Scratching The Surface Of Unconscious Bias

Gender and race aren’t the only areas where people commonly harbor unconscious (and conscious) biases. You may have noticed that many organizations are undertaking company-wide efforts to counter bias around gender and race, creating initiatives to reduce pay disparity and to increase leadership opportunities among these groups. This is great, but it’s just scratching the surface.

Gender and race are far from the entire landscape. Negative biases can be based on a multitude of other factors, from people’s job functions to their age, their religion, their sexual orientation, and their socioeconomic status (and this list is nowhere near exhaustive).

Here are some other common areas for biases:

Educational: Whether you went to college, where you went to college, to what level you completed, and what you studied.

Family status: Whether you are single, married, divorced, and if you have children or not.

Political affiliation: Whether you are conservative, liberal, politically active, or inactive.

Nationality: Whether you are a citizen or if not, what country you come from.

Language: Whether you speak the native language fluently, with an accent, or if you speak multiple languages.

Even seemingly mundane characteristics like how messy someone’s desk is, their posture, or how powerful they look in their chair, can lead people into biased thinking.

While you can’t (nor should you) monitor every thought and action for bias against every kind of person, you can revisit the overall fairness of your procedures and decision-making regularly to build a more inclusive culture at work.

Download our guide, Manage Your Biases to Better Manage Your Team, to learn some strategies for identifying your biases as a leader and what you can do to manage them.

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Is Everyone Biased?

Pamela Fuller, FranklinCovey’s Inclusion and Bias Thought Leader and Global Client Partner, answers the que...

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We Are Bias Machines

Have you ever wondered where biases come from? Brandon Stone shares how we as humans create biases.

Manage Your Biases To Better Manage Your Team

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Scratching The Surface Of Unconscious Bias

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Unconscious biases affect how we make decisions, engage with others, and respond to various situations, often limiting potential, inhibiting performance, and leading to poor decisions.

Written in an approachable and practical style, The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias gives readers the tools to reframe bias, cultivate connection, and create high-performing teams at work.

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Mike Hassett explains three common bias traps where we are more prone than usual to rely on biased thinking.

Everyone has biases, whether they are conscious or conscious, but where do they come from? Bias is often traced back to these five things.

Pamela Fuller, FranklinCovey’s Inclusion and Bias Thought Leader and Global Client Partner, answers the question of whether or not everyone is biased.