In the summer of 1989 I decided that I wanted to run the Honolulu marathon (26.1 miles) in December 1990. In August 1989 I sustained a hip injury which virtually made it impossible for me to get in and out of a car. No problem, I think to myself, the marathon is fifteen months away.
By January 1990 I was still having challenges with my hip so my coach, Kit Sundling, came every Saturday to walk me on a track which was softer than the pavement. It took four months of walking on the track, physical therapy, massage and chiropractor visits before I could run again.
We set September 1990 as our next check point by entering the Portland marathon. The goal was to run twenty miles and then stop. We ran seventeen miles and then I broke down – I couldn’t make it to mile twenty.
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Several years ago I was scheduled to fly from Rochester, New York, to Southern California to deliver a commencement speech at a community college.
As I arrived at the airport in Rochester, I learned that my connecting flight to Chicago had been canceled. The airline put me on a plane to Washington, D. C., where I was to catch a connecting flight to Los Angeles. As we pulled away from the gate and approached the runway, the pilot came on the radio and said we would have to go back to the terminal. The engine was on fire!
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“All people over 80 have uninteresting lives.”
“Young black men who play music loud in cars only listen to rap music.”
“All gay men are artistic and fastidious.”
These are just three of several biases (“inflexible beliefs about particular categories of people”) of which I have become aware in the last several years. This awareness came to me in a variety of ways, most of which grew out of the fact that, because of the nature of my work, bias tends to be on my mind much of the time. I’m not proud of them, of course, but I am glad I know these biases are there so I can begin the process of eradicating them from my thinking.
For most of us, however, getting in touch with our biases is hardly the only thing on our minds.
Sure we’d like to become more aware, but the stresses and rush of the workplace leave little room for this kind of ongoing introspection. Sometimes too we resist looking at the tiny clues that our behavior and thoughts toss up to us. This is usually because we suffer under the misguided notion that having a bias makes us “bad people” and, therefore, we struggle to avoid the issue altogether.
Whatever the reason for the inability to spot our biases, one solution is to turn to trusted co-workers for help. To facilitate this teamwork, I have designed a process called a “Bias-Spotter Partnership” that can readily be employed in any workplace where inclusion and bias-reduction are a priority.
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Have you ever had one of those days when things just don’t go right? You leave the house only to realize you left your cell phone by the bed and have to drive all the way home to pick it up. After starting off again, you learn, while listening to the radio, that the concert you were so looking forward to Saturday night has been canceled. Then you get to work anxious to start on a project that is under a tight deadline only to discover that you’ve been scheduled for a meeting you knew nothing about.
(Are you grumpy yet?) Continue reading » »
When I was growing up, both my parents smoked. I also spent my most formative years breathing the smog-choked air of Los Angeles County. Come to think of it, I had a boyfriend or two who was addicted to nicotine in the days when most people didn’t think much of it.
On the other hand, I never smoked myself. Well, that’s not quite true. I do remember the time when I snuck into my parent’s bedroom to see what all this smoking fuss was about. Being a naïve 10-year-old, I didn’t stop to think that my father might walk in, which he did. Somehow I have a memory of my contorting my never-to-be-nicotine-stained hand behind my back to hide my sin only to realize that the smoke from the cigarette was wafting straight up my spine creating, much to my father’s surprise, the incongruous image of my hair being on fire. Yes, I got caught.
Taking all that into consideration, am I predisposed to lung cancer? How at risk am I for emphysema? It’s hard to say, but clearly I am at greater risk than those whose parents did not smoke or who grew up breathing the pristine air of an offshore island.
We can ask the same question about our biases. Continue reading » »
