There are many challenges that recruiters face on a day to day basis and perhaps the biggest of all of these is recognising and dealing with unconscious bias. Not just their own unconscious bias but also all the bias that exists throughout their organisations.
So how should we recognise, understand and deal with unconscious bias? My guest this week is Howard Ross who is the founder of management consultancy Cook Ross as well as being an author and recognised thought leader on identifying and addressing unconscious bias.
In the interview we discuss:
• Why the human brain is naturally biased
• Examples of unconscious bias and its effect on organisations
• What organisations can do to recognise and deal with unconscious bias
• The role of technology
• Which companies are doing a great job dealing with unconscious bis
Howard also talks about his new book and share his thoughts on the growing level of polarisation of thinking the world is experiencing.
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Transcript:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
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Matt Alder [00:01:22]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 145 of the Recruiting Future podcast. There are many challenges that recruiters have to face on a day to day basis, and perhaps the biggest of all of these is recognizing and dealing with unconscious bias. And not just their own unconscious bias, but also the bias that exists within their organizations. So how should we recognize, understand and deal with unconscious bias? My guest this week is Howard Ross, who is founder of management consultancy Cook Ross, as well as being an author and recognized thought leader on identifying and addressing unconscious bias. Enjoy the interview. Hi Howard and welcome to the podcast.
Howard Ross [00:02:10]:
Thanks so much Matt. It’s great to be with you.
Matt Alder [00:02:12]:
A pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone a bit about what you do?
Howard Ross [00:02:18]:
Sure. I’m Howard Ross. I’m the founder of Cook Ross. We’re an international management consulting firm based in the Washington D.C. area in the States. Although we’ve worked not only all over the United States, but with over countries and our work is basically helping people develop inclusive organizational cultures in which people of all different kinds can thrive and be successful.
Matt Alder [00:02:40]:
Cool. And what type of companies do you work with?
Howard Ross [00:02:44]:
Well, they range broadly from Fortune 50 companies to multinational corporations, colleges and universities. A lot of work in health care, particularly because of the impact of diversity on the quality of healthcare delivery. Everything ranging from that to working with the Atlanta Braves baseball team at one point. So just about every kind of organization you can imagine that we’ve worked with over the 35 years we’ve been doing this.
Matt Alder [00:03:10]:
Fantastic. Now one of the things that you have written and spoken about extensively. Is unconscious bias now something that, you know, we’re kind of hearing talked about more and more? I think most recruiting and HR teams will be, at very least be aware that it exists. Could you tell us a little bit about what you see in terms of unconscious bias in the workplace?
Howard Ross [00:03:38]:
Yeah, absolutely, Matt. I mean, I think let’s first start by understanding what we’ve learned about the human mind over the course of the last several decades, and that is that we’re far less rational than we think we are. We know that all human beings make very quick decisions about people, and every one of us who’s listening to this podcast knows that. There are times when you see somebody and you make a quick determination whether that’s positive or negative about that particular person. And this is the nature of the way the mind works. The brain has evolved over centuries to make very quick determinations as to who’s safe and who’s not safe, who seems valuable and who doesn’t seem valuable, etc. And we do this in various different walks of life. But of course, when it comes down to making choices around talent management and organizations, this can be particularly problematic because we may make a choice either to be interested or not interested in somebody based on factors that have nothing to do with their competence or their professionalism or their talent or experience, but rather who they’re reminding us of or what past experience we’ve had with people like them. And so the key to this work is to help people be more thoughtful about their decision making, to be able to make decisions more consistent with their values.
Matt Alder [00:04:53]:
And do you kind of have any examples of unconscious bias working in practice?
Howard Ross [00:04:58]:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. We know, for example, that if you that dozens of studies have shown that the names that people have on resumes has a huge impact on who’s called back. You know, the original study was done by two researchers, Senda Melinathan, who is now at mit, and Marianne Bertrand, who was at University of Chicago. And they sent out resumes to organizations that said that they were looking for diversity in hiring. And the names on the resumes were consciously made to sound either white or African American. So, for example, Gregory and Emily were two of the white names. Lakeisha and Jamal were two of the African American names. What they found was that people were 50% more likely to call people back for a second interview if they had the white names than the African American names, even if the organizations were looking for diversity in hiring. Now, subsequently, that study was repeated all over the world and found that in Culture after culture after culture, whether it was in Singapore around Chinese based surnames, in the UK around Anglo American surnames versus Muslim surnames, et cetera, that time after time that the dominant cultural name tended to draw more callbacks than the alternative names, even though all of the information on the resumes word for word, was the same except for the name.
Matt Alder [00:06:21]:
And ultimately what effect does this have on organizations?
Howard Ross [00:06:25]:
Well, I mean, I think we can look at it in two different ways, Matt. I think the one obvious is that there’s a function of equity and fairness and that is, you know, if I get a call back because my name’s Michael and with the exact same resume, don’t get a callback because your name is Mohammed, that’s problematic. I mean that’s, it’s obviously not just, it’s not fair and it’s not equitable, but from an organizational standpoint, perhaps even more important than that is it’s an absolutely crazy way to make talent management decisions. Because if I’m not hiring somebody because I’m being influenced by factors that I’m completely unaware of, then the chances of me getting the best candidate, the person who’s doing the hiring getting the best candidate are about equivalent to is if you’d roll the dice because you have no idea what’s really making the decision. So this is a situation where we can actually do well by doing good. That if we pay attention to making sure that the decision making process is as fair and equitable as possible, then we’re actually going to make better decisions and ultimately get better people in our organizations.
Matt Alder [00:07:27]:
By its very nature, this isn’t something that people are doing on purpose. What’s your advice to both to individuals and corporations in terms of deal with this? What kind of process or thinking should they adopt?
Howard Ross [00:07:44]:
Well, there really are, there’s really a whole range of things that organizations can do on an individual level. It’s really valuable to give people the right kind of education, understand unconscious bias. We know that unconscious bias education, and in fact diversity and inclusion education in general is controversial, that there are people who have questioned the effectiveness of it. And some of those studies are very valuable and really important for us to look at as diversity practitioners. The one thing that we do know is that the kind of training, the kind of education that really impacts people and leads to more egalitarian decision making is training that helps people understand the way they think and the way they make decisions. And the more we understand the way we’re making our own decisions, we’re able to make those decisions. Consistent with their own values. But education is always just the beginning of a process. I mean, you could imagine if we could have the best unconscious bias education in the world. But you don’t have to do a performance review, let’s say for four months. The chances of it affecting your performance review are pretty slim because by then you’ve likely forgotten everything. So the second component is to use what we call priming mechanisms to remind us at the time we need it, what kinds of things are important for us to avoid, in this particular case, unconscious bias in the performance review system. So these little reminder tools that people use kind of as needed basis is the second factor. Then the third factor is that we’ve studied many, many different ways that we change our systems and structures. So, you know, for example, if we’re doing interviews, using panel interviews, or using structured interviewing, or letting people know some of the key questions of the interview a few days before so that language doesn’t become an issue or various things like that. So looking at our structures and systems throughout the talent management process and adapting them in ways that makes them more bias resistant. And then finally the last is to develop the right kinds of metrics for accountability so that we can actually track where in the system the breakdown is occurring and be able to be really focused on how to make the kind of changes necessary, the kind of the.
Matt Alder [00:09:50]:
State of the market at the moment is that certainly in HR and recruiting, technology is seen as a bit of a panacea that solves all issues and all known problems. What’s your view on technology? Is it something that can help in this area or is that a red herring?
Howard Ross [00:10:09]:
Well, no, I mean, I think it’s like anything else. I think any technology can be very helpful. And at the same time, any idea is dangerous if it’s the only one you have. I mean, I think the way technology is often being used now relative to bias, Matt is using blind resumes, technologies that allow us to do blind resumes. Which is a whole notion that really comes from an experiment that was done with symphony Orchestras when back 40 years ago, almost no women were playing in the major symphony orchestras in the world. And so a number of people started to try different things, including most notably having the musicians audition behind a scre and on rugs so that you couldn’t hear their shoes and know that they were high heel shoes or even see the musician at all. And that’s led to almost tripling the number of people and the number of women who are in symphony orchestras. Any fans of the voice, the Television show, the Voice, who are listening in, would be interested in knowing that that program came from this experiment. Now, the problem, of course, with that technology, that’s really helpful. It eliminates, for example, the name bias I was talking about. But the thing we have to be careful about is it also eliminates the opportunity to make subjective decisions about people who have, you know, you might call it unusual backgrounds who didn’t come through the normal path of getting to where they are and have special, special narrative about their story that makes them compelling. And so we don’t want to eliminate all of that. It is a good way to eliminate some of the bias that. That’s there.
Matt Alder [00:11:42]:
And in your experiences, which. Which companies have done a really good job at, you know, recognizing this, dealing with that.
Howard Ross [00:11:52]:
Well, I mean, one of the organizations that we work closely with that I give a shout out to is Target Corporation. Caroline Wanga, who is the chief diversity officer at Target, has done a remarkable job, I think, of bringing these concepts into an organization, beginning to create systems and structures that support them in a way that’s often very challenging in retail businesses because you’ve got such large turnover and vast expanse of people. But that’s one organization, many that we’ve worked with that more recently that’s. That’s doing some extraordinary work.
Matt Alder [00:12:27]:
So you’ve just published a new book, and I know it’s, you know, one in a sort of series of books that you’ve. You’ve written. Tell us a bit about that. What’s the. What’s the new book about?
Howard Ross [00:12:38]:
Well, the title of the book is Our Search for How Our need to Connect is Tearing Us Apart. And it was really inspired by the polarization that we see happening really all over the world, but especially in Western countries today, here in the US and throughout Europe. And I was just really intrigued by looking at my own reaction, how much I was being pulled into the us versus them and the whole political dialogue, and more than I could ever remember in my lifetime. And so we began to study, my mentee of mine, John Robert Tartaglione, who did enormous work on the research, as well as Nikki Caldwell, and I started to study why does this happen? What is it about human beings that has us getting pulled into these tribal kinds of involvement and where we become so firmly fixed into us versus them dynamics that we can’t even hear the other person or the other side anymore? And the more we looked into this, the more we realized that this is inherently human, that human beings inherently divide people between us and them, not unlike what we discovered in the research on bias that human beings are inherently biased. And so we also started to look at the workplace, especially because the workplace is one of the few places anymore where people come together with people who are different from them and have to work together regardless of whether they like it or not. So it gives us a huge opportunity to begin to, if we’re willing to take it on and be proactive about it, to break down some of these barriers and to increase people’s capacity to have courageous conversations and to deal with some of the differences that are out there.
Matt Alder [00:14:11]:
I mean, that’s interesting. And, you know, you talk about there about, you know, this being human behavior and, you know, dividing things into tribes and that kind of stuff. It certainly is, you know, a pretty kind of intense, tense time for sort of polarization, you know, polarization at the moment is. Is that something. Is that something to do with social media, do you think? Or is. Or is this just. Just a kind of a, you know, a cycle of something that would have happened anyway?
Howard Ross [00:14:46]:
Well, I think that. I think that there’s. There are factors that contribute to being worse now than ever. And one of the most important is what you’re referring to is not just social media, but media in general, sources of information in general. I think we think back, you know, a couple of generations ago, most of us looked at the same basic news. You know, here in the United States, we all looked at abc, NBC, and cbs, and you got the same basic news. It was really from station to station, not a few percentage points difference in terms of how things were presented. And then we interpreted that news in the different ways we interpret it. Now with the advent of cable news, we watch bifurcated news stations. So if one watches Fox News, for example, they not only get a very different interpretation of the news, but different news entirely than somebody who watches, let’s say, msnbc. And not only that, excuse me, that’s then supported by our social media streams, so our Facebook streams, which tend to be people who are like us and who we agree with. In fact, many people actually befriend people or unfriend people who disagree with them, and then the Twitter feed and everything else. And so pretty soon, we’re living in an echo chamber of our own agreement. We hang out with our own friends. People are, at least in the United States, people are more politically segregated than ever before. And so at some point, the color of the sky in my world looks different than the color of the sky in your world. Our fundamental way of operating is shaped by all of this information. And very few people reach outside of that boundary, those boundaries, and intentionally go out to expose themselves to what the other side is listening to.
Matt Alder [00:16:19]:
Now, this certainly sounds like a book I think everyone should be reading without kind of, you know, giving us sort of too many spoilers. What can you give us insight into some of the findings that you came up with? You know, is there cause for optimism in all of this pessimism?
Howard Ross [00:16:38]:
Well, I mean, first of all, I’m not too worried about spoilers. This isn’t a novel, so there’s no surprise ending here. But, yeah, I mean, I think. I won’t say either optimistic or pessimistic. I think what the research shows us is that this is what human beings do. We do divide ourselves into us versus them, and we have an opportunity in front of us. And I think that there’s the old. I think an old saying or expression that the symbol for crisis in China is a combination of two symbols, one danger and the other opportunity. And I think it’s a perfect example of where we are right now. I think we are in a crisis circumstance. And that is if we continue to go the direction we’re going. With this increased tribalism and polarization, there’s no pretty end to that. I mean, ultimately, we could see how it won’t take much matching kindling for that to turn into something even more ugly than it’s turned into now. And so that’s really dangerous, and it’s something we have to pay sharp attention to. The other side of it is that we know that human beings do have the capacity to bridge across these barriers. And we’ve seen it time and time and time again in history, even in situations like, you know, Rwanda or Northern Ireland or. Or any other place in the world where there’s been civil discord that moved to civil war and Oregon and cultures were able to come back together and re establish themselves in different ways. So the question is, are we willing to take on the moral authority of doing something about this? And I think that as citizens of a democracy, we have a responsibility not to just complain about it, but to get out and do something about it.
Matt Alder [00:18:17]:
Howard, thank you very much for talking to me.
Howard Ross [00:18:19]:
Oh, hey, it’s my pleasure, Matt. Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:18:21]:
My thanks to Howard Ross. You can subscribe to this podcast in itunes or via your podcasting app of choice. The show also has its own dedicated app, which you can find by searching for recruiting future in your app store. If you’re a Spotify user, you can also listen to the show There you can find all the past episodes@www.rfpodcast.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list and find out more about Working with Me Me. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next week and I hope you’ll join me.
