The Future-Proof Workplace by Linda Sharkey & Morag Barrett

Author:Linda Sharkey & Morag Barrett
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119287575
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2017-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

Stereotyping Is Personal

Linda has personally experienced this type of stereotyping numerous times. At a conference, she was sitting on a dais next to her boss, and people assumed she was there as his assistant.

She was the keynote speaker.

Stereotyping is personal because we apply our own experience and intent to the situation at hand. When someone speeds past us on the highway, we tend to label them as a bad driver, a road hog, and jerk.

When we drive fast because of a family emergency or the piping hot take-out food we need to get home, we don't think of ourselves as being bad drivers, road hogs, or jerks.

We don't give others the same benefit of the doubt.

This is why forced ranking so often fails. The assumption, and bias, is that the bottom 10 percent of employees underperform. And more insidiously—will always underperform.

Inversely, executives are perceived as successful and perceive themselves as successful because they are at the senior levels rather than acknowledging their success occurred despite their flaws.

Take Susan Boyle's famous first television appearance on Britain's Got Talent in 2009. Despite her amazing talent and potential, she was ignored most of her life, and certainly not considered star material.2

As she marched onto the stage, Simon Cowell rolled his eyes, and the audience laughed.

Until she sang her first note.

How often do we overlook talent and potential because of deep-seated stereotypes and unfavorable first impressions? And how many first impressions are actually tangible examples of unconscious bias?

The 2014 Sony Pictures hacking scandal revealed that the company's female executives and producers made substantially less than their male counterparts.

We have put in place programs like day care and flexible work schedules. Quotas were established for how many women and minorities' need to be hired and promoted. Development programs offering coaching and mentoring were established for minorities to get more exposure with senior leaders. But these programs fall woefully short.

Advancement for women and minorities—and for that matter, anyone who does not fit our Western view of leaders—has been a slow trickle.

Why? Because even well-intentioned programs don't fully address unconscious bias.

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