Approaching Bias with Curiosity
We all face biases at work that hinder our growth and performance. Being vulnerable and asking the questions from a place of curiosity is the best way to open up a positive path forward.
👋 Hi! I'm Yue. Chief Product Officer turned Career Coach. My personal mission is to help more women and minorities break through into the C-suite. Each week I tackle topics like building presence and power, navigating conflicts and escalations, and charting your path to promotion. Subscribe to get access to these posts, and all past posts.
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(First (fur)baby of the Family, Teddy the Corgi, Bay Area, California)
Bias and stereotypes are around us everywhere. My husband is a tall, above-average-looking (imho) man of Latin descent. When he puts on a hat and t-shirt to do leaf-blowing around our house in a nice upper-middle-class suburb of the Bay Area, our lovely neighbors will stop by to ask how much he charges per hour. He will get stopped at Harvard Square when he’s going to class because he is wearing a hoodie and fits the description of someone who stole a purse recently. When he walks into a high-end restaurant, the staff, and sometimes guests, briefly wonder if he’s here to interview for a job in the kitchen or a server late for work.
These biases translate to the workplace as well. It takes him much longer to establish credibility with his team and his leadership even though he is arguably more qualified and experienced than others. On sales calls, people pitch to his white male team member instead of addressing him as the decision-maker. If he shows the smallest hint of irritation at an issue, he is immediately perceived as threatening or aggressive.
As an Asian female, I can relate to many of these unfair scenarios due to bias and have more interesting stories of my own to add to late-night dinner conversations. If you are not a white male working in a Western business culture, you will at some point in your professional life experience a decision or an interaction that feels unexpected, unfair, and undeserved. And you’ll wonder: did this scenario happen this way because I am a woman? because I am Asian or Latino or Black? Is this something I can and should try to change? How do I work through this?
Bias causes real pain
We get hurt when we believe we are treated unfairly. It doesn’t matter if the other person was not aware of it or was not doing it intentionally. When we feel we are treated unfairly, we no longer consider the other person someone we can rely on and be vulnerable with. Worse, we often then go into protective mode from the perceived threat. Our intuition is to withdraw with a grudge or fight back with anger. A wrongly perceived threat often creates yet another wrongly perceived threat in the other direction. A vicious cycle begins of suppressed anger, confusion, and resentment because communication breaks down and you no longer feel safe in that person’s presence, and vice versa. A small misunderstanding may eventually balloon into a real mindset and belief that the other person is intentionally hurting you.
Find Curiosity
Rather than working from anger or fear, the emotion you need to find and bring to the forefront is curiosity. Be curious about what just happened: What was your intention with this comment? What is prompting you to act this way that seems so out of the blue to me? What do you know that I don’t?
When you are curious, you are putting your ego aside and putting your logical, analytical brain in the driver's seat. You are distancing yourself from your primitive emotions that arise with a perceived threat. You are looking for connection and understanding.
In China and India, there is a parable of the four blind men and an elephant. It’s the story of a group of four blind men who have never come across an elephant before and tries to learn what an elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the animal's body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk or the tail or the foot. They verbally describe the animal based on what they touch and begin to suspect that the other men are dishonest. None can out-shout the others and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to claim absolute truth based on their limited, subjective experience as they ignore other people's limited, subjective experiences which may be equally true.
When it comes to bias, you are likely missing information about what is going on in the other person’s mind — what past experiences have they had that you triggered? what other priorities or goals are they trying to defend that you are not aware of? In fact, they might not fully understand what is going on in their mind and why they did something the way they did. =) When you (both) only know a part of the picture, no matter how hard you try to guess why someone did something, your chances of getting it right are extremely low. To find the information you are looking for and need, start with curiosity.
How do you find the mindset to start with curiosity? Begin with giving yourself time to process and feel the initial emotions of anger, fear, or frustration. Acknowledge that it is okay to feel this way. Then, take a pause — it could be taking 15 seconds during a heated debate, or coming back to the conversations a few days later. Get your ego out of the way (e.g. needing to constantly assert what you know). When you feel calm and genuinely curious, you are ready to reapproach the situation.
When you engage calmly, you help them relax as well. When you approach with curiosity, you trigger their mirror neurons and will draw them into a state of curiosity as well. Finally, when you put on your thinking hat, you bring them into thinking and reflection as well. This is the state you want to be in to approach conversations about bias and stereotypes: relaxed, curious, and logical.
Reapproach with vulnerability
Start in a place of vulnerability when re-engaging with the "perceived threat”. It may feel very counterintuitive — they just hurt me, why would I expose myself to the possibility of being harmed again, intentionally?
This is because in most cases, the individual did not intend to harm you. There was no intentional ill will. By allowing the other person to clearly see that they may harm you, you are showing them the full impact of their action — you are telling them your part of the elephant.
Step by step, here’s how to re-engage:
Describe to the other person how you felt when they took a certain action. This puts you in a vulnerable spot. You are admitting that they hurt you and telling them how they could do it again.
Don’t try to justify it for them or hand-wave it away. Many of us have a tendency to immediately follow up our description with “oh but you probably didn’t mean it” or “it’s a small thing” or “but that’s okay”. It’s likely what we are trying to say to ourselves to make ourselves feel better. And when you say it to them, you are avoiding the discomfort required for learning. They need the time and space to process what you said. Don’t tell them immediately it’s not important.
Let the comment sink in. Sit with the discomfort, the awkward silence. Let them process their emotions and engage their logical brain. The more unexpected or surprising your reaction (to them), the longer you need to give them. Give it at least 30 seconds if not longer.
Ask an open question. When you feel like they may be ready to speak again, ask them an open-ended question.
“What did my description of my reaction bring up for you?”
“How are you thinking about what I just brought up?”
“What is your take on my reaction?”
As any good therapist would suggest, when trying to get someone to open up, stay away from questions that can be answered with a yes or no. These questions cast blame and puts the other person in the defensive immediately and shut down. It also does not invite the person to truly share what they think. Restructure your questions from “did you intend X”, to “what did you intend.” Avoid playing the 20 question game with yes/no questions to try and guess (exhaustingly) what they were thinking. If you’ve never touched their part of the elephant, you probably won’t guess it.
Open-ended questions invites them to share their side of the story (their part of the elephant. This gives each of you the other part of the the puzzle you were missing to get to path forward together. Curiosity breaks down walls and alleviates misunderstanding.
Do you feel like there’s bias in your workplace? How can you approach it from a place of curiosity? What is hindering you from doing so? Comment your thoughts and feedback below!
See you next week at 3:14pm!
Yue
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