Unconscious Bias

Within organisations that have some of the best diversity policies in the world, there often lurks the spectre of hidden bias. Organisations with flexible working rarely taken, with networking groups seen as nothing more than a 'tick box', with talent pools bursting with diversity and boards made up of white middle aged males.

Hidden or unconscious bias can scupper best efforts to achieve. Understanding how it affects your career can be a revelation – gaining practical tools to identify unconscious bias in others and counter it is, however, more difficult.  By training people to understand unconscious bias, you not only build the leadership skills of specific groups - but of everyone in the organisation.

By engendering a leadership journey concept in organisations you can make big changes.  Your teams need to:

• be willing to undertake an exploration of self and others
• be willing to uncover long held beliefs and bias
• understand how those bias’ came to be and what purpose they have served
• strengthen their leadership practice by working towards identifying their sometimes micro behaviours and
• be receptive to replacing the beliefs that drive them.

In leadership, unconscious bias is not only a key driver, but a limiting factor too. The truly authentic leader who seeks to address their own vulnerabilities, as well as their strengths, will be able to harness the power of their own and others’ unconscious bias to improve performance.

We aim to help individuals, teams and organisations develop their leadership skills through a range of training interventions and tools that will effect a real difference.

Our programmes include an intensive one day programme designed to address unconscious bias alone and explore individual and group behaviours. This can also be delivered as a series of two hour web-enabled interventions (download a pdf) which can be delivered to a remote, even global group.

“VIVE!” our flagship leadership programme is the unconscious bias “Trojan horse”.  It forms a study of self and the impact and image we create – by looking at the hidden beliefs of self and others. The programme is intrinsically linked to helping the delegates to be better leaders and to strengthen their own approach whilst also dealing with the perceptions of others.

Hidden bias is not simply manifest in the individual senior leader or recruiter. It lives and breathes in the culture of organisations. Our team of leading strategic consultants can work with your organisation not simply to explore the impact of your diversity and inclusion programmes, but also to build strategies and plans that are truly inclusive. 

Often our programmes are run following a departmental, team or organisational audit. We work with the leaders in the field of bias testing and can design bespoke tests  (which are run anonymously) to identify and understand the genuine extent of the bias carried in the organisation or department . These tests can inform our work, provide leverage for future interventions, or simply lay bare the possibility of discriminatory behaviour. Bespoke tests can be designed to explore a variety of areas.

For more information please click on the links below:

Introduction to Key Concepts of Unconscious Bias
A choice of interventions
One day unconscious bias programme

To arrange a preliminary discussion please e-mail info@angela-peacock.com