What is Unconscious Bias?

Unconscious bias or implicit bias is taking decisions by one personal experience or by belief and they don’t know that they have been biased. Here our brain creates a prejudice that affects our decision-making. Typically, this helps us to familiarize ourselves with things that are either good, bad or just patterns of behavior. Everyone has these biases and uses them as mental shortcuts for faster information processing. However, sometimes in our conscious state, our brains are exposed to misinformation and stereotypes.

For example, when someone questions 2+2 ? we instantly reply as 4 without any calculation, because our brain has become accustomed  to the answer . Likewise, our brain makes decisions in a second without analyzing. In this article, we can see how we can overcome this Unconscious bias.

Unconscious bias in Corporate?

Unconscious bias can have a significant influence on our attitudes and behaviors, especially towards other people. It can influence key decisions in the workplace and can contribute to inequality. It leads us to look at the same work differently depending on who is working.

It makes people more judgemental and unaware of the decision. The most common bias in work culture are

• Affinity Bias
• Ageism Bias
• Horns effect
• Confirmation bias
• Gender bias
• Halo effect
• Conformity bias
• Attribution bias

Every bias has its way, If not properly addressed, these biases can negatively impact a company’s workplace culture and team dynamics.

In Corporate unconscious bias mostly happen in the Interview process, Team meetings, Business -decision, Team discussion on Ideation. As an individual, it is important to recognise and understand what biases you may have and how to overcome the bias.

How to overcome Bias?

The tricky thing is, we often don’t know when we are being unfair or subjective. While we may think we’re pretty good at spotting potential bias in other people, it’s incredibly hard for us to see bias in ourselves. Because it’s tough to know exactly when our decision might be impacted by bias, it’s important to use strategies for managing bias at any time when evaluating someone.

TIP to overcome the bias. T-Time I-Intention P-Process.

Time:

• Take your own time to analyse before taking any decision.
• Allocate time and analyze the pros and cons of the issue.
• Ex: You can block a calendar for giving the feedback, so that you will have enough space and time to think over it.

Be Intentional:

• Being intentional about the people we connect with and how we communicate can help us be more inclusive and expand our network.
• Reflect on how you’re reacting to different people’s ideas.
• Gather more information and make a data-driven decision before giving any feedback.
• Example: Pay attention when people speak. And after reflecting, be intentional about your communication style and about making space for all of the voices in the room.

Process:

• Create a process for how you give feedback to help ensure it is objective, thoughtful and helpful.
• Follow the process to maximize objectivity and consistency. One of the most important strategies to manage bias.
• Example: Circulating agenda’s before the meeting so that people can be known about its context and expectation, and at the end of the meetings, invite everyone to share any final thoughts.
• Review your calendar at month-end to examine the time spent with the people and proactively make adjustments to distribute the time evenly on next month.

So, by using this TIP we can overcome the Bias in Corporate. Biases are pervasive, you can reduce their impact with deliberate attention and effort.