You’ve decided to take bias seriously, but don’t know where to begin. Here are some tips to help you succeed in identifying and addressing bias in your personal and professional life.
Before you begin, recognize that making progress on bias is going to take a lot of focus and effort. If you already care about how bias affects you and the people around you, you are off to a great start. Research has found that one of the best predictors of whether people can reduce their negative bias is simply whether or not they have the desire to do so!
If you’ve got the desire, we’ve got the tips to help you put that desire to work:
- Learn more about your colleagues with the intention of making meaningful connections.
- Once you know more about each other, your biases will dissipate.
- Make a conscious effort to expand your professional network.
- The more diverse your network, the more your assumptions will be challenged.
- Create fair-minded processes for things you tend to do off-the-cuff.
- Rather than impromptu delegation, determine who is really the best for a task, or rotate mundance tasks regularly among team members.
- Team up to disrupt bias-prone procedures at your organization.
- Work with other people who have a similar desire to identify and address bias.
