Copywriter & Chief Editor | Asyah Saif | Grammatica Communications Ltd.
Creating brave spaces requires us to use our self-awareness to embrace diversity, demand inclusion, and build belonging. Part of the work towards embracing diversity, inclusion, and belonging relies on our ability to connect with others, which is what emotional intelligence is about. Connecting with others includes recognizing the layers of our own identity, how the dimensions of our identity influence how we connect with others, and the ways that we can foster belonging by recognizing the frame of reference which we operate within.
Affirmative Action as a Case in the US Supreme Court
The Daily podcast by the New York Times published an episode in November titled “Why the Supreme Court Might End Affirmative Action”.
For decades, many universities in the USA have used race as a factor when deciding which students to admit, but a landmark case argued in fall of 2022 may be about to change that. There are two cases that argue that affirmative action in higher education—taking account of race for any reason to make an admissions decision—is unlawful. One of the cases focuses on Harvard University, and it posits that there’s a distinct development that they’ve discriminated against Asian students in particular.
In the early 2000s, a court ruling was in favour of taking race into account as long as it is one factor among many in considering the whole student in the admissions process. It cannot be a quota, and it cannot be the only factor. According to that precedent, affirmative action is about looking at life on college campuses that is composed of a mixed student body, which adds up to a better learning environment for all.
The term “diversity” came up in these hearings at the Supreme Court over 200 times in a couple of hours of arguments. One viewpoint is that the USA is diverse, so it’s essential to who they are, and higher education institutions should reflect that. The other side takes a completely different view about whether diversity is an adequate justification for race-conscious admission programs. Additionally, folks found it challenging to understand what diversity actually meant despite its frequent use. Some argued that diversity meant everything to everyone. Another argument brought attention to Harvard’s student population being over 80% wealthy students, which is not diverse. Others asked whether the university cares about religious diversity, and Harvard doesn’t ask about religion. More and more questions came up. What counts as diversity? Why not religion? Why not class? And how come those categories are treated differently from race?
Many brought up that if you can’t define or measure it, how do you know if you’ve achieved it? How do you know when you’re done? If we’re supposed to be assembling, in this case, a student body that coincides exactly with the percentage of those racial groups in the general population, would we say that we’ve met diversity if the percentage is achieved? The end goal becomes unclear.
In the case around affirmative action that set the precedent in the early 2000s, they had said that they expected that, in another 25 years, we will no longer need to take account of race in university and college admissions, and that this was a necessary evil that society will be done with. Interestingly, we’re almost at that milestone mark—when they thought we’d be done with diversity because it would no longer be an issue. Perhaps looking back they’re realizing how short sighted that was. Moreso, it speaks to how complex diversity as a concept is and how hard it is to achieve complete equity along different dimensions of identity in our institutions, whether academic, government, public, healthcare, corporate, or others.
What does diversity really mean in our own workplace context? Considering such a big and complex topic of affirmative action, how can we take some key learnings and apply them to our immediate workplace. How can we be open to diversity while challenging our own unconscious biases is a way to bring the topic down to a micro level so that we’re able to implement some of the spirit of what diversity is meant to be.
Dimensions of Identity
So, what does identity really mean?
Before looking at inclusion and diversity, we need to consider the role of identity, both our own identity and the identity of others. We all have multiple dimensions to our identity that make us who we are. Some of our identities are visible to others, and some are not. Consider this in relation to the analogy of the iceberg: the exposed part of the iceberg sits above the water, but that’s a small percentage of what we can see. The larger mass—around 90%!—sits underneath the surface, and that is the part that we can’t see.
When we meet new people for the first time, they’re only seeing a small part of what makes us who we are, just as we only see a small part of what makes them who they are.
“The goal of creating a brave space may be to delve deeper below the surface to better understand someone’s full identity and how that impacts the way they navigate the world.”
Dr. Johanna Pagonis
But consider your frame of reference and what the components of your identity are. Visualize an empty picture frame. To populate that picture frame with an image of yourself, we ask that you reflect on the components of your identity: the things that people can see and the things that people can’t see.
In a recent talk to students in the Police Studies program at MacEwan University, we discussed the topics of inclusion and dimensions of identity. As part of an exercise, I challenged them to share an assumption they made about me based on what they could see. Of course there was a significant amount of hesitation; after all, it is not often that we are called in to voice these assumptions that we make. I reiterated that I gave them permission to share and that it is in the spirit of learning and would not be taken personally, a student was brave enough to share. She said that her assumption was that I was a marketing professional based on my professional attire.
This was a great demonstration of the biases that we may have of people without really knowing anything about them. This is what we mean by unconscious bias: we see someone and we make automatic assumptions as to who they are.
Awareness of Unconscious Biases is Part of Challenging Them
An unconscious bias is a mental shortcut that we use to process information and make decisions quickly. Our brain needs to do that because otherwise there’s no way we’d be able to make the decisions that we make every day. We’re flooded with millions of bits of information every second, but we can only consciously process about 40. Our brain creates shortcuts that can be used when making decisions with limited information, focus, or time, but can sometimes lead us astray and have unintended consequences in the workplace. For example, our brain naturally categorizes people and leaps to conclusions as a way to process information faster.
Unconscious bias can prevent us from making objective decisions that can lead to positive outcomes for the people in our organization. It can cause people to overlook great ideas, undermine individuals’ potential, and create less than ideal work experiences for our colleagues. Challenging unconscious bias means that we need to work a little harder and make a conscious effort to unveil and address our personal biases. The first step to reduce our biases is to actually recognize that we have them.
The following are five common types of unconscious bias. Reflect on a moment in time that you held that unconscious bias and the impact it had on others.
1. Affinity bias. It is the tendency to gravitate towards or give preference to people who are similar to ourselves. We are more likely to remember a job candidate who went to the same school as us, is at the same spot in their career as us, or has similar life experiences to us.
2. Perception bias. When we make assumptions or form a stereotype about a particular group of people. Perception bias can take on many forms. For example, we may falsely assume that a person who’s introverted cannot perform or be a leader or someone who is extroverted will be a fantastic leader and perform very well.
3. Confirmation bias. It is the tendency to seek out information that further confirms our preconceived notions or beliefs, and it can also create what’s called an echo chamber. We seek out and gravitate towards information that confirms what we believe to be true. It leaves a big blind spot in judgment and inhibits our ability to think critically and make sound decisions. This happens everywhere, and I have seen examples of it in science and law enforcement. For example, this can happen in a miscarriage of justice when a person is conducting an investigation and they are only collecting data that validates their hypothesis, which can lead to a wrongful arrest or conviction.
4. Groupthink. It is the tendency for people to confirm or go along with a group rather than form or express a differing opinion. Groupthink often causes problems in meetings and group decision making. For example, the first person or first few people who shared their vote or opinion on an idea might change the votes or opinions of everyone who follows. Another example of groupthink is when someone says something really inappropriate and no one challenges it because of fear of standing out or being unpopular because of a differing opinion. What we’ve discovered is usually you’re not alone in how you feel, and sometimes it takes just one person to step up and speak up for others to feel safe enough to do the same.
5. Halo and horns effect. The halo effect is the tendency to focus on the good qualities of a person or a situation and as a result overlook anything bad. The horns effect is when you let one negative quality about a person or situation overshadow anything that is good. This can transpire in promotion decisions where the type of person that gets along well with everybody and has a lot of friends is perceived as a good person overall overlooking other performance factors and competencies.
Through reflection exercises, we can start to shift our frame of reference, which is a cognitive mechanism that allows us to unbias our biases. It allows us to accommodate new knowledge into our existing mental categories or mental schema to make room for new information.
“We’re not bad for having these unconscious biases. We all have them. Our brains are wired to find shortcuts and store information in a certain way so we can retrieve it. There is research that shows that by just becoming aware of unconscious biases we can then start to actually change our behavior, our reactions to it, or unmask those biases.” Katie Allan
Katie Allan
Taking Action to Challenge Unconscious Bias
A manager of one of my research studies shared a story with me that fits well as an example of the horns effect bias. In the research group at the time, there was a woman that everyone perceived through the horns effect. Nobody liked her, nobody would invite her for coffee, and she was always neglected, and the reasoning was because she wasn’t a nice person and very difficult to get along with. When the manager came into this team, he saw the dynamic that was playing out, and he decided to talk to the woman who was always being excluded. His intention was to really find out what was going on. When he sat down to talk to her and ask her what her perceptions of what was going on, she started to cry. She felt that nobody liked her, and she did not know why she was being excluded from gatherings. On one hand, she lacked the self-awareness of her behavior and how it was impacting others; on the other hand, no one ever bothered to talk to her about her behaviour and its impact on the team. As a result, the horns effect bias kept being reinforced and acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it took the new manager to break the cycle.
Sometimes, it takes an outside perspective to help us become conscious of our unconscious biases and seeing the impacts of our behaviors and decisions. In the above example, the staff might have been behaving in ways that were negatively affecting the team morale, but then the team was contributing to it by always excluding the staff member and not talking to her about what she was doing. There was no brave space created for compassionate conversations and self-reflection. Ultimately, even if your bias is based on someone’s behavior, the question becomes: What can you do about it? If you do nothing, that bias is never challenged, and the other person is never supported in developing their self-awareness.
At the end of the day, what kind of a workplace environment do you want to create, and what role do you play in that? Do you wait for others to take the lead or do you? There are many things you can do to create a brave space, and challenging unconscious biases within your team is part of creating those spaces.
Key Takeaways & Calls to Action
1. Think about your own examples or experiences with the biases mentioned above. Reflect on having and holding some of those biases, and also reflect on being on the receiving end of those biases.
2. Individually or in a group or with your team, draw out the picture frame activity (this is your frame of reference). Draw a frame and write down the dimensions of your identity. Include all components of your identity: the visible and invisible factors that make up who you are. Think of the iceberg. The visible could potentially include race, gender, and age. What is underneath the surface? This can include your education, family status, values, purpose, and trauma. Consider how all these factors shape who you are.
3. Think of a time when your frame of reference prevented you from being able to understand someone else’s experience or entrenched you deeper into a bias that you had. How did that influence the conversation and the relationship, and what would you do differently next time?