Perception and Bias

It's been a few years since we all have been hearing about perception and bias.
Thought of sharing some of my learnings and thoughts on this topic and reflect on them.

An interesting TED talk I heard recently, spoke about the neurological reason why it is so hard for anyone to change bias and why all of us have it in some form or the other. We all have perceptions and bias depending on race, gender, culture, nationality, religion, color, age, achievements to name a few. There are many other aspects of differences. In most cases these factors matter a great deal in forming our opinions about a subject or a person, in understanding topics, in questioning new facts and even reflects in our body language.

Bias is unconscious. Our brain is designed to make certain inferences and learn from historic experiences and facts that we have read, heard or seen. In future when the brain perceives any event it tries to match it to experiences it has already learnt and then it tries to make shortcuts to get solutions on how to deal with the present scenario. So to recognise and acknowledge you have a bias is definitely helpful but it is not a corrective or preventive measure. If we compare it to a scenario, it's like learning about how the pancreas works but not knowing how to produce more insulin to cure diabetes. Like diseases need intervention in the form of medication to stop them from becoming worse, bias needs strict processes as methods to stop them and it has to be build 360 degree in an organisation.

During hiring and promotions it is important for hiring managers and decision makers to highlight their positive and negative bias explicitly and record it with scores. If I am hiring an employee for the role of a system engineer it is important for me to not only score them on their technical capabilities and company cultural fit but to also have a score on my positive and negative bias. For e.g. a smart and intelligent female employee will score high on my positive bias. However if the interviewee is wearing makeup and high heels it could score negative on my bias scale in perceiving commitment to work. Its about a perception my brain has formed to the role of a system engineer. I have seen most system engineers who are male and not as many engineers who are female and coming to work with make up hence my mind recognises this pattern to identify a hardworking individual and penalises someone else for no apparent reason. If we honestly do this exercise over a period of time we will be able to explicitly identify if we are penalising someone more than others and can normalise that bias. Once the bias is identified I can then focus on removing those aspects out of the persons profile and focus on skills needed for the job only.

Why perception and bias is a hurdle to overcome before we can bring about diversity and inclusion in workplace today?
Perception and bias is relevant for every judgement we make during hiring, building team culture, promotions and almost all professional interactions. Are we loosing on identifying and fostering talent, motivating people, increasing productivity all of which not only affects the overall growth of an employee and leaders and even affects business in the long run.

A few interesting exercises I did in this aspect to improve my understanding on these topics are given below: These are simple exercises you can do with your colleagues:

1. The Catwalk

This activity is fun and will give lot of points for discussion, if you are in a large group (10 or more ideally). A few things needed for the activity: post it notes (or just paper cut into small slips) and pen/pencil

1. Divide yourself in 2 groups.
2. Lay a mat or carpet on the floor to walk on or draw some lines to create an imaginary ramp
3. One group (group 1) is given post its/papers and pens. This group then stands on the side of the walk
4. The other group (group 2) lines up at the beginning of the ramp
5. Start some music and ask group 2 to walk the ramp one by one slowly
6. Group 1 writes a single word about their perception of the person who is walking the ramp and sticks it on his/her back. Don't forget to write your initials on the perception note you are handing over. Please make sure you write your perception for everyone walking the ramp.
7. Hand it over to the catwalker or post it on his/her back
7. Repeat it by swapping the groups
8. Pick random volunteers to discuss some of the perceptions within your group

Reflections:
- Does the perception tell more about the person who is walking the ramp or about people who have that perception?
- Why did people have certain perceptions about the volunteer? Was it accurate?
- Should a person handle negative perceptions about him/her? Explain your thoughts on why or why not and how.

2. The Duo

Group with someone you perceived as completely opposite to you and then spend about 30 minutes with them. Then reflect if your perception about this person was correct. Thereafter inform them about the experiment and tell him honestly the perceptions you had and let them confirm if they really fit into the perception or not. You can do this experiment both with strangers and also with known people where can pick up random topics and discuss perceptions about it.

3. Havard experiment: Try it
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

Do career breaks brake your career?

From my experiences in the past 10 years, I feel organisations need to encourage and consider opportunities for professionals taking voluntary career breaks. A voluntary departure is looked upon skeptically by many, with some recruiters assuming lack of commitment or low performance.

I have taken two career breaks in the past 12 years. My first break was to handle family responsibilities and the second one was because I was unhappy with my work environment.
During my second break I reflected on critical points where I was handling difficult situations and people at work and it helped me get clarity in my thoughts and improved my confidence and resilience. During my breaks, I worked hard on entrepreneural endeavours. I worked on security protocols for surveillance UAVs, IAM and learned about ideation, forming business case, product pitch etc. In my second break, I co-founded a pre-school in Bangalore. In this process I learned and developed skills like setting up infrastructure from scratch, influence, marketing, resource management, business operations, finance to name a few which I could not have gained experience in my regular job. To setup the pre-school I researched extensively about child psychology, various methodologies for teaching, networked with founders and principals of other schools and social entrepreneurs to understand curriculum and processes they follow and did market survey and meetings with more than 300 parents in the neighbourhood to understand their requirements and needs.

In my breaks I worked with NGOs mentoring children from vulnerable backgrounds and learned more about child psychology and counselling. These trainings taught me to listen and accept without judgements, to control myself from preaching and empathise. I am still learning but this experience was an eye opener.  I also volunteered to lead technical and entrepreneural teams in Grace Hopper Conference for women in technology. I heard stories from women allover India, the achievements, the struggles, the persistence in pursuit of passion. I learnt about managing large teams, event management and networking. I networked with a large group of women in different levels of their career. All the skills that I got an opportunity to learn and practise during my voluntary break help me build a foundation for my long term career and life.

So for anyone applying for a job after a break, highlight your story and what specific skills you have build during your break and be patient, persevering and optimistic