Unconscious Bias, Workplace and Global progress

Why does it matter?

Introduction.

Conscious effort on raising awareness, challenging and managing unconscious bias is important from both a business perspective and global economy & progress perspective. This is so, especially now because we are a global village, with emerging phenomena such as increased migration, portable careers, fluid talent and inter connectedness made possible by technology. This will bring diverse people from diverse backgrounds with diverse knowledge, skill and abilities together, spurring unparalleled human interactions both formally and informally. These interactions give access to a pool of ideas, resources and talent, in turn presenting boundless opportunities for solutions to pressing human problems. The global village therefore presents huge opportunities and potential for progress where businesses, talent, customers and society will interact in a complex web of relationships (often laced with bias) in an ecosystem of cause and effect that results in more complexity. These potentially fruitful interactions can indeed be hindered by invincible walls of bias. Diversity and challenging unconscious bias will no longer be a ‘nice to have’ but a must have and will be a fundamental driver and enabler of human solutions and progress. Hence the need to raise awareness on unconscious bias, first by accepting that we are all biased, then accept that at least 90% of our decisions are biased (mostly irrational and not necessarily objective) and whose outcome directly impact self and others.

What is unconscious bias?

Unconscious bias are automatic associations that we use while making decisions about people, places or things. Unconscious bias is implicit and resides in our subconscious mind as opposed to commonly known conscious bias which is explicit, resides in our conscious mind and results in overt discrimination. Unconscious bias is more pervasive than conscious prejudice. Initially many people raised awareness on open discrimination and prejudice but we were unconscious of the biases that reside in the subconscious and their effects on diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI).

How is unconscious bias formed?

The conscious mind receives billion and billions of pieces of information through our 5 common senses (external stimulus) and the work of the subconscious mind is to store this information. For ease of storage and retrieval the subconscious mind will group and categorize these information on the basis of what this information means to the individual, the key word here is ‘mean’. Meaning is personal, not necessarily objective or reasonable. Meaning happens at the level of emotions, because when we form meaning we attach emotions to a fact and how that fact makes us feel, after stamping an emotion on a fact it becomes an experience and we store this experience in our subconscious mind to use it as a reference next time we come across the same fact or a similar fact. Therefore our subconscious minds associates certain emotions to the organized information stored by the mind and creates files of experiences which are permanent and form part of who we are and who we become. Experiences are largely emotional and the filters they form are called biases and because we are unconscious to them they are unconscious bias. Unconscious bias even shapes preferences on inanimate objects because of the previous experiences associated with the object or context in which the object appears, that’s what forms our preferences towards things, food, places, items etc.

These files allows us to form automatic associations of certain facts to people, places and things called stereotypes. Stereotypes become our reference for future sense and meaning making in regards to who we are, who others are and what our world is. They become our lenses of viewing and judging the world within and around us. They define our preferences, our default standard of quickly assessing stimulus or information coming at us, these standards or filter become stereotypes, preferences, and favourtism, determining how we respond and act towards others.

Humans create meaning and assumptions around experiences, based on our needs for survival and to protect or advance ourselves, to feel secure or safe or just be ‘happy’. We relate and analyze any incoming future stimulus/information against these stored ‘biased’ experiences, Over a period of time, slowly but surely, filters or lenses or ‘criteria’ for quickly relating, associating and grouping the incoming information emerge, they become adopted by us we model them to our children, friends, communities, organizations and others, soon they become the standard for a society, then a norm, then our culture from which we automatically refer and anchor all our behaviors and habits.