Have you ever had an attitude that, no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t seem to change? Maybe you wanted to become more receptive to new kinds of experiences or overcome a tendency to get irritated too quickly. We all have challenges similar to these – for me, it’s a pesky tendency to be just a little bit too judgmental. Try as I might, I have had a heck of a time changing what really amounts to a mental habit of thought – a way of thinking that, in turn, dictates my behavior and reactions.
Biased attitudes are like that – sometimes, no matter how hard we try, they just won’t go away. The good news is that with bias, as with any other destructive attitude, there is hope. That hope lies in a simple suggestion:
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What comes to mind when you think of these people – actress Kathy Bates, singer/actress Queen Latifah, and CCN commentator Candy Crowley? Can you picture them? If so, you know that one thing these top-achieving professionals have in common is that they all carry what our North American culture would categorize as “a few extra pounds.” Because we know what these three people do for a living and how much they have accomplished, their physical appearance probably doesn’t lead us to jump to any conclusions about their abilities, energy, or self-discipline. But, what happens when we encounter people of similar weight in our workplaces? What sort of knee-jerk assumptions might we make about their potential to succeed?
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