How Leaders Can Shift Our Unconscious Bias w/ Sara Taylor

In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with speaker, author and DEI consultant Sara Taylor on how to shift our unconscious bias filters.

Sara shares her insights and experience with key takeaways:

• Unconscious filters control most decisions and behaviors.
• Disconnect between intent and impact in workplace interactions.
• Bias isn't just negative—it can also be positive.
• Leaders set the tone for organizational cultural competence.
• Bias impacts organizations at multiple levels.
• Diverse teams perform best with cultural competence.
• Cultural competence requires a developmental process.
• Unconscious filters affect both leaders and organizational systems.

 

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today we have Sara Taylor and here is why she is awesome. She's a nationally recognized speaker, bestselling author, and consultant specializing in diversity, equity, and inclusivity. DEI for people that don't have a lot of time, with 35 years of experience in that area. She's the president founder of Deep Sea Consulting that makes organizations across the globe, more effective and inclusive and their leaders more culturally competent. I have a feeling we're going to talk about cultural competency in a little bit. They've helped organizations like the 3M company, Coca Cola, Marriott International, General Mills and more and more and more. And she's released a new book Thinking at the Speed of Bias, How to Shift Our Unconscious Filters.

And it's definitely going to inform our conversation today. Hello, Sara.

Sara Taylor: Hello Russel. So great to be with you and thank you for having me.

Russel Lolacher: I'm, I love self reflection. I'm can't tell you how much self awareness is a big part of the show. It is a superpower. I talk about a lot and I'm super curious to talk about how unconscious bias can weave in and out of that. But before we do, Sara, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I have to ask the question I ask all of my guests, which is what is your best or worst employee experience?

Sara Taylor: Yes, yes I will go to a story that I tell quite a bit actually. It might not be the absolute worst, but it is a story that folks can relate to and I talk about it in the experience of being marginalized and of microaggressions. Folks have probably heard about those words, right? I was, it was early in my career. I was very young as a Chief Diversity Officer. Let's see how old was I? I was in my... like 30 ish or so. And here I am running a huge department and a big organization. And one of the pieces of work that I needed to do was to establish what is called a supplier diversity department. A supplier diversity program.

So that means, and I worked for a County, the County lets out a lot of money you can imagine, particularly in construction contracts, right? So the folks that had typically had the contracts with the County, millions of millions of dollars, were typically construction contracts that were owned by white men.

So here I am sitting down with these groups of contractors trying to talk about how do we establish this new program of supplier diversity, the one and only woman and also a lot younger than them. And it was continual that they let me know that I wasn't a part of their group. It was the, Oh, Sara so great to work with you. You're just like one of the guys. But yet, they wouldn't treat me like one of their group. My ideas weren't ideas until they were expressed by one of them. And meetings were held outside of the meetings when I wasn't there. I was left off of email chains and over and over and over again. And I think what's reflective too about those kinds of situations is what do we do?

And unfortunately, I can't say that I have a good example. I kind of froze. And the other learning for the organization, the organization didn't essentially have my full person as a resource. Because I froze. Because of that situation. So I hate to start with negative Russel it's, it is definitely pertinent to our conversation.

Russel Lolacher: How did.... first first, how did that... How did that employment finish up? And second, how did it inform you moving forward in your, in the next steps in your career?

Sara Taylor: Oh my gosh. It informed me so much because I realized and again, I was young as a leader. I realized how much more, um, strategic work needed to happen to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. I just kind of thought... I mean, this is like the right thing to do. And so folks are going to want to do this.

Right. and like, oh wait, so we have to like strategize around these. Guys, we've got to strategize around the leadership. And so that was definitely one of my biggest learnings. And ended up, I, I left the organization and because it was really not a good place to work and started my company. That was 22 years ago. So there you go. It was in the end, all for good.

Russel Lolacher: I can't tell you how many times I asked that question. And, and especially when people are working for themselves now, like the worst is usually happened 20 years ago. And it's the reason they become entrepreneurs. So bad leaders are doing so much for entrepreneurship. They have no concept of what they're doing for entrepreneurship.

Sara Taylor: So true! That is so true! We ought to give them some kind of federal grant or something, to boost, to boost small businesses. No, no, let's not. Let's not.

Russel Lolacher: So cognitive bias, that is our target for today. And I did a little dictionary work. So I want to start with the, I always have to start with definitions on the show, because what are we talking about if we don't define things? So from what I've seen, it's defined as, and I'm looking to see how you agree or disagree with this, a systemic thought process caused by the tendency of the brain to simplify information processing through a filter of personal experiences and preferences. That work for you?

Sara Taylor: Yeah, I think that works. I think that works. Some of the things that I include, too, in our definition is that it can be positive or negative. And I think most folks typically think about bias as something negative that we have about folks that are marginalized. We can also have a positive bias for folks that aren't marginalized.

And if you think about an organization, you think about an organization that has whatever identity A is. We got identity A all at the top of the organization and all kinds of identity Bs at the bottom of the organization. So we want to increase that identity Bs in the top of the organization, right?

And we do all kinds of things and it never happens. Never happens. And people will say that's because we probably have negative bias around identity B. Yeah, but you also have positive bias around around identity A. So it is, it is both and bias influences all of our thoughts, positive and negative.

Russel Lolacher: I love that. If you differentiated that because I feel like I have to do that all the time because people just assume something is a thing. For example, if you see the word trust, everybody assumes trust is a good thing. I'm like, no, I've trusted horrible leaders do horrible things. I've trusted leaders backstab me.

Or leadership. They assume it's good. They just say the word leadership. I'm like, Nope, there is some horrible leadership out there that is completely influential. So I, I really appreciate that conscious bias, unconscious bias, cognitive bias, these things have, realms, have different ways of looking at it, have different spectrums.

So I appreciate that. Now does that mean cognitive bias is only different in that you know that you have the bias?

Sara Taylor: What I would, yes, it is. And, and some of those can be, let's, let's be honest. There are some areas of bias that might seem very trivial. Um, when it comes to broad systemic inequities, I like small talk at the beginning of a meeting. Okay, that's pretty trivial when it comes to overall inequities, yet it's still a bias that operates in my what I call my unconscious filters, and it will influence how I take in others.

So if I have a colleague that doesn't like small talk, My filters don't tell me oh they don't like small talk they're just different from you my filters tell me they're rude. They don't care about you. They don't care about this project. Look at how look at how they're just, boom boom boom focus on the task they don't even care about people. And so bias can be that as well and that can also lead to the broader systemic inequities that we see.

Russel Lolacher: What do you mean by filters? When we come through unconscious bias? I mean, I always, my brain always goes to the idea of worldview when it comes to unconscious bias is. But I'm sure and seen through your book that you break it down a little bit more. Can you be a little clearer with that?

Sara Taylor: Yeah, filters are an automatic mechanism that operate in our unconscious and they dictate our thoughts, decisions, behaviors. So important to understand three functions that filters have, and I'm going to get at a couple of those functions actually with questions. How many pieces of information do you think our brains take in in one second? Take a guess.

Russel Lolacher: See, I'm gonna shoot like my brain immediately goes 50, 000 like or it's like three just depends on the person.

Sara Taylor: And if they've had caffeine or not, right? Actually, 11 million. And that seems completely impossible to imagine, right? That's because the second part of the question, which is probably where you were going too, how many of those 11 million are we conscious of? It's just 40. So what that means is our unconscious filters, they have this, it's a job that they have to absorb exponentially more information than we can ever, ever be conscious of. And then their second job is to, after taking in all of that information, their second job is to analyze, categorize, put things in order. And then the last function, I'll get out with another, question. Can you tell me right now what your next thought will be?

Russel Lolacher: I blanked!

Sara Taylor: Right? We can't, right? And the reason we can't is because that thought is actually created milliseconds before it moves to our conscious mind, it's created by our unconscious filters. So put those three things together. Our unconscious filters take in exponentially more information than we can be conscious of.

So I might have even just in my day today, taken in information that is biased and stereotypical against me. I don't know. Then my unconscious filters analyze and store and like, like little mini algorithms essentially. And then they dictate my thoughts, which dictate my behaviors and my decisions. All in milliseconds.

That's how incredibly powerful filters are.

Russel Lolacher: How can this impact us in the workplace as leaders trying to build relationships with our colleagues, other leaders, our teams?

Sara Taylor: The, the way that it truly impacts is that for the vast majority of us, and we know this through an assessment called the IDI, Intercultural Development Inventory, we know that only about 10 to 15 percent of us have an acknowledgement, a recognition, and understanding of what's going on with our filters. So that means about 85 to 90 percent of us are completely controlled by our filters. So what's information that I'm taking in? I don't know. But that's what's dictating what I'm thinking about this other person that I'm interacting with. So and where we really see this is a disconnect also with leaders and with folks that are working with co workers.

We see this in a disconnect between intent and impact. One of the things that I have asked, probably tens of thousands of people now in different presentations is I've got an assumption that the vast majority of folks show up in the workplace with positive intent. And do you think that's true? And tens of thousands of people will say, yep, I think that's true. So, I mean, seriously, Russel, who shows up and says, okay, today I like really want to be a jerk. Like, if anything, let me be a jerk. I mean, no, we don't do that. So if we show up and we're all showing up with positive intent, why is there any misunderstanding or conflict? It's because we don't have that ability to see how our unconscious filters are dictating our thoughts and behaviors. And we also don't have the ability to see how that is true for our coworkers. So we end up in filter fights. We end up in filter misunderstandings. That's why it's so important to build this ability.

And it is possible while only 10 to 15 percent of us have that ability. Any of us can develop the ability to acknowledge our filters and shift them, check and challenge them to be more effective. That's the good news.

Russel Lolacher: Oh, I feel like there's so much bad news too. The thing is, is that when I, as a leader, I think about what you're describing and I think about the pandemic and I think about how many executives were like, you're going to work from home. That means you're not going to work. You're going to be in the garden.

You're going to be you'll be taking two hour lunches. Their assumptions and their biases was that if I don't see you, if I can't have complete control of your environment, you're not really going to be delivering. So we can say all we want with words about how we trust our employees. We hired them after all, but then there's this action. And pandemic was certainly bigger, stressful, but it certainly was, it certainly was a litmus test for a lot of leaders that had the beacon on what their unconscious biases were.

So how can we do it? So I just want to get your thoughts on that first. And then I want to get an understanding of how do we, how do we understand others unconscious bias when it isn't such a big spotlight, like a pandemic?

Sara Taylor: Sure, sure, sure. Let's take that first one. Um, during the pandemic and how leaders responded. Actually, that's pretty it's pretty much an example of the day to day that there is not just the filters of the individuals, but we operate in, when we all come together and the majority of us aren't able to check and challenge our filters, we end up operating also in filter driven systems.

Organizations, filter driven organizations where you have, how many times have we heard and people will even complain why do we continue to do it this way? Why have we always, or that'll be the excuse. We have to do it this way because this is the way we've always done it. It's that filter.

Really being hostage to the way things have always been done or hostage to the way the dominant culture does things. All of that is evidence of a filter driven culture. So leaders then that say this is what I was taught. I was taught to mistrust my employees, my staff. I was taught that they're going to try to take advantage and whether it was taught, like, it's not like these are taught as lessons. Okay, leader, you will understand... No, we're taught it through what other folks say. Oh, yeah, you gotta check on those folks. They might not be working. Oh, you know this, that or the other. It seeps in all of these messages that are seeping into our unconscious as individuals and the filters that are driving our organizations. So beyond the pandemic, that's where you see leaders that continue to drive for cultures or, or enhance even and support cultures that actually don't make sense for the organization. Don't make sense for their staff.

But they're kind of on the, this is what we've done, this is what I know, this is what's right, this is what's good, this is what's professional, so this is what we're going to do. All of that is filter driven behavior.

Russel Lolacher: And they don't do it maliciously. I mean, there's a lot of leaders who are, this is the path to success. This is how I became successful. So this must be how you get to be successful. So everybody should be that everybody should be on that ladder, not the jungle gym, the ladder that I have gone up, in order to be successful.

And that just completely ignores different definitions of success, different generational definitions of success, the missing rung that a lot of diversity is missing because that's just not how cultures are set up. Yeah, it hurts my heart.

Sara Taylor: I know. I know. I hear you. I hear you. And that is exactly... and if you think about once again that that disconnect between intent and impact, and that actually is another thing that the IDI measures. And we know that pretty much everybody has a gap, significant gap between their intent and their actual impact.

So we think that we're much, much more competent, much, much more inclusive, much, much more respectful, effective than we actually are. So you're absolutely right. This is not about those folks that are out there intentionally doing harm. Are there those folks? Absolutely. But much greater in the population are those folks that think they're doing good.

That think they're being the leader that they're supposed to be and not even realizing the harm that they're doing.

Russel Lolacher: We have to assume we have, everybody has unconscious bias. So I'm guessing for us to even go down any path, the first step is admitting we even have a bias because nobody, to your point, nobody wants to think they're the bad guy. Nobody wants to think they're the problem or they're stopping innovation or stopping diversity from happening.

But how do you get that light bulb on for them to understand as a leader, 'No, you have biases too. Everybody does.'

Sara Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. One thing that helps is a wake up call with that assessment. When they find out, oh my gosh. Here I am this competent, successful leader. How can I not be in the last of all of the stages of, of competence? What, how could I not be the best? So that's the first wake up call.

But the second that really, really helps is we talk about three different types of filters, so and we start with the easy ones and the ones that we don't attach as much judgment to and the ones that we can be conscious of. So like I mentioned small talk. It's easy. You can get a group of leaders in a room and even line them up.

That's what we do. We line them up on a continuum on one side of the room, those that like, like small talk and on the other side, those that think small talk is a waste of time. And we'll talk about it and they'll laugh and they'll joke about each other. But then when we really relate that to, that's a filter, that's an easy one.

And look at how difficult it is for you all to work with this one. That's an easy one. And then we move. And those filters we call individual filters. The next type of filter is group filter. Those that tie to identities that I'm a part of. So that is dominant culture in the U.S., we're very direct communicators versus other cultures that are more indirect communicators, as an example.

Those also are easy for us to identify, but because they're reinforced by the groups that we're a part of, we tend to hold a lot more judgment. And we literally sanction, this gets to those filter driven behaviors again, how many organizations have we seen that literally sanction and, and put down in policy direct communication as if that's the only way to communicate.

And the third type of filter is systemic filter. Those are the filters that tie to stereotypes. Go back to I don't even know myself, 11 million pieces of information that I take in every second. How many seconds have I been awake? I don't know today. How many pieces of information could I have taken in that actually are counter to my conscious beliefs that tell me as a woman, I should not be doing this work.

I shouldn't be working. I shouldn't be a leader. As a white person, I shouldn't be married to a black person. And on and on and on and on and on. How many pieces of information have I taken in like that? And if I'm not able to check and challenge my filters, I don't know when they come up. They may even impact my behavior that I hold back myself as a woman in the workplace, or I hold back other women in the workplace as an example. So, that's a lot to take in those three different types of filters, individual, group, and systemic. But the but when we work with leaders to develop their competence in checking and challenging filters, we start with those easy ones and we make sure that leaders can hold judgment from those easy ones and that they can check and challenge their behavior when it comes to the easy ones.

Then we move to the little bit more difficult before we move to the really difficult.

Russel Lolacher: How do we keep this consistent though? Because 11 million bit of information. We're doing these filters...

Sara Taylor: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: And then the workshops over. And then the, that conference we went to is done. We need, this is a, this is a long-term challenge. So what do, what do we do to keep that going?

Sara Taylor: Yeah. So good news is those stages of competence... remember when I said that typically only 10 to 15 percent of us are in the competent stages? Any of us, like I said, can develop. And once we do, It is very, very rare to regress. Once I'm able to see how filters are at play in interactions, I can't turn that off.

I see it around me all the time, and we hear it from individuals, from leaders across organizations all the time where they say, Oh, my gosh, this has been around me all the time, and I never even saw it. I had never even knew it. So you don't turn it up once you see it, and you really develop them the behaviors of that check and challenge because you're right.

We can't influence, go back to those functions, I can't influence how, what goes into my unconscious. I can't influence how my filters analyze. The only spot I can intervene is when they create my thoughts. And before those thoughts create my behaviors. That's where I get real, real adept at, at, intervening consciously. We call it the active conscious process. Really get adept at intervening so that we can check when though those bias pieces of information are coming through wanting to influence my thoughts and behaviors.

Russel Lolacher: How do you influence beyond? So I love... you're talking very much, I love this about self awareness moving on to situational awareness. However you are an individual in an organization, unconscious biases affecting things like DEI, hiring. Like it is an organizational challenge. So what is we as leaders can we do to sort of go, I can work on me, but I know notice our processes are very much still supporting unconscious bias.

What do we do?

Sara Taylor: Oh gosh, there's so much. How many more hours do we have again?

Russel Lolacher: 37. Go!

Sara Taylor: I'll just kind of touch on a number of different things. First, what we do is we broadly develop that competence in the organization and that can happen and we've seen it over and over again. So when the majority of folks in the organization are operating from those effective stages, that's when then we can implement tools to review policies, to really review the culture and really take a look at what's embedded in our organization that needs to shift. So, developing that critical mass. The other piece then, and then using tools to evaluate. But the other piece that is so very important is when you develop an organization, you have to start with leaders. In all of the organizations that we have worked with, when we have used that assessment, we have never seen one single organization where the organization is more developed than its leaders. Now, that is not because leaders are somehow better, somehow, Somehow special. It is because leaders set the culture and the bar in the organization. And so if our leaders are operating in those ineffective stages, there is no way we can move the organization.

Trust me, we have tried in a number of different organizations where it's been a grassroots approach and they say, and we keep saying this is not going to work, it's not going to work. And they say, yeah, let's try it. Let's try it. Let's try it. And it doesn't. Leaders have to go first. This is not the work that you can delegate.

This has to be my individual work, my teamwork as a, as a leadership team, then my verticals work, we all develop so then we can all move forward and be more effective. And here's the other piece I should have mentioned earlier. What we see, research that was done by Joe DiStefano and Martha Mevsnesky that looked at both diverse and homogenous teams, and what they found, and then they measured their performance, and what they found was this really kind of, really startled them, surprised them.

They found that the lowest performing teams and the highest performing teams were both diverse. And the mediocre teams, were homogenous. So it's like, okay, what's the difference between those two sets of diverse teams? And also the majority of the diverse teams were a lower performing and just a few that were the peak performers.

So the real key is, okay, if you want to be the peak performers, A, we know you've got to be diverse, but how do you not be those low performing diverse teams? So they dug into that and they found was it was this ability, this ability to be able to understand the full complexity of differences on our teams and respond accordingly.

So what it means is if I, as a leader, first of all, imagine those three bell curves, low performing diverse teams, mediocre homogenous teams, high performing diverse teams. Of those three, which one is, if not already, going to be obsolete within a short number of period of time? It's the homogenous teams. So as leaders, the question for us is, which of those sets of diverse teams do we want?

Which do we want as our legacy? Which do we want as our culture? Even just selfishly, which do we want to get up and work with every day? I don't think there's any that would say, yeah, give me the low performing teams. No. The two key ingredients of the highest performing teams was diversity and this ability, that's why it is so, so critical.

Russel Lolacher: Where does cultural competency come in this? You've talked about competency. You've talked about culture, and I noticed a lot of your work focuses on this as an approach for leaders. I want to bring those two words together and understand what the hell we're talking about.

Sara Taylor: Yeah, exactly. It is actual cultural competence. And so cultural competence is in those earlier stages, our filters, our unconscious is completely in control. We start with being completely oblivious to even easy to see differences. That's the first stage. The second stage is the stage, unfortunately, that we hear a lot in social media. It's very polarizing, judgmental, good, bad, us, them, division, hate, stereotypes. That's the second stage. The third stage, where almost all of us are in a still, controlled by our filters, we want to ignore the differences. Differences are divisive, so let's just focus on how well we're, we're just one big happy family.

Actually, that's where the majority of us are. So those are the first three stages of cultural competence. The last two we can first see, acknowledge our own filters. And then acknowledge the filters of others and then finally shift our behavior in order to respond to those differences in filters.

Russel Lolacher: We've talked about our responsibility. We've talked about our responsibility to the organization through unconscious bias. We haven't talked about the organization's role in ensuring that we have a bias aware culture. How does an organization as a whole take this on through process and I don't know, protocols, posters on the wall?

Like what, what do we do to make sure that this is something we prioritize?

Sara Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, that's the first thing you do have to prioritize it. It has to be something that is important and it can't be something that, okay, we're going to do now, and then we're going to forget it. Or we're going to just do check the box and okay, let's do this activity, that activity and the other activity.

Um, or, okay, we're going to do ERGs now cause everybody else is doing ERGs. Imagine again, if you're like every other organization that hasn't done development work, you're operating in that third ineffective stage of development, any work that you do is just going to be spinning your wheels work. Work that just keeps you spinning in that tractionless transactions of ineffectiveness, completely unaware of your filters. So the very first step is you got to develop if you really do want to do this. If you, and you got to develop your cultural competence, your ability to see filters as an organization, then you got to review your policies, make sure that your policies and your practices. You got to be really discriminatory about your practices.

Are these really what we want? To use, are these tradition, which is good, or are they just bad habit? Um, and really examining those. Again, making sure that you keep this as a long term priority, not just, okay, we're going to do this for the next six months, or we're going to bring in this one speaker, and then we think we're going to be done.

Russel Lolacher: Has technology impacted any of this? And I mean, so first off, when I hear AI, I hear that's a whole other biases because it's all created by people with biases. But technology, and I bring this to the forefront because of remote work, of hybrid work where we're not in front of each other. We're not communicating in the same way we were five, six years ago.

How does that impact understanding of unconscious bias when we're now having to interact through a screen?

Sara Taylor: Yeah, there are a number of things that make it more difficult when we're interacting through a screen. We don't have as many cues as we can take in. Now, there's a good side to that, that our bias, our, our filters are also not taking in some of those cues. Some of those negative pieces. But the challenge is that we're also not able to respond based on those cues.

We're not able to see a more complete picture based on those cues. So it is more difficult. And we also know in other ways that AI is really influencing, um you just take a look at I'm sure many folks have have seen the some of these... just Google image of us fortune 500 CEO or just CEO and what it will give you as a white man.

Or I know there was a ChatGPT that was asked to give different versions of a Barbie. And, it was horrifying the stereotypes that it pulled up and that it created of that Barbie. Horrifying. So absolutely we know that it, because like you said, fueled with our bias as humans and then it's just amplified.

Russel Lolacher: So it sounds like technology is more of a hindrance than a help when it comes to unconscious bias. Cause you've got, like, as we said, AI, we've got remote technology. So we're not getting all the bits information we need to really take in everything we need. So is it a push to be more human? Like, is it a push to be more connected in a human way?

Sara Taylor: Yeah. Yeah,

Russel Lolacher: Cause technology seems to be hindering it from what you're saying.

Sara Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. It definitely is. And then that therein lies our challenge as organizations because there is also the, we miss the human connection when we are remote all of the time, but there are also more folks that really need to be more remote most of the time. So we would completely miss out on them as a resource if we require them to be in person more.

So what it means is being much much more intentional when we are together. Much much more intentional about the human connection versus this is a task that we have and now that we're together let's work on that task. It's using that time when we're together to, to really strengthen the human connection.

Russel Lolacher: I want to wrap it up with any, any examples you might have. I mean, you've been working in this field for quite a while. You've written a few books on this very topic. Have you ever, can you give any examples of working with a leader where they just had that aha moment where they're like, I had no concept I was this bias and they worked differently to really improve the organization and their role in it?

Sara Taylor: Oh, absolutely. I'll give you one real quick one. And then another, that's a bit of a story. One leader that literally, in the middle of a training with it was with all of the leadership, he literally stopped the training and said, Oh my gosh, I see right now how I have been doing the whole budgeting process wrong. Now you'd think budgeting, what would that have to do? Absolutely has to do, because it, at every moment, our filters are working. And he specifically related it to operating in that third stage of development and how that hindered him in the advice that he was giving, not the advice, the orders he was giving his team related to the budget.

And, of course, when he shifted that, they were able to have a much, much more effective budgeting process and effective budget in the end. But let me give you another one. One particular leader that said, after she developed her cultural competence, so she moved from that third stage to the latter stage of development.

And she said, I talk about this process like the Wizard of Oz. Because, I'm this competent, capable, successful leader, I'm thinking, I'm seeing everything that I'm supposed to see, everything that there is to see. And then I realized after going through this process, it was like me working in the environment of the first frames of The Wizard of Oz that were grainy black and white.

But now I see in 21st century high definition technicolor. I see these deep greens and rich purples of all kinds of differences in filters that were operating around me all the time, that I didn't even know were there. And now I see it. And now to get to the impact, there were a number of things in her, her team. They had a MnA that they actually went through right after their cultural competence development process. And they have a number of things that they track as far as effectiveness of the MnA and all of them were higher than previous MnAs. And they were the ones that attributed to their cultural competence development. Another organization that attributed their cultural competence to development, a development to an incredible increase in their engagement and inclusion scores, we could go on and on and on with the positive benefits and impacts of this work.

Russel Lolacher: It's so funny because I love the idea that you connected the impact to intention because we don't. Most things are checkbox exercise or transactional at best and then we move on to the next thing. So... and I say this because words like diversity, innovation are thrown around like crazy, and yet you have to be so curious about you, yourself, how you show up, your biases, in order to really embrace these things that we say are so important.

Sara Taylor: Yes, absolutely. And it's not something that we're used to our unconscious just taking over and our conscious just kind of goes along with things. This is more work. This is more work. And then that means when we're together too, we need to do more work to have shared meaning. What is our shared meaning even about like you use those terms?

What is our shared meaning about the word diversity? What is our shared meaning about innovation? And what we find many times is that not only do we not have shared meaning, some terms that we throw around like that, say innovation or whatever it might be are actually, we've maybe even tout them as values. We want to be innovative. And when we really think about it, we aren't a company that's about innovation. We aren't. We really don't need to be innovative as a culture. So it's not only that we lack the shared meaning, but that we just see it as, Oh, it's a positive so we need it in the organization. Let's tell everybody to do it. And we don't even think that everyone attaches a different meaning to that word.

Russel Lolacher: You circled us back to the beginning where definitions are important to start with because then what the hell are we talking about anyway?

Sara Taylor: That's right.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you so much for this, Sara.

Sara Taylor: So true. Absolutely.

Russel Lolacher: Let's finish it up with the one simple action you believe people can do right now to improve their relationships at work.

Sara Taylor: It goes to that intent actually. We, we've been talking about I have positive intent, but I might not have a positive impact. When I'm in an interaction with others and it doesn't go well, what do I typically assume of them? My, my filters will say they're rude. They're disrespectful.

They're unprofessional. Guess what? They had positive intent too. So my one simple is, in those situations of disagreement, of misunderstanding, of just kind of stop and think they had positive intent. Assume that their intent was positive. That's my one simple thing.

Russel Lolacher: That is Sara Taylor. She's a nationally recognized speaker. She is the president and founder of DeepSEE Consulting, and she's got a few books under her belt as a bestselling author, including her latest Thinking at the Speed of Bias, How to Shift our Unconscious Filters. Thank you so much, Sara.

Sara Taylor: You are so very welcome. Thank you, Russel. This has been fabulous.