Today’s passage, “Are We Unconsciously Bias?”

“It’s the unease of walking into a meeting where no one looks at me.”

“And, the unease of being judged when I leave early to go pick up my children.”

“It’s the frustration of being talked over in meetings or not asked for my opinion.”

“And the frustration of asserting my opinion only to be labeled aggressive or angry.”

“It is the annoyance that I am less committed to my family life because I am a man.”

“And the annoyance of the assumption that I am less committed to my work because I am a Mother.”

“It’s the pressure to be super-human and not talk about how I am really feeling.”

“And the pressure to fit in.”

“And the anxiety of not wanting to share my personal life because most of the people I work with are heterosexual.”

These are just a few of the quotes pulled from #InclusionStartsWithI a discussion around bias and the importance of a positive, inclusive work environment. 

The video features an actual group of employees who work at Accenture. I think the video demonstrates that bias is a given and it can appear in the most unexpected ways when we lack awareness around the formation of our thoughts and how our thoughts lead to perceptions, which attributes labels on others. 

So what is bias? Bias occurs when we unconsciously stereotype other people. An example could be unconsciously favoring male resumes over female resumes when a hiring manager is looking at their first names.  

Here is another example of bias that’s in the form of a riddle. “A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene and the son is rushed to the hospital. At the hospital the surgeon looks at the boy and says "I can't operate on this boy, he is my son." How can this be?

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Being biased doesn’t mean that you are bad or racist, it means you’re a regular human being living in a labeled world and everyone of us, in my opinion, is biased to a certain degree. 

So why does this matter? Well, when we are unconscious to our bias, we likely keep a circle of friends and mentors around us that think and act in ways that are similar. Perhaps, we share the same perspective on a wide variety of things. When we leave our comfort zone and enmesh ourselves with others outside of our family of origin, our geographical or cultural community, we begin to open up to a variety of ways of synthesizing information.  It is through diverse discourse that we begin to see one issue in a multitude of ways.  

If you would like to watch the full Accenture video on diversity and inclusion, I am enclosing a link in the details section of this episode.

How freeing it is to undergo a thorough investigation of our unconscious bias and liberate ourselves from labels.

Connect with me: Instagram.com/megan_nycmom