Watch Your But

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions. Still, as 2023 turns to 2024, I’m redoubling my efforts to gain clarity about my unconscious biases, and how they might be holding me back from using my agency and my voice more intentionally toward creating a more peaceful world. The eruption in the Middle East has been deeply upsetting and polarizing, and even two-plus months after the horrifying Hamas attacks on Israel, and with the subsequent and ongoing brutality the Israeli military is unleashing on the people of Gaza, I still feel like I haven’t found my footing. Something is keeping me silent and paralyzed, and I think one of the causes may be some of my unconscious biases that are preventing me from reckoning honestly with the unspeakable human suffering that is worsening every day.

The following may feel like an attempt to intellectualize away the task of truly reckoning with what is happening. In fact, it may be just that. My hope is that this intellectual turn may end up providing you and me with something we can actually use in our efforts to find our individual and collective voices.

We need all the help we can get identifying our unconscious biases. It turns out that help is but a word away.

“I have a friend who’s tall, but they’re good at basketball.”

How does that sentence compute? It probably sounds a little weird. Why? Because the “but” isn’t doing what it usually does, which is precede something that violates expectations. In this case, we expect a tall person to be good at basketball (at least stereotypically), so what’s that “but” doing there?

No, I haven’t gone completely off the rails. This is directly related to inclusive leadership.

A crucial skill for inclusive leaders (and, if we’re being honest, for all humans) is identifying our unconscious biases, so that they don’t drive our decisions and actions. The problem is that unconscious biases are…well…unconscious. “But” can help bring them out of the shadows.

Consider the following: “I have a primary care physician, but it’s a man.”

How does that sentence read for you? If you were raised in a society that has trained your brain to think of doctors mainly as men, then the sentence probably strikes you as a bit odd.

One of the tricky aspects of digging into these questions is that it forces us to confront what is actually going on in our minds, as opposed to what we hope or wish is going on. If we’re honest about how we react to sentences like the one above, we’ll quickly see that our brains are stuffed with stereotypes and unconscious biases. It can be upsetting to see, but we need to see it if we don’t want our actions to be driven by our biases. (I owe the “but test” to mentor George Lakoff. If you want a deeper dive, check out this LinkedIn article I wrote.)

Meanwhile, I invite you to come up with your own “but test” examples.

Remember not to get down on yourself for having nasty biases. That comes with being human. Instead, focus on getting better at seeing the biases, so that they loosen their grip on the decisions you make and the actions you take.