Unconscious bias is something that affects everyone at some point. It’s something that can be controlled and challenged within yourself. What exactly is unconscious bias, how does it affect our decision-making process, and how do we deal with it? This is especially important in the work place because you don’t want your decision making to be affected by your bias and your leadership skills will suffer if not dealt with correctly.
According to Dr. Renee Navarro, bias is “a prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another usually in a way that’s considered to be unfair. Biases may be help by an individual group, institution and can have negative or positive consequences” (Unconscious Bias). There are two types of biases: Conscious and Unconscious bias. “Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that individuals from outside their own conscious awareness” and that everyone has these unconscious beliefs about social groups.
It’s not good to have unconscious bias, especially in the work place, because it can affect: “Recruiting and Hiring, Performance Evolution, Promotion and Succession Planning, Innovation, Building High-Performing Teams, Humility, and Discipline” (Brainard). This bias is a form of categorization of social groups/individuals. Our mind quickly judges people based on many factors and that’s how we “flock” towards a certain person or group. Without even giving a chance to the others based on your thoughts, how you grew up, what you saw growing up, and other factors. 
Unconscious bias has been an enemy of innovation because we are “driving toward the easiest and quickest solutions at the expense of more creative, bright ideas,” often seeking past answers, rather than using our knowledge to make a new one (Brainard). With making high-performing teams, the bias will lead us towards a team based on what we already know and what we are most familiar with, instead of utilizing new individuals that may be better.
How do we deal with something that is “hardwired in our brains and has a significant impact on the decisions we make every day” (Peisach)? The answer is simply: chances. You should give people chances based on their records, resume, and when you talk to them, ask questions. This is important in the work place when hiring people or evaluating them.
Priming is also something that can be done. “Priming is a memory effect that gets created when one activity subtly, and often unconsciously, impacts subsequent behaviors. By consciously priming people to pay attention to potential areas of bias, extensive research as well as our experience with clients has shown that they can be encouraged to be more conscious of their decision-making processes” (Ross). You can dig deeper, spend more time on a situation, take good notes, and in the work place: don’t evaluate the candidate until after the interview is finished. 
In conclusion, unconscious bias is not a good thing to have, but it’s so integrated into our brains, that we cannot control it at first. However, we can manage it with asking more questions, digging deeper within a situation, and not evaluating the individual until afterwards when doing interviews. It’s especially prevalent in the work place and should be highly considered in dealing with leadership and managers in general.
References
Brainard, Michael. “The Impact Of Unconscious Bias On Leadership Decision Making.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 13 Sept. 2017, www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2017/09/13/the-impact-of-unconscious-bias-on-leadership-decision-making/#846cb8a5b3f4.
Navarro, Renee. “Unconscious Bias.” USCF Office of Diversity and Outreach, https://diversity.ucsf.edu/resources/unconscious-bias
Peisach, Jeffrey. “Unconscious Bias – How to Keep Our Brains from Making Bad Hiring Decisions.” Cambria, 13 July 2017, www.cambriaconsulting.com/blog/unconscious-bias/.
Ross, Howard J. “3 Ways to Make Less Biased Decisions.” Harvard Business Review, 16 Apr. 2015, https://hbr.org/2015/04/3-ways-to-make-less-biased-decisions
