Transcript - Episode 015 - Unconscious Bias
Episode 015
Unconscious Bias
You can listen here: https://therebelliousrecruiter.podbean.com/e/episode-015-unconscious-bias/
Diversity, inclusion, and acceptance. They are all hot topics these days, as is the conversation around Unconscious Bias. Truth be told, this subject I am talking about today? It's the reason I started writing my podcasts scripts.
Hi, I'm Daava Mills, The Rebellious Recruiter. Have you ever heard of the McGurk Effect? What about Deliberate Practice? The first… for most people not likely, unless you watch a lot of BBC or science documentaries. But the second? Yeah, you've heard it spoken about as the 10,000 hour rule, made popular by Malcolm Gladwell. So… what do they have to do with each other?
Well, you're about to find out. Pull up a seat. Let's chat.
Intro music…
One of my Diversity and Inclusion heros is a guy by the name of Joe Gerstandt. He's a bit uncommon among DE & I folks, for a host of reasons, which I won't get into. But I heard him speak some years ago, and what he showed us and lectured about got my brain working, in that philosophical sense that you've heard from me. What he did was have us watch a video in which 500+ people were split into two groups. You can find several of these on YouTube, of the McGurk Effect.
Before I talk about the video, what is the McGurk effect??? The McGurk effect was "discovered" in the 1970's when scientists were studying how babies learn language. They discovered that once we are imbedded with our language that our brain listens and sees at the same time. When the results contradict each other, the brain overrides what we are listening to, and creates a third sound.
For example: in most the videos, you can play them and listen, not watch you will correctly hear "bah bah bah." But if you watch without sound you'll see "dah dah dah." And if you watch and listen you might hear "gah gah gah" or "jah jah jah." Why does this happen? Well, these videos aren't all in one. You are watching the person make a "d" sound, but the audio was swapped out for a person making a "b" sound. And your brain gets these mixed signals, and will try to make sense of it, because the signals don't match. So, a third sound emerges.
The initial time I was in a seminar and this was brought forward, it was to bring up the concept of our assumptions and how bias is formed. The audience was divided down the middle, the right side of the room was told to watch and listen, the left side told to close their eyes. The results were crazy. The right side had a ton of different answers for what they just watched and heard. The left side 100% agreed on what they had heard, and what they heard was completely different than what the right side. No one on the right side of the room, heard what the left side did. Same video, same audio.
A couple years later I was reading up on the McGurk effect and I learned that highly trained musicians aren't fooled by it. They know what their brain hears in most cases, and they rely on that information, not what they see. Why is that? Well, when someone's job is to play music for 40 or more hours a week, and they have to deliberately practice and intentionally listen to the notes, they aren't fooled, because they KNOW what they HEAR, regardless of what they SEE. But for people like me, even though I played the violin when I was younger and did my fair share of church singing and worship leading… my practice is not at the level of those musicians, because it was never my job to do that much deliberate practice.
Now, my singing is decent, my ears are decent. There was a time that I could sing an "A" on key, no pitch pipe, because I had tuned my violin so many times starting with the "A" string, that I inherently knew what an "A" sounds like. But I have to find the other notes, off the "A" note. So, definitely not an expert there.
So, let's look at this from a recruiting perspective. Take the concept of deliberate practice. Regardless of it being 10,000 hours or less, the reality is that deliberate practice is just that… Deliberate. Very few people approach interviews from the standpoint of a science behind them. And very few people deliberately dive into concepts during interviews. Instead, they take the first answer as the answer. The first answer given, rarely has context. And many times, any context?? It's all in the interviewer’s head, caused by personal assumptions. Getting to context takes deliberate practice, it takes asking a question you think you have the answer to and asking it anyway. And the added difficulty here is that candidates often try to manipulate the context. Not because they want to lie, but because well-meaning family and friends tell them to hide certain pieces of information. Even google searches on interview theory tell people how to sidestep questions to give the interviewers an impressive answer… even if it doesn't answer the question.
Take the "What is your weakness" question. I don't inherently hate the question because it's bad. I hate the question because there is a lot of information out there on how to answer the question and trick the interviewer. I hate the question because a lot of interviewers bring their assumptions to the question about what it means if the candidate gives a truthful answer. Then they determine if it is a truthful answer, creating a big swirl, that ultimately has nothing to do with how the person performs the job.
Also, wrapped up in that 10,000 hours. The average manager will do about 5 hours of interviews a week. At that rate it takes about 38 and a half years to get to 10,000 of deliberate practice to get to the point of excellence. You need to hire people now… Let's be clear, 10,000 wasn't the actual hour based on the studies, it was an average across a lot of things. What if to be an excellent interviewer you only need 2,000 hours… that's still almost 10 years of effort you need to put in, in order to be excellent.
I'm going to take another rabbit trail. Often in my career, I'll talk to people over the phone, and be very impressed by what they are saying. The issue is that when they would meet with the hiring manager, or me, face to face, I often felt let down… Like something was off.
You might have noticed that too. What causes that? Well, there's a study for that too. Nick Epley, out of the University of Chicago has it. I was in a master class at an HR convention some years ago where he was speaking about human connection. I noticed during his presentation that he fast-forwarded through some slides to get to his next point… What I saw piqued my interest. I used to work for Management Recruiters. And I clearly saw one of the MRI offices called out on a slide as he was fast forwarding. When it was time for questions, I asked him to go back to those few slides. Turned out he did a study, in conjunction with MRI. I turns out that we tend to favor people when we can only listen to them, and when we see them in person another first impression emerges.
Now this study made sense to me, as phone interviews for decades was 50% or more of the interview process. I placed people into jobs, without ever seeing them face to face. There was no Zoom, no Join.Me, no Webex, GoToMeeting… I wasn't distracted by their mannerisms, when all I could hear was their voice and the information presented. It made sense as to why I loved talking to people on the phone, and consistently was let down meeting them in person. Because my brain was making up a third piece of information, but that third piece, didn't exist.
Going back to the McGurk effect. What your ears hear is correct. What your eyes see is correct. What your brain makes it into? That's not correct. This is where unconscious bias starts. And this is how we wind up with a bunch of likeable people we want to go to happy hour with. It's how we end up with no diversity on our teams. It's also how we end up with organizational weaknesses that are difficult to manage. What if the strength of your team is creativity and innovation… But that also means your weakness is focusing so much on creativity and innovation that the routine functions don't get done right, or the same way. You know, birds of a feather flock together and all that… This is where it starts.
It can be overcome with deliberate practice, though… Deliberate practice means getting out of your comfort zone. Remember the last episode? CLAMS? Right there… you need a little bit of all those motivators. If you have a bunch of Challenge and Advancement junkies on your team, no one will consistently get the work done. This is where those Stability minded individuals are great! Get the blend going. Don't buy into the wisdom that they need to cross a rope bridge together. You need people to know how to fill in for each other’s gaps.
So, what happens when you feel let down? Well… acknowledge it. Acknowledge your assumptions. Your brain is doing what it was designed to do, make sense of information presented, and help you make a rational decision. That being said, you brain is also confused in these moments. When your brain is confused you start making assumptions, but what if… what if those assumptions are caused by unconscious bias? What if you could practice your way through unconscious bias, and consciously start recognizing how your personal assumptions are driving the interview process?
You know the number piece of advice I give the people I work with? Acknowledge your feelings. Why is that? Because when we start fighting our feelings in the moment, we lose the ability to be present to what is happening.
When that candidate comes into the interview, and you feel let down. Acknowledge that feeling, give it space for a moment. Stop fighting it. AND, and realize that it is likely driving an assumption. That your brain might, in fact, be creating a third issue, because what you hear and what you see don't make sense together.
I'm going to segue here. I'm going to talk about a terrible interview question. And why it's terrible… Here it is, "walk me through the steps of baking a cake." This question is often asked because interviewers want to know how people think through a process. But this is silly. Really silly. If you were to hire me for my baking process skills? You'd honestly be very disappointed in me at the interview, and you'd actually not hire me.
You see? I can barely bake, because I can barely follow a recipe. Cooking however… when I can taste as I go, add a little more salt, see what happens with a pinch of paprika? I rock it. But I've had several baking disasters in the kitchen due to my inability to follow a recipe to a "t." And even more when I do, because I don't know the science behind altering things due to humidity and elevation.
That being said, when it comes to interviewing, I'm extremely process oriented, even when there is a perceived lack of process, there is a process there. I watch how the team interacts, get a feel for how they make decisions. Then I start coaching and creating processes around that. That is like baking, there is a science due to humidity, elevation, air pressure, age of ingredients. I know that. My skills in the kitchen, how I approach food… it has nothing to do with how I interview, how I manage teams, how I train.
That question? That creates assumptions. Assumptions are unconscious bias at work. The only way to overcome that? It's to hire people who challenge you. Make you learn new managing skills. Bringing on people who have different skills, some of those skills brought about through lifelong adversities. Those adversities? Many are largely invisible, again, causing assumptions to you when you interview. The adversities that you can clearly see? They cause you to focus on the difference, instead of what in the difference makes the person effective at their job.
Did you ever watch Star Trek, The Next Generation? There was an episode where the Enterprise was on a planet where only people without disabilities were allowed to be born. It was the fact that Lt. LaForge was blind, and his computerized eyesight that filtered information correctly to his brain helped them solve a problem. A problem for which they would have never had the answer to, had they not encountered someone with a different way of looking at something. Literally a different way of looking.
Let's wrap this up and set a challenge for yourself in the next interviews.
McGurk effect - where is your brain creating a third, and incorrect assumption based on competing, yet correct data points?
Deliberate practice - accept that if it really takes 10,000 of deliberate practice to be a master interviewer, that you will retire around the time you master it. Focus on getting better.
Unconscious bias - ask more questions, ask why, and don't rely on your assumptions. Get comfortable with challenging your assumptions in interviews.
Look to hire people who are different than you, think differently, and come up with radically different solutions.
Learn to have different managerial solutions and different communication solutions for those on your team. If you are a leader, that will only make you better.
That was a lot of information, right? I'm glad you listened in, and I am glad you will take the time to listen to yourself, listen to your candidate, acknowledge your assumptions, and keep growing, because sometimes the answers lies in our differences, not our sameness.