Don't Judge a Book by its Cover
Jasmine Gartner Consulting
Training & Advisory Consultancy, specialising in unconscious bias, diversity, equity & inclusion, and employee forums
Years ago, I ran a two-day training course. After dinner on the first night, a few people went to the bar for a drink and to watch the football. Most of us didn't stay too long - there was an early start the next day. But one young guy did - he was downing beers, and cheering on his team.
So, nobody was surprised when he rocked in, bleary-eyed, around two hours late the next morning.
But the HR Director went to check in on him at a break, and it turned out that he had had some terrible news early that morning about a family member, and we'd all read the situation wrong.
This is called deficit thinking - it's a bias we have where we see a behaviour as being the result of a flaw in the person rather than zooming out and looking more broadly to see what the situation is that may have caused the behaviour.
In my example, it was easily cleared up when the HRD spoke with the person. But with a lot of conflict at work, that assumption about who other people are goes unspoken and unresolved, whether it's about an individual or a group of people.
The first step is always to ask "is there anything about the situation that might be affecting how someone is behaving?" The second step is to think about how you might be able to remove any barriers or obstacles.
Do you have any examples of deficit thinking in your workplace and how you countered it? As always, I'm interested in your ideas.
#Training #Diversity #Equity #Inclusion #DEI #EmployeeReps
Extending Invitations to Experience and Engage with Who and What Matters to You
10 个月Yes, a million years ago we were in a circle of about 14 people going around introducing ourselves and letting people in the group know what we wanted. I was leading the group and was getting increasingly angry with this little beep I kept hearing yet it was impossible to localize exactly where it was coming from. As the leader, I was going last and I was really getting ready to let the insensitive person, whoever it was, know in no uncertain terms how thoughtless and inconsiderate they were. It was just about my turn when the last person before me introduced herself and as she was finishing said, "by the way, if any of you are hearing a tiny beep every few minutes, I am a severe diabetic and we are experiment with a new insulin injection device that I wear and the little beep let's me know that I am doing okay." Of course my brain turned the page on the judgemental book I was writing and I did an instant Monty Python and I said something completely different than I had intended.