Buki Mosaku - Navigating workplace bias

Hey, and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled and to an interesting subject, one of which I've been surprised at, we've really not tackled before. And with this expert in front of us, the very jolly and expert looking face of Buki Mosaku, which is a fantastic name to conduit, and I really like it. Oh, he's got his glasses back on. Again, ladies and gentlemen. So stand back to be wowed. It's all going to happen now. So first of all, hi, Buki, how are you?

Hi, I'm good. How are you?

And where in the world are you today?

So I'm in London, West London. Notting Hill.

Yeah, right.

I've heard of West London.

It's a place. Notting Hill.

The Americans will be thinking of the film, the Londoners be thinking of the lack of traffic. And the rest of us were thinking about the carnival.

Yeah, exactly.

An exotic place. And you're probably thinking about house prices, I'm guessing.

Oh my God. Yeah. Don't even talk about it. What can you do? These are first world problems. First world problems, correct.

Totally agree. So, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

I'm the founder of Diverse City Think Tank and we're workplace bias experts and D and I specialists. And our focus is to help equip organisations and individuals with strategies and skills to help them navigate what I describe as the inevitability of workplace bias. And in line with that, I've got a book coming out called I Don't Understand - Navigating Unconscious Bias in the Workplace. So, yeah, that's kind of the edited highlights version of who I am.

So what qualifies you to speak on the subject? Because obviously it's a big subject and I've seen you launch straight into sales and publicised the book straight away, which is great, but where does your knowledge base come from?

Well, look, for the past 22 years, coming into 23rd year, I've been operating as a consultant globally, a business consultant. And this started off primarily focused around corporate development and sales and increasing the productivity and effectiveness of staff. And then what happened is that in that process I became exposed on a personal level to various forms of unconscious bias that involved myself, but also as a consultant working with large organisations throughout the world, thousands and thousands of people. What I saw was how organisations addressed what I describe as career stifling, unconscious bias, how they would look to kind of mitigate it as a problem. And over time, I became kind of uncomfortable with the approach. And so this led to the forming of diversity think tank and operating as workplace bias experts.

So let me unpack that a little bit, if I may, for those who are less familiar with the subject. So first of all, can you tell us what bias is? The difference between conscious and unconscious bias, and maybe a couple of examples to sort of illustrate it?

Yeah, so I think that's a really great question.

So I'm glad you asked it the first. In terms of dealing with what bias is, I think let's look at unconscious bias and how it manifests in the workplace because that's essentially what I deal with. So, it's any conditioned view that negatively impacts our behaviour to certain groups. That's what I describe as career stifling unconscious bias. And these conditioned views are born out of stereotypes. Social societal conditioning towards particular groups based on race and ethnicity, based on sexual orientation, based on age, based on gender. These are all forms of bias. These are all topics or victims of bias based on the groups that they're in. And the bias is driven by negative stereotypes, which we get from susceptible conditioning.

Okay? It's a sort of protection mode that allows us to be able to make instantaneous decisions. It is socially constructed. But of course, I'm just interested to know, which is sort of. I mean, conscious bias is obvious, isn't it? Because it is actually explicit and it's sad But I'm just wondering which is worse in a way.

Okay, so actually let's just look at it because you did ask me what conscious bias is as well. So conscious bias is where I make a decision, where I consciously make the decision that I don't like certain types of people, or I like certain types of people and I will treat them accordingly. That is, conscious unconscious is when it's a conditioned view, it's a shortcut. What people like you, Doctor good doctor call, is driven by cognitive shortcuts, right? And so, it's an unaware thinking pattern, but the pattern is there and it's been driven and conditioned by societal conditions.

That's it. And that's really important to understand because you can have people who are incredibly well meaning, who are incredibly empathetic with people, but actually because they are a product of their social conditioning, they don't necessarily, if necessarily massively self-aware. They're not particularly aware of their unconscious bias because by implication they are unconscious. So, it's how do people spot their own unconscious biases?

Yeah.

And I think it's really important to. The third part of your question was examples. And there are a lot of these examples out there. So, for example, there's a disproportionate underrepresentation of women in senior roles, leadership roles in organisations. There's a disproportionate underrepresentation of ethnic minorities as an ethnic minority myself, of black people in particular in senior roles.

Right.

This is driven by unconscious, partially. Sorry, driven by unconscious bias. That is not seeing these people as people in roles, in senior roles, because society and conditioning has told us that. And everything we see on TV, et cetera, tells us that. These are examples. Again, you could look at sexual orientation as well, and age as well, be it young or old. There are certain people decide that a certain age is appropriate for certain roles and a certain age is inappropriate for certain roles. This is all conditioned thinking and is not necessarily true. And it's unconscious. So those are examples. And like you said, it's not necessarily on purpose, but it's there. And if you look at the statistics, they reflect this. And so having a way of dealing with this for all of us is really important.

And we can all be affected by it, some more so than others, but we are all affected by unconscious bias. And it's fascinating, isn't it, because it's a sort of interplay between socioeconomic factors, culture, media, and now social media, and of course, parenting as well, which is part of the social background. But it's fascinating to think that actually we may have the issues we have because of the media landscape being driven by white, old, rich, white blokes. And I work a lot in the transgender community, and this is a massively marginalised and underrepresented minority in the workforce, possibly the most discriminated against of all, really, at the moment. But it's fascinating to think that actually we may have the issue we have because of an agenda, really, rather than by accident, because it may well be the media have shaped the landscape over the last 30 years.

Yeah, I think that is definitely there. And there is a structural element to this, a systemic element to this. However, I think it's important that when we look to address bias in the workplace, unconscious bias in the workplace, we do not use resolution models driven by what I call the out there approach. Right, out there, being outside of the work. Outside of work. Whilst both bias outside of work and inside of work are driven by social injustice. Actually, the resolution model for workplace bias is actually different to the resolution model. For example, for racism, or for homophobia, or for the equivalent for gender identity in the workplace. The model is different. And one of the mistakes that a lot of behavioural scientists and so-called experts make, right, is that they transpose the model, the resolution model, for dealing with bias out there.

Can you give me an example of what you mean in here?

Well, if I'm attacked, if I'm on the receiving end of actual physical attack or verbal attack, aggravated assault, outside.

Right.

My options are kind of limited. I can respond.

I see, right.

I can respond in the same way I can go to the police sometimes. Arguably, it could be the police that are the actual pro perpetrator. I can seek legal redress, or I can protest in peace and get my government representative to protest on my behalf.

That's pretty much it, right? That's the model out there.

And it begins and ends with authority, leadership.

However, in the workplace, the model doesn't have to be that way.

No.

There are great wider opportunities. And the wider opportunities are that in the workplace, you can talk, you can have a conversation, you can sense bias. And you can, if you know how to, and not trying to do a sale here, but in my book, this is what we talk about. You can actually call out bias in the moment and navigate it in a way which allows you to not be a victim of it and furthermore allows you to overcome it and puts you in an even stronger position.

Right.

You don't have that.

And so the problem is that what experts do, so called experts and activists and all of these types of people, their model for dealing with workplace bias is the people at the top need to change. They need to increase their bias awareness, they need to interrupt their biases and.

so on, which is pointless, really, because that doesn't deal with the issue.

Yeah, well, look, an element of that is important, but not enough attention is allocated to equipping people with the skills to navigate it on their own. And if you don't do that, what happens is that you're always reliant on somebody else to change, which keeps you as a victim, FYI, in brackets, keys into sort of, well, old kind of stereotypes, which have been around for centuries. So it's really important that we equip people, everybody. But the first thing as well, is that we need to understand how bias manifests in the workplace. And I don't think most people understand that. We really need to understand that.

So we're really looking for an awareness and a culture profile of the organisation so that actually, the way we do things around here is free from bias. And that comes down to skills. It comes down to attitudes, behaviours. It comes down to the way we think, what we do, how we act. And that's why I say you don't need to wait from it coming from the top, you can just get on with it in your own team.

I think so. But if the top want to do anything about it, and they desperately are trying, trust me, because I deal with lots of clients in these areas, right. What they need to do is unsubscribe from this guilty perpetrator, hapless victim model, this kind of unidirectional view of workplace bias. Now, it probably needs some unpacking. Do you want me to unpack that?

Well, why not? We'd be churlish to refuse.

So the traditional model for dealing with unconscious bias in the workplace, career stifling.

Unconscious bias, that is decisions which hold one person back and allow another person to go forward..

Right.

The traditional model is saying, right, we've got these white, middle class, heterosexual males. Usually some females, they are the guilty perpetrator, and they need to change the way that they think, act, do, behave, whatever and they need to interrupt whatever it is inside them. This original sin almost, that is causing them to be disproportionate, to treat minorities badly.

That's the model.

Right.

That's pretty much the model. Then the other part of the model is generally, let's tell everybody to be nice to everybody. And even if person looks different from you, is a different sexual orientation or different sex, be nice or different age, be nice. That's the model.

Right.

And this is all reliant on basically a majority to shift.

Right.

This is a unidirectional model. It says that these people who look a certain way, walk and talk a certain way, they are the guilty perpetrator. And these people who look a certain way, walk and talk a certain way, they are the hapless victim.

But the problem with that is that if I'm a leader and I'm part of the majority, and I'm subscribed to that model, which 99.99% of organisations are.

I will always be looking to correct myself, trying to improve myself, which sends a message to me that I'm guilty, that I'm some kind of faulty product, but it also sends a message to me that there are these poor, hapless victims who are the recipient of my guilt. And in order for them to have worthwhile, productive, fair careers, I need to change. Well, that just keeps them as victims and keeps me as a guilty perpetrator.

Right.

So what I'm saying is why not allocate more attention to equipping people with the skills to navigate it.

Right.

Navigate bias. So those minorities or those traditional victims, give them the skills, but then to navigate it. And if you give them the skills they’re not reliant on this traditional guilty perpetrator and suddenly they're empowered.

Right.

So that's really important. But the other element of this is really important, too. And the other element of this is that there are two forms of bias and nobody wants to talk about the two forms or two categories.

Right.

The first category is what I describe as directional bias. Direct, that is, towards you. That's what we're all familiar with because of your age, race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity. That's bias towards you where you don't get the rub of the green on decisions and there's nobody that looks like you in the boardroom, right. That's directional bias.

But there's also reverse bias and this is what nobody talks about and this is a key element of the problem. There's reverse bias. So, I, as a black minority, couldisinterpret unfavourable decisions from you, as a white member of the majority leader, as driven by unconscious bias.

Well, actually, hello. That's actually my bias.If I misinterpret it, that's my bias.

Yes.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

And the problem is that when you sense my bias or you have an inkling that I'm coming from a place of reverse bias in your decision making.

Right.

You don't tell me, right. Most people don't tell me because they don't want to say that, because they don't want to seem unsympathetic to the equality cause. So, what they do is they don't say anything. And if they do say anything, guess what they tell somebody else. And guess what the other person they tell looks like. Of course, then so if it's you, for example, you would tell another white male or somebody similar to you, which would reinforce the bias about minorities. Me, a black male, having chips on their shoulders. Now, it gets worse because I sense bias from you, right?

Which I could be wrong, by the way, but I sense it in your decision making. I don't tell you either. What I do is go and look for somebody else and tell them and guess what they look like, and you get schism.

Yeah, they look like me, a black male, black heterosexual male. And that reinforces the bias about the majority being guilty perpetrators of bias towards people like me. And never the twain shall meet. And this is where we live. And the reason that traditional approach might exist is because there is power and safety in being in your own sets as it were. So it's been an approach that's got us a certain amount of the way forward. And are you sort of saying that's worked as far as it goes? And now the next step is something different?

Yeah.

We have to evolve, because In a nutshell, unidirectional views or one way street. Views of career stifling unconscious bias.

Right.

Divide us because it says that there are these people who are like this. They are the bad guys.

Right.

Whereas if you accept what I've just described, the two categories of bias, what you're accepting is the multidirectional nature of workplace bias. And if you can accept that in the moment, I can be biased towards you as much as you can be biased towards me in the moment. Regardless of the power differential, regardless of that, I'm a graduate and you're a chairperson.

Right.

In the moment, I can be biased towards you and you can be biased towards me. If we can accept that multidirectional nature, then we're actually accepting that we're the same.

Yes.

And it's important, I think, to characterise this, because, actually, I don't think you're saying, let's look after the victims, as it were. I know you said you should be called victims, but the people to which the bias is being directed at, it's not about equipping those people to have the resilience to deal with the bias, which is useful, but it's also important a. To call out the bias. But it's also. What you're saying is we should still culturally change to make sure that overall, the volume of bias comes down. Otherwise, all you're doing is you are allowing people to unmodify their behaviour because they know, actually the victims are more robust. And that's the wrong outcome, in a sense, isn't it?

Yeah, that's an interesting way of looking at. But I think ultimately, though, having said that, I think ultimately the only way to deal with that is for people to actually, when they sense bias, to call it out. I think that's it. And I think here's the thing. All bias in the moment at work, whatever in a work environment is sensed, you never actually know. Otherwise, it wouldn't be called unconscious bias. It would be called explicit bias. It wouldn't be called implicit; it'd be called explicit. So, it's always sensed. So, what we need.

And that's a problem. That is the problem, because if you're part of a disadvantaged minority, you can be more spiky and more prone to. As you're saying, your own bias is there because you sense more risk in the world. So, I guess by saying, listen, I'm sensing some bias, that's a risky phrase in itself, because he can just say, I'm not comfortable with the way this is going. What's your intention? I mean, there are lots of different phrases you could use to get around the problem. But you're advocating saying, I'm sensing bias at the moment. What's going on?

Well, I'm advocating that the most effective way to call out bias to navigate is to use these three powerful words. I don't understand.

Yeah.

We call this dispassionate developmental inquiry. Engage in dispassionate developmental inquiry. In fact, when you turn the phrase, I don't understand into a question, so I don't understand like that. What happens is that you invoke our natural instinct to give direction. In other words, the person will say to you one of two things. What don't you understand? Which gets you into a conversation which you wouldn't have been able to get into otherwise, or they'll say, well, let me show you. Either way, you're now into a conversation. Now, the key is to stay in that developmental inquiry mode of dialogue, which is what we teach. When you do that, one of four things are going to happen.

Right.

The bias towards you will call itself out. You don't need to say to the person, you gave the job to her, but you didn't give it to me.

Because of X Y.

You don't need to do that as long as you engage in developmental inquiry. Dispassionate developmental inquiry. In other words, I don't understand that mode of conversation. What you're going to find is that the bias towards you, if it's there, if it's real, will call itself out or what will happen. This is really important or what will happen is that your reverse bias will call itself out. Your reverse bias will call itself out.

Right.

So those are the two or what will happen is that something that you weren't privy to, which is totally fair under the circumstances, will be revealed, or something that neither you or the presumed perpetrator were aware of. For example, I could speak Spanish. There was a job which required Spanish. I didn't know it required Spanish, and they didn't know that I spoke Spanish, so I was never shortlisted. That's got nothing to do with me being black. It's got nothing to do with my sexual orientation. It's got nothing to do with my sex. It's just life.

Right.

And sometimes that happens.

Right.

But this would all come out if you engage in.

I don't understand types of conversations. So, I think what we need to do is equip people with skills to navigate the inevitability of bias. And we should also equip traditional perpetrators to call out reverse bias. If we're equipping each other with the skills to call out the inevitability of bias, it will dissipate. It has to. But the problem is we don't do that. What we do is we say, no, I'm white, middle-class leader. I got us into this because of his stuff, which happened in history.

Right.

So I need to deal with this. Well, you do need to deal with it, but you can't deal. If you say, I need to deal with it on my own, you're actually reinforcing the status quo, because you're pushing the people that you're trying to help out and you're disempowering them. Why not give everybody the skills to call? And when you do that, you accept that we're the same. But we don't want to accept that we're the same. We keep saying them and us. When it's an us versus us.

Yeah. It's interesting. I can see why there is a role for I as well as we and you. So, I think there is. That tripartite nature of this is important. The other benefit I see about this is that actually there's a degree of accountability being built, because when you're saying, I don't understand, you're sort of putting the locus of control into yourself. So, what that's doing is giving you a degree of control over the process. That classic thing. When you ask a question, you're in the control of the process. So, I think that's quite an interesting sort of idea. I quite like that. I'm going to investigate that. So, you've written a book, allegedly. I heard a rumour somewhere that it's interesting. I've just been having a look at it, and I see it launches in August 2023.

Is that right? Actually, now that. Actually, it's going to that date my publishers told me that date has been changed to the 7 September.

Wow.

But it can be pre-ordered now.

Yeah. So that's good. So, who did you write the book for?

That's a really good question. You've eaten your Weetabix this morning, Russell?

Right.

So I wrote the book. Well, they say we teach what we need to learn.

Right.

Somebody great said that, Richard. I can't remember his name. But in terms of who the book is aimed at, it's aimed at workers. You know, it's aimed at senior management, middle management, people who have staff.

Right.

And if you manage a team today. If you're a chairperson, a people manager, team leader, you are dealing with a diverse team, you're dealing with people different ages, different family makeups and so on, Neuro thinking patterns.

Right.

So we need to be able to have cohesive teams. And so, these are the people that I wrote it for, people working in and managing cohesive teams. And then the actual teams, the actual minority. How does the black guy, how does the woman, how does the minority sexual.

orientation person who senses bias from time to time, how do they deal with it? How do they call it out instead of going to a safe space, which is the kind of prescribed thing.

Right.

What if I could just call it out in the moment? What if I could call it out in the moment in a way which doesn’t get the other person's backup, doesn't invoke defensive fragility. That is, a person gets upset, annoyed, outraged.

Right.

If I could call it out in the moment, I could navigate these issues as and when they happen. And that's good for me, for my leadership skills and it's good for the cohesion of my team.

Brilliant. So, you better tell us where we can find this book, what it's called, all the vital bits of information. I've just seen how much it costs. I've just recovered from the shock. That's the pre-order price. I normally download a copy as we're chatting, but luckily, I can't download.

Yeah, well, hopefully my publishers are watching this. There's a message that I don't set the prices, but I'm pulling your leg on. It's reassuringly expensive like that.

Yeah.

So you can get it from Amazon, right? You can get it on all outlets. But you can get it from Amazon. And better still, what I would encourage people, because there's a deal on this if they go to navigatingbias.com

And there's a Masaku's bias navigation test that will actually tell you, give you an indication of what the best unconscious bias strategy for dealing with bias strategy is for your organisation. But there's also a deal there on the price of the book. So that's a crafty way of getting a deal on the price and getting a free bias navigation strategy workshop. So otherwise go to Amazon, Waterstones and all your usual. You'll be able to get it from them.

Brilliant. I think it's not just great, I think it's very timely as well because I think people are looking for, I think we've become so sensitive to some of these subjects, we've really become disempowered and we've become, I say in the transgender world is that people are, because it's slightly weaponised, people are becoming really cautious and they don't know what to say. And everybody's dancing on eggshells.

Exactly. We just need to be adults and say, I'm going to say something. If it's wrong, I'll put it right in a second. But let me say something because you get yourself into a state of complete, well, victimhood, which is one of my least favourite sort of states to be in, I guess.

Yeah.

30:10 Buki

Or you call it internally. If you think about it, what do you call in when you get these things? When you're on the sense of an injustice, you just go, I just don't understand how these people could be so insensitive. The injustice, the incivility of this behaviour and you're calling it inside instead of calling it in. What if you could call it out?

Yeah. Well. And I’m known to invoke the great Ted Lasso. Everybody does these days, and we need to be topical. So, if you don't put Ted Lasso somewhere, he talks about that difference between curiosity and judgment, doesn't he? Or the psychologist behind the show does. And I think that's what you're actually saying here. The curiosity is the question. I just don't know. I just don't know. Don't understand. And the judgment thing is, I can see it now. I'm the victim and now I have to respond and go back into my sets and such like. I like it. I think it's brilliant. So people can go and have a look at your website as well. You better spell your name because it's completely unique. Well, it's certainly one of your own.

31:07 Russell

All right, so it's B for book U.

No, don't do it. Sesame Street. That's all.

I didn't want anywhere to put D.

That would just do my head in. So, B-U-K-I-M-O-S-A-K-U. Sorry. So bukimosaku.com, let me get my own website.

Correct.

bukimosaku.com.

And it's a great website, actually. Been chatting. There is all sorts of interesting stuff, blogs, a fund of information, and I'm sure there's going to be a way of capturing people's names on your email list. Then you can be treated to many helpful and influential, of course, informing it, no. And I think rightly so. I think you've got a great message there, and it's brilliant the way that you clarify and put it across. I think it's different to what other speakers have heard. So I love it. Thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Thank you, Russell. It's been a pleasure.

It certainly has. You take care.

You, too.