Informal Assessments

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ILRDI001: Improving Engagement

Cornell University ILR School

Examine an "Inclusive Climate"

In this module, you examined the critical characteristics of inclusive climates, and determined what it means to have an inclusive climate (as distinguished from other initiatives, such as increasing diversity within the workplace). You also examined why inclusive climates are important and looked at the benefits that inclusive climates offer to both the individual and the organization. By exploring what an inclusive climate is, you have set the stage for examining the critical role that leaders play in shaping inclusive climates.

In the last module, Professor Nishii explained that an important responsibility for you as a leader is to provide clarity about what we mean by inclusion. In this module, you will learn about the factors that both inhibit and facilitate experiences of inclusion so that you can shape clear norms about the behaviors that are valued versus those that are discouraged. You will examine common interpersonal dynamics that get in the way of fostering inclusion. Although some of what is described here may sound familiar to you, reflecting on how these dynamics play out within your team will help you to engage in and reinforce behaviors that will help to counteract these patterns. You will also examine four enablers of inclusion and develop strategies for embedding them within your work group.

Status Cues

When people feel that their membership in an identity group (such as gender, race/ethnicity, disability status, sexual orientation, religion, functional background, education) puts them at a disadvantage within the workgroup, then any talk about inclusion feels like a farce. What can you do to replace resentment and competition with openness and cooperation?

There are a number of factors that facilitate and inhibit inclusion. I'd like to first talk about status cues as a major inhibitor of inclusion. So when identity group membership is perceived to be correlated with what we might call life chances, or access to resources, opportunities, and voice, members of the favored or higher- status group command more respect, deference, and power. They can count on receiving the benefit of the doubt in a way that cannot be taken for granted by members of the lower-status group. The more the work context signals that there is greater social value associated with membership in some groups than in others, the greater the obstacle there is to inclusion and its associated benefits. When people feel that their membership in an identity group puts them at a disadvantage, then any talk about inclusion is going to feel like a farce. 

The good news is that even though patterns of privilege and disadvantage may be slow to change at the societal level, they can be delegitimized much more easily within work groups through the fair implementation of work practices by unit leaders like you. When team members feel that access to resources and opportunities like coaching, developmental opportunities, high-visibility projects, leadership roles, and pay and other perks are fairly distributed, boundaries between in and out groups blur. Resentment and competition can then be replaced with openness and cooperation.

Unconscious Bias

Our brains interpret incoming information so efficiently, and below our level of awareness, that we believe that what we see is objective. How does this affect management decisions? Here, Professor Nishii presents findings that have emerged from hundreds of scientific research studies, and explains what it means for you.

Another inhibitor of inclusion is unconscious bias. Scientists estimate that we're exposed to as many as 11 million pieces of information at any one time, but our brains can only consciously process about 40. That means that over 99.9% of incoming cues are processed automatically or unconsciously by our brains. Our brains have essentially evolved to help us survive by automatically filtering incoming cues based on preexisting shortcuts about how someone or something is likely to be, and this is what we mean by unconscious bias. Unconscious thinking, it's fast. It feels intuitive. When we react to something, or make a decision, it feels logical and it feels right. Our brains interpret incoming information so efficiently, and below our level of awareness, that we believe that what we see is objective. We rarely realize that what or who we perceive to be safe, valuable, likable, and competent has been impacted by the way that our brains have interpreted that information for us. While these shortcuts that our brains take can be very helpful, for example, for predicting what behavior is acceptable or expected in an office setting or an elevator or a courtroom, they can also mislead us. The cues that are visible to the eye, like others' gender, and race or ethnicity, and age, physique, things like that, trigger the fastest and strongest associations within our brain. The default way that our brains work is that once somebody has been categorized, for example, as being female and young, the traits that are associated with those labels are assumed to apply to that person, regardless of how much they actually represent the prototype, and these traits are assigned to them just like they would be to anybody else who's assigned to those same labels. Because it takes less effort for our brains to process biased confirming than disconfirming information, our assumptions about what people are like are easily reinforced. In the absence of active, conscious efforts to attend to unexpected pieces of information, our assumptions can remain untested, and can therefore be inaccurate. That's why unconscious bias can represent a formidable obstacle to inclusion and learning in organizations if it's left unchecked.

Stable Patterns

Key Points

Unconscious bias interferes with inclusion and learning

Leaders can set a standard for calling each other out on decisions influenced by unconscious bias

Unconscious bias represents a formidable obstacle to inclusion and learning in organizations. Here are some stable patterns that have emerged over hundreds of scientific research studies:

Unconscious biases related to competence and leadership

Women and people of color receive lower evaluations of competence when attributes associated with their social group are incongruent with the attributes thought to be required for success in a particular role (e.g., women in senior leadership). The notion of “success” tends to be scrutinized more heavily such that more is required to dispel doubt and be perceived as similarly competent. Well-known resume studies, for example, have shown that a resume with a clearly male or white-sounding name yields a significantly higher level of interest among evaluators than an identical resume with a female or African-American name.

(Mis-)Attributions for others’ behavior

While the success of “ingroup” members tends to be attributed to ability and failure to situational factors, the opposite tends to be true of “outgroup” members for whom success tends to be attributed to situational factors and failure is attributed to incompetence. This translates into greater reluctance to appoint an outgroup member for an important or visible role.

The likeability penalty

People tend to dislike individuals who engage in counter-stereotypical behavior. For example, women who voice their opinions or are unafraid to disagree with others are often described as “aggressive,” “pushy,” or “self-interested,” while the same behaviors engaged in by a man are expected and therefore are more likely to be referred to as “leader-like,” “strategic,” or “assertive.”

These patterns result from automatic, unconscious thinking. Research shows that by creating a culture in which you and your teammates use the terminology you’ve learned here to help each other call out decisions or reactions that may have been unduly influenced by unconscious bias, you can help each other to be less biased.

The more people speak up, pose questions, and ask each other about the quality of the evidence underlying assumptions in use, the greater your collective intelligence. Ask each other: “Are we being logical and careful in the way that we’re drawing conclusions and making decisions? Are we evaluating people using the same, stable criteria? What are we failing to consider here? What evidence is there that our assumptions might be incomplete?”

Micro-aggressions

Micro-aggressions refer to subtle behaviors that lead someone to feel devalued. Even though each instance may seem minor, they add up. They define the tone of the team and contribute to people’s experiences of the climate. In response to these behaviors, you, as a leader, should express disapproval in order to promote greater inclusion.

Another inhibitor for inclusion is what some people call microaggressions. Microaggressions refer to subtle behaviors that lead someone to feel devalued. So here are some examples: Being repeatedly interrupted or spoken over; having others take credit for your ideas; not feeling welcome into a discussion, even when others are aware of your presence; and being the last to receive information about something. If other team members appear to be receiving more microaffirmations, that is, visible signs of support as expressed by smiling and nodding and looking interested, that too can feel like a microaggression. What's critical to remember is that the power of subtle, non-verbal cues is incredible. Each instance may seem minor, but cumulatively, they define the tone of the team, and determine people's experiences of inclusion.

What are some examples of micro-aggressions you'd see in a work group?

When you think you have your answer, click the check mark to reveal.

 

Answer

You may be able to think of many other examples of micro-aggressions. Some examples of micro-aggressions that work group members might exhibit include:

· being condescending or demeaning towards others;

· showing little interest in the opinions expressed by others;

· addressing others in unprofessional terms;

· excluding some from professional camaraderie;

· withholding valuable information from others;

· interrupting or speaking over others;

· taking credit for others’ ideas;

· doubting others even on matters over which they have responsibility;

· or failing to welcome someone into a discussion even when others are aware of their presence.

Behaviors to Reinforce (or Discourage)

See attachment - Checklist of Behaviors  

Professor Nishii offers a checklist of behaviors to look out for in your team or work group. Some of the behaviors will foster inclusion, and those you should reinforce within your team. On the other hand, some of the behaviors you should actively discourage. You can save this checklist and use it in the future to guide your efforts at fostering inclusion.

Compelling Direction

Now, Professor Nishii moves into a discussion of the factors that can help foster an inclusive climate. There are specific things that leaders can do. They may seem obvious at first glance, but too often, these behaviors are not practiced.

So now on to the factors that facilitate inclusion. Research evidence supports what may sound obvious: Teams that develop a shared understanding of the team's goals, and align each member's contributions towards those goals, out-performed teams that don't. In reality, however, it's not uncommon for teams to suffer from unresolved disagreements about what needs to be done and how. The teams that triumph are those that invest the time needed to develop a shared vision. As a team leader trying to develop an inclusive climate, your role is to provide clear motivations, norms, and systems of accountability for encouraging group members to challenge each others' perspectives and persevere in their debate of multiple possible solutions. What you need is for team members to develop a shared belief that the combination and recombination of team members' different ideas and perspectives makes for better solutions. Otherwise, the different perspectives held by team members can lead to disruptive conflict and remain unexpressed, thereby hampering, rather than facilitating, continuous improvement.

Team Insight

Professor Nishii discusses an important key to effective team functioning: to invest the time and space necessary for team members to learn about one another as individuals. Nuanced, personalized information will replace superficial assumptions and open the door to deeper-level cooperation and trust.

Okay; so another facilitator of inclusion is what we'll call team insight, or developing a deeper-level understanding or insight about team members. When you discover points of connection with others, it feels good. It validates your identity and it accelerates trust-building. This is known as a similarity attraction effect. When perceived similarity with another person increases, so does liking and respect for that person. Shared bonds facilitate a freer exchange of information and a greater openness to other people's perspectives. It's easy to experience this with people with whom you assume you have things in common. But it can be more difficult with people with whom you assume you have less in common. When someone holds assumptions about you that aren't true, or are overly simplistic, for example, about what you're like, or what you probably are or aren't good at, or your preferences, or how you're likely to react to something, it can be frustrating, right? You might feel like the other person has misunderstood you, or is being unfair or judgmental. 

And such a pattern might make you feel uneasy or even insecure and maybe lead you to avoid the other person, and at times can lead to tension, and maybe also conflict. An important key to effective team-functioning is to therefore invest the time and space necessary for team members to learn about one another on a more personal, individualized level. Little by little, nuanced, more personalized information that you learn about others replaces the more superficial assumptions your brain may have unconsciously been relying on. And the discovery of similarities and shared values or experiences tends to blur the boundaries that may have previously inhibited deeper- level understanding and cooperation and trust and perspective-taking.

Supportive Context

People need to feel safe to express themselves without having to worry about suffering negative consequences. Under what conditions do people experience the greatest safety? And how can you, as a leader, foster that psychological safety within the group?

So the next facilitator of inclusion that I like to talk about is supportive context. A supportive context is one in which people feel safe to express themselves without having to worry about suffering negative consequences, because they know that others will assume that they have positive intentions, and the default assumption is that people are competent. The psychological safety to speak up is facilitated by having a shared value among team members regarding the importance of taking risks and making mistakes for the sake of learning; that is, in order to learn and succeed sooner. People experience the greatest psychological safety when team members trust each other, and they listen to one another's input with an open mind, rather than with a tendency to judge and react negatively to alternative perspectives or dissenting points of view. When people lack a sense of safety or feel threatened, information-processing and discussion tends to become strained and is much less effective. It's important to keep in mind that protecting psychological safety for team members to express themselves doesn't necessarily mean that everyone should be encouraged to say whatever is on their mind. People have to be mindful that what they express and how influences psychological safety for others.

Inclusive Rules of Engagement

Have you ever seen a team in which discussions and decision-making are dominated by a subset of team members? Sometimes, a few people have the loudest voices, or the strongest personalities, and they get more attention and influence. How can leaders ensure that team members are functioning as a group, building constructively on each other's ideas, resolving conflict, and ultimately, making decisions together? The highest performing teams do just that.

Okay; the final set of facilitators of inclusion that I'd like to discuss are inclusive rules of engagement. Research from the fields of communication and psychology show that in the absence of team rules or norms that are explicitly designed to facilitate the participation of all team members, and to promote collaborative exchange among them, team discussion and decision-making are often dominated by a subset of team members. This could be a function of status differences and/or personality. So, for example, those with greater status or more outgoing personalities can easily dominate the discussion. The net effect for teams is that they become more prone to group-think, or narrow and incomplete decision-making, when only a limited set of views are considered. Rather than leave it up to chance, high-performing teams develop and adhere to norms about how they will do the following: solicit input from all team members; ensure that team members build constructively on the ideas of others; how they will resolve conflict; and ultimately how they will make decisions. So here are a few examples of inclusive rules of engagement: So, one could be to institute a "no interruptions" rule. Probably my favorite example of this is something that a firm called IDEO does; they have somebody wear one of those bells that you often see on the counter of a hotel or motel late at night, and whenever somebody talks over somebody or interrupts them. somebody rings the bell as a reminder for them not to interrupt or talk over each other. Another idea is to have team members write down their ideas independently prior to brainstorming, and then use a round-robin approach to ensure that each member shares their ideas. Otherwise, teams often suffer from what's called a common information bias; that's when people focus their attention on ideas that they believe they have in common, because those intuitively feel more valid whether or not that's actually true. It's easy to feel like an idea that nobody else has expressed must somehow be off-base, even when in reality those may be the very ideas that help the team the most, that is, in being thorough in their decision-making. A third example is for teams to take this one step further by voting silently on ideas so that team members are not unduly influenced by the votes of others. 

And this helps to ensure that the team's final decision is more representative of the views of all the team members, and that the team can also identify the ideas or issues about which people disagree and provide an opportunity for them to examine these ideas more carefully. A fourth example is for teams to agree upon a safe mechanism for analyzing team processes and performance episodes to extract lessons about how things can be improved in the future. So the Army does this; they use what they call after-action reviews, and they're four questions that they ask after a performance episode. "What did we set out to do?" "What actually happened?" "Why did it happen?" and "What should we do differently next time?" with the bulk of the attention being on that last question, "What should we do differently next time?" And the idea is to engage everybody in the discussion in an effort to continuously evolve the norms within the group. So, the exact rules that are likely to be the most effective in governing inclusive interactions in your team may differ from those adopted by another team. The important thing is for your team to have what's called a chartering conversation, one where team members discuss their preferences and come to agreement about the norms that should govern team interactions. And this is an excellent investment of time for your team. Openly discussing differences in expectations and coming to agreement about operational adjustments that will improve team members' experiences and engagement will have really lasting effects. For one, doing this in a structured format as a team feels a lot less intimidating and confrontational than having one-on-one conversations among individual team members. Also, it's a classic example of how the method matches the message of inclusion. It will also help to minimize misunderstandings and conflict in the future. It will provide a safe environment for team members to share their views about the team, and will also provide team members with language and frameworks to guide follow-up discussions about additional adjustments that may be helpful for the team to make. Research clearly shows that teams that develop detailed charters outperform those that don't.

Professor Nishii recommended several inclusive rules of engagement. How many can you remember?

When you think you have your answer, click the check mark to reveal.

Some examples of inclusive rules of engagement include:

1. To institute a no-interruptions rule;

2. To have team members write down their ideas independently prior to brainstorming and then use a round robin approach to ensure that each member shares their ideas;

3. To vote silently on ideas, so team members are not unduly influenced by the votes of others;

4. For teams to agree upon a safe mechanism for analyzing team processes and performance episodes to extract lesson about how things can be improved in the future;

5. To have a chartering conversation in which team members discuss their preferences and come to agreement about the norms that should govern team interactions.

Inclusion Team Charter

See the attachment – “Inclusion Team Charter”

As Professor Nishii has explained, when it comes to inclusion, it’s best for the method to match the message. Many people resent being spoken to about diversity and inclusion, but when given a chance to discuss it, they will agree that inclusion is preferable to exclusion and they will have ideas to share about how to promote inclusion in their own work group. An exercise that can help teams to develop a shared vision, resolve disagreements about what needs to be done and how, and establish inclusive rules of engagement is called "team chartering." You can download a chartering template from this page that you can use with your team for this purpose.

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