Is the F-word good for business?

After last week’s look at technology as an attention barrier (and bridge), on this week’s pod:

·         I bust a myth – with the help of Dr. Graham Music of The Tavistock Centre,,

·         Ivan Newman gets me to ‘Speak from Experience’ and

·         I give you a tip,

all connected with a very human obstacle – and opportunity – because ‘the F-word’ in this week’s show is ‘FEELINGS!’ 

We’re talking about the role of emotion in business – especially in creating and resolving conflict – which isn’t as ‘pink and fluffy’ as it might sound. 

This week’s myth is all about the gap between ‘one of us’ and ‘one of them’ – and how we can close it; and the ‘light note’ we end on is a clip about my own experience of being ‘one of them’ at a job interview .  As you’ll hear, I couldn’t help laughing at the memory of the senior partner of a law firm tying herself up in knots – because I came complete with guide dog! 

In the end, she and I had a couple of conversations which helped us understand each other better; but later, in another firm, I came up against direct discrimination.

I was offered a promotion – but it was blocked from the top.  This was shortly before the first Disability Discrimination Act and the head of the firm made no bones about his reasons – ‘I can’t risk trusting a blind woman with responsibility’.

After that kind of experience, obviously, I’ve never come close to treating anybody else like that, right?

Wrong! 

One of the first applicants I ever interviewed told me he had multiple sclerosis.  All my knowledge of the condition was based on two people I’d only known from a distance – both of whom were quite severely disabled.  So my first thoughts were:

‘He can’t do this job!  The office is upstairs …’ and so on.

Luckily, I saw what I was doing before I got into trouble!  (It would have been really embarrassing if I hadn’t – because I’d just written a book to help managers avoid disability discrimination! 

We went on to have a long conversation, from which I discovered he was a very skilled, talented man.  We didn’t end up working together, but that had nothing to do with his health or ability.

I’m owning up to that not very proud moment in my career because if I can fall into the assumption trap, anybody can. 

Assumption is one of the many attention filters we use to deal with all the information coming at us every day.  It can offer an effective   shortcut – but sometimes it turns out to be the kind that leads you up a cul-de-sac – and leaves you thinking:

‘It would have been quicker to go the long way round!’

That’s especially true when it’s an offspring of bias and the parent of prejudice.

(I’m using ‘bias’ to mean a leaning towards, or away from, anything from an idea to a person, or group of people; and ‘prejudice’ to mean the development of that into prejudgments – all based on sketchy, subjective foundations, rather than objective evidence).

Bias and its descendants are as much facts of life as the conflicts they cause.  As Graham says on the show, distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are likely to have played an important role in our survival; but we now live in a world where physical distance and time can be twisted into all sorts of unusual shapes.  So being able to bridge relational distance (the degree to which we feel connected to, or alienated from another person) is more valuable than it has ever been.  That includes financial value, when it allows us to build more inclusive teams and customer/client-bases.

Martin Buber (religious philosopher) called this kind of distance ‘human-social’ and split it into three main categories:

·         ‘I & thou’, where we see another person as a unique individual;

·         ‘I & you’, where we see them through their group membership/s; and

·         ‘I & it’, where we see them only in terms of their function.

I’d extend ‘I & it’ to include people we define by any single attribute.  In ‘I & you’ and ‘I & it’ situations, prejudice can thrive.

Managing that within your organization starts with confronting your own – which starts with acknowledging the biases which spawn them.  Some you’ll be aware of – but some are unconscious, or ‘implicit’.  So the subjective assumptions they breed feel like objective facts. 

The ex-boss who blocked my promotion clearly had a very limited understanding of visual impairment.  I doubt he’d ever spoken to anybody directly who actually had firsthand knowledge of the subject – no, not even me!  (In all the time I worked in his small firm, we never exchanged a word).  So he filled in the holes in his real knowledge with assumption – flowing from fear.

Social biases like that aren’t the only implicit beliefs which can cause conflict and get in the way of sound decision-making.  For instance:

·         ‘Confirmation bias’ is at work when we only take into account evidence that supports our existing view – and ignore anything which contradicts it;

·         ‘Recency bias’ is one of those tricks our memories play, giving more weight to recent events than things which happened earlier – potentially tilting decisions around performance reviews and salaries; and

·         ‘Proximity bias’ has come to the forefront with hybrid working, because one of its effects is the belief that the people around us are working harder than those operating remotely.  That creates team tension – and potential fragmentation.

Tackling any unconscious bias is obviously a challenge; but it can be done – and it’s worth the effort.  Not only will you be able to make fairer, more robust decisions; you’ll also be better-placed to help others in the business do the same.  So here are a few tips to get you started:

1  Take a step back:

The first step is to become aware of subconscious influences on your decision-making.  The starting point is to step back, so that you can look at how you weigh up your options and come to conclusions from a fresh perspective.

2  Perception begins with perspective:

If you’ve been with me from the beginning of this series, that’s going to be a familiar phrase.  It applies here because tapping into more diverse viewpoints on decisions and the processes which lead to them, helps you expand your own perspective on, and so your perceptions of, people and situations; and when you widen your focus, you have more chance of spotting and breaking patterns which could cause problems.

3  Remember, context shapes content:

Another familiar phrase – and it’s as true here as anywhere else!  Once you’ve acknowledged that you hold a particular bias, think about where it comes from - your:

·         culture,

·         family,

·         personal experience – or, most likely,

·         a mix of all three.

If you know you hold a social bias, which causes you to favour one group of people over another, you can kill two birds with one stone:

Confirmation bias reinforces the social kind.  So you can tackle both at once, by proactively looking for evidence which contradicts your perception.  Formal training can help, because it gives you a chance to unpack your beliefs in a safe, structured environment. 

There’s also the ‘Implicit Association Test’ (Developed by researchers at Harvard et al in the late-‘90s).  IATs were originally devised to assess unconscious racial bias, but they’ve since been extended.

They’re still a long way from perfect – and they won’t tell you whether your biases are leading you to prejudiced behaviour.  Critics also point out that if you take a test several times, you could get several different results; but keeping all that in mind, they could be a jumping-off point for your exploration.

4  Invest in conversation:

As I hinted earlier, the quickest, easiest – and most cost-effective shortcut to breaking down this kind of barrier – and building a bridge in its place – is to talk to the very people you’re biased against – and, even more importantly, listen to them.  The more you find out about who they really are, as individuals, the easier it will be to see that a stereotype, that looks like a template which fits everyone in a particular group, actually fits no-one.

5  Find a patch of common ground and build on it:

The antidote to prejudice and its ancestors is empathy, for which the vast majority of humans have the necessary skills and abilities – even if life might have switched them off for a while.  It grows in common ground, fed by shared experience.   So when you’re faced with someone you see in terms of ‘I & you’, or even ‘I & it’, it’s easy to assume you have nothing in common; but all you need to start building is one small connection. 

If all else fails, there’s one thing that connects every single person on the planet – we’re all human.  So if you’re struggling, start with that broad feature and work down to finer details.

It won’t turn your worst enemy into your best friend!; but it will give you the potential to turn ‘one of them’ into ‘one of us’; -, which will help you resolve, manage and even prevent conflict.

Empathy isn’t limited to individuals.  This week, I’ve noticed there have been calls for it in relation to M&S, as they work to get their online operations back up and running after last week’s cyber attack. 

  This is, of course, only one small element of a much bigger topic, which we’ll come back to in the not too distant future.  In the meantime, as always, if you need help with any aspect of conflict management at work, come and talk to me!  All my details are on the website:

http://www.savvybusinessresolutions.com