5 Tips on Navigating Unconscious Bias in Leadership Roles

Very early in my first career, as a software and hardware technical writer, I was required to write a solutions white paper with an Iranian software architect. His English was extremely poor and I recall thinking snarkily in the first five minutes of meeting him, “Who gave him this job? How can he be smart when he barely speaks English?”

Dear Reader, I was young, naive, and raised in a country (India) where your smartness and intelligence and class were determined by speaking flawless and posh English. I was unconsciously biased.

At the end of the 45-min meeting, I realized he was brilliant and I would need to lip read to make sense of what he was saying. It was a stellar white paper, and a painful lesson for me. I have not fallen into that particular bias again.

Here’s the thing you need to know about unconscious bias. Because it can rear its head in the most innocuous of situations, it is important to be vigilant as you become a leader and build successful teams. Remember unconscious bias works both ways: you could be biased or you could face bias from team members.

In my first people manager role, I organized an amazing dinner for my large team. One of the men who reported to me commented after the dinner that women were really good at organizing this kind of stuff. I realized that the default pattern of the company was to always assign the organizing of social events to the women on the team (even if it was a woman doing the assigning.) This was an internalized bias at work. Some of the men were just as qualified (and even enthusiastic) to organize these activities— but they had never been asked. A gender bias lesson learned. Now, I rotate the responsibility of team events, and everyone gets a chance to demonstrate that a particular gender is not better at a specific activity.

Does awareness and vigilance mean you are never to be caught in the trap of unconscious bias? Not really. The pace of technology has empowered decentralized workforces with the mantra of work-from-anywhere-and-with-any-style. Team members can be located in any part of the world and cultural references are no longer solely from the U.S.

Decades on, I continue to actively work on my personal biases. This has become increasingly important as I head marketing at startups and hire a wide spectrum of people to build teams.

Age is another big factor where bias shows up. My teams consist of interns still in college, freshly minted college graduates, employees who do not have a four-year college degree, mid-level employees, and senior employees with decades of work experience. A funny example of being the recipient of unconscious bias is when I bring up the latest in social media tech in team meetings and the millennial's look visibly surprised.

Here are some of the ways I use to reduce my unconscious bias at work:

Here are some articles that explain the problem clearly and succinctly. (I already shared the Implicit Association Test above.)

Hope this was helpful!

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