Welcome back. This lesson focuses on cognizance of bias, which is one of the six signature traits of highly inclusive leaders. A dictionary definition of biases, prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group, compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. This signature trait focuses on prejudice related to social identity groups. Bias can be explicit or implicit. Explicit biases are consciously held prejudices. Persons who have explicit biases are aware of them and they believe in them. For example, some people think that men are superior to women. Implicit bias refers to unconscious beliefs and attitudes. I will explain more about this later. Both types of bias matter when looking at inclusion in the workplace, they can lead to discriminatory behaviors, especially against non-dominant groups. This signature trait focuses on leaders cognizance of implicit bias. Implicit bias is harder to identify than explicit bias and everyone is subject to it. It's important for leaders to understand implicit bias. I dive deeper into implicit bias in the spotlight on implicit bias. Notice that the trait is cognizance of bias. This means that highly inclusive leaders have awareness or knowledge of implicit bias. The researchers who identified the six traits said inclusive leaders are deeply aware that biases can narrow their field of vision and prevent them from making objective decisions. Two types of biases are relevant to inclusive leadership. Personal biases are unconscious stereotypes and attitudes about social identity groups. These biases are deeply ingrained in most people. Process biases refer to unconscious preferences and isms or negative attitudes against certain groups, for example, sexism, racism, and heterosexism. These are built into organizational policies, processes, and practices. Perhaps you've heard about resume research experiments that analyze how hiring committees respond to job applicants. All of the resumes considered had the same information, except for the applicant's name. Findings repeatedly show that hiring committees tend to prefer applicants with male sounding names over female sounding names. This type of process bias can create subtle advantages for some groups and subtle disadvantages for others, thus process bias can make it hard to achieve equity and inclusion. In the spotlight on implicit bias, I describe more information and research results. Here's a brief story about bias in the workplace. After an employee said that I paid more attention to men than women during a staff meeting, I reflected on what I knew. I thought about what I have learned about bias through experiences and education. I have taken implicit association tests which concluded that I unconsciously associate men with work, and women with family. This may affect how I interact in the workplace. In case you haven't heard about it, the Harvard Implicit Association Test determines a person's level of unconscious bias related to various social identity categories. Examples include, race, sexuality, religion, age, disability. In the lesson plans I provide information about the IAT, including how to take the test. Based on what I've learned about implicit bias, I understood that the result of my IAT did not mean that I am sexist, rather, it showed how humans socialize each other to value dominant groups, in this case men, more than non-dominant groups, in this case women. I have accepted that gender bias is ingrained within me, even though I'm not sexist. I believe in gender equality, and I advocate for gender equity in the workplace. In terms of process bias, I knew that the workplace where the meeting occurred, higher education has a documented history of gender bias. For example, numerous research projects have reported gender bias in hiring and advancing women faculty in science fields. Those projects include resume experiments that I mentioned earlier. Being aware of personal and a process biases help me to be receptive and responsive to the employees' feedback about my behaviors. Highly inclusive leaders act upon their knowledge and awareness of personal and process biases in several ways. On a personal level, they understand that all humans are subject to stereotypes and prejudice about social groups. Even when unconscious biases contradict their personal value systems, they work diligently to identify their own biases. They monitor themselves and they ask others for feedback. They understand that ways they are privileged can unconsciously affect their attitudes toward people who do not have similar advantages. Through formal and informal education, they learn how to manage or reduce implicit biases, and they apply what they learned. Please see the spotlight on implicit bias for details. Inclusive leaders understand that implicit biases are built into organizational processes and structures such as hiring and promotion practices, and allocation of resources. They participate in formal education to gain knowledge about how implicit bias embeds within organizations. They review and revise policies and procedures to minimize biases, and they cultivate cultures where members feel equipped and empower to provide feedback related to particular biases. In 2019, the leadership of McDonald's took a proactive approach to implicit bias. McDonald's is the world's largest restaurant company with over 30,000 restaurants in over 100 nations. Their leadership created the Better Together: Gender Balance and Diversity strategy. By 2023, the company seeks to increase the representation of women at all levels and achieve greater gender equality. McDonald's CEO and other senior leaders announced the initiative by displaying pictures of the McDonald's arches turned upside down. This action symbolized McDonald's hope to raise awareness of unconscious bias and the importance of reducing it. McDonald's Better Together strategy incorporates proven practices for addressing implicit biases in organizations. They developed an educational protocol called food for thought beyond bias. Their website says their protocol is firmly centered in our core belief that our unconscious bias can slow us down, moving beyond bias speeds us up. McDonald's is integrating implicit bias training into existing educational platforms, writing gender neutral job descriptions, and using artificial intelligence tools to recognize and root out gender bias from hiring processes. They also are providing implicit bias training in their leadership development programs. In conclusion, cognizance of bias can help leaders minimize the effects of unconscious prejudices in the work place. In future lessons, I will share strategies and techniques for how to cultivate cognizance of bias. Next, we're going to explore another signature trait, curiosity.
