Un-American
Photo by Lucas Sankey / Unsplash
Back in March, a few days before the Bay Area shut down to shelter in place, I decided to treat myself to lunch at a fairly remote outdoor café. It’s got great Moroccan food, a few rickety tables on a patio, and a fun waterfront view. I wanted to stare at the water and think about our uncertain future.
So I picked a spot as far as possible from the only other occupied table, and tried to tune out their conversation. No such luck! They were having an intense discussion, and it was pretty loud. One was CEO of a new startup, pre-seed and still putting his team together. The other startup CEO was apparently doing well, heading into Series B, and giving out advice. And one story he told has stuck with me for months.*
He talked about his original COO. “As smart a guy as you can find,” he said. “Really, so so smart, and he had some great and innovative ideas.”
“But he couldn’t take critical feedback. He resisted every suggestion that went against his ideas. He took criticism personally. He blew up at people who pointed out there might be better ways to do things. And he held us back. I lost a lot of time and money because of that guy. So I had to let him go.”
“So learn from my mistake as you put your team together. Don’t go for the smartest guy in the room. Go for the smartest guy** who can take critical feedback, and who can accept other people’s perspectives and ideas.”
___
*I took notes.
**I didn’t say anything that day. But of course, I need to point out here that you don’t have to be male to make a great addition to the C-suite.)
Critical feedback
What does it take for organizations to thrive?
Some of the foundations of thriving organizations are:
● Accurately identifying and meeting client needs
● Encouraging and incubating innovation
● Happy and engaged employees who feel safe and like they can rely on each other
● Diverse employees whose perspectives and contributions are encouraged,
● Diverse employees who are promoted based on their competence and performance.
And critical feedback is absolutely central to all of these.
As an anti-bias consultant, I’m constantly pointing out that anti-bias work goes way beyond just hiring people from underrepresented groups. A lot of people seem to think that’s it. “Move the needle! Get our numbers up!”
In fact, real anti-bias work is about setting up policies, procedures, and cultures where bias gets identified and interrupted. And critical feedback is key.
If you can’t even hear that something you or your team is doing is suboptimal, how can you avoid mistakes? Identify areas of improvement? How can you optimize things?
Bias is suboptimal. And it goes hand in hand with resistance to critical feedback.
Cognitive bias is a thing
Humans are designed to be biased. Our brains are amazing, and do all kinds of spectacular things.
But they also set us up to see – and evaluate – the world in skewed ways.
We use shortcuts to process information. Our decisions can be influenced by emotions. We put too much trust in our memories.
And we’re deeply influenced by the people who surround us, along with the ways our culture has trained us to see and value the world.
So when we’re at work and make decisions, we want to make sure we’re avoiding biases like:
● Availability bias, where we make decisions based on examples that spring to mind. “Pedro hated the commute from Tracy, so we shouldn’t hire this candidate. She lives there, and she’ll just leave us as soon as she finds a closer job.”
● Confirmation bias, where we ignore evidence that goes against our previously held beliefs. “Men are just more technical. So it makes sense that our engineering team is all male.”
● Bandwagon effect, where an idea seems more plausible because other people believe it. “Everybody really liked that third option. I guess I shouldn’t be worried about it leaving out a bunch of people.”
These biases, and many others, are incredibly common.
How can we avoid them?
Well, one way is to have a diverse group of people in the room. Their different perspectives can help point out where decisions are being influenced by cognitive bias. (It’s incredibly helpful to have an anti-bias checklist as well.)
But for that to work, you have to have a culture of safety and trust, where people are encouraged to point out mistakes or problems. And where they’re not retaliated against.
And it can take a lot of training, practice, and work to get to that point.
Photo by Christian Erfurt/Unsplash
Resisting critical feedback on bias
In my research, I’ve seen that, like the COO who got fired from that startup, it is hard for many people to receive critical feedback. (It’s why there are so many employment lawyers who work on cases of whistleblower retaliation.)
And when that feedback is about bias? It can be unbearable.
Instead of processing the feedback and figuring out what they can do better, people shut down. They refuse to discuss it, and they ban future discussions.
Or they flare up with anger.
And they may strike out, and retaliate in a way that is basically “kill the messenger.”
The CFO who screams “Get out of my office!” at his female colleague who has brought up some gender bias in a recent public performance of his (which had upset a large chunk of the company).
The woman who bursts into tears and says, “But I interrupt everybody! If I can’t interrupt Tara just because she’s Black, I guess I’m not going to talk at all.” She then storms out of the room, where she gets comforted by her colleagues.
The VP who fumes, “But the only people who deserved to be promoted to engineering manager this round just happened to be white men. How dare you suggest our team is biased against women!” And then transfers the woman who pointed it out to him.
And the countless, countless people who have called out discrimination and harassment at their workplaces and were subsequently fired.
Un-American
On September 4, the Executive Office of President Donald Trump put out a memo ordering federal agencies stop running anti-racism trainings.
In its first sentences, the memo calls these trainings “divisive, anti-American propaganda.” Later on, it calls them “un-American.”
This is just another example of resistance to, and retaliation for, critical feedback about bias. Of lashing out, of refusing to discuss, of shutting down discussion more generally.
Unfortunately, it’s happening at the very highest levels of this country. And so will have even more widespread and negative consequences than the usual resistance and retaliation.
You don’t have to be a historian to know that there have been issues involving race and unfairness in this country for hundreds of years.
And even people who avoid thinking and talking about issues of bias know, deep down, that they exist. This brief clip of Jane Elliot asking white Americans to stand up if they would be happy to be treated the way Black citizens are says it all.
Calling critical feedback “divisive” and “propaganda” is a time-honored tradition.
But it doesn’t lead to good outcomes.
Ignoring bias, and punishing people who put in the time and care to give critical feedback, is suboptimal.
If you want your organization to thrive, you need to create a culture where people who give critical feedback are valued and treated with respect. Whether that feedback is about a general mistake, a cognitive bias, or some kind of societal bias at play.
People who resist critical feedback and retaliate against colleagues who bring it up? They need to be able to change.
And if they can’t change? They need to leave.
Otherwise, you are guaranteeing future problems, pain, and negative outcomes that could have been avoided. That CEO at the cafe ended his advice by saying, “I only regret not getting rid of him sooner.
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