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Who Will Benefit From this Book? What this Book is Not Part One: The Basics of Bias Chapter List Chapter 1: Bias Defined and Misdefined None of her managers would tell Priscilla that she was doing poorly; they all wanted to be “nice” to the only black woman in the department. Were they guilty of bias? CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION What is a bias and why is there so much confusion about what the word really means? Bias is an Inflexible Belief About a Particular Kinship Group Which, if any, of these people are guilty of bias? I don't mean might be biased or suspected of bias, but absolutely, positively guilty? Case 1: Juan, a 50-year-old manager, had occasion to interview a woman named Nancy who, at the time of their meeting, was in her mid-20s. After the interview, Juan said to his boss, "I'd like to hire her, but we need someone willing to commit for the long run. Nancy has changed jobs four times since college. I hear that some people in her age group are that way, and she obviously fits the demographic." Case 2: It was the end of a long day at the diversity conference, and I was tired Chapter 1: Bias Defined and Misdefined Bias is an Inflexible Belief About a Particular Kinship Group Case 1: Flexible versus Inflexible—Juan was Innocent Juan was innocent because what he felt about Nancy was not an "inflexible belief about a particular kinship group" but an observed fact about a specific individual. On the other hand, if prior to meeting her he had said of Nancy, "All Generation X employees change jobs a lot, I know that's the way Nancy will be," he would have been guilty of bias. One reason some of you might have thought Juan was guilty is that the characteristic he ascribed to Nancy (changing jobs often) could, if applied inflexibly to all Generation Xers, indeed be a reflection of a bias against people born between 1961 and 1981. This confusion brings us to two key points that will help in your efforts to diagnose bias in yourself and others: Biases are attitudes not behaviors. There is no such thing as a "biased action," only actions that to a greater or lesser degree of certainty hint at a biased attitude. Just because a word or action is consistent with a biase Case 2: "Just Like Me"—I was InnocentBeing drawn to people like yourself is not necessarily a symptom of a biased attitude. If it were, the employees at one large hotel in Washington, D.C., would be in real trouble. Were you to look into a managers' meeting at this hotel, you would see a veritable United Nations of diversity: Latinos at one table, Vietnamese at another, Bosnians to the right, Iranians and Czechs and Poles scattered in clusters in the center of the room. Is it racism? It could be, but in this case it isn't. Being a nation in which segregation is a painful part of our history, we assume that the clustering of kinship groups is a sure sign that something is wrong. Do these groups feel uncomfortable with each other? Are they afraid or excluded or—our paranoia shouts—are they plotting something? It is time we bring a balance to this issue of being drawn to people like ourselves. We must learn when it is bias and when it is simple human comfort. It is this desire for comfort Case 3: "All White People Look Alike"—Ayana was InnocentConfusing one member of a group for another is often erroneously thought to be symptomatic of bias. If we wanted to, we could jump all over Ayana, a woman who was not accustomed to being around white people, for mistaking one tall, blonde customer for another. The truth is, however, that her error is nothing more than an example of the truism that groups of things or people that are unfamiliar look alike to our untutored eye. Take wine for example, cabernet in particular. To me a cabernet is a cabernet is a cabernet. Each glass is like the next—a little pinker, a tiny bit sweeter—but any show I put on of knowing the difference is pure affectation. I have so little knowledge of wine in general and cabernets in particular that they all taste and look alike to me. To my son-in-law, however, a chef and wine enthusiast, the subtleties in taste, bouquet, and color are so varied that he would never mistake a California cabernet for one p Case 4: Reasonable Assumption—Harry was InnocentIn a perfect world, Harry would have asked first before assuming that his neighbors were from Mexico. He didn't, but that omission does not make him biased. Harry's only crime was drawing a reasonable conclusion and turning out to be wrong. I'm not sure I'd give his new neighbors the same break. The neighbors clearly felt that being mistaken for Mexican was an insult. This reaction points more to their own bigotry against Mexicans than it does to any biases Harry might have toward them. Like Harry, Frank, the new doorman at David's New York apartment building, drew a reasonable conclusion when he assumed David was a deliveryman for a local Chinese restaurant. Consistent with security regulations and unfamiliar with the tenants, Frank asked David for identification before letting him into the building. David, a Chinese-American who was carrying a large bag of Chinese food, was furious and accused the doorman of racism. It is understandable Case 5: In the Spirit—Mary was InnocentA good sense of humor, a sense of comfort with oneself, and a willingness to laugh at the forces that divide our society have nothing to do with bias. When I heard this story from the white person who had been so warmly embraced, I fell a little bit in love with Mary. I imagine you did too. Case 6: Guerilla Bias™—Gretchen was GuiltyPoor Gretchen has the dubious distinction of being the only one of this bunch to be guilty of bias. She would probably be very upset to know this because Gretchen is one of the nicest of nice people. She has a good heart, never wants to hurt anyone's feelings, and likes to think well of others. The bad news for Gretchen, and for those around her, is that she is a carrier of a particularly dangerous species of bias: Guerilla Bias. Defining Guerilla Bias One reason Guerilla Bias is so dangerous is that it is difficult to spot and almost impossible to diagnose. This is because, like guerilla warfare in which the enemy is hidden within stands of lush foliage, Guerilla Bias lies concealed behind good intentions, kind words, and even thoughtful acts. In Gretchen's case, her so-called thoughtful acts included accepting Saru's ideas without really understanding them, assuming that his ideas were good just because he was Asian, and, finally, saying noth Ifs, Buts, and Maybes Defining bias is difficult; it involves a demoralizing glut of "yeses and nos," "ifs," "buts," and "maybes," each of which seems designed to drive us mad. Yes, being drawn to someone like yourself is normal; no, it should not be completely indulged. Yes, it is OK to make a reasonable assumption about an individual, but you are biased if you don't change your mind in the face of conflicting evidence. Yes, it is all right to make an honest mistake in current terminology, but we must make an effort to understand what bothers the people around you. Yes, some behaviors do not reflect a biased attitude, but, maybe, that behavior should be changed anyway. The simplest way to cut through all this muddle is to think of a bias as the small voice inside each of us that, upon meeting a stranger, whispers, "I've known someone similar to you before so I know what you are like" or "I've heard about 'you people.'" Biases cause us to react, not to individuals but to a motley succe Chapter Summary Behaviors and words are not biased; attitudes are biased. Actions that are consistent with bias may be inappropriate, but they do not automatically reflect a biased attitude. One of the key characteristics of a biased attitude is that it is inflexible. Because of the deep-seated need for group membership as a means of survival, there is nothing wrong with, nor biased about, being drawn to members of our own kinship group. When we are unfamiliar with a particular class of objects or people, individual units within that class tend to look alike. To mistake one member of an unfamiliar kinship group for another, for example, does not, unto itself, mean that we are biased. It is not bias to make a reasonable assumption based on available evidence. If, however, we later gather new information that contradicts our original assumption and we fail to change our mind, then we are possibly guilty of bias. Even though reasonable assumptions are not automatically rooted in a biased Chapter Summary Chapter 2: Carefully Taught: How Bias is Learned Overview It was her mother’s simple admonition not to share her Coke with the son of the black housekeeper that embedded the seed of bias deep inside Joan’s adolescent psyche. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION How do we learn biases and why are they so deeply ingrained? It was a subtle message and if its impact had not been so sad, you could almost say it was gentle. There was no violence, no foul words hurled like weapons, just a shadowy teaching hidden beneath the stern admonition not to share her Coke with the son of the black housekeeper. That is how the seed of bias got imbedded deeply inside the fertile soil of Joan's adolescent psyche. It was planted far more subtly than was Rose's belief that "All Mexicans are destructive." That grew out of one horrifying night when two drunk teenagers from her all-Mexican neighborhood tried to break into her house. She was alone, her phone was disconnected, and she was, understandably, terrified. The exper Chapter 2: Carefully Taught: How Bias is Learned Immune Deficiency: Why We Contract BiasesYou would think that human attitudes, like physical traits, would be subject to the laws of evolution with the fittest and most functional thriving and the least functional—attitudes like bias—shriveling like a useless appendix. As it turns out, evolution may be great at ridding us of gills and webbed feet, but it is remarkably poor at bringing about the extinction of bias. On the contrary, it seems as if human beings are afflicted with an immune deficiency when it comes to catching the bias bug. We are receptive, even eager, to develop biases despite the fact that they put us in little better than a dream state in which we misjudge and misread, and, as a result, mismanage many of our relationships. The reason we are so vulnerable to acquiring biases is that deep down we believe they benefit us in some way. Most of these benefits aren't worth the trade-off in damaged lives and disrupted workplaces, but we fail to realize that at the time of our Initial Infection: Tribal Leaders and Experience Tribal Leaders as Carriers of Bias Many of us grew up in homes that were veritable petri dishes of the bias virus. We lived each moment watching, listening, experiencing in an atmosphere infected with biased messages and subtle or not-so-subtle examples of distorted vision. It may not be fashionable these days to blame parents for our faulty thinking, but when it comes to bias, we must lay the responsibility firmly in Mom and Dad's overburdened laps. Parents are the most powerful people we know during our formative years. They are our tribal leaders and because they are the primary force that guides us, we believe what they say. If parents are open-minded (read unafraid), that is great. Children of open-minded parents learn to be in the moment and evaluate each person as she comes along; they have no psychological need to divine the nature or intentions of individuals according to the group to which they belong. If, on the other hand, ou The Virus Spreads The Impact of Culture Once we are infected, either through our parents or by experience, each of us becomes a carrier of the bias bug. This contagion can happen in any environment, but it takes place most readily in cultures that are cordial hosts for this particular strain of disease. One way in which cultures manifest this hospitality is by tolerating, at least to some degree, the open expression of biased attitudes. This is one reason that biases are destructive no matter who holds them. It is tempting to say, for example, that a woman's bias against other women doesn't count as much as a man's or that a Chinese person's bias against the Japanese is OK because they are both Asian. This logic, however, crumbles when we realize that tolerating anyone's bias creates a climate in which the rest of us can feel that ours must be acceptable too. When this happens, bias gradually becomes a transgression akin to cheating on one's taxes and we begin to rationalize our prejud The PrognosisThe bias virus is remarkably hardy. One reason for this toughness is that most of us just can't stand being wrong and will do almost anything to prove our biases correct. Psychologists call this process belief perseverance and talk a lot about the numerous mind games we play to keep our biases alive. For example, we: Ignore or forget information that does not support our bias. Give extra weight and credence to information that validates our bias. Rationalize and distort what we see to make it conform to our bias. Act on our bias in a way that allows it to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once we go through all this effort to convince ourselves of the truth of our biases, things really get interesting: The more we believe the bias to be true, the more we think of it as desirable. As soon as we decide the bias is desirable, our mind redoubles its efforts to locate and remember any evidence of how right we are no matter how tenuous. This result is: The more we think it is d Chapter Summary One reason we learn biases so readily is that they provide us with the desired illusion that we can predict the behavior and character of people different from ourselves. Many of our initial lessons in bias come from our parents who expose us to subtle and sometimes ambiguous biases that, because they are so subtle, can be difficult to identify and defeat. Another way we learn biases is through experiences that frighten us into connecting more firmly with our own group while forming negative associations with the objects of our fear. One rarely mentioned reason for acquiring negative biases is that some people like the stimulation and challenge that comes from living in a dangerous world. Inflexible generalities thrive best in cultures in which biased thinking is regarded as acceptable. This is one reason that biases must be condemned regardless of who holds them. Once we acquire a bias, we strive to hold on to it by distorting any contradictory evidence that comes our Chapter Summary Part Two: The Vision Renewal Process Chapter List Chapter 3: Step One: Become Mindful of Your Biases Overview When Carrie and her hospital were sued by the Filipino nurse, the manager had no idea what the problem was. Now, too late, Carrie has become aware of her bias against Filipinos and admits she treated them poorly. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION How can I become aware of my biases to target them for extinction? Dostoyevsky, in Notes from the Underground, said of our penchant for self-deception: Every man has reminiscences which he would not tell to everyone but only his friends. He has other matters in his mind which he would not reveal even to his friends, but only to himself and that in secret. But there are other things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind. One category of Dostoyevsky's sequestered things is our biases, our secret beliefs of how we feel about other groups of people. I agree with Dostoyevsky that fear is the primary cause of this secrec Chapter 3: Step One: Become Mindful of Your Biases Positive IDIdentifying our biases is a matter of facing reality—painful, embarrassing reality. I had just such a reality check recently. It would be convenient to pretend that this incident took place years ago, long before I took up the work of bias reduction, but if I did, I'd be lying. Because this book is about telling the truth, that would be dirty pool. In fact, the incident happened in the fall of 2001. You'd think at that stage of the game I would have known better: The target of my bias was a black man named Louis who had recently begun dating a white friend of mine. In an effort to make Louis more comfortable in our social circle, I chatted with him at a couple of parties; no response. I tried bringing up subjects that might interest him; still nothing. I kept making excuses for Louis, saying things like "He must be uncomfortable," "Let's give him a chance," "We need to try harder." My daughter, never one to keep her opinions to herself, I am proud to say, finally asked, "Mom Strategy I: Observe Your ThoughtsAll biases, even the most deeply subconscious ones, periodically appear in the form of a thought. It is our job to examine that thought to see what it tells us about our hidden beliefs. This means we need to watch what we think. "How can I watch my thoughts?" you may be asking. "I am my thoughts, there would be no 'me' without them and if there is no 'me,' there is no one home to do the watching." These are understandable questions considering the nature of our culture in which thought and intellect are highly prized, but the truth is, we are not what we are thinking. There is a "you," an awareness that lies behind your thoughts that is capable of observing and chronicling them as they rush by. Give it a try, right this minute. Watch the thoughts that are coming into your mind. Maybe they go something like this: What is this woman talking about? I thought this was a diversity book and all of a sudden we're talking about mind control or something.... Bet Strategy II: Analyze Your ThoughtsWatching our thoughts is important, but it is merely the evidence-gathering stage of our investigation; the next step is to examine that evidence to determine what it really means. One way to do this is to look at each initial reaction that you have chronicled and ask yourself this question: Would I feel the same way about the meaning of an incident if the actor were of a different kinship group? Here are some examples: A female executive shouts and pounds the table when speaking of the underhanded tactics of a competitor. You turn to the person next to you and whisper, "She sure is getting hysterical." Ask yourself this question: "If the executive had been a man rather than a woman, would I have still thought he was hysterical or would I have assumed he was justifiably angry?" If your answer is no—you would not have thought he was hysterical—you just might have a bias that tricks you into believing that women are more apt than men to get hysterical wh Strategy III: Measure the Emotional Content of Your ThoughtsThe second step in determining if your thoughts are evidence of bias is to see how much emotion is attached to them. The more emotion, the more likely it is that the thought reflects a biased attitude. Both Andy and Thomas, for example, gave a negative answer when asked for their opinion about the gay men with whom they work. Only one man, however, is biased: The case of Andy: Andy works in the oil and gas industry. He is an enthusiastic heterosexual who cannot accept working with gay men. When asked what the problem was, he flushed with emotion and practically sputtered with rage as he said, "Those people are just wrong; I can't stand thinking about the perverted things they do on the weekends. I wish they would just stay away." The case of Thomas: Thomas is an equally enthusiastic heterosexual who works with the same gay men and does so without complaint. How does he feel about them? When asked he says, "I don't believe in t Strategy IV: Examine Your Attitudes Toward Human DifferenceObserving your thoughts and emotions as you think of and encounter other kinship groups is a good start toward bias identification. There is still, however, one more piece of evidence that needs to be collected. To bring charges of bias against ourselves, we need to shore up our case by examining how we feel about the notion of difference itself. Generally, those who have few biases tend to be fairly indifferent to whether or not a person is diverse. People who possess the lucrative virtue of seeing others clearly neither ignore the difference nor put excessive emphasis on it. Where do you fit? When We Notice Differences Too Little My friend Elise shared with me an incident that would be comical if it weren't such a good example of how not to handle differences. It happened when a United Parcel Service driver came to the reception desk at Elise's work with a package for a new employee named John. John, you'll need to know to un Conclusion: Looking Toward the Next Step Now that you have discovered your biases—many of which I imagine were quite a surprise—the next step is to figure out the function that each one serves. Yes, biases do have a function, they do benefit us in some ways. In most cases that benefit is temporary at best, but it is a benefit nonetheless. After the benefit is identified, you then will be asked to weigh it against the damage each bias causes. That information will, in turn, enable you to pick the most destructive biases as the ones on which to focus for the balance of the Vision Renewal Process. Chapter Summary Many of us are reluctant to admit our biases because we feel that to have a bias means that we no longer are nice people. Although biases are not desirable, they are not, unless they are extreme, automatically signs of bad character. Behaviors, even if inappropriate, do not necessarily indicate a biased attitude. One way to become aware of our biases is to observe the thought that comes to mind in response to a kinship group and gauge how much emotion is attached to it. The more emotion, the more likely the belief is, in fact, a bias. Those of us who put either too much or too little emphasis on the ways in which a person is different are more apt to have a bias against that person's kinship group. Chapter Summary Chapter 4: Step Two: Identify the Alleged Benefits of Your Biases Overview Willy didn’t like having a gay man on his team, but his bias convinced him the man was too emotional to handle the stressful job and wouldn’t be around for long anyway. For the moment, Willy’s bias made him feel more comfortable. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION What secondary gains and benefits do I receive from believing in my biases? In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, Arab-Americans were the unhappy targets of biased people of all stripes. I met one of these unfortunates on September 30 of that fateful year. I don't remember his name, but I do remember his pain and the glimpse I had of the rage that lurked just below his courteous demeanor. He was a Lebanese cabdriver, and he was frustrated and more than a little frightened at how badly some of his passengers had treated him since the World Trade Center attacks. Most of those who hurt this man so deeply were merely abrupt or cold or sat stiffly in the backseat wit Chapter 4: Step Two: Identify the Alleged Benefits of Your Biases Biases Allegedly Relieve Feelings of GuiltOne often-unrecognized secondary gain from bias is the relief from feelings of guilt. The first-century Roman historian Tacitus was talking about guilt when he said, "It is human nature to hate those we have injured." When we injure someone, we feel guilt. To relieve that guilt, we struggle to justify what we have done. One way to accomplish this questionable goal is to convince ourselves that the person we have injured is in some way inferior and, therefore, deserves our illtreatment. In short, we make ourselves feel better by becoming biased against them. Exploration Point Do any of the biases you identified in the last chapter carry with them the benefit of relieving guilt? How has this benefit shown itself in your life? Does it really work? Even a historical injury from which we are chronologically removed—American slavery is a good example—can trigger a defensive reaction that causes us to dislike the victim. The demon of defensiveness whi Biases Allegedly Protect Us From Diminished StatusEven the horrific bias that early European settlers had against the native populations of the New World can be explained by a secondary gain. In their case, that gain was the protection of their status as civilized human beings. Isolated, stranded in an unfamiliar environment far from the lace curtains and polished pewter of which they were so fond, the Europeans feared they might slide down a muddy slope and land in a heap beside what they perceived to be the uncivilized inhabitants of "their" new land. To reassure themselves that they were still socially refined, the settlers needed to create a sharp contrast between themselves and their Native American neighbors. They did this by cultivating the illusion that the Native Americans were profoundly and, most telling, "naturally" barbaric. The doctrine of the noble savage aside, this bias served in their minds to utterly distinguish the "them" from the "us" and eliminate any danger of th Biases Allegedly Protect Us From LossFear of losing something we believe to be rightfully ours is one of the most common reasons for the development of a bias. This explains why biases increase in times of economic slowdown and why it is then that we begin to hear a medley of mantras about how "those people" are "taking all the jobs," "getting preferential treatment," and "taking advantage of the situation." Yale psychologists Carl Hovland and Robert Sears, working in the 1920s and 1930s, found that when cotton prices in the South went down, the number of lynchings increased. [1] Legend or myth or fact—it's hard to tell from this distance—tells us that when the Roman Empire was crumbling, Christians were more frequently fed to lions. True or not, we do know that this penchant for using bias as a way to protect our supply of limited resources has been with humankind since the early days of civilization. Nan, a bank manager in southern California, provides us with a modern example of how Biases Allegedly Protect Us From Emotional PainMark has a bias. He believes that all fully abled (or, as he is fond of saying with a nod toward Father Time, "temporarily abled") people look down on him and others with disabilities. This misbelief—that all members of a given group are biased—is perhaps the only prejudice that is actually tolerated in the workplace. That toleration is unfortunate because by putting up with the personal fiction that "All men are sexist" or "All white people are racist," or as in Mark's case "All fully abled people look down on people with disabilities," we promote the notion that some biases are acceptable and others are not; nothing could be further from the truth. Prejudices like Mark's—I'll clumsily call it the bias bias—are usually triggered by a desire to protect the misbeliever from a repetition of emotional pain. From Mark's point of view, as destructive as his bias is, it does keep him from being caught off guard next time he is treated like a chi Biases Allegedly Provide Us with an Excuse for Our BehaviorThe bias that is the culprit here is our old nemesis and the nice person's bias-of-choice: Guerilla Bias™. As you recall, this brand of bias is based on the premise that emerging group members are in some way fragile; this bias is frequently disguised behind kind thoughts such as "I don't want to hurt their feelings," "I don't want to make anyone upset," or, my personal favorite, "I wouldn't want to risk offending anybody." Because Guerilla Bias is so hard to detect, you would think that its alleged benefit would be equally difficult to determine. In fact, it is really pretty simple: Guerilla Bias benefits us by providing an excuse to stay away from people around whom we feel uncomfortable. Here are a few examples of how this thought process plays out to our temporary benefit: The Waiter and the Wheelchair Behavior: A waiter ignores the woman with cerebral palsy and asks her younger male companion what she would like to eat. Al Biases Allegedly Protect Our Community and Individual ValuesAll was fine in Martha's upscale New Jersey neighborhood: The streets were tree-lined, the houses neatly painted, the residents pleasantly liberal, and the school respectably integrated to the tune of two upper-middleclass black families. All was fine, that is, until another black family moved in and then another and then another. Before these nice people knew it, the black student body at the local school had swelled to a dangerous critical mass of 30 percent. "Those people" were still, mind you, quite civilized. Don't get images in your head of drug-crazed kids who refuse to work at McDonald's because they can make more money dealing cocaine. They were gentile sorts; upper-class, educated, well dressed. Along with this critical mass of blackness came, you guessed it, a fear followed shortly thereafter by an outbreak of bias. There is not much to fear from one lone black child, or two, or three, but, in suburban white-people' Conclusion: A Cautionary NoteThis is the point in the Vision Renewal Process where you just might be tempted to close this book and abruptly terminate your journey to-ward bias reduction. Why wouldn't you? In the last chapter you were reassured that biases don't make you a bad person; in this one, you were shown that biases do, in fact, offer benefits. Taking all this into consideration, you'd have every right to ask, "Why not wrap it up right here?" The reason to continue with the Process is that the benefits you have identified are temporary at best, while the price, as you will see in Chapter 5, for holding on to your biases is very steep and destructive and, in many cases, very very permanent. Chapter Summary Although biases are destructive in our lives and our workplaces, they also benefit us in some ways. Many of these benefits are illusions, others are temporary, but if we are to decide which misbeliefs deserve our most immediate attention, we must balance those benefits against the damage the biases cause. Some biases relieve feelings of guilt over how badly we have behaved toward a particular group. They do this by tricking us into believing that the target of the bias has a characteristic that justifies our ill-treatment. Some biases give us the illusion that we are, and deserve to be, of higher status than other groups. Biases provide us with the temporary benefit of protection from the loss of something we feel is rightfully ours. Biases prevent the repetition of emotional pain. This is particularly true of the bias bias, which holds that certain kinship groups are inevitably biased against others. Guerilla Bias allows us to feel better about staying away from people Chapter Summary Chapter 5: Step Three: Put Your Biases Through Triage Overview When Linda’s bias caused her to lose a top sales associate to her main competition, she lost, along with a valuable employee, thousands of dollars in convention business. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION Which of my biases should I work on first? When my daughter was a teenager, I learned one important lesson: Don't sweat the small stuff. So her room was a mess and her hair was green, she was a good kid and that's what mattered. The same principle applies to healing your biases. Some matter, some (almost) don't. As we saw in the Introduction, everybody has biases—big ones, small ones, destructive ones, (almost) harmless ones. We need to aim our guns at the biases that do the most damage. In short, pick your fights. For example, lighten up about the fact that you tend to think "All professors are absentminded" or "All French people are good cooks." These generalities may not be entirely harmless (nor was my daughter's green hair), but Chapter 5: Step Three: Put Your Biases Through Triage Does Your Bias Compromise Your Ability to Hire the Best People?Linda would have had to answer this question with a regretful "Yes." The Human Resources Director at a prestigious hotel in Beverly Hills, Linda allowed her bias to interfere with a key hiring decision. The mishap occurred during an interview for an important Director of Sales position. Had we been watching the interview through a one-way mirror, we would have seen a look of complete befuddlement on Linda's face. Despite her extensive professional experience, she found herself in a quandary: Sitting across the desk from Linda was an applicant who, by anyone's standards, was perfect for the job: outgoing, articulate, and very knowledgeable of the hospitality industry. She was also born and raised in Japan. Therein lay Linda's problem. Because of Mariko's heritage, Linda's evaluation of her was grossly distorted by another set of qualifications, or I should say misqualifications, that popped into her head. All Linda could see Does Your Bias Interfere with Your Ability to Retain Quality Employees?When Hector walked to the front of the auditorium following my diversity workshop at a California bank, I wasn't much in the mood to talk. It had been a long day and I was anxious to get to my room, order my beloved room service, and see what movies were available on pay-perview that night. Hector, however, looked anxious to speak his piece so I reluctantly put down my laptop and gave him my full attention. Now I'm glad I did. Here is what he had to say: I've worked for this bank ever since I graduated college. I figured I'd be here the rest of my career. That is until the company decided to open locations in the Latino community and transferred me from my old branch on the West side. I was very successful before, but just can't seem to make this new assignment work. I'm thinking of moving to another company where I'd have a better chance to get ahead. Hector, by the way, was one of five Latino branch managers who a Does Your Bias Interfere with Corporate Productivity and Individual Success? One of the really creepy things about biases is that they can easily become self-fulfilling prophecies. If a manager believes that an employee has a certain characteristic, darn if she doesn't find a way to make that characteristic come true. The promising black fighter pilots who flunked out of flight school in disproportionate numbers know what I mean. An investigation revealed that some white instructors felt the black pilots lacked the skills to fly safely. As a result of this bias, and in a misguided effort to save themselves and the airplane, the instructors were grabbing the controls prematurely, thus depriving the pilots of the chance to show their capability. [1] These instructors held the bias, "Black pilots can't quite cut it," and found a way to make that bias come true. Most of us are in no position to grab anyone's controls, but we all have the power to actualize our biases through our failure to Does Your Bias Interfere with Your Ability to Sustain Harmonious Teams?The woman who approached me following the workshop was utterly confused about how to handle what seemed to be a straightforward management challenge. Her confusion surprised me because she had appeared so bright and experienced during the program. I was surprised, that is, until I realized that she was allowing her own personal brand of Guerilla Bias cloud her judgment. The conversation went something like this: I just don't know what to do. I have several Native American employees who are late to work every day. I know they all have reliable transportation so there's really no reason for them to be so lax. All I can figure out is that it must have to do with their culture so I decided to give them some leeway and let them come in any time up to half an hour after everybody else. Now my problem is that the other employees are complaining and want the same flexibility. In my industry, that just isn't going to work. W Does Your Bias Compromise the Success of Your Sales Efforts?Ted is an elegant man: educated, soft-spoken, obviously intelligent. He is also black. With a trace of irony that he obviously enjoyed, Ted recounted the story of how he went into a Mercedes dealership ready to pay cash for a new car and was ignored. Willing to give the sales staff the benefit of the doubt—it was a busy Sunday after all—he left and came back again: still ignored. That was enough for Ted, he had spent enough years being discriminated against to know when to quit; he took his business elsewhere. Ted's departure was not, however, the end of the story. Being a man of action with an admitted weakness for genteel revenge, he swung back past the original dealership on his way home from picking up his spanking new S-class sedan. When he told the manager what had happened, she appeared to be genuinely outraged. All the outrage in the world, however, could not reclaim the lost sale of one of the priciest cars on the mar Does Your Bias Put Your Organization at Risk for Litigation? Racist jokes, gay bashing, sexual harassment, litigation: I'll bet I have your attention now. Litigation is the worst nightmare of every organization, every manager, and every CEO. Tragically, this particular nightmare has a way of coming true with alarming regularity. Sometimes the waking dream is filled with contemptible characters who tell racist jokes, denigrate gay people, or make sleazy comments to female subordinates. Other times, and this is the real worry, the act that results in litigation is of the Guerilla Bias variety: no sleazy and easily identifiable characters in sight. I doubt, for example, that the manager who inspired Meg's discrimination suit was particularly sleazy, he was probably even "nice." Because he was so nice, he couldn't bring himself to tell her that she was doing a bad job; he was, you see, afraid that Meg, who is black, would think he was discriminating against her. Eventually, the manager fir Conclusion: Preparing for the Next Step Exploration Point After studying the observations you have made while reading the last two chapters, identify the biases that have the poorest ratio of alleged benefit to potential damage. Those are the ones you will work on throughout the rest of the Vision Renewal Process and that will be referred to as your "target biases." Chapter Summary The biases that most deserve our attention are those that carry the least desirable balance between alleged benefits and the damage they cause in the workplace. Biases interfere with appropriate hiring decisions by negating our ability to evaluate applicants accurately. Biases threaten the retention of quality employees in many ways, including when they distort our perception of what individuals of diverse backgrounds have to offer. Biases interfere with individual productivity and success by causing us to hold team members to a low standard of performance, preventing us from providing appropriate feedback, and causing us to act on our biases in such a way that they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Guerilla Biases interfere with the harmony of diverse teams when they seduce us into giving unreasonable preferential treatment to emerging groups. Biases interfere with successful sales when they cause us to misinterpret the buying power, needs, or attitudes of potential c Chapter Summary Chapter 6: Step Four: Dissect Your Biases Overview Hannah, a top executive, just couldn’t get rid of her bias that “All men are sexist.” That is until she realized that her belief grew out of only three bad experiences in her long career. Once she figured that out, she was able to see men as individuals, not as reflections of her painful past. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION How can I test the validity and accuracy of my biases? Lynn remembers it clearly (sort of). It happened many, many times (but she can't exactly remember when). (Almost) every time she was teamed with one of "them," they were so lazy she had to do all the work (mostly). Besides, she heard from her friend that the ones he worked with were that way, too. Vague memories, questionable experiences, rumors—not exactly what I would call reliable sources of information. Lynn obviously needs to undergo the next step in the Vision Renewal Process. She, like most of us, must dissect her biases to show how unreliable they are. Although Chapter 6: Step Four: Dissect Your Biases The InquisitionQuestion 1: Where did you learn each bias and under what circumstances? For the sake of illustration, let's pick a bias that I held for many years: "Black men whom I don't know are apt to be dangerous in some way." To answer the question of where I learned this prejudice, I have to look at three possible sources: Parents: My parents were, as I mentioned earlier, ambivalent racists. As a result of having lived with a mix of experiences and cultural messages, they were left precariously balanced between the mores of 1930s white America and 1960s semienlightenment. They were, therefore, in some ways wise and in other ways ignorant. Unfortunately, just enough 1930s attitude remained in them to negatively influence my thinking. Media: There is no need to belabor this point; we all know how much the media enjoys depicting black men as threatening creatures of the night. Experience: This is where it gets tricky. We looked at this subject a bit in Chapter 2 ("Carefully Taught: H Glad to Make Your Acquaintance Personal Contact There is a story floating around that may be apocryphal, but like most good fiction, it is well designed to make its point. Supposedly, some children were asked this question: Who is better, the kids in your town or the children in the neighboring village? "The kids in our town" was the speedy reply. When asked why they felt this way, the children answered, "It's because I don't know those other kids." The point of this anecdote is that the more experience we have with a group, the more apt those experiences are to be broad and thus the less apt we are to develop a bias against them. Another reason that exposure, if it is broad enough and positive enough, diffuses bias is that the more exposure we have to a group, the more knowledge we acquire, and, therefore, the less afraid we will be. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: "Knowledge is the antidote to fear." [2] Singer Buchanan, currently EEO Commissioner for the State of Kentucky, provided me wit Chapter Summary By looking at each of our biases logically, we weaken its power to interfere with our accurate perceptions of others. We can do this in several ways: Question the source of the bias; question the experience that caused the bias; assess how many times we actually have encountered people who conform to the bias along with any experiences with people who do not; and gain more exposure to and knowledge of diverse groups. Experiences that spawn biases can be distorted by many things, including the emotions and expectations that we bring to the interaction. Exploration Point Describe the average welfare recipient. What percentage of Latinos living in the United States think that new immigrants should learn English? What percentage of women think appearance is a very important consideration when purchasing a car? With which emerging group do white people feel they have the most in common? Black Americans? Asian-Americans? Latinos? People of Arab ancestry? Let's see how you did Chapter Summary Chapter 7: Step Five: Identify Common Kinship Groups Overview Tom who is white and Mai who is Asian didn’t realize how much they had in common until discovering that they both knew what it was like to feel out of place because of the color of their skin. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION How can I redefine my kinship groups to minimize my biases against people I perceive as different from myself? Even she was amazed as she watched herself reach out and sweep the contents off the top of the secretary's desk. College-educated, bright, usually reserved, Alice had been hired over the phone for a long-sought-after position. A common tale, you've heard it or lived it before. She showed up at the office only to see the receptionist's face turn white and watch as she scurried away into a nearby office. The receptionist returned a few minutes later accompanied in her wake by the sound of a door slamming and the strains of her boss's voice yelling, "Get her out of here, how could you be so stupid? You know Chapter 7: Step Five: Identify Common Kinship Groups How Sharing a Kinship Group Reduces BiasAs we saw in the Introduction, a kinship group is "any population that shares a self-ascribed or externally ascribed characteristic that sets it apart from others." This characteristic might be a disability, race, gender, age, or any other of dozens of human dimensions. The virtue in the concept of kinship group is that it allows each of us to belong to many groups at once depending on the characteristic on which we focus. It also—and this is the best part—enables us to broaden our group to include many populations that we previously thought of as different from ourselves. One of the many advantages of sharing a kinship group is that: Once you identify yourself with a particular population, members of that group are transformed in your mind from "them" to "us." When this happens, we automatically begin to evaluate members of that group more fairly. This is because human beings have a tendency to give their own "kind" a break. When members of the Acknowledge a Shared "Race"As a symbol and reminder of how groundless all this separation is and how easy it should be to identify shared kinship groups, let's pick apart the myth of race and ask the question: How did this notion of racial weness and theyness get started anyway? According to Margaret Mead, it was the boats that messed us up. If only we had spent thousands of years walking from Africa around the world, Meade laments, the gradation in skin color would be so gradual and so slight that no one could possibly start all this silly business about race. [3] But the boat did get invented and the myth of race that anthropologist Ashley Montagu, in Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race, called "the witchcraft of our time" got invented along with it. Even though there are more genetic differences within so-called racial groups than between them, we still choose to use this imagined thing called race as an excuse for bias and myriad other ills. Originally concocted by scien Acknowledge Shared EmotionActing coach Constantin Stanislavsky and Sigmund Freud shared the same rough category of race, but they also had something more real in common: both men were preoccupied with the notion of empathy. Freud, when talking about empathy, used the word einfuhlen, which means to "find one's way into another's state of mind," or as some have translated it, the "feeling in" process. Stanislavsky's version of "feeling in" and empathy was an acting technique he called the "Magic If" by which actors better understood and got under the skin of their characters. Actors who use Stanislavsky's technique ask themselves how they would act "if" they had their character's life experience. The odds that an actor would have actually lived the life of Willy Loman or Stanley Kowalski, for example, are so remote that the only way for him to answer that question is to identify experiences of his own that approximate those of the character. The Magic If thus allows one human being to en Look for a Shared Work EthicAs important as it is, empathy and the Magic If is only one way in which we can identify a shared kinship group. Another is to look for values on which we can agree and that, therefore, can become the defining features of new and shared kinship groups. The point in this chapter is not to delineate all the values that can be shared—those are for you to discover. What I want to accomplish here is to illustrate one value that if identified and voiced, can create a shared identity around a common point of view. Because this book is about the workplace, I have chosen to focus on what is commonly referred to as the work ethic. This section is designed to remind us that a work ethic, like so many potentially unifying values, is by no means the exclusive monopoly of native-born Americans; it is a value and, therefore, a kinship group category, that we all can share. None of my contributors said it or lived it better than Zhao Lin Chen. Mr. Chen came to America a sca Create a Shared GoalHave you ever been stuck in an elevator? (This one scares me as much as public speaking scares you.) I wager that when this happened, you and your fellow prisoners abandoned all pretense of conventional elevator etiquette: You no longer stood erect, stared forward, looked neither to the left nor right, and, certainly, no longer pretended that you were alone. Also, once the reality set in that the elevator was malfunctioning, any fine distinctions about who belonged to what demographic category instantly dissolved; you were now all members of a newly created kinship group. This particular kinship group was composed of people who had in common the stark terror of being trapped in a small space, being out of control, and possessing no knowledge of when or how the adventure would end. The group also had a shared goal: Get out of there and the sooner the better. Of course a kinship group born of a temporary experience like being trapped in an elevator has a short life sp Identify a Shared HumanityIn recent years, I undertook a task that has taught me more about the humanity we share than any other experience of my life. I have begun raising puppies for an organization called Canine Companions for Independence; one of these dogs, a black Labrador named Jazz, is warming my toes as I type these words. The idea is that we raise and train the puppy, give it back for advanced training, and then, if all goes well, eventually have the honor of seeing it placed as an assistance dog to a person with a disability. This process of raising a puppy is obviously filled with rich emotional experiences, many of which are found in connection with the diversity of people that the dog attracts. For example, as I walk into a restaurant or through a mall or into a movie theater with a puppy named Bliss—a yellow Labrador-Golden Retriever mix festooned in her blue and yellow CCI cape—people of all descriptions approach me to ask about the dog or to beg the favor of a short se Chapter Summary One way to diminish bias is to broaden and multiply the number of kinship groups to which we feel we belong. In this way, we create "in-group" connections to people whom we previously thought of as very different from ourselves and thus minimize our biases against them. We can expand our notion of racial kinship groups by recognizing that, although a very real societal construct, the notion of race has no physiological foundation. One key strategy for identifying common kinship groups is to empathize with the emotions and experiences of those who are otherwise very different from ourselves. This common feeling, even if it is to a different degree, automatically creates a connection that reduces our biases. Most populations in the workplace already share a kinship group defined by the value of hard work. This is a connection, and a kinship group, that can be particularly valuable when seeking to build diverse work teams. The creation or recognition of common goals is ano Chapter Summary Chapter 8: Step Six: Shove Your Biases Aside Overview Jill almost didn’t hire Lance because he was over 50 and she figured he couldn’t do the job. Luckily, she shoved her bias that older people are uncreative aside and hired one of the most innovative professionals her department had ever seen. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION How can I move my biases out of the way so they no longer block and distort my view? Some years ago, I was strolling down a street in Los Angeles—nice part of town, broad daylight, lots of people around. I was also, and this is an important detail, a perfectly safe distance from the curb. As I walked, a car pulled up beside me, slowed down, and stopped. Just as I turned to look at the car, the driver lowered his head so I could see his face. The moment I saw that his skin was black, I jumped back. I then had one of those uncomfortable moments that make life so interesting when the man said, with great dignity and compassion, "That's OK, I understand." He then asked for dir Chapter 8: Step Six: Shove Your Biases Aside Chapter Summary Once we have laid the proper foundation, shoving our biases aside becomes a mechanical act of habit and will. The more we practice pushing our biases out of the way, the easier it becomes until, eventually, we do it automatically. Seeing people clearly has a cumulative effect. The more we are able to see people as individuals without the intervening distortion of our bias, the more evidence we will have that our bias is wrong. Chapter Summary Chapter 9: Step Seven: Beware the Bias Revival Overview No matter how hard she tried, Bess’s bias that people with accents are less intelligent kept popping back up. Finally, she decided to treat everyone as if they knew what they were doing. The result? Improved performance and a bias that once again went into remission. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION What do I do if my biased attitude returns and how can I keep that from happening? "When I turned again, Sherlock Holmes was standing smiling at me across my study table. I rose to my feet, stared at him for some seconds in utter amazement, and then fainted for the first and last time in my life." —Dr. Watson (via Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Empty House) Literature is filled with unexpected reappearances, some of them welcome, some terrifying. This quote, of course, refers to one of the good kinds: Sherlock Holmes's return from his alleged demise at the hands of the infamous Professor Moriarty. Dr. Watson is surprised, but he is gla Chapter 9: Step Seven: Beware the Bias Revival The Reluctant PatientThe primary reason biases return is that we don't really want them to go in the first place. Like a child who wants to stay home from school for just one more day, there are lots of reasons why we might not want to recover from our bias. Maybe we don't want to betray or question the parents who planted the bias in the first place, perhaps we cling to the misbelief because it is like an old shoe that has molded itself into the shape of our thinking and is just too comfortable to take off. Most of all, we resist recovery because we are all a little bit in love with our biases. Biases are our buddies. As we saw in Chapter 4, bias like most bad habits, has its perks. When we drink too much, we feel high. Chocolate tastes good. Smoking calms us down. When we give up those bad habits, let's be honest, we lose something. With bias, we lose, or think we lose, lots of things. Most of all, when we let go of a bias, we lose a false sense of security and enter the frightening Individual Encounters and Resuscitating EventsBiases come back to life, not only because we crave the benefits that we think they bring, but because of events that spark their revival. These resuscitating events fall into two categories: Encounters with individuals who conform to the content of our bias External events involving the objects of our bias Individuals Who Conform to Our Biases Nothing can resurrect a bias faster than encountering several people who actually conform to what we believe. This happens because biases come from somewhere; someone at some time must have had the characteristics that we turn into biases or this whole bias business never would have began in the first place. When you find yourself confronted with someone who confirms your bias and you can hear your old nemesis knocking at the door, try this: Remind yourself that any one encounter or incident applies only to the specific individuals involved. Go back through other experiences with the group in questio Fake it Till You Make ItSometimes, let's face it, a bias can be so deeply rooted, so firmly attached, that we just can't get rid of it, or every time we think it's gone, it comes wandering back like an unwanted houseguest. In that unlikely event, there is still hope: Act as if you don't have the bias. Aristotle was a fan of this approach. He knew that attitude follows behavior and with respect to bias he would no doubt have supported the modern dictum: Fake it till you make it. Psychologist Daryl Bem put it another way: "Saying and doing becomes believing." [1] The psychological truism that underpins this statement is that most of us can't stand doing something that does not conform to what we really feel. This disconnect between action and feeling is called cognitive dissonance. Because cognitive dissonance is so unpleasant, something has to give, and if we're stuck with the behavior, we are forced by our discomfort to change our attitude. The impact of cognitive dissonance is support Pass the BuckOne of the promises I made to myself when I started writing this book was to be realistic about bias. One of those realities is that at times you cannot succeed. Shards of past experience and tightly packed layers of fear combine to create a mass just too dense to dislodge. In cases like this, it is time to pass the buck. Rebecca, for example, admits that her eye still catches a glimmer of her childhood bias from time to time. Exploration Point What other behaviors might you adopt in the workplace to fake an attitude of acceptance and respect? Rebecca grew up, she recounts, in an environment so thick with bias against black people that it took her years to emerge from its influence and, she says reluctantly, "I'm still not quite there." Rebecca knows that if even one tiny fragment of her bias breaks off and floats to the surface, it could distort her ability to make appropriate management decisions. This is a risk Rebecca flat-out refuses to take. As a precaution, she is c Chapter Summary One way to minimize the return of biases is to understand why we are reluctant to let them go in the first place. This means to identify the benefits, as we did in Chapter 4, that we feel they bring into our lives. Biases can reappear when we encounter people who conform to the belief. When this happens, we need to remind ourselves that the characteristics of any one person are not necessarily typical of the entire group and that if our experience has been broad enough, we have had numerous encounters with individuals who do not share those traits. Biases can also reappear in response to dramatic public or workplace events like terrorist attacks or discrimination suits. It is the manager's job to make certain that these events are accurately and thoroughly portrayed. Because attitudes have a tendency to mimic behavior, biases that are difficult to dismiss can be weakened by behaving as if they don't exist: fake it till you make it. In the face of particularly stubborn b Chapter Summary Part Three: Gateway Events: Entering into Diversity Dialogue Chapter List Chapter 10: The Benefits of Diversity Dialogue Overview When Jane heard what her boss said about her, she was ready to sue for discrimination. Fortunately, she mentioned the rumor to him before taking action and discovered that he had been badly misunderstood. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION How does talking about diversity help reduce bias? When in recent memory has dialogue about bias been given a better forum than during the O.J. Simpson trial and when in recent memory has an opportunity so brimming with potential been ignored? As it turned out, the trial and its atmosphere were more stifling to conversation than even the most virulent forms of political correctness. The O.J. trial invaded neighborhoods and workplaces like the proverbial elephant. This particular elephant stood swaying in the middle of thousands of dining and meeting rooms, but no one, despite the permeating stench, would acknowledge that the beast was there. Every sound bite, every video clip, offered another opportunity to Chapter 10: The Benefits of Diversity Dialogue Benefit: Increased Knowledge and UnderstandingHere are the stories of two very different women. One was willing to risk diffusing a bias and thus succeeded in moving the cause of diversity forward. The other allowed her fear of confrontation to seduce her into passing up an opportunity for understanding that would probably never come again. The woman who was willing to walk bravely through her own personal gateway event was Deborah, a restaurateur in San Diego, California: Some years ago, I had an unfortunate relationship with a food-and-beverage manager to whom I reported. After being on the job for only a few weeks, he upped my hours, increased my workload, and began to make comments under his breath like "Female executive chef ... what a joke!" To make matters worse, he was uncomfortable with the fact that I was gay. He even told a coworker that he was determined to "drive out the female chef." I tried to talk to him, to get a good relationship going, but he just wouldn't listen. Th Benefit: Rumor ReductionRumor, I'm sure you would agree, is the bane of the manager's life, and few subjects are as ripe for the rumor mill as diversity and the kinds of misunderstandings human difference can produce. We have all heard or been the victims of rumors like: "Have you heard that the CEO decided to let all the Muslims take off an hour early every day so they can go home to pray?" or "There's no doubt about it, they brought in that new vice president just because she's black, they are just trying to be politically correct" or "The only reason I can figure that Bob gave Joe that promotion is because they are both gay. I'll bet they have a thing going." Unsubstantiated rumors like these play as big a role in perpetuating bias as real incidents that can at least be pinned down and, therefore, dealt with. Harvey, for example, was mangled in the rumor mill and would never have known it had his alleged victim not had one drink too many at a company reception. Bolstered by the cour Benefit: The Stifled Spread of BiasAs we saw elsewhere, bias is contagious. A perfect upbringing can inoculate against infection, but unfortunately, that strain of vaccine is in perilously short supply. Because of the shortfall of perfect upbringings, we need to face up to this fact: The responsibility for stifling the spread of bias rests on each of us and our main method for achieving this goal is conversation. There are many ways to talk about how this works, but you can't beat good old Pavlov and those dogs for giving us a clear explanation. You may remember from high school that Pavlov's goal was to condition his dogs to salivate even in the absence of anything to salivate about. He created this reaction by setting off a buzzer and simultaneously giving the dogs meat powder. The meat powder, of course, made the dogs salivate. After a while, they would salivate when the buzzer went off even if the yummy powder failed to appear. If too much time went by without the powder being offe Chapter Summary Dialogue in the face of gateway events is one of the most effective tools for reducing bias. Open and honest conversation reduces bias by increasing mutual knowledge and understanding, minimizing and clarifying diversity-related rumors, and creating an atmosphere in which biased attitudes are unable to thrive. Chapter Summary Chapter 11: Getting Diversity Fit Overview When the man in the wheelchair accused her of bias against him, the woman froze. What could she do? She knew he was wrong, but was too diversity unfit to know how to respond. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION How can I be prepared for a gateway event when it comes my way? He couldn't call it anything other than an ambush or, if your taste runs to the medical, a "sudden onset" gateway event. It was early on a Monday morning and Jock was rushing to the weekly management meeting. Just as he rounded a corner he practically collided with two of his supervisors who were embroiled in a heated disagreement. As best he could figure it out, one of the combatants had offended the other with a comment about the new female sales associate. Knowing it was his job to do something, Jock stopped around the next turn, thought for a moment, then, as if he had come to some kind of a decision, moved on down the hall; after all, he couldn't be late for his meeting. "I just co Chapter 11: Getting Diversity Fit Conclusion: Preparing for the Next Step Exploration Point Before launching into the skills necessary to conduct good conversations when faced with gateway events, it is helpful to look back at how you have performed in the past. By answering these questions, you will have an idea of what your strong and weak points are and can thus better target your effort. Think of one time when you had the opportunity to engage in a dialogue about bias but chose to walk away. Why did you hesitate? Think of one conversation about bias in which you did participate but were not successful. What makes you think it was unsuccessful and what do you think you or the other parties did wrong? Think of one incident in which you had a conversation following a gateway event that you consider successful. Why do you define the dialogue as successful? What were the elements in the conversation that made it work? Chapter Summary In order to participate successfully in gateway events, we need to name the fear that prevents us from dialoguing effectively. Fear not only makes us reluctant to talk about bias but also prevents us from thinking clearly, interpreting accurately what is going on, and focusing fully on the other participants in the conversation. The specific fears that accompany gateway events include fear of intimacy, fear of having our biases revealed, fear of either our or the other person's anger, or fear of being judged as excessively serious or "uptight." Chapter Summary Chapter 12: Cognitive Skills for Diversity Dialogue Overview Despite the fact that the speaker was a strong supporter of diversity, when his talk was over, a woman raised her hand and accused him of bias because he used the word “guys.” What would you have done? CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION What cognitive skills do I need to carry on effective dialogue about a gateway event? Do any of these situations seem familiar? You are a CEO who just gave an important speech regarding the goals for the next quarter. As you walk off the stage, one of your direct reports says she is offended by your comment that the company's new product would give the customer a real "bang for the buck." What do you do? You are a Diversity Manager who is conducting a pilot training program. Part of the course content deals with cultural differences in attitudes toward punctuality. In an attempt to contrast Latino notions of time with those found in mainstream American culture, you refer to the latter as "normal" with the Chapter 12: Cognitive Skills for Diversity Dialogue Resist, Remember, RethinkResist, remember, rethink. These three Rs sum up what our initial reaction should be to any gateway event. Think of these as the diversity version of those first three Rs: Reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic. Resist Despite all the regulations that clearly state "two pieces per passenger," the people boarding after me were laden with packages and bags and so-called "carry-ons" that seemed too large to take on the Titanic much less onboard a SAAB 340B. I was absorbed in my reading, so I didn't see it coming: Bam! This huge dark green duffel bag swung around and hit me, hard, in the head. I looked up and with a scowl more appropriate to a deliberate attack than an act of clumsiness, struck back with an impatient, "Can't you be more careful?!" The woman who had lost control of the bag obviously had no intention of hitting me; nonetheless, my head hurt just as much as if it had been a carefully aimed assault and my response was just as churlish. My defensive reaction Identify Your GoalsHow a gateway event resolves itself is predicated only in part on the details of the initial action. The ultimate outcome is also influenced by the sequence of decisions that follow. The atrocity of September 11 was arguably the largest gateway event in U.S. history. The flash points on that event, however, lay not only in the attack itself but in each subsequent reaction to it. In short, each swing of the gate following an event provides another opportunity to make good or bad choices and to set good or bad goals. One such choice following September 11 was the sending of an angry e-mail to an Islamic Web site. That e-mail read: "Go back to your beautiful land of sand and pig dirt, and take your HATE with you." Not so good so far: a brutal attack (gateway event) followed by a response that had the potential to make matters worse. Fortunately, the recipient of that e-mail, Mohammed Abdul Aleem, possessed the courage and goodness to react with compassion and kind words Recognize a Common Enemy It was the night of the Los Angeles riots, April 1992. I lived in San Diego but was vividly aware of the chaos that reigned 135 miles up the coast. Between phone calls from frenzied relatives and lurid television coverage, it seemed that my childhood home-town had turned into an inferno of hatred and violence. Finally, it all got to be too much so my husband and I decided to drive down to the local mall in a futile effort to escape reality. The mall was deserted except for a few other couples who, like us, were ambling from shopwindow to shopwindow. I recall one couple in particular. The only reason I remember them is the color of their skin and that color was black. As we passed within a few feet of each other, I swear there was unspoken communication between us. My silent contribution to the conversation were questions like: "Do you think I'm racist because I'm white?" "Are you angry with me too?" "Do you think I'm afraid of you?" Their questions were: "Do yo Recognize Mutual ContributionsEvery gateway event is a collaborative effort. One of the parties might hold the moral high ground and be more right than the other, but both people, by virtue of the fact that they were present, must in some way have contributed to the friction. Notice that I say "contributed"; this has nothing to do with blame, guilt, or innocence, or with who should be rightfully punished. If I leave my purse on the front porch and someone takes it, I am certainly not to blame, but my absentmindedness was a contributing factor to the fact that the bag was stolen. Here is an example of how two people contributed to a gateway event that might have turned ugly and expensive. It started when Nonna accused Rachel, her manager, of bias against her and the other Russian immigrants in the department. When Rachel heard the accusation, she was initially shocked. After talking to Nonna, however, she realized that they shared equal responsibility for the negative feelings between t Build on the Pyramid Principle It was February of 1999 when I sat in my hotel room in Cairo, feet up on the sill, whiskey glass in hand, gazing out the window at one of the most amazing sights on the planet: the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Looming in the mist, it seemed grander and more elegant than its likeness in even the most touched-up travel photograph. I wasn't thinking much about bias reduction on that romantic night, but the image of the pyramid stayed with me and laid the foundation for what I call the Pyramid Strategy for succeeding at gateway conversations. This strategy is informed by what any architect knows about building: whether it is constructing the Pyramid of Cheops or Blenheim Palace or the Vatican or the Great Wall of China, the only way to proceed is one stone at a time. When it comes to conversations about bias, this means we need to adopt the motto: "Think small." Often in the heat of a gateway event, we become overloaded by the scope of the issue and the intensity Chapter Summary It is important to collect our thoughts and feelings before proceeding with a gateway conversation. In this way, we maximize the likelihood of accurately assessing the dynamics of the situation and, therefore, of proceeding appropriately. Setting goals before entering into a gateway event increases the chances of achieving a positive outcome. Within every gateway event, both parties share the common enemy of bias. Bias permeates our culture and affects us all in different ways. Gateway conversations are more apt to end successfully if we recognize the contributions of all participants. Gateway events are best resolved by breaking them into small units that can be resolved in easily achievable stages. Chapter Summary Chapter 13: Verbal Skills for Diversity Dialogue Overview Charmaine was ready to sue. She was certain she had lost the promotion because she was gay. She was certain, that is, until her boss showed his respect for her by really listening to what she had to say. CHAPTER FOCUS QUESTION What verbal skills do I need to carry on effective dialogue about a gateway event? PeeWee Reese, captain of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s and 1950s, knew nothing about the rules of political correctness the day he faced an angry crowd on a baseball field in Louisville, Kentucky. Despite his lack of sophistication and his being a child of his times, PeeWee's language was one of highest respect and compassion. As taunts of "Jungle Bunny" and "Snowflake" hurled down on Jackie Robinson, PeeWee quietly walked from his position at short-stop and put an arm around Jackie's shoulder. PeeWee, a slight man, a white man, and a Southerner, said not one word. His elegant gesture permeated and diluted the climate of Chapter 13: Verbal Skills for Diversity Dialogue Employ Verbal and Vocal ModulationThe communication principle that PeeWee understood more than any other is the importance of modulation. In radio, modulation means to adjust the phase, frequency, or amplitude of a transmission to a level that will most successfully carry the broadcast. In human communication, and no more than in the emotionally charged context of gateway events, modulation means to lower our verbal and vocal volume to ensure that our message is heard. My father, who was an actor, taught me something important about the presentation of dialogue, ideas, or accusations: Lower your voice. By softening our ideological and physical voices to a whisper, we allow, and even tempt, the listener to crane forward to hear, and more readily understand, what this mysterious and barely audible message is all about. As my father used to say, "A whisper is more tantalizing and a lot more interesting than a shout." While loud and harsh utterances cause most of us to retreat behind a sou Avoid Dogmatic LanguageAnother language choice that can interfere with our conversational goals is the use of dogmatic or absolute statements. Have you ever been in a discussion in which one person rebuts an argument with, "Well, that's the law" or "It's in the Bible" or "That's what I was taught"? End of conversation and, most important, end of learning. Of course, we have every right to believe in the law or the Bible or in what our parents taught us. What we don't have is the right to use these beliefs as devices to stop the dialogue. Slamming the ideological lid on a topic might make us feel righteous and safe, but it is also an excellent way to defeat our goals of sustaining productive conversation, getting to know each other better, and pounding another nail into the coffin of bias. It is when someone has accused us of a biased attitude that we are most tempted to make dogmatic statements. Particularly if we haven't gotten ourselves diversity fit, we are apt to buckle at the knee Maintain a High Standard Like dogmatic statements, sinking to the other person's level may seem like a good idea at the time, but it will always turn out to be a mistake. Helen is a good example of how a nice person can be sucked into the verbal mire by the bias around her: Helen, who worked in a male-dominated manufacturing environment, had had enough. Day after day, week after week, she was exposed to a litany of comments such as "It must be that time of the month" or "She must not be getting enough." One day at a departmental meeting, Helen's male supervisor blew his top over a proposed change in procedures. Helen decided to seize the opportunity to help her boss understand how women feel when their emotions are dismissed as hormonal hallucinations and responded by saying, "You know, Jack, you're getting awfully emotional. I guess it must be that time of the month." This approach might have been mildly amusing if Helen and Jack had been two friends kibitzing at a dinner party or a f Strive for Creative CommunicationUsing respectful language is important, but it also needs to be language to which the other person can relate. An analogy, for example, is a great tool for helping someone grasp, and even agree with, your point of view. I learned this technique during a mild gateway event involving my husband and myself. It happened when I realized that Tom was failing to grasp why having the confederate flag flying over the South Carolina courthouse was upsetting to some black Americans. He just couldn't get it. He kept coming back at me with arguments like "But the flag symbolizes more than just slavery," "It was so long ago," and "It doesn't mean that anymore." Finally, I realized I needed to talk about this issue in terms that connected to his own kinship group. I decided to exploit the fact that Tom is three-quarters Swedish. Here's my side of the conversation: Tom, assume for the moment that the Swedes were enslaved by the Norwegians until the middle of the 19th c Really ListenBooker Izell, currently vice president of diversity at the Atlanta Journal, has much to teach us about the verbal side of dialoguing about diversity and the power that such dialogue has in reducing bias. Booker travels a great deal and one day he had the misfortune—or at least it initially looked like a misfortune—to sit next to a deeply biased man on the airplane: The man was upset by an article he had just read about crime in the black community and said something to Booker about blacks acting like animals. Sensing a gateway event in the offing and keeping his cool, Booker responded with, "You do know I'm black, don't you?" Undeterred and remarkably unembarrassed, his seatmate responded with, "Oh, you're OK, but I think we should send the bad ones back to Africa." The man was talking so loudly that the flight attendant became concerned and offered Booker another seat. Much to her surprise, and certainly to the surprise of Booker's seatmate, he refused the attendant's off Conclusion: Living Anywhere We WantObviously, Tony and Dennis didn't need any of the techniques discussed in these last two chapters. Good conversation came naturally to them. It has been 50 years since that first encounter in college and they are still friends. Dennis, in fact, writes Tony often and teases him with the question, "Are you living next to any white people yet, Tony?" Politically correct? Of course not. Friends? Absolutely. Tony's answer, by the way, to Dennis's 50-year-old question, "Why do you want to be with whites anyway?" was, "It's not that I necessarily want to be with white people, I just want to get an education so I can live anywhere I want." Chapter Summary Lowering the "volume" of both tone and words increases interest in what we have to say, maximizes credibility, and minimizes resistance to our message. It is tempting to make absolute or dogmatic statements in the heat of a gateway event. Although we all have the right to believe as we do, such statements only serve to shut down conversation and create defensiveness. One of the biggest mistakes we can make when talking about diversity is to respond in kind when someone speaks to us with disrespect. Always maintain high standards of communication. Not every person we converse with shares our values or life history. When attempting to get your message across, use metaphors, analogies, and similes to address that individual in a way they can most readily understand. Listening attentively and openly is perhaps the single most important aspect of dialoguing about diversity. Chapter Summary Conclusion: Moment of Truth Each morning—well, most mornings—I roll out of bed and stagger into a room in my house that is variously called "the meditation room," "Little Man's room" (that's my grandson, Aiden), or, in homage to my stepdaughter who once slept there, "Krista's room." I call the dog, plop myself on the floor in an awkward and painfully unnatural cross-legged sit, ring the meditation bell, and begin to do battle with my mind. That's where the dog comes in, her rhythmic breathing and inspiring ability to take life as it comes serve as a constant, if at times noisy, reminder of what I am trying to accomplish. Last week, my mind and I were engaged in a particularly bloody skirmish when I had one of those forehead-slapping insights that escape notice when one is drowning in the minutia of life. In a flash I realized that the goal of these meditations—to take life one breath, one thought, one experience at a time—is as pertinent to reducing bias as it is to living a happier, m Part One: The Basics of Bias Part Two: The Vision Renewal Process Part Three: Gateway Events: Entering into Diversity Dialogue Endnotes Introduction 1. Patti Hanson, "Why Employees Leave: The Root Cause of Employee Departure," retrieved 10 January 2003 from <www.shrm.org>. 2. Kipp Cheng, "New Numbers Make the Case: Ethnic Spending Power Continues Rapid Rise," retrieved 10 January 2003 from <www.diversityinc.com>. 3. "Finally, the Truth: How Many Gay Americans Are There and What Will They Buy?," DiversityInc. (Nov./Dec. 2002), 65. 4. Edward E. Hubbard, "Measuring Diversity Results Series—Article 1," Profiles in Diversity Journal (March/April 2002). 5. Bruce Jacobs, Race Manners (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1999), 50. Chapter One1. Joseph Ponterotti and Paul Pedersen, Preventing Prejudice (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1993), 52. 2. Nathaniel Branden, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem (New York: Bantam, 1994), 43. 3. Indra Lahiri, "Avoid Bloopers in Multicultural Marketing," Cultural Diversity at Work (May 1999). 4. San Diego Union-Tribune (15 July 1993). Chapter One Chapter Two1. Gordon Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1979), 9. 2. The Nature of Prejudice, 22. 3. Paul Wachtel, Race in the Mind of America (New York: Routledge, 1999), 109. 4. Jennifer James, Thinking in the Future Tense (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 155. 5. Daryl Bem, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Human Affairs (Belmont, California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1970), 43–44. 6. Beliefs, Attitudes, and Human Affairs, 27. Chapter Two Chapter Three1. Jim Adamson, The Denny's Story (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000), 66. Chapter Three Chapter Four1. Carl Hovland and Robert Sears, "Minor Studies of Aggression: Correlation of Lynchings With Economic Indices," Journal of Psychology (1940). Chapter Four Chapter Five1. David Shipler, "Seeing Through," The Washington Post (4 May 1997). Chapter Five Chapter Six1. Jennifer James, Thinking in the Future Tense: A Workout for the Mind (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 220. 2. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Society of Solitude," Courage (1870). 3. Population Reference Bureau, 1996. 4. Latino National Political Survey, 1992. 5. "Taking America's Pulse: The National Conference Survey on Inter-Group Relations," The National Conference (n.d.), 10. Chapter Six Chapter Seven 1. Paul Wachtel, Race in the Mind of America (New York: Routledge, 1999), 134. 2. John Dovidio, "The Subtlety of Racism," Training and Development (April 1993), 51–57. 3. James Baldwin and Margaret Mead, A Rap on Race (New York: Del Publishing, 1971), 25–26. 4. Tom Morganthau, "What Color is Black?," Newsweek (13 February 1995), 68. 5. Paul R. Ehrlich, Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2000), 49. 6. Robert Lee Hotz, "Is Concept of Race a Relic," Los Angeles Times (15 April 1995). 7. Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect, 8. 8. Rosie Mestel, "Tiny Disparities in Human Genes Go a Long Way, Studies Find," Los Angeles Times (12 February 2001). 9. Sharon Begley, "Three is Not Enough," Newsweek (13 February 1995). 10. Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), 107–108. 11. George Harris, Dignity and Vulnerability: Strength and Quality of Character (Berkeley: Univ Chapter Seven Chapter Nine1. Daryl J. Bem, Beliefs, Attitudes and Human Affairs (Belmont, California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1970), 54. 2. Beliefs, Attitudes and Human Affairs, 55ff. 3. Jennifer James, Thinking in the Future Tense: A Workout for the Mind (New York: Touchstone, 1997), 78–79. Chapter Nine Part Three1. Bruce Jacobs, Race Manners: Navigating the Minefield Between Black and White Americans (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1999), 1. 2. Race Manners, 155. Part Three Chapter Eleven1. Bruce Jacobs, Race Manners (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1999), 11. Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve1. Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 46–50. 2. Solomon Moore, "Expressions of Support Surprising to Muslims," Los Angeles Times (26 September 2001). 3. Roosevelt Thomas, Building a House for Diversity (New York: AMACOM, 1999), 61. Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen1. Roger Kahn, "A Tribute to Captain Courageous," Los Angeles Times (19 August 1999). 2. Paul Wachtel, Race in the Mind of America (New York: Routledge, 1999), 37. 3. Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, Sheila Heen, Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 13. Chapter Thirteen Chapter 1: Bias Defined and Misdefined Chapter 2: Carefully Taught: How Bias is Learned Chapter 3: Step One: Become Mindful of Your Biases Chapter 4: Step Two: Identify the Alleged Benefits of Your Biases Chapter 5: Step Three: Put Your Biases Through Triage Chapter 6: Step Four: Dissect Your Biases Chapter 7: Step Five: Identify Common Kinship Groups Chapter 9: Step Seven: Beware the Bias Revival Chapter 11: Getting Diversity Fit Chapter 12: Cognitive Skills for Diversity Dialogue Chapter 13: Verbal Skills for Diversity Dialogue
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