Bias, implicit or not, intentional or not, is at the forefront of most companies and bosses’ minds. Companies spend thousands on various kinds of anti-bias training.

But based on decades of data, not much seems to change.

Perhaps that’s because bias isn’t “fixable” or, as Lily Zheng, a diversity and inclusion consultant, says, Bias isn’t like an upset stomach that an individual can take an antacid to fix.

Zheng offers a truly commonsense approach that is far more practical and achievable than trying to make people unbiased.

The outcome of any implicit bias training shouldn’t be to cure people’s bias or make them more objective—it should be to make people bias-aware. (…) When people are bias-aware, they are able to act with less bias without fixating on being unbiased.

It all boils down to knowing yourself, which can be a lost cause for some people.

More than a decade ago I started talking about MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy)™ is the basis for everything you do—it is the why of life.

Everything you do and say is a mindset, grounded in your attitude towards others, which, in turn, is based on your personal philosophy.

Obviously, implicit bias is part of MAP.

Zheng provides a good roadmap for handling implicit bias, focusing on the need for self-honesty and a non-judgmental attitude, including that awareness doesn’t always mean change.

While the decision may not end up changing, the process of being honest and nonjudgmental about one’s own bias adds both accountability and intentionality.

I provided a simple step-by-step for changing your MAP if you so desire.

Both require honest self-awareness, but doing them is, as always, your choice.

Image credit: Ron Mader

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Yesterday was my birthday and the last way I wanted to celebrate was to write a post.

But since it was for Friday, I thought I would share China’s version of bro culture.

China is a gender nightmare, in spite of having the world’s largest number of self-made female billionaires, as well as women holding down senior roles in many startups.

Employment ads specify the desired candidate gender and appearance along with soft skills.

Ms. Shen is a “programmer motivator,” as they are known in China. Part psychologist, part cheerleader, the women are hired to chat up and calm stressed-out coders. The jobs are proliferating in a society that largely adheres to gender stereotypes and believes that male programmers are “zhai,” or nerds who have no social lives.

Must be attractive, know how to charm socially awkward programmers and give relaxing massages.

Note that Shen holds a degree in civil engineering.

While the bias is far more overt, one has to wonder if the harassment and bullying is as common.

Image credit: HikingArtist

It’s always gratifying when something I wrote in years past, based on my own experience, is validated by current research. Yesterday’s Oldie about privilege is no exception.

I wrote it in 2015 and last week I read the validating research in the Harvard Business Review (love these little ego trips).

There are lots of people held back by bias. And that means that some of the people at the top have advanced partly through privilege.

Our research finds the idea of being advantaged to be uncomfortable for many senior leaders. We interviewed David, a senior executive who recognizes both having benefited from unfair advantages and the injustice of bias. He’s tall, middle-aged, well-educated, heterosexual, able-bodied, white, and male — and these provide David with unearned advantages that he intellectually knows he has, but that in practice he barely notices. He tells us he feels an underlying sense of guilt. He wants to feel that his successes in life are down to his abilities and hard work, not unfair advantage. “I feel like a child who discovers that people have been letting him win a game all along,” he says. “How can I feel good about myself succeeding if the game was never fair?”

Over the years, I’ve found the idea of ‘fairness’ and ‘unfairness’ deeply embedded in people’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) where it has a major impact on all three MAP components.

In speaking with leaders about their built-in advantages, we have seen that David’s experience is widely shared. Acknowledging these advantages can challenge their very identities and sense of worth.

As is often the case, normalcy erases awareness.

Our research on speaking truth to power shows there is often a blind spot among the powerful, preventing them from seeing their impact on the less powerful. We call this advantage blindness. When you have advantage blindness, you don’t feel privileged. You don’t notice a life of special treatment; it’s just normal. You don’t think about your physical safety most of the time; you don’t worry about holding hands with your partner in public; when you get angry, no one asks you if it’s because of your hormones; and people in power generally look like you.

The results of the researchers interviews list three negative reactions

• Denying the playing field is unlevel.
• Focusing on one’s own disadvantages.
• Denying the playing field is unlevel.

And three positive ones

• Owning personal prejudice and bias.
• Empathy from connecting with people who are “other.”
• Putting personal advantage to collective good use

The one problem with the research is it’s focus on executives, which is to be expected from Harvard, but the same advantages, bias, guilt, and negative reactions can be found at all levels.

The good part is that the positive approaches discussed also work at all levels.

What should you do next?

• Read the article.
• Consciously and honestly identify your own advantages.
• Write (not keyboard) them down.
• Reread the list often.
• Heighten your awareness.
• Lower your defensiveness.
• Implement the actions described and add your own.

While you can’t eliminate societal advantages, you can put them to work for the greater good. Doing so will go a long way to validating your advantaged success.

Image credit: Duck Lover

Yesterday we looked at the new methodology being used to determine Fortune’s 100 Best Places to Work, which has been tweaked to emphasize feedback from those who self-identified as women, minorities, or LGBTQ.

Hard data has proven over and over that a diverse leadership and workforce increases revenues, adding substantially to company revenues and success.

Companies have spent millions on diversity training, so why hasn’t it worked?

It shouldn’t be surprising that most diversity programs aren’t increasing diversity. Despite a few new bells and whistles, courtesy of big data, companies are basically doubling down on the same approaches they’ve used since the 1960s—which often make things worse, not better. Firms have long relied on diversity training to reduce bias on the job, hiring tests and performance ratings to limit it in recruitment and promotions, and grievance systems to give employees a way to challenge managers.

The answer is fairly obvious to anyone who considers people, instead of datasets, etc.

In short, people don’t like being told what to think/do.

As social scientists have found, people often rebel against rules to assert their autonomy. Try to coerce me to do X, Y, or Z, and I’ll do the opposite just to prove that I’m my own person.

Not exactly rocket science.

So what’s a successful approach?

It’s more effective to engage managers in solving the problem, increase their on-the-job contact with female and minority workers, and promote social accountability—the desire to look fair-minded.

Or in today’s terms, DIY

Maybe it is rocket science.

More proof that diversity is (finally) being taken seriously is found in a lawsuit recently filed by IBM.

Diversity hiring, once a niche pursuit of human resources, has become a major recruiting priority at many US companies. As evidence, IBM is suing its former chief diversity officer for bolting to Microsoft.

Diversity hiring as a trade secret.

I love it.

Image credit: US Forest Service – Southern Region

Valeria Chuba is an intimacy coach (clinical sexologist) and has found three main responses by her male clients to the recent bevy of harassment complaints.

• Defensiveness
• Disbelief at the enormity and pervasiveness of sexual violence and misconduct
• Difficulty with empathizing

No surprises, but her commentary is interesting and useful.

In trying to figuring out how to interact with women many men are choosing the easy route.

… men who want to enact the “Pence rule” (avoiding socializing alone with any woman who is not one’s wife) do so at a potentially enormous cost to their female colleagues, their organizations, and themselves. In fact, the notion that some men are confused as to how to “mentor young women without harassing them” is a troubling comment on masculinity.

Easy, because it takes little effort from them, while further screwing (pun intended) women and “keeping them in their place” — which is below and away from men.

There’s a better way to monitor your words and actions.

Best, it’s a simple yardstick with which to measure them.

Ask yourself if you would say the words, use the tone, or perform the action on your mother, sister or any female relative.
Measure other men’s comments/tones/actions the same way.

Think about how you would feel if they were speaking to your mother/sister/grandma/etc. If it was your mom/etc. would you let it go or would you call them on it?

That simple mental test is an excellent guide for men who are worried about whether they or someone else is crossing the line.

That said, men also need to understand that women may still make the wrong assumption and take it the wrong way based on her previous experience with other men.

Not because it’s a bad yardstick, but because trust takes time — especially when dealing with systemic social problems.

So keep using the yardstick; share it with your team; embed it in your culture, be an active part of the (eventual) change.

Flickr image credit: Bill Smith

In response to a post by Ellen Pao in September I said I wasn’t holding my breath waiting for things to change.

Good thing I wasn’t.

What changed started with a post by Susan Fowler calling out Uber’s misogamist culture, which led to CEO Travis Kalanick’s firing, Gretchen Carlson sued roger Ailes and won, other women started coming forward with their own stories and then the entire #metoo thread on Twitter.

Next came the harassing men crying crocodile tears and saying how terribly sorry they are if their past actions caused any pain.

Talk about arrogant, unfeeling, ignorant, and purely self-focused.

Monday Sheryl Sandberg wrote an excellent post pointing out that harassment has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with power.

The 1992 presidential race was once summed up in a pointed phrase: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Today, as headlines are dominated by stories about sexual harassment and sexual assault at work, a similar phrase comes to mind: “It’s the power, stupid.”

And that nothing would change until the white male power structure became more balanced.

She goes on to say,

It is my hope that as more employers put thoughtful, effective policies into place – and as more is done to punish the perpetrators – more people will come forward without fear. For too long, too many people have believed that there’s no point in reporting harassment – that nothing will happen, or worse, that it will negatively impact their career. And on the other side, some people are scared that their reputations will be ruined unfairly. Having a consistent and fair process that applies to everyone helps protect against both scenarios and restores a degree of faith in the system.

However, I don’t believe anyone has much faith as long as they are forced to take harassment complaints to arbitration.

A growing number of American companies are requiring workers as a condition of their employment to sign agreements that stipulate they must resolve a dispute with their employer through arbitration. This agreement is known as a mandatory arbitration clause.

It was Carlson whose lawyers found a way around it.

In signing her employment agreement 11 years prior, Carlson had agreed to resolve disputes with Fox News Channel through private arbitration. But she and her legal team found a way around this by suing Ailes personally.

But, as Sandberg says, you need to have a certain level of power to even consider moving on someone with more power — and enough money that you can survive for a while sans paycheck.

Private arbitration is good for companies, since the rules favor businesses and most arbitrators think of the companies as clients — and who bites the hand that feeds it?

Moreover, the results aren’t published, so, there is little blowback even in the rare cases when the company loses.

“This veil of secrecy protects serial harassers by keeping other potential victims in the dark, and minimizing pressure on companies to fire predators,” Carlson wrote for The Times.

The Arbitration Fairness Act of 2017, which is before the House Judiciary Committee and for which Carlson is an advocate, would prohibit employers from requiring arbitration.

But considering the men who make up our current Congress, let alone the current president who would have to sign it into law, I certainly won’t be holding my breath for this one, either.

Flickr image credit: caninhas

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that are still relevant, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of some of the best posts during that time.

Today is a two-fer, because, when discussing leadership, commentary on followers should be required.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since these two posts, 5 years on the first and 10 years on the other, were written and the world has changed drastically. It is far more complex and moves much faster than ever before. What hasn’t changed — contrary to the impression you get from both traditional and new media, whether mainstream or on the fringes — is how much influence so-called leaders actually exert on their followers.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Hate, Intolerance and Responsibility

Anyone reading the news—local, national or global—knows that hate and intolerance are increasing at an alarming rate everywhere.

Also, because there have been/will be so many elections around the world this year ‘leadership’ is in the news even more so than usual.

What responsibility do leaders—business, political, religious, community—bear in fostering hate and intolerance?

Not just the age old race and gender intolerance, but the I’m/we’re-RIGHT-so-you-should-do/think-our-way-or-else.

The ‘we’re right/you’re wrong’ attitude is as old as humanity and probably won’t ever change, but it’s the ‘do-it-our-way-or-else’ that shows the intolerance for what it really is.

And leaders aren’t helping; in fact, they are making it worse.

During my adult life (I missed being a Boomer by a hair) I’ve watched as hate and intolerance spread across the country masked by religion, a façade of political correctness or a mea culpa that is supposed to make everything OK, but doesn’t.

Various business, political, religious and community leaders give passionate, fiery talks to their followers and then express surprise and dismay when some of those same followers steal trade secrets, plant bombs, and kill individuals—whose only error was following their own beliefs.

We are no longer entitled to the pursuit of happiness if our happiness offends someone next door, the other end of the country, or the far side of the globe.

I remember Ann Rand saying in an interview that she believed that she had the right to be totally selfish, where upon the interviewer said that would give her freedom to kill.

Rand said absolutely not, in fact the reverse was true, since her selfishness couldn’t impinge anyone else’s right to be selfish.

Leaders aren’t responsible; we are because we go along with it—as did the Germans when Hitler led them down the hate and intolerance path.

That about sums up my attitude

What’s yours?

Image credit: Street Sign Generator

Two kinds of followers

In general, followers fall into two categories—thinking and unthinking. All of us have issue-specific litmus tests and look for a general comfort level with other followers.

Thinking followers usually have a broader definition of comfort, critically evaluate individual ideas and attitudes, as opposed to blind across-the-board acceptance, and are more willing to consider compromises. They often challenge their leader offering additional considerations, thoughts, suggestions, as well as open disagreement.

Unthinking followers are more emotional, rarely disagree or argue and may opt out of all thought and consideration following blindly and allowing the leader think for them. At their worst, unthinking followers are fodder for cults.

Most of us would classify ourselves as thinking followers, but are we? I know that politically I have one litmus test that is absolute and a couple of others that have high priority without being locked into specifics. Beyond that, I’ve always considered myself pretty open.

However, as extremists have polarized various issues I find myself becoming more adamant in my own feelings and less open to listening to those who believe that their views represent truth with a capital T — but I still want to live in a country where they have the right to say it.

I’ve lived a long time and I never thought I’d say this, but the rise of social media, with its ability to say anything anonymously sans responsibility, has seriously compromised my belief in free speech.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Fortunately, the folks with whom I usually spend it are out of town. I say ‘fortunately’, because in my current mood I would be hard-pressed to cover my true feelings.

While the narrowest definition of “my world” keeps chugging along, with nothing causing woe, my full world is, as the saying goes, going to hell in a hand-basket.

Or, more accurately, on a well-greased slide made of hate.

I understand hate up close and personal, as opposed to an intellectual or conversational concept.

Over the years I’ve built up layers of armor starting around age 5

So it’s difficult to believe I was naïve enough to agree with a friend, whose email detailing the problems inherent in political correctness became a post in 2015.

Being a black man, I prefer a racist that’s honest about who he is and what he is. I prefer working for such a person because I know what to expect. I presume it would be the same for you as a woman regarding sexists. These days no one is a racist, we just have “unconscious biases” that prevent us from taking unpopular positions and that ensure that the powerful can continue to exclude the less powerful.

Politically correct environments rob me of information, choice, and the ability to navigate astutely to attain my objectives.

What a difference two years and one election makes.

Kevin no longer wonders who is a racist — it’s very obvious.

And I get to end my life amidst the same hate I grew up with.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

More technical problems made this post very late. My apologies.

Be sure to ready Ryan’s post tomorrow; he’s far more upbeat than I.

Have a wonderful turkey day and I’ll see you all Friday.

Image credit: Purple Slog

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Curation has gotten much worse over the last two years since this was written. Facebook curates your news feed based on your profile and online actions, so you see mostly items — whether real or fake — that are in line with your worldview. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter and most other sites show you “targeted ads” based on the the cornucopia of personal information at their fingertips.

The result is a world that is narrowing and, in doing so, becomes more harrowing.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Earlier this month I shared a conversation with a founder who believes he can lead only one type of person.

It wasn’t that surprising, because the more things are curated the more we hear from and cleave to people like ourselves.

There’s no question that curation reinforces opinions, while eliminating conflicting ones, narrows people beyond from where they started and acts like fertilizer to unconscious bias and outright bigotry.

But isn’t college supposed to help change that by exposing students to people with different beliefs, experiences, attitudes, etc.?

Several years ago a couple of startups gave the college-bound a way to curate their roommates, so they could be sure not to be exposed to ideas, attitudes or upbringing not in sync with their current thinking.

Mangers have been doing this for decades by thoughtlessly hiring people like themselves, so they can stay within their personal comfort zones.

Now college students are taking the concept much further with the demand for “safe spaces.”

Safe spaces are an expression of the conviction, increasingly prevalent among college students, that their schools should keep them from being “bombarded” by discomfiting or distressing viewpoints. Think of the safe space as the live-action version of the better-known trigger warning, a notice put on top of a syllabus or an assigned reading to alert students to the presence of potentially disturbing material. (…)

Eric Posner, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School commented, “Perhaps overprogrammed children engineered to the specifications of college admissions offices no longer experience the risks and challenges that breed maturity,” But “if college students are children, then they should be protected like children.”

This need for safety and zero-level tolerance for discord makes me wonder what will happen to the current college generations when they venture into the workplace, let alone the rest of the real world.

Image credit: Deb Nystrom

As many of you are aware the news this week has been dominated by the allegations against Harvey Weinstein and his sexual harassment and assaults on a variety of women.

As we learn more about what has occurred a new movement has started, #metoo. Women who have been harassed, assaulted, or worse are speaking up. Some for the first time.

As I have read through some of the posts of my personal friends and spoken to my wife, I am realizing this is much more rampant than I thought.

It has lead to some interesting discussions at work with my colleagues that I never imagined I would have. Most of the women I have spoken with have a story. Perhaps it was flirting that went beyond welcomed attention, an off-hand comment and in one case full-on assault.

It was heartbreaking to hear, as well as enlightening.

One thing I learned today, though, is the other ways women in the workplace have to cope.

In two separate conversations today I learned how my female colleagues have had to deal with aggressive men, misogamy or simple brush offs.

I am in the IT sector and the women in the technical roles have dealt with from not being taken seriously to not being trusted simply because of their gender.

I write all of this as a testament of how we as a society must do better.

I am still amazed that we can pick out the differences amongst each other, differences that we have zero control over, and tear one another down.

The fact that we allow gender to dictate how we should treat one another is shocking.

I am not naive enough to think that we can all just get along, however if we claim to be enlightened, then perhaps we should act like it.

Image credit: @UltraViolet