According to research, more than half of UK employees have suffered from or witnessed some form of discrimination in the workplace, be it connected with their race, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disabilities.
It is, then, a cultural epidemic, visible in the surge of lawsuits, disengagement, and disenfranchisement by anyone within arm’s reach of its career-stifling impact.
The statistics are truly terrible – showing there are zero Black CEOs or CFOs in the FTSE 100 in the UK.
Equally, with only 43 women on the Fortune 500 list, women leaders hold approximately 8.1 percent of Fortune 500 CEO spots, and only two of which are People of Colour.
On a national level, the negative impact of unconscious bias against certain groups of people helps sustain unacceptable and historic wage gaps (such as between men and women, or white workers and ethnic minorities), resulting in non-representative, ‘identikit’ management teams, and leads to talented employees missing out on well-deserved promotions.
Businesses, of course, suffer through the exit of disaffected staff but also through the reduced productivity, impaired decision making and team cohesion brought about through unengaged and excluded employees.
Staff, meanwhile, can suffer from low self-esteem, alienation, and even mental health issues as a direct result. Research has shown, for instance, how pent-up trauma and regret can lead to a form of PTSD called ‘race-based trauma stress’ (RBTS) among minorities and marginalized groups.
It is, then, one of the most chronic and challenging social issues of the day, and one that, sadly, does not seem to be getting better.
Enter, Buki Mosaku, an internationally recognised expert on workplace bias and effective communication, and the founder of DiverseCity Think Tank.
Having worked as a workplace bias, communication expert, consultant, and coach to tens of thousands of staff within companies across the UK and the world — he has a deep understanding of the issue and his message is clear: the current approaches to dealing with career-stifling and profit-draining unconscious bias are simply not effective.
Why? As he explains in his new book, “I Don’t Understand”: Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace, it boils down to the fact that the four common strategies for tackling unconscious bias are ‘unidirectional’.
In other words, they are based squarely on the premise that unconscious bias is a “one-way street that starts and ends with the majority and majority leadership”.
This top-down approach, he says, simply perpetuates a corrosive ‘Guilty Perpetrator versus Hapless Victim Mindset’ that, at best, can bring about surface-level changes from leadership but little more and which, in large, is responsible for what he sums up as a growing “diversity and exclusion nightmare in the corporate world”.
By contrast, he is the lead proponent for an urgent re-evaluation of unconscious bias strategies based, instead, on an understanding of the issue as multidirectional in nature – i.e., that the traditional ‘victim’ has as much of an active role to play as the traditional ‘perpetrator’ in the effective handling and resolution of the problem.
“I Don’t Understand”: Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace crystalises this simple yet revolutionary approach into a practical business guide that every professional, C-suite executive, or HR manager needs to read.
Remarkably, it is also the first guide to comprehensively navigate all forms of unconscious bias in the workplace, and by so doing will speak to all on how to overcome unconscious prejudice and discrimination.
Buki doesn’t hold back from tearing into what has come before – what he calls the classic ‘us versus them’ mentality – and urges for a true transformation which will create a workplace culture of collaboration, peace, and productivity.
He states that to improve diversity and reduce the unconscious bias that hinders career progression for minorities, we should not leave it for those at the top to make change.
This, he says, places a burden on a presumed guilty leadership to help the presumed, stereotypical ‘poor hapless victims’, who become passively reliant upon their engagement.
Neither is shaming people the way to bring about lasting change, as it invokes guilt, resentment, and defensiveness in the traditional ‘guilty perpetrators,’ while perpetuating a sensationalised picture of the plight of minorities.
But, of course, we cannot simply do nothing. Where bias is ignored or denied, disengagement increases and tensions increase.
The above encapsulates the four most common unconscious bias strategies within the corporate world, which can also be summed up as ‘Do Nothing Now Strategies, ‘Do for Them Strategies’, ‘Do With Allies Strategies, and ‘Do With Them Strategies’.
The problem, says Mosaku, is that they are outdated, outmoded, and ineffectual. In their place must be institutionalised a new ‘Do-Together Strategy’.
Devised by Mosaku and having been shown to work in countless businesses already, this fresh and unique approach promises to harmoniously address the problem effectively and successfully ‘in the moment,’ when it is first sensed, and where it has “the potential to do so much damage”.
This strategy of ‘bias navigation, as Mosaku calls it, is predicated on a number of key elements being present:
- That there is an organisation-wide recognition that career-stifling unconscious bias in the workplace is a two-way, not one-way street;
- That all staff are independently trained and equipped to effectively navigate unconscious workplace bias when sensed in the moment;
- That managers and leaders are independently trained and equipped to effectively navigate sensed misinterpretations of unconscious bias attributed to them; and
- That all staff feel equipped to harmoniously navigate career stifling unconscious bias if they sense it.
With this in place, employers and employees alike can benefit from the twin part of Mosaku’s powerful plan of action: Buki’s IDU? Methodology.
As basic as it may seem, stating “I don’t understand” in a situation where unconscious bias is sensed could, says Mosaku, be the most important three words any professional ever utters.
This is because it instantly gets to the heart of the problem by stimulating frank and open dialogue between the perceived perpetrator and victim.
Both parties are engaged in the conversation in a way that would be virtually impossible through any other means, and it brings any actual unconscious bias out into the open to be defused while clearing up instances where a situation is being mistakenly attributed to bias.
Being multidirectional in nature, it invokes a leader’s natural instinct to give direction and coach the employee, who can then engage in developmental enquiry — adopting a proactive role in the unearthing and dismantling of sensed bias (either within traditional perpetrators or, in some cases, their own unconscious bias).
The author draws upon many real-life examples to illustrate his points, underlining just how tricky unconscious bias can be to navigate when subjective perceptions and uncertainties surrounding a person’s motives abound.
These include his own experiences of racial bias as a Black ethnic minority working in the City of London, the US, Europe, and other global environments.
He reveals how he was aggressively asked how he, a black man, could possibly be a managing director — an incident which he says still traumatises him 22 years on.
He also holds his hands up to having been a perpetrator of reverse bias, interpretating someone’s behaviour as racially biased when no such intention actually existed. He therefore holds everyone up to the same yardstick, again coming back to the multidirectional nature of unconscious, career-stifling bias.
There is a powerful moment in “I Don’t Understand”: Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace which I feel highlights just how important this new guide really is.
It is a moment when he references CNN’s interview with Robin Di Angelo PhD, the New York Times best-selling author of White Fragility, when she says: “A person of colour is asked, ‘What would it be like if you could just give white people feedback where we show our inevitable-and-often-unaware assumptions and patterns — and [have] us receive that feedback with grace, reflect, and seek to change our behaviour? What would that be like?’”
And the man of colour says, “It would be revolutionary.”
This is Mosaku’s Do-Together Strategy in a nutshell. We all have a propensity for unconscious workplace bias, it is part of human nature, and it is unrealistic and profitless to think it can ever be entirely eliminated.
Instead, we should all invest on how we can navigate its inevitability and improve, and it all begins by saying “I don’t understand”.
Mosaku’s new book eschews all the usual guidance, whether espoused by specialists or celebrity influencers, to drill down to the common-sense basics, and rebuilds from there to something we are sorely lacking in the modern workplace: true understanding.
If you wish to improve your workplace environment and relationships with all you come across, “I Don’t Understand”: Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace is absolutely essential.
“I Don’t Understand”: Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace by Buki Mosaku (Business Expert Press) is out now in paperback and eBook formats, priced £25.95 and £13.80. It can be ordered via Amazon or via the publisher. For more information, visit www.bukimosaku.com or www.navigatingbias.com.
Q&A Interview With Buki Mosaku
We speak to workplace bias expert Buki Mosaku to find out more about his new book “I Don’t Understand”: Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace, and why it’s so sorely needed to address major misunderstandings within companies on the realities of unconscious bias.
Q. Where did the title of your book, “I Don’t Understand”: Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace, come from?
A. As a black ethnic minority working both in the UK and globally, I experienced racial bias. The problem was that I was confused. Sometimes it was workplace bias aimed towards me but at other times I realised that I had misinterpreted unfavourable decisions towards me as unconsciously motivated by bias when it was actually my bias towards the majority driven by my past experiences, hearsay in my peer group, and — less so then but more so now — a wider narrative about the majority.
It was a combination of my recognition of this confusion, and the fact that whenever you’re on the receiving end of sensed workplace bias the overwhelming feeling is one of disbelief and incredulity voiced as some variation of …
‘I don’t understand how someone could be so insensitive.’
‘I don’t understand why they don’t realise how unfair this is.’
‘I can’t believe the injustice and incivility of this behaviour.’
‘I don’t understand why they are double checking and questioning my experience.’
‘I just don’t understand!’
… that led me to the title.
In all these instances, the circular negative thinking is labelled ‘inwards’, but this begged the question: what if you could call out your discomfort and internal enquiry to the sensed perpetrator instead? This led me on a quest to work out how to do this and to understand the interpersonal dynamics that drive unconscious bias in the workplace, the obstacles to tackling it effectively, and to creating a solution.
Q. You are highly critical of traditional approaches to dealing with workplace bias. What is your main objection to these methods?
A. Traditional approaches see unconscious bias in the workplace as a one-way street when in fact it’s a two-way street. Even though it is more prevalent towards minorities from the majority, minorities can and do perpetrate unconscious bias toward the majority when they misinterpret behaviours and decisions from the majority as driven by unconscious bias when they are not. Strategies based on unidirectional/one-way street views of workplace bias do not allow for this misinterpretation and as such have four major problems:
1. They inadvertently exclude minorities from the resolution model and keep them as perpetual victims of bias reliant on the majority to change for the betterment of their careers.
2. They reinforce to the majority that they are guilty perpetrators of bias towards minorities by default, leaving them in a perpetual state of self-correction
3. They perpetuate distrust in minorities and suspicions of bias, which creates a perception of more bias than there actual is. This, in turn, leads to the loss of billions of dollars in disengagement from minorities (and also the majority — something that all the research misses out).
4. They demonise the majority and create unspoken multidirectional tensions and disengagement that lead to underrepresentation of minorities in high profile and senior roles
Q. Why, by contrast, do you believe the solution to navigating workplace bias effectively is the IDU? Methodology?
A. The IDU? methodology acknowledges and accepts the multidirectional nature of workplace bias and in doing so allows for the inevitable misinterpretations of unconscious bias in minorities and the majority.
This enables both minorities and the majority to effectively call out workplace bias without invoking the number one obstacle to navigating unconscious workplace bias, ‘defensive fragility’ — the propensity for all human beings to get their back up whenever they are painted in a negative light — and successfully navigate career-stifling bias whenever they sense it in the moment.
When leaders, people-managers, and staff are equipped with strategies and skills to navigate multidirectional workplace bias, the problem of career-stifling unconscious bias and its impact on underrepresentation of minorities in the workplace will eventually disappear.
Q. What are the potential consequences to a company of not effectively dealing with workplace bias?
A. The consequences are serious and include billions of dollars/pounds in losses resulting from minority and majority disengagement, lawsuits, attrition, and reputational damage to name but a few. But one of the biggest problems is underrepresentation of minorities in senior or high-profile roles. There is a tendency for organisations to address the problem primarily by artificial means as a result of understandable pressure to figuratively and literally colour things up at the top, which just makes things worse. The pressure is warranted but sole reliance on this model …
- Excludes minorities from the resolution and stifles organic career progression for minorities. In doing so it causes slow growth in representation of minorities as they, the people affected, have no role to play in accelerating their careers; and
- Reinforces the guilty perpetrator versus hapless victim model which builds multidirectional distrust and disengagement. This promotes an eradication mindset characterised by inordinate amounts of time being spent on bias awareness and bias interruption training. Yet we all know that bias can’t be eradicated so this is a waste of time and money.
Q. You say that traditional victims of bias have as much of a role to play as traditional perpetrators in resolving bias. Can you explain more?
A. Whether you’re a member of the majority or minority, you have a 50/50 chance of being part of the problem or part of the solution to career-stifling bias. If you sense bias towards you, whoever you are, and you don’t call it out then you’re part of the problem because your silence is tacit approval of the bias you sense. So, in essence, you actually reinforce multidirectional bias when you don’t speak up and engage in addressing the problem by calling it out. You become a super spreader.
The traditional unidirectional approach to bias excludes minorities from taking part in resolving bias-related issues by rejecting the multidirectional nature of workplace bias — mostly out of guilt — and putting the burden of change 100 percent on the majority.
Minorities have to have more of a role to play in the resolution model and that role is calling out sensed bias. Until employers equip minorities (and themselves) with the skills to effectively call out workplace bias, problems of underrepresentation, disengagement, tensions etc. will not only remain but will also get worse. When minorities are equipped with bias-navigation skills, they themselves are active participants in fast-tracking increases in organic representation in senior roles and transcending all of the other workplace bias-related problems.
Q. What do you think leaders will gain most from your new book?
A. Leaders will gain a practical guide to resolving the global career-stifling and profit-draining problem of unconscious bias in the workplace. They will be able to …
- Equip people-managers with skills to resolve multidirectional workplace bias issues that stifle careers of minorities and cause their underrepresentation;
- Organically fast track minority representation in senior roles and bridge related disparities;
- Reduce unspoken majority-minority tensions born out of multidirectional workplace bias that lead to disengagement, reputational damage, law suits, poor wellbeing etc.;
- Build an environment of psychological safety; and
- Measurably increase productivity through more cohesive, higher-performing teams.
Q. Can you explain what you mean by the concept of ‘defensive fragility’ in operational bias?
A.Defensive fragility is simply the propensity of human beings to get upset when accused of anything that paints them in a negative light — in particular, bias. As such, intimations of bias and the injustice associated with it make it difficult to call out when it is unconsciously aimed towards minorities from majority leaders, or when it is unconsciously aimed from minorities towards the majority, without damaging relationships and negatively affecting career progression of minorities.
Q. What is Mosaku’s Bias Navigation Test (MBNT), and how is it utilised by companies?
A. The MBNT is a free assessment tool that enables people-managers and staff to identify if their organisation is unconsciously using ineffective and costly strategies to address career-stifling workplace bias and under-representation problems. It then provides them with the best strategy to tackle career-stifling bias in their firm based on their answers. You can find out more by visiting www.NavigatingBias.com.
Q. Why do you believe that a focus on trying to eradicate unconscious bias is doomed to failure? Can you give an example?
A. Bias is part of the human condition and therefore it is inevitable. In the same way you can’t stop the current, rough winds, storms, and other potential hazards that could thwart a journey by sea, you can’t stop workplace bias. Yet sailors still manage to sail boats and reach their destination. They do this by navigating these elements. When we directly or indirectly focus on trying to eradicate unconscious bias in the workplace, it is essentially a waste of time — like trying to stop the current.
Instead, we need to learn to navigate workplace bias like a sailor navigates the elements at sea. The IDU? methodology is the compass you need to successfully and effectively call out and navigate all forms of career-stifling workplace bias. It shows people what to do — how to think, what to say, when to say it, and the way to say it — so that they can put career-stifling unconscious bias behind them once and for all.
Q. Have you any tips for tackling workplace bias?
A. Here are three actions that will hold anyone in good stead when they sense they are a victim of career-stifling bias.
First: Address your concerns with the unconscious perpetrator then and there. Don’t wait.
Second: Always give the sensed perpetrator the benefit of doubt regardless of how certain you are about your perception of bias.
Third: Always focus on the issue at hand as opposed to the wider problem of career-stifling unconscious bias or underrepresentation. So, for instance, if you sense you weren’t short listed for a promotion due to unconscious bias, ask about and focus on the criteria for shortlisting rather than the issue of unconscious discrimination.
These three actions will automatically allow for any misinterpretation of bias on your part and, in doing so, will enable you to unearth the sensed bias — theirs or yours — without getting the other person’s back up. Then you can collaboratively work to resolve the issue in your favour.