How to Build Your Business Bias-Free

By Sondra Thiederman, Ph.D.

Lisa said to her business partner, “I really want to do business with the Korean community, but they won’t look me in the eye. Why are all Koreans so unfriendly?”

Bess has had, as she puts it, a “thing” about people who don’t express themselves up to her standard. Whether it is that English is their second language or they lack education, as soon as she hears them speak, her mind is filled with negative judgments such as “unintelligent” or “will never be able to do the job.”

It was important that Ellen hire the best I.T. person for the job. After interviewing several top candidates, she finally said, “They are all qualified – but I think I’ll go with Tran, everybody knows that Asians are better with computers than any one else.”

What do Lisa, Bess, and Ellen have in common? For one thing, they are nice women, competent, professional, and ever-determined to do the right thing. They are also, like so many of us, each a holder of a bias – an “inflexible belief about a particular category of people.”

They have one more thing in common as well. Each of them is in danger of having her business damaged because of a belief that distorts her ability to make successful leadership decisions.  Fortunately for them, and for the rest of us who struggle with our own biased attitudes, there are steps we can take that are effective at diffusing all but the most virulent of biases.

Step I: Become aware of your bias. All biases, even the most sub-conscious ones, periodically toss up a clue to their presence in the form of a thought. These thoughts are knee-jerk assumptions about the character of someone different from ourselves. Your task is to make a mental note of this first assumption, an assumption that just might be a whiff of  smoke drifting up from an as yet un-identified bias. Once we notice the bias, we can name it and will then have the power to target it for extinction.

Step II: Dissect your bias to reveal its weak foundation. Ask yourself  this question: Was the original source of my bias reliable? In most cases, the answer will be “no.” You might, for example, discover that your bias was spawned by the repeated messages of a frightened parent, from rumor, or from a media that loves to distort the truth. Even if it did grow from actual experience, you will be surprised at how unreliable that experience can be. This is because what experience teaches us about an individual or a group can be grossly distorted by the presence of intense emotion, the trickery of self-fulfilling prophecy, or the filter of expectation.

Step III: Pretend you don’t have the bias. Aristotle was fond of the third step in bias reduction. Although he might not have put it this way, basically he would have agreed with the modern dictum, “Fake it till you make it.” He knew, and modern psychologists would agree, that attitude follows behavior and that acting as if you don’t have a particular attitude is a powerful tool for defeating bias. 
 
What happens when you consciously decided to take actions that do not conform to your inflexible belief? The bias begins to fade. It fades because it can’t survive the onslaught of positive and varied information that the new behaviors cause to come your way. The better you treat people, the better they respond; the better they respond, the more positive your experience; the more positive your experience, the better you feel about a group whom you had previously dismissed.  “Fake it till you make it” – it works.

Sondra Thiederman is a speaker and author on bias-reduction, diversity, and cross-cultural issues. Her latest book is Making Diversity Work: Seven Steps for Defeating Bias in the Workplace (New York: Kaplan Publishing, Revised second edition, 2008) which provides practical tools for defeating bias and bias-related conflicts in the workplace. She can be contacted at: www.Thiederman.com.