Previously, I discussed why we might be reluctant to give others feedback and gave some ideas for approaching feedback in a positive way for positive results. This week, I’d like to talk about the downside of not giving feedback and why it’s such an imperative if you want to maintain effective working relationships.
What is implicit bias?
There is a lot of talk about implicit bias these days. We are grappling to understand what it is and how it impacts our lives. If you haven’t taken the implicit bias test, you might want to — it is interesting and illuminating. If you are interested in the scientific foundations of implicit bias, you can also read Dr. Greenwald’s article on the topic here.
According to Greenwald and Krieger, implicit bias, also known as hidden or unconscious bias, is a person’s automatic preference for one race (or sex, or age group, or national origin and so on) over another. Implicit Bias: Scientific Foundations, 94 Calif. Law Rev. 945 (2006).
Implicit bias and giving feedback
What if our automatic, unconscious bias caused us to be uncomfortable enough with another person that we drew back from offering them feedback? What if denying people the feedback and mentoring they need to learn, grow, acquire skills and develop might be considered discrimination or at least contribute to a discrimination claim if it were based on their protected class? For example, imagine a manager who isn’t comfortable with some in the work group and only mentored those he was comfortable with. What if those he doesn’t mentor don’t develop as well, don’t progress as far, don’t acquire the necessary skills and don’t advance? Is this just a coincidence?
One perspective on this is that some people just “click,” bonding while others don’t. Those who form positive bonds in a team often do more work and perform at higher levels — and this is a good thing. But what if some bond and some don’t, creating an “in” group and an “out” group?, The “in” group may not make eye contact with the “out” group; may not appear to hear the “out” group’s input or may become noticeably impatient when someone from the “out” group says something they don’t like. Or, what if someone from the “out group” wasn’t told about a project or invited to participate when they easily should have been. What about the situation where someone from the “out” group expresses an idea, no one even comments, or even appears to notice that anything was said, then a few minutes later, someone from the “in” group states the same idea, and everyone lauds the idea. The members of the “in” group don’t even remember hearing the idea the first time.
If this sort of thing is happening along race,gender or age (or any protected class) lines, implicit bias could be a contributing factor. What if those the manager bonds with have certain similar characteristics like being male and the males who report to him seem to start understanding the “unwritten rules” of the workplace culture better and sooner than others? How would you know whether this is implicit bias and how would you evaluate whether it has an adverse impact on an employee’s terms and conditions of employment. We rarely explicitly say, “I won’t tell her she’s not doing well because she might claim its gender discrimination.”
Is implicit bias affecting your feedback and management style?
To evaluate whether there is bias, most employment lawyers will say you have to look at the comparators.This means the people in the workplace who are roughly similar to the person with the claim, doing roughly similar work and,all things being equal,should receive roughly similar treatment.
An unpublished case from the District of Oregon in 2012 looked at these factors without mentioning implicit bias. It’s called Arjangrad v. JP Morgan Chase, NA (D. Or. 2012) and involved sex, race, national origin and retaliation claims.
Arjangrad was a banker with Washington Mutual before Washington Mutual was acquired by Chase Bank. She worked in the small business group and was called a “relationship manager.” Everyone agreed, including her employer, that she was successful in this role both when employed by Washington Mutual (2007-2008) and by Chase (beginning in 2008). In fact, the judge described her as having a “stellar reputation.”
Arjangrad transferred to a new banking unit after a year with Chase and was supervised by a new manager in September 2009. The only incident in the case that explicitly refers to national origin is a conversation Arjangrad says she had with her supervisor in early September 2009. She claims he asked her if she was Indian, to which she replied that she was Persian and was from Iran. According to Arjangrad, her supervisor responded by saying, “You must hate men,” and was cold and withdrawn with her from that time forward. She attributed this to race or national origin discrimination. The judge didn’t see it that way — in fact, the judge found this was at most an ambiguous remark, could mean many different things and was not direct evidence of discrimination.
But the judge did find the supervisor treated her differently than he treated others, including he did not give her feedback and management support like he did to others.
The supervisor faulted Arjangrad for not understanding credit well, not providing good prospect reports and suggesting prospects for development which he found to be inappropriate. But he never told her this, nor did he explain to her why or what she could do differently. Instead, he kept telling her, “Keep doing what you’re doing, you’re fine” or words to that effect, right up to the time he put her on a performance improvement plan for poor performance in late November, 2009. Arjandgrad asked him for feedback on a weekly basis in September, October and November, but he never told her he thought her performance needed to be improved. The court found “[the supervisor] failed to provide Arjangrad specific constructive feedback in her business development efforts.”
In addition, sometime in the fall of 2009, her supervisor ranked all of the employees who reported to him. One of the key factors in the ranking was how many calls each of the employees logged into a “contact manager” program. Although he faulted Arjangrad for having lower calls logged into the program, the evidence suggested that Arjangrad was only told that certain calls were to be logged into this system, not all the calls. Furthermore, her access to the system was delayed. Once she had access to the system and once she understood the types of calls she should be logging, her call totals far exceeded her colleagues’ totals but his rating of her did not reflect this.
In addition, Arjangrad was downgraded in her performance evaluation for engaging in certain behaviors which the evidence showed her white colleagues were also engaged in. But the white colleagues were rated as exceeding expectations despite this behavior.
When it was time to do Arjangrad’s review, her supervisor scheduled it for a public place, a busy restaurant, in the hopes that she would not become visibly upset or “emotional.” He then proceeded to tell her she was performing poorly. While she was trying to talk to him, he mocked her by saying, “dit, dit, dit” possibly referring to her difficulty articulating her thoughts due to her emotional state. Arjangrad also said he interrupted her continually, and asked her, “Why don’t you just quit?” If I were Arjangrad, I’d strongly consider taking him off my Christmas card list.
Why would he do that in a public place like a restaurant? Would he do that to someone he respected, someone he liked, someone he considered a real human? Of course not. When we want to treat others disrespectfully, the first thing we do is de-humanize them. To get to the mindset in which he could treat her this way, he had to believe that Arjangrad was no longer a human being worthy of respect and dignity. In his mind, she was a silly, nattering fool, to whom it was perfectly acceptable to be disrespectful because that’s all she deserved.
This makes me wonder:. In the supervisor’s value system, does he articulate his values this way: “Some people are worthy of respect, and others aren’t, especially if I have power over them”? I doubt it. We don’t do that sort of thing consciously —which leads us to implicit bias.
We’re still in the realm of speculation here, because the base factual scenario involves real people and the facts haven’t been proven. But what if Arjangrad’s supervisor had implicit biases about people from Iran, or women that didn’t meet his sexual stereotypes? What if he (subconsciously) viewed himself as “better than” Arjangrad because of her national origin or gender? What if this subconscious viewpoint led him to refrain from giving her the feedback she needed to be successful? Certainly the judge thought she did not get the feedback she needed to be successful in this new job.
Four steps to identifying and stopping implicit bias for managers
It’s pretty rare that someone gets up in the morning, faces themselves in the bathroom mirror and says, “Good morning, you discriminatory jerk! How are you? It’s a great day to be biased!” In fact, most people consider themselves to be good people. Most people can come up with some pretty great justifications for their own behavior, even if that behavior isn’t really nice at all
Step one: good manners are good business. This is the one employment lawyers are always emphasizing.If you are justifying disrespectful treatment of another human being, stop immediately. No one deserves poor treatment. If you are so angry, upset, frustrated or passive aggressive about someone you can’t see his or her humanity, you are in no fit shape to give feedback on performance issues. If you are telling yourself that someone “deserves” bad treatment, you are telling yourself a lie to justify your own bad behavior. This is not good management, it is poor self-management. This is not a legal lesson, this is a common sense lesson. It is not illegal to treat people poorly, just as long as you are treating them poorly based on non-discriminatory reasons. But do you think we’d have an unpublished case if Arjangrad had been treated with compassion and respect in that performance evaluation meeting?
Step two: slow down enough to notice what you are thinking and gently question your own resistance to your employee or co-worker. This step has to do with checking in with your own behaviors and thoughts as a manager of others. If you are meeting regularly to give feedback to one employee to go over his work with him, point out ways to make it better, give him inside tips, but completely ignoring other employees, you might just have a problem. To recognize this, you have to slow down enough to register what you are doing. Once you slow down, you have to be able to notice your own thoughts about your employees. Do you have some resistance with one or more of them? Do you know why? Are you willing to examine it honestly and without judgment? This is where a mindfulness practice can help you become a perceptive observer of your own experience — a witness to your own thoughts. Once you slow down enough to notice, you can question and consider your reactions and thoughts. Once you question and consider your own reactions, you may start seeing patterns and even recognize that some of your thoughts aren’t actually true.
Step three: high standards and good manners aren’t mutually exclusive. The next lesson is to find something with which you can align yourself with the employee or co-worker. Unless the person is a sociopath, psychopath or axe murderer, you should be able to do this. If you aren’t able to do this, it suggests that you aren’t correctly perceiving reality. It doesn’t mean you jettison your objections to their performance issues. It just means you consider the performance issues objectively. You can still counsel, discipline and even fire people while treating them with respect and dignity. You don’t lose your standards because you maintain your manners.
Step four: schedule and keep track of your interactions with employees so you know whether you are spending time with all of them. Keep track of your coaching, feedback and mentoring with all employees so you have some sort of record to go by. Arjangrad’s supervisor used an excel spreadsheet, but unfortunately, his notes were all about picking her apart to justify his dislike of her. This is one sided rumination, not helpful notation. Just take notes about when you check in — don’t try to make this into an evidentiary record against your employees. The goal is for you to know if you are giving everyone at least some face time and help. The more time you spend with each of your employees, the more you will break down barriers (yours and theirs) and be able to get to the meat of what you are supposed to be doing: accomplishing projects, delivering work product, increasing production and profits.
Remember that proving implicit bias is very hard to do. A person can have a “gut feeling” they are the victim of discrimination, but unless there is evidence to back this up, they aren’t going to get very far. However, shouldn’t you manage your employees to do the best you can for yourself, for them and for the company, not just to avoid litigation? The law doesn’t require you to do this. It just requires you to refrain from discrimination. Arjangrad’s supervisor failed to give her feedback which led to her not doing what he wanted her to do, which led in part to a poor rating which put her job in jeopardy, which caused her to lose her job which caused her to sue. Feedback — or in this case, the failure to give feedback — was one of the foundational issues in the case. Arjangrad, a “stellar” employee before she worked for this supervisor, just needed feedback to understand how she could continue being stellar. And, had the supervisor done that, perhaps she would still be a stellar employee delivering profits and productivity instead of being a cost drain in litigation.
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*An unpublished case does not have precedential value, meaning it can’t be relied on by lawyers in other cases. But I believe the facts are very interesting for human resources professionals and those who manage people.
**This case was considered by the court on a motion for summary judgement in which all inferences are resolved in the plaintiff’s favor. In other words, these facts are assumed to be true rather than having been found to be true by a court.
***I would like to emphasize that the feedback itself was not the evidence of different treatment. Rather, the lack of feedback led to the poor performance evaluation which was the evidence of different treatment.
AUG