(Our insights come from conversations with over 2000 executives world-wide.)
I would like to introduce you to anonymous CEO in Insurance - Nick, whose HR has asked us to address his unconscious bias (henceforth UB) because of complaints from two female members of the c-suite. HR tells me that they have gone through standard UB training before, but to little effect to his emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, and inclusivity.
Why did conventional UB training fail? It was, after all, methodical and systematic, starting by establishing definitions and concepts, then moving onto consequences of failure (legal and social), then onto case studies, ending with recommendations and implementation. The main reason it was ineffective was it fell for the following common fallacy: diagnosing behaviour must have a remedy in behavioural change. If Nick behaves badly, then surely, we have to change how he behaves. However, this fallacy, while generally encountering its limits at all levels of the organisation, finds its fullest contradiction at the c-suite level.
Why has the attempt to change Nick’s behaviour proved to be ineffective? Generally, training leaders in anything is hard. They are more embedded in their paradigms and assumptions after decades of experience; they are usually more sceptical towards training; and they see the way out of problems for themselves. Standard training in UB promises quick and clear solutions. If Nick simply follows the recommendations ‘starting your conversation saying this’, ‘always demonstrate that are listening’, ‘ask for opinions’, ‘don’t make assumptions’ – and applies these, no wonder his peers (via his HR) are looking for a different solution.
Behaviours are effects; bias is the cause. Behavioural training has significant limits, and they are known – lack of engagement, lack of enforcement, unclear metrics, resistance to change. Ebbinghaus states that 50% of information from new training is lost within an hour. Research by the Association for Talent Development (ATD) found that only 21% of surveyed organizations believe they are effective in developing leaders. In other words, behavioural training just does not stick, even when the people are engaged and genuinely intend to change.
One key behaviour change that is recommended requires reflection. For example, Nick can cause offence to a colleague by assuming she has a boyfriend when she is in fact gay. Behavioural training would therefore recommend that he reflects on sexual orientation before engaging in casual conversation. However, seminal work in cognitive psychology by Tversky and Kahneman show that these biases are in fact underlying heuristics – short-cuts our minds make in decision-making that take empirical data and past experiences to form conclusions. The reason Nick made an assumption about his colleagues’ sexual orientation was because 95% of the population are heterosexual, and his heuristic made that calculation subconsciously. Importantly, our heuristics are evolutionary endowments made do save time and, in our primitive past, saved lives. In other words, these cognitive functions are gifts of efficiency.
The one thing executives do not have is time to reflect. Therefore, asking executives to take more time to reflect on matters that they will feel are not directly relevant to their performance is counterproductive, and the research shows as much. So how do we harness heuristics while upskilling emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills? The answer – UB training needs to serve Nick’s goals. That is the only way he will genuinely connect with them. How do we do this? The recent innovation to leadership training – Business Epistemology – requires rebuilding an executive team’s knowledge ecosystem so that real-time incentives for perception change are affected. Behaviour is an effect; beliefs and motivation are the cause. Standard UB training changes the effect. I suggest we change the cause. Moreover, Nick is a task-oriented problem solver, rather than people-oriented. The ecosystem recognises this and needs to leverage his gift.
On the other hand, the ecosystem needs to use problem solving abilities in leadership that are people-oriented, with higher interpersonal skills. This is crucial for the face of the executive team, both to employees and to the market. Nick is therefore no longer a fallen leader with a horrible personality, but a part of an inter-dependent system which together is robust and successful, and, most importantly, that he sees himself this way.
This is the innovation in conflict management advanced by Business Epistemology – it takes the faults of one leader, and finds the solution in the leadership team. If Nick has UB towards women, teaching him how to talk and listen to them cannot be effective. Instead, the Business Epistemology approach goes to where Nick is and what he wants. If he wants more clients, insight, collaboration, and eventually commercial growth, he needs to see the achievement of this through his team and how a healthy flow of knowledge in this ecosystem can only serve to achieve his ends. This requires keeping his executive team talking to him, talking to each other, each seeing themselves as inter-dependant and necessary parts of a larger system.
Therefore, when he next meets one of his women executives, he doesn’t see a woman (or any gender for that matter), but a source of what he wants for the success of his business. The consequence is she then feels valued, part of the team, and trusted, whereas previously she may have felt inadequate, and a diversity token. This will go much further to changing Nick’s behaviour once he is given a reason to change – the reason he wants and believes in.