Deconstructing Bias – My Learnings. The beautiful orange sun was all set to pack up behind a sea of buildings. Traces of fading winter can be felt in the evening breeze, which had a slight nip. In a matter of minutes, the entire landscape had shifted.
The twilight seemed to awaken the darkness within me as well.
I was told by my handpicked loyal team that I was biased. It hurt like hell. I cared about my team, I cared about being fair, and I cared about being a good human. How could they say this about me? So unfair. I was angry and upset. And yet a niggling thought kept popping up – What if they were right? Just what if?
Everyone talks about physical fitness, but what about Emotional Fitness for the Urban Professional?
Introspection…
As the resentment settled, a question arose, what is it that I am doing that is causing this? At some level whether biased or not, I was causing pain and I had to own that. When I owned that I started unpacking things in my head and like a snake emerging from its hideout – an interesting trail of thoughts emerged.
I remembered an Indian fable where Lord Shiva and Parvati had to decide who among their children would get to eat the divine fruit of supreme knowledge. They set up a challenge and told the kids that whoever goes around the universe three times first, gets the real deal. Karthikeya, the more physically oriented younger son, flew off on his supersonic Peacock and the potbellied Ganesha was left wondering what to do with his mouse pet. Ganesha used his intelligence and went around his parents three times and in all sincerity explained logically to his parents that they were the entire universe for him and his sincerity, logic and intelligence appealed to the parents, who offered him the fruit. Karthikeya came back soon enough and wasn’t amused, in fact he was so infuriated with the decision that he left home. Why? Of course he was upset with the fair play aspect but there was something deeper. He was offended because he felt there was a relationship angle to the decision and they loved his brother more than him. They were Biased. Who was right? Well, if the above board Gods had to deal with accusations of Bias lesser mortals will certainly face the scrutiny of many.
Back to my story…
Like everyone else I also make decisions and typically there are some ingredients that stand out, what is the context or background like who has bandwidth now, there is logic – what is the right thing to do, there is past performance track record, there is capability and potential, there is attitude and there is also a relationship which exists between me and person involved. In our fable, Karthikeya disagreed with the logic but in fact was more upset because he felt they were fonder of his brother. He assumed that he was done in because of the relationship, while in fact Ganesh exhibited mental agility and convincing skills. If places were swapped and if Karthikeya had gone around his parents and explained it as well, chances are he would have gotten the fruit. While the negatively impacted person assumes that the relationship was the primary reason for an unfavorable decision, is that always the case?
Related Read: If you constantly find yourself comparing your life with that of others, you need to Stop Comparing, Start Living!
Deconstructing Bias…
As I attempted Deconstructing Bias, I realized that people were perceiving bias through my behaviors and my decisions, expectations influencing their perception. When things were unfavorable the default assumption was the relationship angle unduly tilted scales against them.
I decided to really unpack the prime villain. The reality was, ‘a relationship’ existed and it existed with everyone in the team and it was different with different people and was a factor at play. I certainly seemed to associate better with certain types of people more than others, given my personality. That bit was true. But it was also true that I wanted the best result from a decision because it invariably impacted my performance. So I did consider context, logic, performance, potential, and attitude. Now, there were two possibilities- I played favorites and this actually overshadowed the other factors or one of the other factors was the reason for that decision.
Having been on both sides, as a manager and reportee and having been at the receiving end of unfavorable decisions myself I realize that it is rarely just about a relationship. And at those times when I was not favored, it boiled down to this – I could conclude bias and wallow in misery and resentment or I could ask – to understand context, potential and other considerations deconstructing bias and see the picture the way my boss was seeing it. Many times this has resulted in better understanding and acceptance of the decision. There have been times when I felt that the relationship factor was a key differentiator but guess what, I had to own that as well – I had to consider why I didn’t build that kind of relationship? Did anyone stop me?
Key takeaways…
When I have made tough decisions involving people there have been times when I chose to shy away from speaking the hard to digest truth. That has to stop. I needed to show them the picture that I was seeing and to do that I had to overcome my tendency of avoiding unpleasant conversations.
The second one on behaviors was an eye opener – surprise surprise – I realized that I do demonstrate different behaviors towards different people. If you are wondering – what a dumb fellow, it’s so obvious isn’t it? Well, when I write this it sounds obvious to me too but it’s taken me years to actually realize this and more importantly accept it as something that is not ideal. For example, in a meeting I had a harsher tone with some people more than others. What I realized was, this was not so much about playing favorites, the other person who knows me better is smarter in their behavior, basically they understood my triggers better and modified their behavior – and this was not like a calculated thing, it just happened. Sometimes, I trusted a person’s capability more because of their past performance and hence went easy on them. Now, for an impacted party or an observer it certainly looked like differentiated behavior and in fact it was but just that it wasn’t so much about a preferential treatment. Not in my head, at least. The introspection helped, this was a big lesson for me and I certainly needed to work on neutralizing this.
Repacking Awareness…
The deconstruction was at an end. The action menu is given below.
- The picture in my head had to be made clearer to all involved even if that meant saying some truths that may hurt. Of course the truth can be said in a caring way.
- You are being watched – every question, every comment is being evaluated – modifying unintended differential behavior by being more present is something I had to practice.
- It was equally important for me to educate my team to own and accept outcomes instead of labeling. Sometimes they just needed to ASK me? Ask, to see the picture in my head. Perhaps some also needed to strengthen their own relationship with me. I suppose they also had to learn to deconstruct a decision or behavior and see what else might have been at play.
The sun had well and truly gone to sleep and even though it had become really dark outside, deconstructing bias and repacking awareness seemed to brighten up my spirits.
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