Activities to Use in Your Unconscious Bias Training

Unconscious bias can be very difficult to recognize since the individual is unaware that they hold this bias and because in many cases they have held this bias for their entire life and it’s been reinforced by the environment in which they grew up.

This is why unconscious bias training in the workplace is essential towards first making every employee aware of their hidden biases and then provide them with the roadmap for avoiding the myriad of negative effects that can result.

Felicity Menzies is CEO and Principal Consultant at Include-Empower.Com, and Ms. Menzies lays out some useful “Ah-Ha” activities for every business to incorporate in their unconscious bias training:

1. Implicit Association Test

“This test measures the reaction time of individuals to a series of words or pictures presented on a computer screen. For example, the individual may be asked to type a particular key if the word presented on the screen is a ‘female name’ or a ‘weak word’ (e.g., delicate, small, flower) and a different key if the word is a ‘male name’ or a ‘strong word’ (e.g., powerful, mighty, robust). This activity is repeated numerous times and the average reaction time for a correct response is recorded.”

2. The Tag Game

“In this exercise, participants stick badges, in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes, somewhere between their waist and neck. Participants are then instructed to form groups without talking. There are no instructions given as to what criteria to use to form the groups. Once formed, the participants are instructed to break up and form into new groups. This is repeated at least four times. Participants will normally form groups based on shapes, colors, or sizes. Rarely do the participants look beyond the badges, and even less rarely do they intentionally form diverse groups in which many shapes, colors, and sizes are represented.”

  

3. The Father-Son Activity

“In this activity, participants are instructed to solve the following problem:

A father and son were involved in a car accident in which the father was killed and the son was seriously injured. The father was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident and his body was taken to a local morgue. The son was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital and was immediately wheeled into an emergency operating room. A surgeon was called. Upon arrival and seeing the patient, the attending surgeon exclaimed, ‘It’s my son!’ Can you explain this?’

Around 40% of participants who are faced with this challenge do not think of the most plausible answer—being the surgeon is the boy’s mother. As such, the exercise illustrates the powerful pull of automatic, stereotyped associations.”

4. The Circle of Trust

“In this exercise, participants are instructed to write down in a column on the left-hand side of a blank piece of paper the initials of six to ten people whom they trust the most who are not family members. The facilitator then reads out some diversity dimensions including gender, nationality, native language, accent, age, race/ethnicity, professional background, religion, etc., and participants are instructed to place a tick beside those members of their trusted circle who are similar in that dimension to them. For example, male participants will place a tick beside all men in their trusted six, white participants will place a tick beside all white individuals in their trusted six, etc. Participants discover that their trusted six often displays minimal diversity – for most participants, their inner circle includes people with backgrounds similar to their own.