Because bias is a leader's Achilles' heel.
Unconscious Bias Workshops
FOR MANAGERS AND RECRUITERS
Understanding what implicit bias is and how it impacts our decisions is key to fostering more inclusive and intercultural workplaces, practices and leadership.
Bias is personal, cultural and institutional.
Most often it is invisible to those who have it. The reality is that we all have bias, and our unconscious is more powerful than you think. The good news is that you can train your unconscious and there are simple ways of mitigating implicit bias.
This workshop focuses on the implicit attitudes or stereotypes that shape how we engage others and make decisions in the workplace.
The session provides an understanding of how bias is formed in our unconscious, and specifically focuses on three kinds of unconscious bias in the workplace:
- Affinity bias;
- Confirmation bias; and
- Social comparison bias.
Using the Harvard Implicit Association Tests, the workshops facilitates a self-examination of a variety biases that influence how we interact and behave around various groups of people.
+ See a Sample of Full-Day Diversity & Inclusion Training for how Unconscious Bias fits with other related content.
Dovetailing the intercultural skills workshop on cultural bias, the unconscious bias workshop examines how implicit attitudes and stereotypes result in subtle forms of prejudice and undermine managers' effectiveness in fostering inclusion and recruiting diversity.
Most importantly, this session looks at the research and proven methods of disrupting and counteracting bias:
- On a personal level;
- For a board or committee;
- At an organizational level; and
- In workforce recruitment.
This session also provides an introduction to institutional bias: the ways that an organization's systems, policies or institutional habits prevent and, in some cases, filter out the diversity that many organizations are aiming to recruit or advance into leadership roles.
Unconscious bias training is key to fostering inclusive board practices and developing inclusive leadership, prior to or concurrent to efforts to recruit diversity.
Clients who have recently taken this training (as part of a full-day of board development) include:
Using examples, stories and research, this workshop aims to empower attendees to:
- Define unconscious bias;
- Identify the impact of unconscious bias in the workplace;
- Identify and use strategies for disrupting or reducing unconscious bias.
What if we don't have budget?
Not having adequate budget to tackle bias is no longer an excuse. Below are recommended resources that don't require a D&I budget:
- Look at Google's employee presentation on how to spot unconscious bias at work
- Watch: Facebook's training on Managing Unconscious Bias
- Take: Harvard Implicit Association Tests
- Read: Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji
- Read: Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives by Howard J. Ross
- Listen to: How To Fight Racial Bias When It's Silent And Subtle by NPR