What I found

VI.1.2.1 Weakening implicit bias requires a process: Unfreeze, Change & Refreeze. Through my research, I described a new way to organize training that will give the desired result – change in implicit bias by the participants. However, the change doesn’t simply come through awareness. It comes because of the ability of the participant to see others’

perspectives through transformational conversation, increasing motivation to change and then giving participants the tools to change.

Awareness played an important role in the workshop, but as the foundation to have the transformational conversation on implicit bias. The first module on awareness gave the

participants a common language and a base as they developed their skills and learned to use the tools given to them in the second module. This is evidenced by the difference in reflection one and reflection two. After reflection two the participants are all talking about awareness and what they have learned about System 1 and 2 (Kahneman, 2011). However, they are not yet talking about change or using tools to mitigate bias. This does not come until after module two, and the transformational conversation element is added. The participants shared their own experiences with implicit bias, and there was a shift in their partner’s thinking as he/she began to understand a perspective outside of his or her own. This is evident in the transcripts from the participants’ conversations. By the time the participants built their plans for change in the final module, awareness was a piece of the solution, but only as a building block to get them to change.

Instead, they talked about how the conversation helped them see a different perspective, they are questioning their own biases, and they are making plans to hold themselves and others around them accountable for implicit biases.

And this sets up the final piece of the process model – refreeze (Burnes, 2004). Motivated participants will develop their own strategy for change by creating a plan based on what they

have learned in the workshop. This is where the need for tools is so important. Very often, we are giving practitioners tips for how to mitigate biases, but this only works if the practitioner is able to identify specifically what the bias is (Kahneman, D., Lovallo, D., and Sibony, O., 2011). For example, we tell them that they may exhibit similarity bias when hiring – the tendency to choose to associate with people just like us. To offset this implicit bias, we tell them to seek out other opinions about the candidate from others. This is offered as a tip, not as a tool. For another common example, confirmation bias is our tendency to seek out information or evidence that confirms what we already believe. The “tip” to mitigate this bias is to ask others for input, vary your sources of information, and talk to others with different viewpoints. The common thread here is conversation. By supplying individual tips without an overall tool framework, we are not making the connection for participants. The transformational conversation piece of the workshop ties these tips together with the opportunity to practice using conversation as a tool and

implementing the learning into a plan for change. This is evident in my field work with the participants citing the tools they plan to use in their plans for change, their conversations about their plans and their post-workshop interviews. So, the process model I found successful includes unfreeze: awareness; change: transformational conversation and tools; and refreeze: plan.

VI.1.2.2 Transformational conversation weakened implicit bias and led to change. And that leads to my main contribution – the creation of a new process model for

weakening implicit bias with the key component of change being transformational conversation. Transformational conversation takes a step beyond awareness. It gives participants an

opportunity to receive feedback on their own experiences with implicit bias and validates their feelings. Several of the participants cited the importance of this validation in their reflections and the overall group discussion. Through listening to their partner’s story about implicit bias, the

participant heard a different perspective and was able to employ empathy to identify with the other person. This newfound knowledge tapped into the participant’s motivation to change.

As a result, the participants were hungry for tools to help them make sense of their implicit biases. They wanted tools to access this unconscious part of themselves. They wanted to learn more and follow-through with their plans, as demonstrated by the participants saying they wanted to read the books by Kahneman (2011), and Banaji and Greenwald (2013) that I

mentioned during the workshop. It was as if the awareness piece of the workshop began to lift the blinds that darkened the room, but the transformational conversation motivated them to want to change. As a result, the participants wanted more – a way to open the window and let in other perspectives and allow for former assumptions to be dissected and debunked.

My research indicates that transformational conversation played a significant role in the change in implicit bias. A study from Lindsey, King, Hebel & Levine “supports the continued use of the perspective-taking method in various diversity training initiatives.” They found that “that taking the perspective of others may have a lasting positive effect on diversity-related outcomes, regardless of the focus of training, when compared to setting diversity-related goals or discrediting commonly held stereotypes about stigmatized groups” (2014, p. 614). My research built on this study to show that this perspective shift through conversation is indeed a valuable path to change. Through transformational conversation, participants of the ingroup and outgroup were brought in contact with someone with a different perspective, and they began to empathize with the other person. Because of this empathy, they started to identify with the person they formerly felt was outside of their own group. However, the surprising piece was that I thought the divide in ingroup and outgroup would be clear between gender, but that was not the case. The implicit bias stories shared in the workshop included not just issues with gender and race, but

differences in working styles, starting a new job, age and culture. There was a realization with the workshop participants that implicit bias cuts across all races and genders – everyone feels a part of the ingroup or outgroup in different contexts. It was through transformational

conversation that the participants began shifting from their own feelings of being in the ingroup or outgroup and seeing others in either grouping to identifying with the other person and seeing commonalities, instead of only focusing on the differences.