One of the most effective ways to determine how to respond to any sensed unconscious bias or microaggression towards you is to use your internal GPS. I call this examining the Peeve or Leave question.
The Peeve or Leave question should always be your first step in navigating unconscious bias in the workplace — or any other bias for that matter. Recent high profile incidents of career-stifling bias and microagressions, such as the incident at Buckingham Palace when a black British charity leader, Ngozi Fulani, was interrogated by Lady Hussey, the late Queen Elizabeth II’s senior lady in waiting, about where she was really from, illustrate the importance of having a toolkit to navigate the inevitability of workplace bias. I offer these tips when confronted with career-stifling unconscious bias or microaggressions:
Before you respond to sensed unconscious bias based on race and ethnicity, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation, class, etc., SLOW DOWN and first ask yourself:
“Is this a Peeve or Leave situation?”
If you deem it’s a Leave situation, I’d suggest the following:
– Consciously make a mental decision that the sensed bias directed towards you is a minor unconscious infraction at worst.
– Consciously acknowledge to yourself that your concern or offence may or may not “have legs,” but then determine that it’s not worth ruining your lunch over.
– Then briefly, calmly but clearly use a light, friendly response, or humor to gently recondition the presumed perpetrator.
– And then move on and enjoy your lunch!
If you deem it as a Peeve situation, then I suggest you do the following:
– Have a calm extended conversation with the sensed perpetrator then and there.
– Draw their attention to your sensed bias through effective, non-judgmental, enquiry-driven dialogue.
– In drawing their attention to the sensed unconscious infraction aimed at you, you must allow for your misinterpretation of their comments or behavior.
– Avoid finger pointing (figuratively or literally) and/or drawing on negative personal past experiences or general negative narrative and hearsay about the category that the presumed perpetrator fits into, otherwise YOU become the perpetrator, not them. You also run the risk of almost certainly getting their back up.
– Then collaboratively agree how you’ll harmoniously move forward and get on with your life and career!
I’ll let you decide whether the Palace event was a Peeve or Leave situation.
Authored by Buki Mosaku
Buki is Founder and CEO of London-based DiverseCity Think Tank, a workplace-bias and diversity-and-inclusion consultancy. He is one of the world’s foremost bias-navigation experts. Mosaku has cracked the code for calling out unconscious workplace bias and stopping it in its tracks, which he details in his new book, I Don’t Understand: Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace (Business Expert Press, Sept. 7, 2023). Learn more at www.bukimosaku.com.