If you have a minoritised characteristic it is likely you have to deal with others’ biases towards you at work.
Others’ biases towards you can be unconscious. However, sometimes those biases can be covert (i.e. consciously held biases that people don’t admit) or overt (consciously held biases that people don’t try to hide.)
If biases are targeted at you, it can be soul crushing.
- Constantly having to look out for bear traps that could damage your standing or career
- Constantly managing your emotions to stay professional
- Constantly managing the exhaustion that results while also doing good work
In the years since the murder of George Floyd, a lot of attention has been paid to helping people and organisations surface and address the interpersonal and systemic biases minoritised people experience at work. Efforts continue and long may they do so.
In the meantime, what do you do if you are impacted by others’ biases? Waiting patiently for things to change doesn’t help and the heartbreak we experience when things don’t change or change too slowly is real
If you are a minoritised person or an ally, read on…
In creating the Next Level Leadership© Programme for career women of colour, I’ve addressed this issue head on and will be teaching practical tips and tools that address the bias of others.
The most important thing to know?
It is not your job to educate biased people out of behaviours that damage you (unless of course you want to…that’s a separate matter.) The solution lies in learning how to lessen the impact on you.
I have developed a three-step process to help you.
Step 1: Prepare
You will already know the people in your organisation who exhibit bias towards you. So part of the answer is to prepare minimise their impact on you.
- Consciously decide in advance what you want to respond to and what you don’t
- Decide the words you will use in countering the impact of their bias. For example:
- If you share views and people slide past them: “I want to bring us back to…”
- If your views are outright dismissed: “Focusing back on the facts…”
- If you are interrupted: “Let me finish my point and I’ll hand over to you…”
3. If there will be allies in the room pre-brief them about what you want them to say or do and also tell them what to look for so they can spot the bias in play.
4. In advance of the situation, identify your typical physiological response and decide how your will counter it. For example:
- Where in your body do you tense? If your shoulders hunch when you experience biased behaviour, how can you remind yourself to keep them lowered in the moment?
- What happens to your breathing? If you breathe more quickly or in ways that are more shallow, how can you remind yourself to take long slow breaths?
Step 2: In the moment
When you face bias in the moment, the golden rule is regulate how you are feeling first before you respond. This is critical as it makes sure you stay in control.
1. Think
- Pause: decide whether to address a behaviour in the moment, later or at all
- Isolate: Identify the specific observable behaviours that the biased person is showing
2. Manage your physiology
- Breathe: Slow belly breaths help calm you, so you can respond in ways that you choose rather than be driven by the emotions someone’s behaviour evokes in you
- Untense: Release areas of the body you normal clench
- Sit tall: To reinforce your confidence in the situation. You will feel more confident and others in the room, including perpetrators, will read your confidence
3. Respond (from conscious choice)
- Remind: Remember and use phrases you decided in the prep phase in step 1
- Address if you want to: Respond to the observable behaviour not the bias you believe sits underneath. E.g. “I notice that you have interrupted me a few times in this meeting. I’d appreciate it if you would let me finish my point. Thank you.”
Remember, you can always choose to address an issue after the event. Sometimes this is the best way as it allows you to prepare how you will do so.
Also remember that you have a choice not to respond either in the moment or after. You are in control, not the perpetrator.
Step 3: Record
You may never want to do anything about someone’s behaviour formally, but making a note of how people with bias have behaved towards you means that the choice remains open, if later you decide you want to address it.
- Notice and record incidents. The more you do this, the more you can identify patterns and therefore be better able to work out how to counter them.
- Collect data: Data is power, and if you do decide you want to address others biases through informal or formal processes, the more data the better: examples, times, dates, who else was there, examples that highlight patterns, etc.
If you are a woman of colour, you don’t have to deal with these and other issues alone. We go into this topic and the other key blocks to you in building a career in more detail on our Next Level Leadership Programme
To find out more about the Next Level Leadership Programme click here
To book a call to explore what the programme can do for you click here