The key is being self-aware of them so they don’t get in the way of reaching people who are different from you.
“Everyone has unconscious biases that are developed through ubrining, environments, & social groups.
While getting over these inate biases isn’t easy, it’s important to be self-aware of them so you can reach people who may look, walk, & talk differently than you.”
-Ray Zingler on X
If you don’t know what unconscious biases are, they are social stereotypes about people or certain groups of people that individuals form outside their own conscious awareness.
No, they aren’t “racist”, they are simply products of how we were raised, where we we’re raised, how we we’re taught, and how we were conditioned believe and behave.
Unconscious biases can obviously be evolved, but many of them are deeply rooted generationally.
Examples of unconscious biases are:
·Affinity Bias (Feeling a connection to those like us.)
·Perception Bias (Stenotypes and assumptions about different groups.)
·Halo Effect (Protecting positive qualities onto people without actually knowing them.)
·Confirmation Bias (Looking to confirm our own opinions and pre-existing ideas.)
·Attribution Bias (Willing to forgive ourselves quickly, but not others.)
(Source: BeApplied.com)
We have a tendency to want to associate with people who look like us, talk like us, walk like us, have similar backgrounds as us, and have similar interests as us.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that as wanting to associate with people who are similar to you is far more natural than wanting to associate with people who are dissimilar to you.
But here is where I am going with this.
In order to be a quality leader of people, especially young people, one must understand that their inherent biases exist.
They must understand that “their world” is not “the world” it’s merely their perception of the world.
And then to take it a step beyond self-awareness, they must recognize that MOST people they are going to encounter are far different from themselves.
Different backgrounds, different upbringings, different belief systems, different goals, desires, motivations, and on and on.
So, in order to reach them, one must learn how to let go (at least temporarily) of their unconscious biases so that they can earn the opportunity to reach them.
This doesn’t mean you have to change who you are or your belief systems (though I encourage everyone to constantly challenge themselves to grow) but to just be aware so you can listen & learn.
There is no more liberating feeling in the world than selflessly denying yourself so that you may learn the values of another, and then earn the privilege of making a quality impact on them.
