When helping your team address unproductive, biased patterns of thought, one of the best things you can do is sit down with them and explain why you think doing so is essential to a collaborative, respectful working environment.
But for this to work, you have to have an open conversation. Be willing to listen to the reasons why your team may be reluctant. People have painful experiences that make them reluctant to do this work. Talk about them. This is going to be uncomfortable, and there’s probably no way to avoid that discomfort. What you can do is to create an environment that reassures people that they won’t be punished for making good-faith mistakes, or for correcting each other’s mistakes.
Entrepreneur and author Jason Mayden explains why it’s important that teammates feel safe both to make mistakes and to point them out. He encourages people to “get beyond the fear of saying the wrong thing because you can’t get to the right thing without first making some mistakes in between.” At the same time, Mayden points out: “I should not hide my truth to make you feel comfortable in your bias.”
Disrupting bias is not going to feel “comfortable.” In fact, it’s going to feel awkward at best and risky at worst. That’s why starting with a conversation is important. Acknowledge the discomfort. Don’t say, “it’s no big deal.” Doing this is a big deal, and different people will be reluctant to do it for different reasons. It’s also important not to confuse being uncomfortable with being unsafe. Don’t minimize and don’t exaggerate. Get it out on the table.
Once you’ve discussed the costs and benefits, odds are you all will decide that you don’t want bias to skew your decision making and your results. If you and your team reach that conclusion, there are three things you’ll need to develop together in order to start disrupting bias: a shared vocabulary, a shared norm, and a shared commitment.
In this episode, Wesley and I discuss this process with Matt Abrahams. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, or here: https://www.justworktogether.com/podcast-season-2
