Owning Up to Bias

April 16, 2015

Back when I was studying journalism in college, we were instructed to strive for objectivity. Our professors made it clear that because we are human and have unique perspectives, we were always going to skew a story in a particular direction. Regardless, the goal was to be unbiased.

The Fourth Estate had a lot more respect in those days.

Today, of course, journalism is no longer expected to be without an agenda. Opinion has somehow replaced fact as sacrosanct. In the age of the Internet and social media in particular, we can all choose to have our information (or infotainment) skewed just the way we like it to further reinforce our perspectives rather than challenge and expand them.

This limits our ability to find creative solutions to problems, work together cooperatively, and to make progress in business, politics and our communities.

Bias exists all around us otherwise we would see just as many women and people of color in leadership positions in business and politics. We also wouldn’t see such a disproportionate number of Black men detained, incarcerated and killed.

Two significant events regarding women occurred this week: 1) April 14, 2015 marked Equal Pay Day, or the date symbolizing how far into the new year the average American woman would have to work to earn what the average American man did in the previous year; 2) Hillary Clinton declared herself to be a candidate for President of the United States of America.

In a recent survey by Pew Research Center on “Women and Leadership,” some 80% of men and women said neither men nor women have leadership styles that make them more successful in business. In fact, about a third of adults (31%) said top female executives may be more honest and ethical than male executives.

Nevertheless, few women reach the top. Just twenty years ago no female CEOs ran Fortune 500 companies; today, 26 or 5% are run by women. In corporate boardrooms, things are a bit better as women represented just 10% of board members in 1995 and today about 17%.

Pew’s survey found respondents say they believe male executives are better than women at assuming risk, yet women are better at compromise. According to the study, men and women may believe female leaders are just as qualified as their male peers, but certain stigmas persist. Even in 2014, some 50% of women and 35% of men agree that many businesses aren’t ready to hire women for top executive positions.

The survey also revealed that 38% of all adults say they hope the U.S. will elect a female president in their lifetime, and 57% say it doesn’t matter to them.

The unending reports of African American men and boys fatally shot by police officers since the tragic event in Ferguson, Missouri last year is a reminder that we as a nation are still facing racism in law enforcement. And this week while visiting our nation’s capitol, I was constantly reminded of how slavery is a continual backdrop to our country’s history, and something we have yet to come to terms with.

Research into unconscious bias reveals that white referees call more fouls on African American NBA basketball players than on white players. And Black referees call more fouls on white basketball players than they do on Black players.

Though we live in a land of so-called equal opportunity where anyone can grow up to lead a company or become commander in chief, the reality is very different. Our bias is unconscious and it is ever present. Facing this and owning up to it is necessary before we can overcome it.

In a new book by Howard J. Ross called Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives, the author provides a formula for how to disengage from bias.

  1. Recognize that bias is a normal part of the human experience
  2. Develop the capacity for self-observation
  3. Practice constructive uncertainty by using PAUSE
  • Pay attention to what’s happening beneath the judgments and assessments
  • Acknowledge your own reactions, interpretations, and judgments
  • Understand the other possible reactions, interpretations, and judgments that may be possible
  • Search for the most constructive, empowering, or productive way to deal with situation
  • Execute your action plan
  1. Explore awkwardness or discomfort
  2. Engage with people in groups you may not know very well, or about whom you harbor biases
  3. Get feedback and data

Whether in business, politics or in our communities, it is up to each of us to admit that we are biased. It is not something we can escape from, but only something we can acknowledge and continually be aware of. This means questioning our perspectives and recognizing that the way we see things may not be as objective as we’d like to believe it is.

Profiling Leaders: Tall, White & Male

October 24, 2014

When you think of a leader, how often do you conjure up the image of a woman or person of color?

Today there are a number of famous women and minorities in positions of power: Mary Barra of General Motors, Meg Whitman of HP, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and President Barack Obama to name but a few.

But they are vastly under represented by a long shot.

In the U.S. women currently represent about half the population and minorities make up 37.4%, when you subtract the white, non-Hispanic or Latino population. In spite of this, leaders in business and politics are hugely over-represented by white males.

As of 2013, women led just 4% of Fortune 500 companies and African Americans led only 1%. Though blacks, Hispanics and American Indians represent about 30% of the overall population, they hold only 3% of senior management positions at American corporations and nonprofits.

Educated like Leaders
According the Pew Research Center, women have been earning college degrees at a greater rate than men since the early 1980s and they currently earn about 57% of all bachelor’s degrees. Racial minorities represent almost a third of all bachelor’s degrees.

The Council of Graduate Schools 2013 report stated that the same held true for Master’s degrees as women are earning advanced degrees by a larger margin than men in every field other than engineering, mathematics and computer science, and physical and earth sciences. Women earn advanced degrees in business at a rate of 53% versus 47% for men.

Look like Leaders
The Economist magazine recently wrote that getting to the top has as much to do with how you look as what you achieve. Despite this supposed age of diversity, we are still led primarily by white men. In fact, our leaders are not only likely to be white and male, but also tall, relatively fit, have a deeper voice and good posture.

In his best-selling book “Blink,” author Malcolm Gladwell found that 30% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are 6 fee 2 inches or taller, even though this represents only 3.9% of the population of American men.

Overweight people are often judged incapable of controlling themselves, and this reflects poorly on their potential to control others.

Sound like Leaders
Quantified Communications discovered that when people were asked to evaluate speeches delivered by 120 executives, voice quality accounted for 23% of listener’s evaluations while content of the speech only accounted for 11%. (It’s not what you say, but how you sound when you say it that matters.) Another study found that male leaders with the deepest voices earned $187,000 a year more than the average.

Diversity in Leaders
Some suggest “covering,” which is a term proposed by sociologist Erving Goffman, that basically describes the process of downplaying aspects of one’s identity. Examples might be a black person who refrains from associating with African-American colleagues, or a woman who shies away from discussing her role as a mother. This seems to suggest you should lead by what others want you to be rather than who you are.

As much as we want a diverse workforce, a diverse board of directors, a diverse executive management team, it seems we are still a long way from realizing a diversity of leaders at the very top.

The Economist article posits that given the number of qualified candidates, selection committees simply end up choosing leaders who look most like themselves. This results in tokenism rather than genuine equalizing of opportunity.

I’m not suggesting women and minorities necessarily make better leaders than white men. However, unless we are wiling to empower them with the same opportunities to lead us, we will limit our options to find exceptional leaders.

Though there are fine examples of women and minorities rising to leadership positions today, they are vastly under represented in both business and politics. Until we judge our potential leaders based on the content of their character and competence rather than the color of their skin and makeup of their gender, we will continue to miss out on realizing our full potential for creative solutions to the challenges we face.

Redefined Leadership through Greater Gender Diversity

December 9, 2011

Women have made great strides succeeding in every profession, yet still find little opportunity in the executive office and corporate boardrooms.

By 2009 women made up more than half of America’s labor force, however, only 12 women were CEOs or presidents of Fortune 500 companies and just 25 of Fortune 1000 companies.

Recently, former Ebay leader Meg Whitman was appointed CEO of HP and Virginia Rometty will soon take over as the first woman CEO of IBM. But these are anomalies as only 3.2% of CEOs in the 3,049 publicly traded companies analyzed by GMI were women.

According to a 2010 study, men hold 82% of seats in Fortune 100 corporate boardrooms and an even higher percentage in Fortune 500 companies. Women and minorities have actually been losing boardseats in large corporations since 2004.

A case could be made for increasing gender diversity not only to provide greater opportunities for women in business, but also to improve overall business.  This is not to say women necessarily make better leaders than men. I only suggest that the yardstick we use to identify successful business leaders may need to be recalibrated.

Leadership qualities in business include such personal behaviors as decisiveness, goal-directedness, and performance-orientation, and we should complement those with social behaviors like relational awareness, emotional intelligence, inclusion, empathy and intuition. These social behaviors are more often associated with women than men, but they can be learned by anyone.

Do the personal and social pressures women face make it harder for them to succeed as leaders in a corporate environment? Countless factors may come into play for women including, maternal and domestic priorities, greater societal pressures, double-standard for behaviors in the office, and the burden of maintaining physical appearances.

The fact is that standards in the business world are still made and enforced by men, and this makes it difficult for women to reach the top in any corporation.

This is especially unfortunate as studies from McKinsey and Catalyst continually find that companies in the US and Europe with a high number of women executives and board members perform better organizationally and financially.

According to Catalyst research, the 25 Fortune 500 companies with the best records for promoting women to senior positions have 69 percent higher returns than the Fortune 500 median for their industry.

The results of a 2010 McKinsey Global Survey found 72 percent of executives say they “believe there is a direct connection between a company’s gender diversity and its financial success.” According to the study, companies with the highest levels of gender diversity also had higher returns on equity, operating results, and growth in market valuation than the averages in their respective sectors.

Research on collective intelligence by Christopher Chabris at MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence and Anita Williams Woolley at Carnegie Mellon University found that the one predictor that a specific group will have high collective intelligence requires that at least half the chairs around the table are occupied by women.

According to Chabris and Woolley it is this superior social sensitivity in reading non-verbal cues and other people’s emotions, and fairness in taking turns that make the difference. Superior social sensitivity includes things like emotional intelligence, a holistic perspective, empathy and intuition.

These traits or “soft skills” are often marginalized or dismissed altogether in the business world. And though they are regularly associated as more feminine characteristics, effective soft skills have proven to be a powerful predictor of career success for both men and women.

Leslie Pratch is a clinical psychologist who headed research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business investigating the longer-term personality predictors of leadership. She found that gender-based expectations for behavior very much influence the styles and evaluations of leaders.

According to Pratch’s research, women are expected to display high levels of social qualities, including the need for affiliation, a tendency to be self-sacrificing, a concern for others, spontaneity, and emotional expressiveness. Men, on the other hand, are expected to show high levels of qualities associated with acting or exerting power, independence, assertiveness, self-confidence, and instrumental competence.

When applied to leadership, female-stereotypical forms of leadership are interpersonally oriented and collaborative, whereas male-stereotypical forms of leadership are task oriented and dominating.

At a time when strong leadership is so desperately needed, it may be necessary to redefine what it means to lead.

To be a successful company and thrive in a global economy, leaders need to lessen their grip on independence and domination, and embrace the distribution of power by engaging others in a collaborative manner to encourage diverse opinions that can bring about successful solutions.

This means hiring and promoting people who have both a task- and collaborative-orientation. In the near term, they may need to promote those people who primarily demonstrate relational intelligence, empathy and intuition to complement those who already demonstrate decisiveness, goal-directedness, and performance-orientation.

And this, more than likely, means hiring and promoting more women into leadership positions.