Tag: bias

Lifting, Bias, and a Hello Kitty Towel (5-10-23)

Happy Wednesday,

Last week was about lifting and different kinds of success.  This week is about a Hello Kitty towel and recognizing the bias we all have.

I was a few minutes into my workout in my house when I realized I needed a towel.  I was doing laundry, so my normal blue workout towel was being washed.  I went upstairs reached into the cabinet without looking and pulled out a Hello Kitty towel.  Instantly I thought to myself, “This is kind of girly for a workout towel, isn’t it?  I can’t use this,” and I dropped the towel.  A second later, I realized what thought had run through my brain and how stupid it was.  I paused and asked myself, “Why can’t I use this towel? All I need is something to wipe the sweat off my face.  If the towel would have been a different color and had Batman or Ninja Turtles on it, I wouldn’t have hesitated to use it.  Why should I treat this towel differently?” I picked the towel back up and used it. 

Are you seeing how this connects with bias?  I was working out by myself in my house, where there was no threat of anyone judging me.  Even in this environment, when I picked up the Hello Kitty towel, my first instinct was a biased one.  My first instinct was to say, “This is towel is too girly, and I’m a tough masculine man doing tough manly things like weightlifting.  Since that towel is so girly, it can’t be a part of doing tough masculine things.”  (Seriously, reread those two sentences and look at how many wrong ignorant assumptions are built in there.)  It wasn’t until I paused a moment to examine my thought process that I realized I was wrong and ridiculous.

I like to tell myself that I’m a good person.  I like to hope that I’m above having bias, but this was another reminder that I’m human.  If I can have a bias about an inanimate object when there isn’t anything at stake, then I know I have more biases lurking under the surface.  We all have biases.  It’s up to us to recognize these biases and then challenge them with each other and most importantly within ourselves.

The challenge: Will you recognize and challenge your biases?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Vegetarianism, being “The Other”, and Judging Individuals (2-19-20)

Last week was about my wife being a vegetarian and how my mom puts in extra effort to include her.  This week is about being a vegetarian and being “the other”.

Not everyone embraced my wife’s vegetarianism like my mom did.  Some people were judgmental and had negative comments.  They’d say things like,  “Why in the world would you do that?  Can you even eat anything?  Are you trying to starve yourself?  You grew up eating meat, what’s wrong with that?”  In each of these situations, my wife became “the other” because she was doing something different from the norm.  Since she was “the other” people judged her and reacted negatively toward her, even if her choice didn’t impact them.

What does this have to do with anything?  If you’re anything like me, you’re probably perplexed that people could get so upset about something that had no negative impact on them.  While it’s easy to see how wrong it is in this situation, I’d argue that this is a mistake we ALL make.  At some point in our lives we all have treated (and continue to treat) people as “the other” because they are different from us and what we consider the norm.  At work treating someone like “the other” might sound like this, “That outfit isn’t appropriate at work (by my standards).”  “Why are THEY acting like THAT (being too loud, laughing too much, smiling too much, not smiling enough)?”  “That person doesn’t seem very professional (by my standards).”  “Yeah, that’s not how WE do things HERE.”  “The people in the other business unit or on the other team do X…(when we all know Y is the ONLY way to do it).”  How have you been viewed as “the other” by people at work? 

We know it doesn’t feel good to be branded as “the other”.  With that in mind, have you ever said any of above things?  I have, and sometimes I still find myself thinking those things.  It’s a built in bias that tells me if you aren’t one of “us” then you are “the other” and being “the other” is bad.  The interesting part of this is that in all those situations, someone being different from me has NO negative impact on me.  In all those situations, what makes a person “the other” has little to no correlation to how they perform as an employee or how they might be as a person.  This built in bias to see “the other” in people is harmful.  I’ve discovered that if I’m not actively confronting that bias, then I lose the ability to see the beauty inside of people. 

The challenge: How do we check our biases, so we don’t judge “the other”?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry