If you’ve been working for at least a few years, especially in the corporate world, you’ve probably done an unconscious bias training. These trainings can be frustrating and ineffective! They fail to really provide deep understanding about bias, and they do not usually provide practical solutions. In this episode, Michael Baran provides that deep understanding with some compelling research studies and with a fascinating account of how biases develop, starting in childhood. He also describes what can be done about these unconscious (or implicit) biases at work, both to reduce our own biases and to mitigate biases with policies and practices.

Have you ever done an unconscious bias training? They can be both incredibly frustrating and entirely ineffective. Why is understanding bias important, and what can we do about it?

In this episode of The Culture Advantage, host Michael Baran explains why he has found unconscious bias trainings frustrating. First, they fail to provide a deep understanding of what bias really is and why we have them. And second, they fail to give practical solutions that can be implemented at work. Michael provides that deep dive into what unconscious bias really is, why we develop biases starting in early childhood, and what we can really do about them.

Michael narrates some of the classic and striking research studies about unconscious bias, focusing first on a study about gender bias in orchestras. When the gender of the candidate was fully blocked by putting a screen on stage, more women were immediately hired, because the interviewers were just listening to the music without the bias getting in the way. In a second example, Michael describes how copies of the exact same resume were sent out to jobs, only with half of them using a stereotypically sounding white name, and half of them using a stereotypically sounding Black name. These studies highlight the striking impact that bias can have on our workplace decisions.

Understanding the impact of bias, what can we do about it? The suggestions that we just try to “make our unconscious biases more conscious” don’t feel helpful because (1) we don’t know what they are, and (2) they are deep seated. Instead, Michael provides some practical tools for how we can reduce our own biases in the long term while also thinking about ways to block the impacts of bias immediately at work. Suggestions include (1) using the Implicit Association Test as a learning tool, (2) diversifying our perspectives and getting to know more about others, (3) introspecting when we commit subtle acts of exclusion, (4) keeping a bias journal, (5) diversifying panels and committees and considering other perspectives when making decisions, (6) baking the bias mitigation into policy and practice, and (7) slowing down the big decisions.

This episode will intrigue everyone and will deepen your understanding of not only bias but also brain development. And then, it will provide practical ways to begin a process of bias reduction, in our own heads, and in our workplaces.