What's an example of a training or an exercise that someone could do to become aware of that kind of bias? >> There's an exercise that I like to use around social identity. Where participants are able to kind of look at the various aspects of their social identity. The aspects of their identity that are given. So things that they inherited, that they cannot change. The aspects of their identity that are core to them. So, essentially, if you took this away from me, I wouldn't be myself. And then chosen aspects of your identity. Things like, where you chose to attend university or college, if that's the case. And so you start to look at the various aspects of our social identity and realize that we use it to identify with others. Or to compare ourself against others, and so it's multifaceted, and there are multiple layers here. But when we take the time to understand who we are through those lenses, right? Again, what are the aspects of my identity that are given, chosen, and core? And how does that inform how I see the world? How does that inform the lenses through which I am interacting with you, the lens to which I interface with my team members. All of a sudden we can see that we can start to identify with people who have similar social identities. We might to start compare our self to those who have different social identities. And if we aren't careful, we start to create these pockets in our work, in our world where we feel like we're more different. And then we can't use those differences. But if we can surface this, perhaps we could work more effectively together. >> Can you give us a story of a team you worked with, and how they may have enhanced inclusion and reduced bias? >> In a recent experience, with a consortium of national employee affinity groups, there's a particular challenge the group is experiencing with respect to selection and development. And it occurred to me that as the team continued to speak about this challenge, there was an audience missing that should have been present, and they were. So essentially they had no voice. The various presidents and vice presidents of the organizations continued to speak to the potential impact of getting this challenge right in the organization. And yet they were often speaking for the folks who weren't present in the meeting. And so I said, I'm curious about who's missing that needs to be present. To really inform these discussions and help your organization be far more successful if they simply had a voice. People guessed around who, and looked at the various groups and they kind of went down their mental checklist, they looked at the membership directory, and still couldn't identify who should have been present. And so I was able to raise that, and say, well, I've heard you say that this is a challenge and an opportunity. And that if you could get this right, with this particular audience, it might have a pretty significant impact on the long-term trajectory of career development in your organization. Why are they not here? And to what extent would you be able to make changes if they were? What might they say about the kinds of opportunities that exist or don't exist in the organization? What are their needs? What are their challenges? What are the opportunities they see? And if we don't know because they aren't here, how do we make changes to ensure they have a voice and they're present, and we're not making some assumptions about who they are and what they represent? I think the key takeaway was after seeing people kind of drop their own defenses after engaging in a discussion for a minute or two. I can see them open up to think about how they had arrived at this particular outcome, this national meeting that only happens once a year. And yet a key subgroup, if you will, wasn't present. And after all their best efforts, they simply just missed the opportunity to incorporate them. So it was just right outside of their awareness, hidden in plain sight, and when I think about the key lesson, it is how do you slow down enough to be present? How do we test our own assumptions? How do we get curious about the things that we don't know? How do we draw out the perspectives from others that are necessary and potentially required for us to all be successful? And in whose best interest is it that we get this right? And if we can say it's in our best interest, it's in the organization's best interest that we really do do a better job at including others and reducing bias. And what are the actions we need to take? So then, I was able to just simply challenge what would next year's meeting look like as a result of this insight. So that's kind of the action takeaway component.
