Overcoming Implicit Bias: Let’s Start Training People the Right Way
In today’s wild business environment, everyone in an organization needs to feel at ease sharing their good, bad and ugly ideas. Yet, unchecked implicit biases freeze people out in too many companies. Leaders spend a ton of money on training, knowing implicit bias is a major barrier to innovation. Unfortunately the trainings are too-often done as a one-off lecture, which doesn’t yield the lasting culture change leaders crave. It’s time to shift away from old-school teaching techniques, to experiential-learning designed for all communication styles and personality types.
Implicit biases dramatically shape the ideation process. How should we look at the problem? What questions should we ask? What types of solutions should we consider? Who should we bring into the working group? Who within that group should be allowed to speak more or less in the meetings? Who is a strategic decision maker and who is expected to execute? These are all heavily influenced by implicit biases which are learned through societal norms, career journeys, past bosses and mentors, and personal experiences. Pre-conceived notions about race and gender also weigh upon the work — manifesting as power dynamics within the working group itself, or in the group’s assumptions around the end user or audience.
According to McKinsey, companies spend as much as $8B per year on DE&I training. But is it actually creating culture change? HBR suggests it’s probably not.
So what’s not working? For starters, a training lecture, while well-intentioned, is only a one-way broadcast, consumed passively by attendees. Too often the content or its delivery fails to resonate. It asks too much of the listener: receive, understand, process, and skillfully implement 25+ new action items after one, 1-hour webinar. It doesn’t connect the learning to real-world scenarios, or give people a chance to role-play and practice. There aren’t metrics or goal-posts to work towards. It’s just a one-time meetup with a one-way flow of information, and a few well-wishes at the sendoff. Sometimes, lecture-based trainings risk putting expectations onto the table of a sudden transformation — where everyone will become flawless by tomorrow. This has the potential to create internal friction within the organization, particularly when there is no follow-on training to ensure people know how to do the necessary work in their day-to-day.
Experiential learning, on the other hand, allows participants to observe implicit biases in real-time, while learning and practicing new techniques on the spot. Inside well-structured group-problem-solving environments, teams can quickly put new principles into immediate practice. They can iterate on real challenges for the business, while also learning how to mitigate implicit bias in a way that sticks. Using Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), the information can be delivered in bite-sized chunks, helping build awareness and muscle memory one small step at a time. The process can be gamified, making it fun and socially rewarding to achieve small wins – and even fun to fail.
Like any process of behavior change, it takes time and consistency. If one webinar won’t change company culture, one workshop won’t either. It’s essential to plan for a long-tail of nudge and nurture to ensure the new behaviors stick. If the first large-group workshop is considered “train the trainers,” then leadership must also intentionally structure follow-on trainings when the trainers go back into their working groups. Here again, applying the principles of CBT can make ongoing learning fun, even a friendly co-op-etition among colleagues.
If the organization’s goal is to unleash its team’s creativity, become more innovative, and solve business problems faster – mitigating implicit bias puts wind into the sails. But fostering real culture change is no small undertaking. Being thoughtful about how it’s done is even more important than being called to do it in the first place. It’s time for companies to move on from old-school lectures, and use real-world working sessions as the platform for behavior change.
