Unconscious Bias: How to Start a Journey of Rethinking in Your Company
Often, when I tell people I work at Turbine Kreuzberg, they immediately think of a soccer club, whether consciously or not. While that’s not a problem, and I enjoy clearing up the misunderstanding, it’s a good everyday example of what our brains do to fill in the blanks. Recently, I was holding a master class on unconscious biases for all colleagues at the company, something I never thought I would be able to do. Why? Because I had my own prejudices.
The research and preparation for the master class opened my eyes substantially, because I became aware of how many prejudices I had and still have towards other people and myself. Whether on the subway, in the supermarket, in the office or during job interviews, you quickly fall into judgmental thought patterns and put other people in a box.
For the past four years, I’ve worked as a recruiting manager and screened dozens of CVs every day. Within seconds, I knew if the applicant seemed suitable to me and I wanted to invite them for a first interview. I came to that decision based on signs like a neat layout, a serious and good looking profile picture, similar job stations or common interests. Very likely, I missed out on many good interviews with interesting interviewees as a result.
Turbine Kreuzberg is a software company with more than 100 developers — 90 percent of them are male. Did I get you now? Did you just think of an introverted man with long hair and a t-shirt with Star Wars comic print?
Biases are deeply ingrained in us
Every day our brains are flooded with millions of pieces of information. Less than 5 percent of them are consciously processed. It’s what our brain does to save cognitive resources, or simply, to avoid exploding. We filter and categorize this information unconsciously and subsequently make decisions that are not always good or right. From small everyday issues, to our private life to important professional decisions: all can be strongly influenced by our categorizations. Here are just a few examples: Only girls wear pink, I don’t like green vegetables, I don’t want to date a person because I don’t like their hairstyle, my boss’s favorite colleague gets the new project, the candidate who is most similar to the team gets the offer.
The way we label and judge is trained into us from an early age and so, also anchored in our personality. The cultural influences we grow up in, our environment, our self-perception, our upbringing, all the media we consume, and lastly our work environment all influence our thought patterns. Currently, more than 180 biases are known. For instance, do you know the IKEA effect? People value objects more when they have assembled them themselves. Another more or less well-known example in the work context is the Dunning-Kruger effect: incompetent people tend to overestimate their own knowledge and skills.
I presented these and more biases at the masterclass I held. Almost 30 colleagues registered for the training session, from different teams, women as well as men, techies and non-techies. Thus, they have taken the first step towards reducing unconscious biases. A one-time training is of course not sufficient to completely eliminate them, but it is a first step. This was also important for me to communicate to my Turbine colleagues. A change in mindset does not happen overnight. It is a journey.
From theory to practice
In addition to theory on the origin of biases, the Cognitive Bias Codex and their negative effects, there was a practical exercise, too. Together, we found the most common biases in our everyday work and tried to think of ways to reduce them in the future. For us, most biases and false assumptions occur in recruiting and feedback situations. For example, gender, name, or age biases can occur when screening CVs. To avoid that, consistent and structured evaluation sheets as well as blind reviews, in which names and pictures are removed, can be possible solutions for fair recruiting.
In code reviews, people are sometimes assigned better or worse coding skills or certain sympathies or antipathies towards them in advance just because you have read their name. How about anonymous tickets in the future that guarantee equal treatment?
Cognitive distortions in our judgment cannot be entirely prevented and a complete rethink does not happen after one training. A first step is to create awareness for the presence of our biases, so that everybody can reflect on oneself and one’s decisions. Since we have to make so many small decisions day in and day out, we can try to schedule more time for important ones (or just sleep on it once) to avoid falling into biased patterns. When possible, make decisions collectively, for example when hiring new employees. Tools like checklists or policies that are embedded in the corporate culture (a common example here is the Code of Conduct) help to make fairer decisions as well.
Biases create disadvantages both personal and competitive
I’ve been talking a lot about unconscious biases now and, at least in the world of LinkedIn, the term seems to have become a buzzword. You may think to yourself, the world won’t end due to one bad decision more or less, or no one hears the biases in my head. The truth is: unconscious biases can create unfair or negative advantages and disadvantages for people. Employees quit because they feel uncomfortable or discriminated against, the wrong person is hired, and ultimately all of this leads to a less diverse and inclusive company. And this, as we hopefully all know by now, is a clear competitive disadvantage and can lead to lower overall performance.
Having read this article to the very end means that you are interested in this topic. This is a good sign. Maybe there will be training in your company soon as well. Please take part. As said, awareness that we all have unconscious biases is the first step towards a society more free of judgment.
Thoughts? We’d like to hear them. Reach out to Sophie on LinkedIn.
