Drawing on extensive research and deep collaboration with the Equality Action Center and leaders across the Expanding Equity network, we’re launching a three-part blog series – How Leaders Can Build the Best Teams. This series is designed to equip HR leaders, middle managers and frontline supervisors with practical tools to level the playing field for all workers and build high-performing, equitable and productive teams.
How Leaders Can Build the Best Teams – A Series
- Part One: Assembling Your Team – Adopting Fair & Effective Hiring Practices
- Part Two: Leading Your Team – Adopting Fair & Effective Management Practices
- Part Three: Developing Your Team – Adopting Fair & Effective Performance Practices
Understanding and Interrupting Bias to Unlock the Full Potential of Your Workforce
Most of us work on teams, and some of us have the privilege of leading teams. For leaders at all levels, the best teams bring diversity of experiences, ideas and approaches, which leads to greater collaboration, innovation and production. But it takes intentionality and hard work by leaders to build the best teams and get the most out of their employees.
What all workers really want is fairness – a fair shot at a job or a promotion and to be treated fairly in the workplace, no matter their identity, background or experience. That’s what most organizations are striving for, a level playing field, but outdated systems, processes and protocols prevent that from becoming reality. Unfortunately, bias creeps in and interrupts the hiring, management and performance practices by leaders at organizations, giving some an advantage while disadvantaging others. As a result, qualified and talented employees aren’t hired or promoted, or are underappreciated and underutilized, and they don’t stay as long or come at all. The cost is clear: less productivity, slower innovation, more attrition and lower profits.
Bias exists in the workplace because it exists in each of us. We judge people, rank people and exclude people. We’re not bad people, we’re just human. We all carry assumptions and opinions that are inaccurate or unfounded but nonetheless affect our daily interactions and decisions. And whether subtle or overt, bias keeps team members from contributing fully to the mission and work of the organization. This series explores how leaders and organizations can recognize and interrupt bias to build inclusive, high-performing teams and a consistent employee experience. When team members feel included, valued and utilized, they’re more likely to share their talents, take creative risks and collaborate effectively – all critical components of a thriving team.
Through this series, leaders will learn:
- How to debias your hiring practices so that all candidates have equal opportunity to excel throughout the hiring process.
- How to debias your management practices so that everyone on your team has the tools, resources and supports they need to thrive.
- How to debias your performance practices so that all team members have equal access to effective and actionable feedback and can grow in their roles and careers.
The Real Cost of Workplace Bias
Bias occurs when individuals or systems unfairly favor some groups over others, preventing team members from bringing all of their knowledge, skills and abilities to the work and resulting in lower team production and lower employee retention. Simply put, addressing bias is foundational to building high-performing teams that deliver and sustain results. Research shows what many leaders intuitively understand: when employees feel they belong, everyone wins. Teams with inclusive managers report higher job satisfaction and engagement, and inclusive teams process information more carefully, re-examine assumptions more thoroughly and generate more creative solutions than homogeneous ones.
Reframing “Unconscious Bias”
We often hear about unconscious bias, but a more accurate term is automatic bias – the idea that stereotypes come to mind automatically rather than deliberately. This distinction matters. Teaching people to interrupt automatic assumptions that arise from stereotypes we learn from outside sources and influences is extremely difficult. Instead, it’s easier to teach “cognitive override”—helping people see what stereotypes look like so that automatic associations do not shape our interactions and decisions. This series will help leaders and teams recognize common forms of unintentional bias, take steps to look at the merits instead and build thriving teams in the process.
The Five Patterns of Bias
Research has identified five well-documented patterns of bias:
- Prove-It-Again Bias: Groups that are stereotyped as less competent routinely have to provide more evidence in order to be judged as equally competent.
- Tightrope Bias: Assertiveness and authoritativeness are less accepted from some groups versus others.
- Maternal Wall Bias: When women have children, it changes their colleagues’ perception of their work, commitment and competence.
- Tug-of-War Bias: When bias against a group fuels internal conflict within the group itself.
- Identity Bias: Stereotypes that differ for different subgroups within a larger identity group.
When Small Biases Become Big Barriers
Bias doesn’t have to be extreme to be harmful and prevent leaders from building thriving teams. Even subtle, everyday slights compound over time. Small differences in employee experiences (notably, biases as small as 5%) can have career-defining impacts if they occur repeatedly. According to Jessica Nordell’s book The End of Bias: A Beginning, if a company starts out with 50-50 men and women and applies just a 5% gender bias at each level in the organization, by the C-Suite at level eight, you’ll have only 2% women left. Bias plays out the same way for any group that is facing unexamined bias in small, everyday ways. The cumulative effect of seemingly minor differences in treatment prevents employees from performing to maximum effectiveness and receiving equal recognition for their work. Ultimately, it hinders workers and teams from reaching their full potential.
The Path Forward: Eliminating Bias From the Process and Building Teams to Be Successful
The workplace is one of the few remaining places in our society where people regularly interact and collaborate across race, class, education and ideology. Most of us long for environments with less division and more collaboration, less conflict and more understanding, less uncertainty and more security. Our workplaces can become those spaces when leaders have the tools to help build and sustain them. Through our research and work with organizational leaders, we have identified three critical action areas to ensure a consistent experience for all employees. In our upcoming posts, we’ll explore each action area in depth. Here’s what’s coming:
- Part One: Assembling Your Team – Adopting Fair & Effective Hiring Practices: Learn how to structure hiring processes to ensure objectivity and consistency so that every candidate has a fair shot at the job or the promotion.
- Part Two: Leading Your Team – Adopting Fair & Effective Management Practices: Explore practical strategies to lead inclusively and foster a supportive and collaborative team culture so that every employee can contribute their talents fully and effectively for maximum team performance.
- Part Three: Developing Your Team – Adopting Fair & Effective Performance Practices: Discover how performance evaluations, project assignments and promotion decisions can support actionable feedback and equal opportunity for all workers.
Ready to build better teams at your organization? Please join us for the conversation over the next several weeks!
The Expanding Equity Core Program is a free, online learning platform and curriculum designed to support HR leaders in creating talent and culture policies and practices that build thriving teams. Join an upcoming info session to learn more.