Better Listening: Reducing Bias (Part 2 of 3)
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In Part 1 of this Better Listening series, we unpacked the impact that stress can have on listening, namely auditory exclusion, which is when someone temporarily is unable to listen due to a high stress condition.
In this segment, we will discuss how we can unconsciously tune someone out due to our biases. The most common biases are not always related to race or gender. We often do a poor job of listening simply because we either (1) do not like someone or (2) do not respect someone.
This can happen subconsciously, we down weight what that person is saying because we do not like or trust them.
How does Bias Impact Listening?
Let’s start with a fairly common example: outside consultants that are brought in to tell upper management what their employees have already tried telling them before. This fundamentally is a listening problem and there are some biases at play.
If companies did a better job listening to their employees, many consultants would be out of a job! This would save companies a lot of money and also increase employee engagement. The global consulting industry is a $300 billion industry with mid-tier firms spending $50-100 million each year on consulting services.
If you have worked for a large organization long enough, you have probably heard or experienced how outside consultants go around and ask employees what they think, and then bring up the same ideas that some of those employees have already raised to management.
The heart of the issue is not only whether management really values their employees’ input but also if they can recognize the biases that are keeping them from being able to listen well.
Data Exclusion and Bias in Listening
I am an engineer by training. As an engineer, we are taught to be objective and to not exclude data unless there is a clear reason that the data point being excluded is an outlier. Any respectful scientist or engineer would not simply exclude data points because they didn’t like the source of the data.
The same principle applies to communication – we need to become more aware of our biases, otherwise, we can end up excluding important information. This is why organizations that are more diverse and inclusive have been shown to have better performance. In a 2023 McKinsey study, companies that were in the top quartile of ethnic representation had a 39 percent increased
likelihood of outperforming those in the bottom quartile. In general, the people at those organizations have learned how to work with other people that are different than them. When you can listen to different opinions, then you are able to make better decisions that drive the company forward.
Impact of Bias against People that are Less Educated
There are many different biases in the workplace, race, gender, religion, ageism, etc. I’d like to focus on one particular bias that is often overlooked. It is the bias against those who are not educated as “well” as you are. If this bias can be overcome, it has the potential to drive tremendous value by providing a competitive advantage in talent acquisition, improving collaboration and team performance.
This negative bias can take various forms:
- Bias towards to those that do not have as high of a degree,
o e.g., Ph.D. vs bachelor’s degree, trade school vs. college or university
- Bias towards those who did not go to as “good” of a school.
o e.g., Ivy league vs. non-Ivy league
A friend of mine was telling me how her daughter who is a higher education administrator recently did an assessment and was surprised at her results. She had gone through a lot of diversity, equity, and inclusion training and was not biased toward any particular race or gender. What her assessment revealed is that she had a negative bias against those who did not value education as much as she did.
Why is bias against those who are not educated as “well” as you and issue?
1. Hinders companies from finding and retaining key talent
There is already a talent shortage for certain jobs and Korn Ferry expects that by 2030 the talent shortage could result in 85 million jobs being unfulfilled resulting in $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenue.
Did you know that over 40% of the United States workforce does not have a college degree? That means many companies are overlooking 40% of the workforce when they require a position to have a college degree. Certain positions may require even higher levels of education; however, many positions have historically used a college degree as an easy substitute instead of screening for knowledge or skills.
I know an African American consultant that works at a large consulting firm. He shared this story. He was talking with a white, male, blue collar worker, let’s call him Ed. Ed told him that if they went to talk to the managers at his company, they would listen to him, even though he was black because of his professional and educational pedigree, rather than Ed.
Skills matter however, when it comes to listening, it is important to remember that just because someone has a better degree does not mean they are the better subject matter expert in a particular area. Otherwise, we may end up down weighting the opinion of certain people over others that have a higher degree. When people do not feel respected or heard, they will leave.
2. Reduces productivity and collaboration
I used to be an engineer at a chemical manufacturing company. One of the senior operators told me that I was different from most of the other engineers they worked with because I listened to them. As a result, the processes I designed fit their needs and they were able to run them at the desired production rates. I was not any better than the operators, we simply had different roles to fill.
Several other engineers they had worked with in the past looked down on the operators, perhaps considering them to be not as smart or educated and therefore, their opinion did not matter very much. But when they were not willing to listen to the input from the operators, they were failing to realize that this handicapped them.
When we can reduce the education bias, we increase mutual respect and as a result, collaboration and productivity increases as well.
Forbes reports that as of February 2024, there were 9.5 million job openings in the U.S. and only 6.5 million people looking for a job. This is a trend that has persisted for the past four years. As the labor force shrinks, productivity has to increase. One way to do this is to work together with our colleagues more effectively. This is the impact that better listening can have through reducing bias.
What can we do to reduce bias when listening?
1. First, uncover your biases. The first step to any change is awareness. There is a complimentary assessment developed by Harvard University that you can take called the Implicit Association Test (IAT).
2. Second, when you talk to someone that you don’t particularly like or respect, go into those conversations with intentionality to listen to counteract your bias. We will not like everyone but that does not mean we cannot choose to listen to them.
3. Third, from an organizational perspective, build a culture that hires and promotes based on skills and merit. A good example of this is to review and question whether a position you are looking to fill truly requires a bachelor’s degree. Is it a MUST criteria or a WANT criteria?
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