00:13In 2018, two Black men
went to a Starbucks
00:18to wait for a business associate.
00:21But when they asked to use the bathroom,
00:23the manager ordered them to leave.
00:27He called the police,
00:29and the video went viral.
00:31Amidst an avalanche of bad publicity,
00:35Starbucks closed all stores
across the country
00:38for four hours of diversity training.
00:42And so, baristas were handed workbooks
00:44with prompts like,
"What makes me me and you you?"
00:50and, "Understanding our bias:
from color-blind to color brave."
00:56This made newspapers across the country,
00:59and arguably, that was the goal.
01:02"Look, everyone! We're solving
our diversity problem!"
01:07The assumption, though, was that you could
address structural racism
01:12with an earnest conversation
about our feelings.
01:20To address structural racism,
you need to change structures.
01:26So in the aftermath
of George Floyd's death,
01:31my sense is that many companies
are feeling pressure
01:35to actually deliver
on their diversity goals,
01:39but they haven't a clue what to do.
01:42And that's because we spent probably
close to a billion dollars on diversity.
01:49But the basic tools of the diversity
industrial complex,
01:53they just don't work.
01:56A one-shot bias training --
01:58it doesn't work
for a really simple reason:
02:00doing anything once won't change
a company's culture.
02:05And the other basic tools --
02:08things like an employee resource group
or a women's initiative --
02:15if the problem is with the women
and the people of color.
02:21If a company faces challenges
surrounding diversity,
02:25typically, it's because subtle
and not-so-subtle forms of bias
02:31are constantly being transmitted
through their basic business systems --
02:36through hiring,
through performance evaluations,
02:40through access to opportunities.
02:42So we need to stop trying to fix
the women and the people of color.
02:48We need to fix the business systems.
02:51And if you think about it,
this makes sense,
02:54because if a company was facing
challenges with sales,
02:58it wouldn't respond by holding
a series of sincere conversations
03:04about how much we all value sales
03:07and put on programming
for "National Celebrate Sales Month"
03:11and expect sales to improve.
03:15But that's a lot of what we're doing
in the diversity context.
03:19If we really want to tackle
diversity effectively,
03:23we need to use the same tools businesses
use to tackle any business problem --
03:30evidence and metrics.
03:33And, you know, I suspect
this will come as a relief
03:36to a lot of CEOs who feel far more
comfortable using those tools
03:41than they do with trying to lead
a deep conversation
03:46about the inner workings
of social inequality.
03:54is for us to understand
what bias looks like on the ground.
03:59And I and my team at WorkLife Law,
04:03we have been studying how bias plays out
in everyday workplace interactions
04:09for well over a decade.
04:11And what we find
is that the same patterns of bias,
04:17the same five patterns,
04:19they emerge over and over again.
04:21So here's what the evidence looks like.
04:24The first pattern we call
"prove it again."
04:28Some groups have to prove themselves
more than others.
04:32This is triggered
by lots of different things.
04:34It's triggered by race and gender,
04:38age, disability, LGBTQ status,
04:45So one study, for example,
04:48looked at callbacks offered to white men
with identical qualifications
04:54but different hobbies.
04:56One résumé listed things
like sailing and polo,
05:01and the other résumé listed things like
05:04counseling first-generation
college students
05:09And, if you can believe it, Mr. Polo --
05:13he got 12 times the number of callbacks
as Mr. Country Music.
05:19Too often when we talk about privilege,
we forget about class.
05:25The second pattern is called
"the tightrope,"
05:28and it reflects the fact
that a certain in-group of white men
05:32just need to be authoritative
and ambitious in order to succeed.
05:38But women walk a tightrope,
05:41where they may be seen as abrasive
if they're authoritative
05:46but unqualified if they're not.
05:49And people of color who behave assertively
often are written off
05:55as angry if they're Black,
05:59even hotheaded if they're Latinx
06:02and sometimes as untrustworthy
if they're Asian American.
06:07The next pattern we call the "tug-of-war,"
06:11and it reflects the fact
that sometimes bias against a group
06:16fuels conflict within the group.
06:20So, for example, if there's room
for only one woman or person of color,
06:25it's entirely predictable:
06:27women are going to be
supercompetitive with other women,
06:30and people of color,
competitive with other people of color.
06:35The fourth pattern of bias is actually
the strongest form of gender bias,
06:39called "the maternal wall."
06:41And it reflects assumptions
that mothers aren't committed,
06:45probably shouldn't be
06:48and aren't competent --
06:50think "pregnancy brain."
06:52So mothers often find
they have to prove themselves yet again
06:55when they return from maternity leave.
06:58And if they do, they may be seen as
bad mothers and so as bad people
07:06The final pattern consists
of racial stereotypes.
07:10So, Asian Americans again and again report
07:13that they're seen as a great match
for technical skills,
07:17but lacking in leadership potential.
07:19And our studies show that Black
professionals, again and again,
07:24report really high levels of isolation
07:28and often startling forms of disrespect.
07:32And an Asian American professional
may be seen as too emotional
07:38in a discussion where, you know what,
07:40a white man behaving exactly the same way
07:43would be seen as having a career-enhancing
passion for the business.
07:49And so what we find is that white women
report four patterns of bias.
07:55Men of color also report four.
07:58Women of color report all five
in very substantial proportions.
08:05And among women of color,
08:07Black women report
the most bias as a group.
08:12But the bottom line, really, is that
the experience of white men as a group
08:17differs from that of every other group.
08:21If a white man is a first-generation
professional or LGBTQ,
08:28he may encounter bias.
08:30But but most aren't.
08:33These biases can have
really serious negative effects.
08:37There's a ton of research.
08:39But here's a story
that really says it all.
08:42We were working with one company,
and we spoke to a woman engineer
08:47who had found a mistake
in one of the calculations
08:51of a male colleague,
08:52and she pointed it out.
08:55When she pointed it out,
08:57she was violating an unwritten rule.
09:00The good woman is seen as modest,
self-effacing and nice,
09:05not a mission-driven expert.
09:08That's why male experts in meetings
exert more influence.
09:14Female experts, they actually exert
less influence than female nonexperts do.
09:21And so when this engineer pointed out
the mistake in calculation, she told us,
09:28the response of her department
was so massively negative that, she said,
09:33"Now I'm just smiling a lot
and bringing in cupcakes."
09:38This company, by allowing
gender bias to go unchecked,
09:43was literally jeopardizing their mission.
09:49So what's the solution?
09:51The solution is to use bias interrupters,
09:55new tools my team has developed
09:58that are evidence-based
and metrics-driven.
10:01And I've just told you about
a lot of the evidence.
10:05Metrics are also superimportant
10:07because they help you pinpoint
where things are going wrong.
10:11So if a company
has challenges with hiring,
10:14they should be keeping track of who
is in the original pool of candidates
10:20and who survives résumé review
10:24and who gets called to interview
10:26and who survives the interview.
10:28And the reason that's important
is because the fix,
10:32if you have a nondiverse original pool,
10:35is totally different than the fix
if no woman ever survives the interview
10:42because every woman is either too witchy
10:49Metrics are also superimportant
for another reason:
10:53to establish baselines
10:56and measure progress.
10:59If you use evidence and metrics,
11:01what we have found is that small tweaks
can have really big effects.
11:07So we've worked with
one company, for example,
11:11who asked us to look at
their performance evaluations.
11:16we found that only 9.5 percent
of the people of color
11:22had leadership mentioned
in their performance evaluations.
11:26That was 70 points lower
than white women.
11:31And that was superimportant
because, as you can imagine,
11:34mentions of leadership
predicted advancement.
11:38And so we worked with them
to do two simple things.
11:42First, we redesigned
the performance evaluations form.
11:47And second, we help them develop
a simple one-hour workshop that,
11:54projected actual comments from the prior
year's performance evaluations,
11:59and asked people a simple question:
12:03Which of the five patterns of bias
does this represent,
12:09Just doing that, we found in year two,
12:12100 percent of the people of color
had leadership mentioned
12:16in their performance evaluations.
12:19At this company, white women,
they had a different problem.
12:24Almost 20 percent had comments
in their performance evaluations
12:28that they didn't really want
to make partner --
12:31this was a partnership.
12:33And we suspected the women hadn't
actually said that.
12:37It was just assumptions.
12:38And so in that one-hour
workshop, we told people,
12:41"Hey, don't say this unless
you've actually had a conversation,
12:46and someone has told you
they don't want to make partner."
12:51In year two, only one woman
got that comment --
12:54one woman in the entire company.
12:59And so what we find is that we have
helped over 100 companies
13:06actually make progress
towards their diversity goals.
13:10And there's growing evidence
that these bias interrupters work.
13:16And the best thing about them
is that they help every single group.
13:21So in this company
I've been talking about,
13:24in year two, people of color
got wildly more constructive feedback --
13:29it was like a 30-percent jump.
13:32But white women, they got more
constructive feedback, too,
13:36and so did white men.
13:38If you design your systems
based on evidence,
13:42it's going to help every single group.
13:45So the bottom line, if you think about it,
your systems and your culture,
13:51they reflect the people
you've already hired.
13:54So if you want to replicate
that workforce into the future,
13:59definitely keep on doing
exactly what you're doing.
14:05if you actually want to make progress
14:07on diversity, equity
and inclusion -- what we call DEI --
14:13my message to CEOs is reassuring:
14:17you already know what to do.
14:19Use standard business tools,
14:21start from the evidence,
14:24gather metrics to establish baselines
and measure progress
14:29and keep at it
until you achieve your goals.
14:33That's the new DEI playbook.
