Activities for Unconscious Bias Training

Learning is usually more effective when it’s interactive. Friendly competition between work colleagues is also a great way to get people to be fully engaged in an activity to the point that they’re having so much fun they don’t even realize that they’re learning something valuable and long-lasting which can improve their company’s overall culture in the present and long into the future.

Teaching employees about the pervasive existence of unconscious bias, and then equipping them with the tools to overcome that bias in their day to day work, is absolutely critical to building a truly diverse and inclusive work environment.

Marshal Learning has provided a couple of games to incorporate in your training in order to create the most effective, long-lasting unconscious bias training possible:

The Tag Game

The Tag Game involves participants placing a variety of different color, shape, and size badges on their upper body. The group is then encouraged to form smaller groups. There is no talking allowed at this stage and no instructions regarding what criteria should be used to form these groups. Once the groups are formed, instruct the participants to split and form new groups for a further four to six times. More often than not, you’ll find that the groups are formed based on the same shapes and colors rather than seeking out colleagues with different badges. Notably, the group rarely uses other criteria apart from the badges to form these groups. We particularly like this exercise as it naturally opens up a discussion about social categorization and how we are predisposed to group bias. From there you can discuss experiences you have had relating to the group and unconscious bias and talk about the benefits of diversity and how your business could become a more inclusive workplace.

The Circle of Trust

Each participant writes down the names or initials of ten people that they trust who are not from their immediate family. The program leader then calls out a variety of categories and classifications such as age, gender, accent, native language, profession, ethnicities, etc. and each group. Each participant places a tick next to each person on the list who shares that characteristic with them e.g women place a tick next to all female people on their list. The group is then encouraged to evaluate their list and discuss it with the group. In most cases, the group quickly realizes how little diversity is shown on their list of trusted people – that their Circle of Trust mainly includes people with backgrounds and characteristics that are similar to their own.

This exercise supports the basis of an honest, progressive discussion about how we form group bonds, how these bonds can unnecessarily exclude others, and what steps we can take to extend our trust to people who are from different backgrounds or have different life experiences. It’s important to make sure that all group members understand and appreciate how common these biases are, and that they are not being judged. Unconscious bias is something that we have or have experienced. It is not unusual that our Circles of Trust are formed of people who we easily relate to but our working lives could be enhanced and our organizations more effective and harmonious if we are open to understanding our biases, how they impact on our decisions to support promoting inclusivity and diversity in the workplace.

The competition in these activities can never be allowed to become personal, or it might risk eroding any goodwill and sense of teamwork between coworkers that is an additional critical ingredient to unconscious bias training in the workplace.

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Created on Jul 21st 2020 03:30. Viewed 311 times.

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