The most important thing to learn from all this is that you are biased.
So am I and so is the rest of the human race, no exceptions.
Now neuroscience research is looking at bias and what it takes to disable it within an organization well beyond Google’s training approach, which may not do much good.
Unfortunately, there is very little evidence that educating people about biases does anything to reduce their influence. Human biases occur outside conscious awareness, and thus people are literally unaware of them as they occur. As an individual, you cannot consciously “watch out for biases,” because there will never be anything to see.
First, some basics; what is bias?
Biases are nonconscious drivers — cognitive quirks — that influence how people see the world. They appear to be universal in most of humanity, perhaps hardwired into the brain as part of our genetic or cultural heritage, and they exert their influence outside conscious awareness.
The great problem is that people can’t recognize bias until after the fact — if at all.
If you are highly self-aware you can train yourself to know areas in which you are biased based on historical perspective, which, hopefully, will send up warning flags when you face a similar situation.
But the best solution involves a team effort, whether at work, home or during other pursuits.
How then can the negative effects of bias be overcome? Collectively. Organizations and teams can become aware of bias in ways that individuals cannot. Team-based practices can be redesigned to help identify biases as they emerge, and counteract them on the fly, thus mitigating their effect.
Bias is real and it’s not going to go away because it violates what we want to believe about ourselves.
I highly recommend this article, not just for you, but to share with the various teams in your life.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
Following-up on yesterday’s post about the “attractiveness bias” I thought I’d share two other posts that will, hopefully, open your eyes and raise your awareness.
And just as the bias for attractiveness is anthropological, not biological, so are other biases.
Biases are fueled by assumptions, which are rarely logical—or conscious.
Google, along with most of tech, is rife with biases—both pro and con.
The idea of unconscious bias came to the attention of Google HR boss Laszlo Bock via a story in the New York Times about the biases among American university science professors regarding the difference in competency between female and male students (the women were ranked as less competent).
Unconscious bias, the sometimes useful tendency to make snap judgments (that subway car is empty for a reason), guides us into unexamined bigotry (she’s a woman, not a leader).
Google being Google they approached the situation using a combination of education—not just for executives and managers, but for everybody—
plus four specific steps to identify and deal with unconscious bias;
Gather facts.
Create a structure for making decisions.
Be mindful of subtle cues.
Foster awareness. Hold yourself — and your colleagues — accountable.
“If we have an employee base that reflects our user base, we are going to better understand the needs of people all over the world,” said Brian Welle, the researcher in charge of Google’s diversity training workshops. “Having people with a different worldview and different ways of solving problems gives you the raw materials to be more innovative and to be able to solve problems that nobody has asked before.”
A series of three studies reveals that investors prefer pitches from male entrepreneurs over those from female entrepreneurs, even when the content of the pitches is identical. Attractive men are the most persuasive pitchers of all, the studies show.
According to Gordon Patzer, author of The Power and Paradox of Physical Attractiveness,
“We are just hard wired to respond more favorably to attractive people. This is something anthropologically that has existed for as long as history exists.”
Anthropologically, not biologically.
Every living creature “responds more favorably” to attractiveness as defined by its species, but that isn’t the same as biological hardwiring.
Awareness of a prejudice allows you to put it in perspective and see past it.
But you have to want to.
I’ve always said that charm is the number one reason for bad hires, what I forget is that looks are the number one reason for missing good hires.
People would say things like, “Pretty girls don’t code,” or “I assumed you weren’t very good at coding because normally physical attractiveness and technical ability are inversely correlated.” It was a revelation to join the team at Pinterest and feel like I was treated like an engineer first, not as a female engineer. In most other places, I felt like people always treated me as a “female engineer,” like I was a novelty. People even called me a unicorn to my face. It was really nice to come here and not have that gender modifier in front of who I am. —Tracy Chou
But once she started working, she quickly got tired of having to explain her role at the tech companies she worked for to strangers who assumed she was in HR or community management. “Now, I tend to always preface with, ‘I work at Pinterest and I’m an engineer at Pinterest,'” (…) We have a lot of support from the company to put on events for women in engineering in particular, whether through logistics or funding.—Nadine Harik
The most exciting part for me is that I get to work on a product that I love and feel like I can actually make a big impact on what we do. It’s cool to be able to focus, and learn and grow as an engineer. —Jennifer Tsai
These comments reflect a culture friendly to women, but in a company that is certainly not dominated by them.
Looking at the Pinterest team picture you see a lot of chronologically young males, but based on the women’s comments the frat boy mentality isn’t what’s shaping the culture.
Nobody can quibble with the level of talent Pinterest has hired or the October 2013 valuation of $3.8 billion.
The point is that talented people of both genders will migrate to a place they feel both valued and comfortable.
Creating a culture that equally values women and men doubles the likelihood of finding, hiring and retaining top talent.
And it’s that talent that paves the road to success.
After James Knight, a dentist in Iowa, fired his assistant Melissa Nelson because he found her “irresistible” and a possible threat to his marriage, according to reports, her subsequent suit made it to the state’s all-male Supreme Court. Over the summer, the justices affirmed that Mr. Knight was within his rights, writing in their opinion that “close personal relationships between men and woman can often produce personal emotions and conduct that are unfamiliar to the workplace relationship.”
Makes you wonder in what century those judges were raised.
Of course, the hilarious part is Knight’s assumption that his attractiveness is so extreme that Nelson would find him irresistible.
People like Knight and his ilk will always blame their lack of self-control on others as they look to shift the blame for their own actions.
Society’s job is to shift the responsibility to where it really belongs, not sanction the avoidance as did the Iowa Supreme Court.
They wanted to find out whether deep voices correlated with success, since prior research has shown that Barry White-like bass is often preferable when it comes to selecting a mate. A separate Duke study last year also found that voters favor political candidates with deeper voices.
Does a deep voice just open doors or is it more than that?
That benefit proved true even when controlling for a leader’s experience, education, dominant facial features and other variables that might sway decisions of recruiters and compensation committees.
Well, that’s depressing.
Just how big a deal is this?
BIG.
The median CEO, with a 125.5 Hz vocal frequency, earned $3.7 million, ran a $2.4 billion company and was 56 years old.
Not bad, but researchers found that executives with voices on the deeper (that is, lower-frequency) end of the scale earned, on average, $187,000 more in pay and led companies with $440 million more in assets.
(For a reference point, James Earl Ray’s voice is around 85Hz.)
Another question is whether what’s sauce for the gander applies equally to the goose, but there’s no way to answer that one.
Mayew says he would like to assess the voices of women executives as well, but he says there aren’t enough for a statistically meaningful study quite yet. At last count, there were just 21 women CEOs in the Fortune 500.
Welcome to the modern Stone Age world of corporate America.
As hiring has picked up I’m getting the same questions from a variety of managers at different levels and in different industries.
Boiled down they all want to know if there is a way to avoid bad hires, i.e., the ones that happen in spite of a rigorous interviewing process.
The answer is yes and I’ve written about them at various times over the years; rather than compose yet another post discussing them I thought I would just link back to them (getting lazy in my old blogging age).
The most persistent reason for bad hires is unconscious.
On the flip side, attractiveness, which we are actually hard wired to prefer, is the biggest reason for missing good hires. But that, too, is preventable.
There are additional links and trackbacks in each post that you will find useful.
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As I said New Year’s Day, I’m looking for guests who want to share their own experiences whether as a boss or a worker. Areas of interest are culture, management, motivation, people acquisition and retention and startups in all their gory glory.
And if you always wanted to draw a comic based on your experiences in the workplace, but aren’t much of an artist, give me call at 360.335.8054 or write me; I care more about your sense of humor, irony and irreverence than your drawing skill!
I ended yesterday with the comment that charm was the number one reason for bad hires, and that I often forget that looks are the number one reason for missing good hires.
I’m not saying that looks don’t also influence bad hires, and that the combination of looks and charm are often devastating to the hiring process, but that can be dealt with fairly well via our Four Hiring Rules. However, according to Dr. Patzer’s research, we’re born attracted to attractiveness.
Attractiveness isn’t about model-level beauty, it’s more about everyday human attractiveness; and since Patzer’s research shows that even infants respond to attractiveness, we aren’t talking about looks as defined by a culture or race, nor, apparently, is it learned behavior, therefore, this idea of attractiveness must be embedded in human genes.
Certain careers are magnets to attractive people, think sales and marketing, and others have drawn the less attractive, think technical, phone-based work, etc.
Think I’m nuts? Take a visually objective walk around your own company and see what strikes you.
The question here really is, Does it matter? If everybody is wired the same way, then who cares. The company with the most attractive people wins, right?
Wrong!
Attractiveness doesn’t equate to talent, and your job, as a manager, is to acquire, motivate and retain talent; nor does it excuse running on assumptions, which, in fact, have no excuse at all.
Being hardwired merely means that we need to rewire our brains, starting with an awareness campaign, followed by the specific work needed to make changes in our MAP.
Changing involves building new habit patterns, which is typically done through practice and repetition. Practice this 24/7, until you find yourself consciously thinking, “X isn’t very attractive, but it doesn’t matter.” When that happens on a regular basis and it really doesn’t affect the outcome of the interaction, then you’ll know that you really have bypassed the original wiring.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Following-up on 
If you’re a guy how do you get more promotions and more compensation?
As hiring has picked up I’m getting the same questions from a variety of managers at different levels and in different industries.
