women’s empowerment), to not being asked for my opinion by a woman moderator in a meeting after she asked everyone else (everyone else happened to be a man), to a random guy I met on a train laughing at me telling him that I am a data scientist and later apologizing by saying “you don’t look like one, you are cute” (he turned up to be the CEO of a tech startup in the bay area himself), to the airport agent coming back and forth to me to point out that I am standing in the wrong queue (EU citizens queue) despite me repeating to him that I am not… The list can get very long and, of course, does not include biases I have been subject to without even being aware of it. Imagine the number of times my CV did not get to the hiring manager just because my name sounded very different to the recruiter or because I am a woman (data shows that recruiters tend to pick people with names they are familiar with and tend to pick less women for technical roles)! I am not listing these bias-related incidents to victimize myself nor to blame anyone. The examples serve to show that, when you are are in a context where you are clearly different than the crowd, or when your life journey is in contrast with stereotypes that we as humanity have developed and nurtured over thousands of years, you are likely to find yourself on the receiving end of many types of biases, even from good highly-educated and well-mannered people. Sadly, the very people who consider themselves elite are the most likely to be biased, for the straightforward reason that the elite concept is built on the notion of ‘I am better therefore you are less’.

So, if bias can come from good people and reputable organizations, is it necessarily bad? And what can we do about it?

Bias is clearly bad. Imagine a company exercising one or many of the bias forms listed above towards its employees. One can clearly see where it is going: a company which workforce is highly homogeneous, and where women employees are avoiding leadership roles, sticking to marginal roles, or simply leaving. In a nutshell, a company that does not deal with its unconscious biases will loose big time on diversity. And, even if you heard it before, I would like to scream it loud once again: Diversity is important. According to Forbes, racially and ethnically diverse companies outperform industry norms by 35%. In addition, teams where men and women are equal earn 41% more revenue. On an individual level, exposing others to unconscious biases makes us loose on potential friendships, deeper bonds and opportunities for seeing life and the world through new eyes, let alone the possibility of subjecting others to a feeling of exclusion without even intending to do so.

This being said, can we cure unconscious bias? Can we actually address a problem when we are unaware of its very existence?

The first step is acknowledging our imperfections and being aware of our own biases, because, yes, each one of us have their fair share of these. Biases may have got to us through the cultural environment where we grew up, opinions and stereotypes we hear around us, but also because of our tendency to generalize our experiences and jump to conclusions. As human beings, we hate gray areas and, for the sake of simplifying our already-complicated lives, end up adopting a cause-to-effect kind of reasoning. We see it around us all the time: A handsome guy cheated on me therefore any handsome guy I meet in the future is likely to be untrustworthy, a muslim committed a terror attack therefore any practicing muslim is suspect of terrorism…We come fully wired with stereotypes. One incident is enough to confirm a stereotype, build a fact out of it and legitimize it becoming a bias in our unconscious minds. As we go through our daily busy lives, we are invited to stop and catch ourselves in situations where we are being biased. Every time you form a judgement about a person or a situation, ask yourself: if this person acted in the same way but looked like me (physically and personality wise), would my conclusion be the same? You can also take this anonymous test developed by Harvard to discover your own unconscious biases, this might be your first step towards being bias free.

Catching bias happening around us and intervening in the right time and manner is also key. A victim of bias is very unlikely to scream it out. However, this does not mean that no harm is done. Do you have a colleague who, for some unclear reason, never gets an invite for after-works? The team might be assuming, out of good intention, that, for whatever reason, this person will not enjoy a certain type of event or conversation, or does not actually care, but this might not be true. Imagine a veiled muslim woman working in an international team and everyone going after work for some drinks. In many situations, she will not be invited because she does not drink. What we are dismissing here is that the feeling of exclusion might be more uncomfortable for her than having people around her drinking. Same example applies to this very geeky colleague who seems not to enjoy anything in life but working. ASK people and do not decide on their behalf. Sometimes, in your team of colleagues/ friends/ acquittances, you need to be THE person who nudges the collectivity towards this way of thinking.

For those who have been subject to biases, and I’ve been one of you, do not take it personally and do not victimize yourself. Do not beat yourself up and accuse yourself of not being/doing enough when actually you are doing everything in your capacity to integrate. Integration does not imply burying your old self and switching overnight into a complete conformism mode. Despite your best efforts, bias can still happen to you and you will still experience situations where you are not cool enough to be around, your name will not be put forward in many occasions despite all your credentials, you will receive over-criticism for minor things… Filter the unconscious bias out of these situations. The way I go about it is simple: if a good person (someone who is generally good to others and have been decent to me) acted with me in an unexpected or unfair way on one or many occurrences, then probably I am being subject to some form of unconscious bias. Do not hate the person or label him/her as bad because this is simply untrue. Instead, let your life journey and actions shatter all the stereotypes that contributed to this person’s biases. And, of course, don’t do it with a revenge mentality (revenge is a stupid self-harming idea). Do it, as Gandhi said, for the sake of being the change you want to see in the world. From experience, I can tell you: nothing beats the happiness of hearing someone who has been biased against you acknowledging that they misunderstood you, quickly judged you or underestimated you at some point in time.

A word for corporates, organizations, schools and families: as much as bubbles are easy to govern, beware of nurturing bubbles. If you are a parent, do not protect your kids and do for them what my parents did not do for me: encourage your kids to travel, interact with kids from different cultures, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds and with disability, as early as possible (I started doing it for myself in my early twenties and, believe me, I wished I started before). If you are a NGO with a vision to change the world, beware of being stuck in old and slow processes just because you are biased against change. If you are an educator, do not make grades fuel all forms of unconscious biases in the hearts and minds of your students. Intelligence after all is not a uniform. If you are a corporate, build a diversified workforce, encourage constructive criticism and educate your employees on bias (Facebook unconscious bias training is available online for everyone here).

Finally, It is important to remember that stereotypes are self-fulfilling: the more you shed light on a stereotype, the more is it likely to happen. Girls are likely to perform worse in a math test when students are asked to tick a male/female box, versus when this question is not asked. When you are nurturing diversity, beware of putting the ‘different’ group that you just incorporated in your culture in a box and vocally labeling its members. This will bring you back to point zero and make them subject to further bias on the long run. On an individual level, be aware of your difference but do not get obsessed about it. I do not go to work everyday thinking that I am a woman in tech in a male dominated environment and screaming out loud that all my colleagues are males. I go thinking that I will be myself and give my best at work. I am not denying that I am a woman, or an immigrant, or that I don’t eat fish, I am just allowing myself to be, to exist, without labels. I do believe that my colleagues and managers will be naturally inclined to hire and work with more women when their relationship with me goes smoothly, rather than when some HR policy forces them to do so. This being said, I am not criticizing diversity policies: someone needs to break the cycle and let in different people. However, when diversity starts to happen, even on a modest scale, let us embrace it and let it naturally evolve into a status quo rather than an exception. As much as raising awareness about diversity is important, we need to remember that true diversity can only happen when we give people the opportunity to free themselves from their labels.