Episode 194: How to Confront Bias
/Show transcript:
Welcome to The Broad Experience, the show about women, the workplace and success. I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte.
This time, we operate in a world of bias…some of us more than others…
“Aneeta and I would say exactly the same thing, almost word for word. And everyone would be receptive and thankful for my contribution. And I would observe team members bristling at Aneeta and also, you know, to the point where it wasn't even subtle, visibly rolling their eyes.”
But how do you confront that bias - if you confront it at all?
“I ask myself, are my worries about how this person will respond to me greater than my worries about existing in a biased system quietly? That lets me make a judgment in my own mind of what I really want to do. And then I craft a way of speaking out that fits me.”
De-biasing your career. Coming up on the Broad Experience.
Last time we heard from Raina Brands, a professor at University College London. I mentioned that along with a colleague she runs a website called Career Equally that was set up to - in their words - empower women to de-bias their careers. Which sounds pretty intriguing.
We touched on this last time but in this episode I sit down with both Raina and her colleague Aneeta Rattan to talk about what that means and how to do it.
First, meet Aneeta:
Aneeta Rattan: I'm Aneeta Rattan, I'm an associate professor of organizational behavior at London business school, and I'm a social psychologist who studies different types of inequality in the workplace and society.
Aneeta grew up in Florida and did her PhD at Stanford before landing her first faculty job in the UK. There she met Raina, and the two became friends, as well as eagle-eyed observers of the workplace.
AM-T: You both are experts in bias and you want other women to be able to…not navigate the workplace in the way that perhaps many people have done up to and including now, but to be able to, you know, confront bias and kind of call it out for what it is and you say of yourselves, ‘we may not experience any less bias, but we are able to call it when we see it, which means we can address it effectively.’ Can you give me an example of where that's actually happened to you? Both of you? Could be in the same situation or different situations…
Raina Brands: We were sitting in a performance review meeting. So this is a group meeting where the work of more junior people is reviewed, and we both noticed actually that every time a man was reviewed, whoever was reviewing them would round out this kind of summary assessment by saying, 'and he's just a really good guy.’ And of course that's never ever said for the women, because there's no such thing as a good woman. You know, when we say she's a good woman, we don't mean that in the same way. As when we say he's a good guy, you know, it’s typically in that in very kind of paternalistic, ‘she'd make a good wife’ way. Not, ‘I want her around in the workplace’ way. And it was very obvious to us and actually independently, we both noticed it independently. I can't remember who spoke out about it, but we did in the meeting, point out that this was happening. And request that that stop, you know, we stop using that descriptor for the men and actually in all future meetings, that was a policy, that you just couldn't use that phrase to describe someone ‘cause it's simply not gender neutral that, you know, you're adding in kind of a likability assessment, when that whole criterion just isn't available for women.
AM-T: I think the equivalent for that, the only one I can think of is that the person would go, ‘she's just a really great person.’ Did that ever happen in a woman’s review?
Raina: No, because it's gendered. It’s typically a man reviewing a junior man. And what they're saying is I see myself in this person, and we know that this is why men typically are sponsored more than women, it's because there's more men in positions of leadership. They encounter a man and they think, gosh, I really believe in the potential of this person in part because I'm similar to them. They remind me of me. We wouldn't have called it out if it wasn't such a gendered process that has the potential to lead to disparate outcomes. It's very subtle I know, but it is reflective of this extra criterion of how much do I really like you and believe in your potential, kind of summarizing this throwaway statement and by adding in that criteria that isn't available for women, there's no way women can be assessed as equal. Because there's just this dimension of just this gestalt, this kind of tacit feeling that they've got, what it takes that we don't have the words to describe that for women. And so women in this performance review are always going to come up short.
AM-T: And can I just check? You made me think about who was doing the reviewing, was it always a guy doing the reviewing or would women also - with some of these reviews was there a senior woman who'd also go, oh and he's just a really great guy?
Aneeta Rattan: From my memory senior women used the same kind of language. And I think that many people will kind of understand the experience of looking up at senior women leaders, realizing that they've learned the language of their peers and in order to be heard in order to be seen as effective in order to navigate those biased workplace structures, they've learned how to talk in the kind of culture, language of the teams or the organizations. And so in the kind of team that is using this kind of highly gendered, um, kind of evaluation marker like a great guy, uh, women will have learned to do that too. They'll have learned what that means and they'll have learned that it makes them an insider to use that kind of language as well.
Raina: And to add onto that, don't forget there of course is a gender disparity in leadership. So it was mostly men saying it cause it was mostly men in the room as is usually the case in these performance reviews.
Aneeta: And one more point I would make on that descriptor is that ‘great guy’ is something that we apply to men because we don't necessarily hold them to the standard that they be likable, but gender stereotypes, which have been documented globally, indicate that women are expected to be likable. There is kind of an assumption of warmth that we come at women with and if they don't fulfill that, we will complain. But if they fulfill that, we give them almost no credit because that is the standard that they're held to according to the gender prescriptive stereotype. And so a woman could in fact be just as much of a great guy as a man, but those same behaviors wouldn't qualify, they wouldn't land during that kind of performance review.
Aneeta is a woman of color. Raina is white. Both have plenty of lived experience to back up their professional research. Raina tells the story of a particular meeting they were in where despite the similarities of their statements, they got quite different reactions…
Raina: Aneeta and I would say exactly the same thing, almost word for word, usually Aneeta articulated better because that's who she is. And everyone would be receptive and thankful for my contribution. And I would observe team members bristling at Aneeta and also, you know, to the point where it wasn't even subtle, visibly rolling their eyes…You know, there's really only one way to attribute that I think.
Aneeta: Yeah. I mean, those would be the examples that I would emphasize as well. And it's really nice, honestly, one of the best parts about having a colleague who studies similar topics, but from a different perspective is that we could both see it. So I didn't, I often didn't need to say, did I communicate well, did I do something wrong because Rena would come out and say, uh, we said the same thing and all those rolled eyes, those were not about what you said. <laugh> because if they were, they would've rolled their eyes for me too.
Aneeta is usually talking about race, gender, LGBTQ experiences…trying to make points about fairness and inclusion. All these can be touchy subjects. And she says…
Aneeta: It feels worse when a racial minority woman in the context tells someone of power or of majority group member background that kind of a point because there's a mismatch between my status socially, and my expertise and then my action in the situation.
Then Raina jumped in.
Raina: You know, ‘cause I guess your original question was about how do you confront that? And quite often, you know, behind the scenes, I would just say what I thought was happening. For instance, I can remember talking to one of my colleagues and was curious about the difference in the way we were received in the group, the contrast between me and Aneeta, and I think he said, oh, do you think it's because of this kind of Californian vibe? And I said no, I don't think it's that. I think it's racism.
So I mean, perhaps this is the Australian coming out in me where we're quite a direct culture, but I often just say the thing for what it is. Which is not necessarily the strategy I recommend <laugh>.
OK, so if being that direct is not recommended for most of us, I wanted to know how ARE we meant to take on bias at work? How far do we go? What do we say? Aneeta says there are many ways to do it.
Aneeta: So I will speak out in the moment when I feel able. And when I don't feel like it's gonna put my entire career at risk, but I also would use indirect methods of speaking out. So sometimes I would talk to Raina after a meeting and say, I feel that this was happening. Can you be on watch for it next time? Sometimes Raina would count how many times an event occurred so that we could then take data in to say to senior colleagues, ‘we are observing a difference in our experiences compared to these people. Here's some data that supports that. Why don't you observe and try and catch that, see if it happens in our next meeting?’ Um, so kind of shifting the weight of responsibility to others to show that this is not a pattern. And I think this is part of the reason why, especially for racial minority women in the context that you inhabit, you cannot just try and navigate on your own. Like you need a portfolio of people who you can go to for different things, whether that be your emotional support, to say how unbelievably unfair something is, whether that is your strategic support. So people who can say to you, ‘I hear those feelings. I've known those feelings. I've felt those feelings, but I only have 15 minutes. So here's what you're gonna do about it. And here are the power players who are gonna help you fix this.’
Of course both Aneeta and Raina are experts in this stuff - so it’s got to be easier for them to speak up than it is for someone who doesn’t study gender stereotypes for a living. I asked Aneeta to give me an example of something a regular woman might face at work, and how she might deal with it.
She said take the example of someone who seems to be doing well, everyone’s telling her she’s doing a great job…
Aneeta: But when it comes time to get the kind of concrete benefits that ought to come from great performance, or when it comes time to get a promotion, let's say she's being told, there's just a bit more that you need to do. People just don't feel certain yet. And so there's a little bit of like, you know, the cat with the string and you keep pulling the string further along and the cat has to keep trying to get it. There's a little bit of that that can develop in organizations. And where is that coming from? In this kind of a scenario where the woman has actually achieved the performance criteria where it's coming from is the basic fact that women in the workplace are presumed incompetent. And that means that they have to prove and re-prove their competence. So when leaders look at this woman and they see she's doing a great job, they're like, yes, she has done great in the past. That is her track record. But what about the future? There's uncertainty there because stereotypes kind of create that doubt. So what could a woman in that situation do?
The approach that I would suggest seems very straightforward, but can feel really hard in the moment. Right? So the approach I would take is I would say number one, okay. Tell me what I need to do so that when we review this in six months, this is no longer a concern.
I think that's the obvious one. It's one that many organizations have structures and policies and procedures to create for you. That is not enough for most women, because in six months it might be something new. So what I would suggest women in that situation do is they say, show me in the last five hires, regardless of gender, show me what they had that I lack. Show me how my profile mismatches, theirs - or, another alternative approach. So that's an example of trying to create a data set for yourself, but also for your colleagues to say, I have actually achieved the performance criteria, I've achieved the same performance criteria that colleagues have achieved. So what could this frisson of a doubt be, right? It kind of, again, as Raina said earlier, it makes the abstract concrete. Another alternative, if that feels too hard or unlikely to be able to do, if you're not close enough to your manager to make that kind of ask, another option might be for a woman in that situation to simply say, I hear you, that you want to see more of this skill. Can you tell me why that is an impediment to my promotion, given that that promotion would give me the opportunity to illustrate that exact skill?
AM-T: And now I want to know, does it work? Do you have evidence that these tactics work?
Aneeta: I mean anecdotally, I spend a lot of time with my women students, my women friends, and my women colleagues, working through strategies like this. And so what I can say is that it works sometimes. It will not work every time, but the point is not to say that, like we know exactly how to navigate the biases of the workplace. There are thousands of biases you're up against in the workplace. The point is to equip women with strategies and skills so that they have resources at hand to apply so that they can keep going for it without being discouraged and really just pushed back and pushed down by others' bias.
Raina: Yeah there's no scenario where you are in a bias free workplace, but pushing, pushing for data at least reduces either the likelihood people will stereotype or the likelihood that those stereotypes can drive decision making. And I think the other thing I wanted to echo with what Aneeta was just saying is this idea of criterions. So one of the approaches we could have used in the good guy meeting was to ask, what do you mean by that? What is the criteria and why are we discussing it? And just kind of surfacing some of the assumptions that people rely on are a good way of at least starting the conversation. And I think, you know, Aneeta is the expert on how to confront bias, but I think approaching from curiosity rather than accusation is usually a good way to structure the conversation. You know, what do you mean by that? You know, what should I take away from that?
AM-T: I'm glad you raised that because one of the things I think can seem intimidating to people about trying some of these tactics is the spirit in which they will be taken, right? So asking a question sounds very innocent and open, but the fact is a lot of women would feel very awkward about using that phrase, ‘What do you mean by that?’ Because of how it could come across, you know, it could come across as really defensive, right? It’s so tricky, I think. I mean that's something that I would really have to think about who the person was, who was speaking to me, for me to come back with that question.
Aneeta: Absolutely. I mean, I think that in general, gender stereotypes in the workplace make it so that women have to navigate a very fine line of kind of tone and self presentation. And then on top of that, when it come to speaking out against bias, you do get more backlash if you communicate in an angry tone or in a tone that feels affronting to the person who you're speaking out to, and that's even worse for racial minority women. So I think it's reasonable to worry about that. Here is the calculus I do in my own mind, in case it's helpful. I ask myself are my worries about how this person will respond to me greater than my worries about existing in a biased system quietly? That lets me make a judgment in my own mind of what I really want to do. And then I craft a way of speaking out that fits me.
So one of the things that is really effective when it comes to speaking out is actually making clear your assumptions. So instead of just saying, why do you say that? Or, why is that the criterion? Saying, I'm trying to just make sure I understand how we're doing these performance reviews so that I'm in sync with you. So my orientation is learning, my orientation is being part of the collective and being effective and efficient. Or saying, I really think that, you know, we're all learning about each other in this team. We just came together. I just wanna make sure I understand where you're coming from when you say that, could you explain that? There is a little bit of a power dynamic there that's unpleasant when I observe it because it's women having to put themselves into smaller positions in order to be able to speak out.
But if what you're trying to do is manage the balance between your desire to speak out and the backlash that you might receive, these are strategies that can work: one strategy that I've studied a lot in my research, which works well when you are kind of confronting more overt, blatant, or obvious bias, is endorsing and actually expressing a belief in the other person's ability to learn. So if you say, you know, that joke came across as sexist to me, the reason I am telling you that directly is because I believe that these things can change and I believe people can grow and develop in this domain, and I'm assuming that you would not want to come across in a way that would offend your colleagues, I wanted to be open with you about it…when it comes to overt bias, at least I found that that strategy actually suppresses some of the backlash that women experience.
Raina: You know and again, caveat, I'm a very direct person, probably to my own detriment. <laugh>, but an expression I use a lot is I'm concerned, or I'm feeling concerned, but usually not in relation to my own experiences, but in relation to what I observe and how that might affect the fairness of outcomes and practices. And the reason why I talk about fairness is because it's something that, it's a value that almost every human being cares about as opposed to talking about diversity, you know. So recently I used it while sitting in on a recruitment meeting for another institution, and right at the end, everyone was tired, and there was this kind of push to move off the predesigned procedure for how hiring decisions would be made. And I was the only one pushing back primarily because I could see how it was creating a disparate outcome. And that was the language I used, that I'm concerned that we're rushing this process. I'm concerned that it's going to create unfairness in the hiring system. And I think that kind of appealing to those universal values, if it's appropriate, can be a way of diffusing some of that backlash.
Raina Brands and Aneeta Rattan of Career Equally.
I’ll link you to more information about both of them and Career Equally under this episode at TheBroadExperience.com.
And having spent this time with them talking about confronting bias I am curious as to whether some of you do this in your workplace and if so, how? And how awkward or not do you find it? And what was the response? You can message me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram or just email me at ashley@thebroadexperience.com. I’d love to hear from you.
That’s The Broad Experience for this time.
There will be a longer than usual gap before the next show because I am going on vacation and I need to start gathering material for new shows. So you’ll hear from me again a little later in the summer.
I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte. Thanks for listening.