They say the devil is in the details, and nowhere is this more evident than in the unspoken biases that shape our workplaces. Join us, Sharon Wilson and Cindy LaCom from Transforming Culture Consultants, as we pull back the curtain on implicit bias, revealing its subtle grip it can have on office interactions. Weaving in personal stories, we confront the 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' narrative and its failure to acknowledge the nuanced hurdles different people face. Our conversation explores the everyday realities of unexamined beliefs, and how they can lead to workplace bullying that's as harmful as it is hard to detect.
Are you part of the engine that drives your company's culture? This is your cue to amplify your impact and join a community of forward-thinking HR professionals, executive directors, managers and employees committed to crafting workplaces where everyone thrives. We're opening up the floor—and our digital doors—for rich exchanges of strategies and success stories. We're setting the stage for a collective journey towards work environments that honor each individual's worth and well-being. Tune in and be inspired to infuse your workspace with respect, value, and security.
They say the devil is in the details, and nowhere is this more evident than in the unspoken biases that shape our workplaces. Join us, Sharon Wilson and Cindy LaCom from Transforming Culture Consultants, as we pull back the curtain on implicit bias, revealing its subtle grip it can have on office interactions. Weaving in personal stories, we confront the 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' narrative and its failure to acknowledge the nuanced hurdles different people face. Our conversation explores the everyday realities of unexamined beliefs, and how they can lead to workplace bullying that's as harmful as it is hard to detect.
Are you part of the engine that drives your company's culture? This is your cue to amplify your impact and join a community of forward-thinking HR professionals, executive directors, managers and employees committed to crafting workplaces where everyone thrives. We're opening up the floor—and our digital doors—for rich exchanges of strategies and success stories. We're setting the stage for a collective journey towards work environments that honor each individual's worth and well-being. Tune in and be inspired to infuse your workspace with respect, value, and security.
Welcome everyone to Transformation Talks. The intention of our podcast is to provide tips, strategies and inspiration to transform workplaces, communities and lives. I'm Sharon Wilson and I'm the co-founder and chief mindset and growth officer at Transforming Culture Consultants, and I have with me today our other co-founder, cindy O'Com, who is our chief impact and inclusion officer. In our last podcast we talked about the problem of bullying in the workplace how to name it, see it and start to solve it. We agree that too often when we think of bullying we really go to the extreme, but the day-to-day reality for many of us is that bullying, harassment and simple acts of unkindness are far more common and far more familiar. Cindy, what do you want to share with us about that?
Cindy LaCom:
I think sometimes the kind of extreme bullying that you're talking about is a consequence of overt bias or stigma, which is really just a set of usually pretty negative and often very unfair beliefs that a society or group has about something or about someone. But overt bias is really blatant. Most of us know this. I'll give you a silly example, but one that kind of illustrates it. I hate ice cream. All ice cream is horrible. Ice cream should be disappeared from the face of the earth. That's overt bias against ice.
Cindy LaCom:
And we have, I think, a lot of overt bias in our society. And maybe that's true in most societies. But more often, especially in the workplace, bullying, harassment and thoughtlessness are rooted in implicit bias. These are biases and beliefs that we don't even know we have, that we don't even recognize. They're beliefs that we no longer see because they've been so normalized. And I want to say this because I know that when we use words like stigma or bias, people's hackles tend to go up, they get a little bit defensive. But the reality is that we're all biased. It's just simply part of being human. Stigmatized thinking takes root in our families, our friend groups, our churches, our communities, our schools.
Cindy LaCom:
A simple example from my own life is kind of pull yourself up by your bootstrap mentality. My dad I learned this from my father. He had a very tough childhood and he had to overcome a number of barriers to be successful. So, in his mind, if he could do it, anyone should be able to do it. And so, because I grew up with that, that kind of became a belief for me as well, and it was one that I just came to take for granted. But what about for the person who has faced complex, adverse childhood experiences, someone who has to deal with being regularly discriminated against, or the child who hears you're useless instead of I love you? And I'm going to use an example. I tend to be anecdotal, but this was one.
Cindy LaCom:
There was a kid in our neighborhood who I tended to mentor a lot, but one day she was in the fifth grade and she came running up to my house and knocked on the door all excited and said I'm going to be in a school play. I said, oh, that's wonderful, may I come? And she said yes, yes. So I asked her mom would you like me to give you a ride? Her mom had a driver's license. And her mom kind of said Okay. So we went to this play and afterwards we went back to the classroom where all these little fifth graders came running in and I was just getting ready to say that was great when her mother said very loudly that was so dumb and, as many of you can imagine, that was the last play or extracurricular activity that that kid ever did and in fact she dropped out of high school in the 10th grade and I have to say some part of me thought what an absolute shape, but also what an opportunity in that moment.
Cindy LaCom:
So I look at this child, who I really was part of her life when she was growing up, and I think, well, it may not be as easy as saying pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And so I think, for a lot of people, challenges can feel intermountable. Learned helplessness as a reality, so is fatigue and security, anxiety and fear. So I have really been lucky enough to see that belief pull yourself up by your bootstraps, or what it Austin's, the me, has been, which is kind of implicit bias which, I'm going to be honest, has led me to judge others when they have appeared to fail to do just that, and that's happened without my really taking into account their lives and the context their lives and the context their choice.
Cindy LaCom:
So I'm going to use one more example of influence at bias. That's rooted in the norms of communication, and we've actually talked about this in other podcasts. We tend to believe that we should quote meet someone in the eyes and that failing to do so is kind of a suspect. And that actually happened in one of the organizations I was working with. Someone in a workshop said that they were uncomfortable with a relatively new employee because that person didn't look them in the eye and this made them think that this new hire was kind of chifky and had something high. My concern at the moment when she said that was that this new employee might have autism spectrum disorder or have grown up in a culture where the norm was that you don't look your boss in the eyes.
Cindy LaCom:
And even if the staff person wasn't bullying this new employee, it's quite possible that they worked to help a chain of more where others in that organization felt that would be OK to make dokes to avoid this new employee or possibly worse. So trust me when I tell you that this staff person really didn't mean to discriminate or to be unkind. She didn't even see her bias as potentially rooted in disability, discrimination or ableism. But what, in fact? If it is and the possibility that it is is pressing enough that we were really glad that TCC was there Using awareness of implicit bias and how it can impact workplace culture and team morale, as well as kind of creating a culture of inclusion. It's key, it's central to what we do.
Sharon Wilson:
Yeah, it really is. And to you know, signe, that's a really good point. I remember one time a company I was working with hired an employee from another country where cooking you know really strong spices and everything you know was something that was part of their culture the wonderful food and it really carried into the workplace because they were cooking in the same area that they were sleeping. And despite the fact that the person was a good employee, you know, gossip about the cooking odors that Lingard started to kind of spiral out of control and they became very disrespectful to that individual and to their cultures and to their lived experience. It really undermined the workplace culture and I had asked them if they meant to be unkind or biased. I'd asked people those were gossiping, almost certainly would have said no, but I hadn't. Outside of perspective kind of a Martian perspective at that time and I was actually in human resources at the time that allowed me to both see the behavior and step in to change it. So I talked to the supervisor and we discussed managing it in a couple of ways. I really wanted to coach them to be able to be more effective as a supervisor and how would they handle it. And so oftentimes, you know I would share that we don't understand what we don't know and what's new to us, and one thing that happened to normalize this kind of newness occurred at the company Potluck, where the managers from different departments integrated food from various cultures. This was the solution that the supervisor thought would be. A really good idea is to expose people to this employee's culture and their food, which was fantastic, and so everyone then had a better understanding of what was going on.
Sharon Wilson:
It was a matter of applying, really a question. How would I want my workplace to address this if the unkindness were directed at me? And that's really what I was talking to the supervisor about. You know putting yourself in the other person's shoes, and you know, cindy, that sounds so simple, but the golden rule quote unquote of you know, how would I want someone to handle this if that were me? You know really is, I feel, a great place to start whenever we're in a situation where we're trying to look at how we might be able to affect something that's happening around us.
Sharon Wilson:
This supervisor knew that this gossip was undermining their department and the culture in general, but they just really didn't know what to do about it. They felt uncomfortable going and talking to the employee. They really kind of wanted me to go handle it and take care of it because I was in human resources, but I wanted to help coach them to be able to understand that we need to look at this from a perspective that they can be empowered and how they want that situation to be handled if it were them. There was really a great conversation that happened Then afterwards. That was an opportunity for that supervisor to talk about how different cultures have things that we don't understand and we all have to be respectful of each other. He just gave a great bridge to me and it opened the door.
Sharon Wilson:
Also, when people were eating this wonderful food that the coworker brought in, which they never had many of them had never had this kind of food before it opened them up to new opportunities and new experiences, because that was a positive experience of breaking bread together. Then that opened the door for the supervisor to be able to kind of have a bridge of that. That was one of the things that I felt was just really powerful and that really could have had some disastrous results had that supervisor not had done something, or maybe if they would have handled it in a different way, which would have been to go to the employee and say you really need to be able to not smell like these spices, or however they would have approached it. Instead, we had an amazing, wonderful employee that was happy, that felt more included, and everyone in the whole department had an opportunity for growth. So, cindy, what kind of tip or strategy can you offer to address this potential issue?
Cindy LaCom:
Well, I guess I would want to say first, I really strongly agree with you that it can be really hard to have these kinds of conversations. I also agree with you that ignoring that kind of a dynamic does not make it go away, and all that happens is that we either reinforce a norm which excludes or damages certain people, or we have employees who really don't feel like they belong, don't feel included, don't feel like they're being treated equitably, and so it's imperative that we address the issue. And I'm going to actually go back to the example I offered before and what happened in that moment when this employee made the comment. They don't meet me in the eye. I'm not comfortable with it.
Cindy LaCom:
I actually called out the staff person and I talked in our last podcast about the difference between calling in and calling out. And just a reminder calling out is publicly asking someone why they might have said something that you felt is problematic or offensive. So I asked her directly, really respectfully. I was really very curious, but I asked her directly why she equated somebody not meeting her eyes with shiftiness and she thought about it, and her response, finally, was I'm not sure that led to an extensive conversation with the other staff who were participating in this workshop about cultural beliefs, about autism and actually other kinds of disabilities, and I ended up developing a more extensive training that focused on other kinds of bias which are rooted in disability, discrimination or ableism, to extend that conversation and help diminish the kinds of bullying and unkindness or, in this case, utterly unintended unkindness in the future. And it actually has turned out to be a really good workshop.
Cindy LaCom:
I've replicated it many times and we want to make this point really clearly while we're having this conversation, and that is that it's not the responsibility of the individual who's being bullied or harassed or treated disrespectfully to change that dynamic. That responsibility should never fall on that person's shoulders. But, as I said, neither can we ignore the dynamic. When stigma or discrimination or unkindness occurs. The solution has to be supported at every level. We all need to practice empathy, but management and staff can also benefit from training. So give them the tools to change that dynamic and, sharon, you suggested this before as well. We've said it before but it merits repeating. It can have a profound ability to shape and empower workplace culture, but they have to be able to see how they might do this before they can begin to solve the problem, and a merchant perspective like the one that PCC offers can really help Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
Sharon Wilson:
Well, as always, I like to always close with just.
Sharon Wilson:
The intention we have is to be a support and a resource for you to help navigate these unprecedented challenges in our workplace cultures and create thinking cultures that had a ripple effect that impact all of us in a positive way. We'd love for you to join our community of HR professionals executive directors, managers that are really wanting to create and grow more empowered workplaces and organizations, so you can get free tips, resources and an opportunity to attend free virtual gatherings where you can engage with industry leaders and innovators and exchange ideas, strategies and best practices. So you can go to transformingcultureconsultantscomslashHR and we'll keep you apprised of when those gatherings are, but you'll certainly be on our list then for us to provide you with some streamlined tips and strategies. We're also available to provide you with a free virtual consultation to explore any challenges or opportunities in your workplace culture, and you can apply for that at transformingcultureconsultantscomslashfreeapplication and you can connect with us on LinkedIn at transformingcultureconsultants. Our vision is a world where employees feel happy, respected, valued and safe, and we thank you for being a part of this vision.
Cindy LaCom:
And we hope you'll join us again in our next video.
