The persistence of the so-called “glass ceiling” and
salary gap between men and women is often chalked up to the fact that men
historically have been more assertive about negotiating for higher salaries,
promotions, and other contributors to career success. The fear that they will
be viewed as unlikeable and consequently discriminated against for negotiating
on their own behalf is one reason women have avoided negotiating for their own
advancement.
Some companies are recognizing their role in this state
of affairs. In a September New York Times article, Farhad Manjoo describes the
initiatives that Google is undertaking to improve the representation and
advancement of women within the company. At Google, 70% of employees are male,
and 83% of the company’s engineers and 79% of its managers are men. In 2013,
Google disclosed that only three of its 36 top managers were women.
The company’s leaders say they are determined to hire and
promote more women and also to address the “severe underrepresentation” of
African Americans and Hispanics, according to Manjoo. Google has launched a
series of workshops focused on making its internal culture more welcoming to women
and minorities.
Interestingly, the company’s diversity training
workshops, which more than half of the company’s nearly 49,000 employees have
attended to date, are grounded in the concept of unconscious bias—the hidden
preferences that shape our decisions and behavior.
The idea for the workshops was born when Google’s HR
chief, Laszlo Bock, read about research finding that women and racial
minorities are systematically discriminated against when applying to scientific
jobs in academia, apparently in large part due to unconscious bias.
We like to think we treat everyone we encounter equally
and fairly. Yet most people who take a simple online test are surprised to
discover that their underlying attitudes toward race, gender, and other
differentiating traits are more biased than they thought.
If you believe you’re immune to pernicious stereotypes,
try taking the Implicit Association Test (IAT) at
http://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. The test, developed by researchers
Anthony Greenwald of the University of Washington, Mahzarin R. Banaji of Harvard
University, and Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia, reveals deeply
rooted attitudes that can influence our judgments. For example, test takers who
think they are free of racial bias nonetheless often have more difficulty
associating the word “good” with “Black” than with “White.”
In negotiation, such unconscious stereotypes can be
compounded by in-group favoritism, or the tendency to evaluate positively and
give preference to those who belong to the same groups you do. When we have
favors to award, such as a promotion or a construction contract, we tend to
give them to people who are similar to us demographically.
Guessing that this type of pernicious effect was holding
back Google, Bock assigned a researcher-led team to create a video lecture on
unconscious bias. The lecture explains how even a systematic 1% bias against
women in performance evaluation scores can result in serious
underrepresentation of women in the company’s upper ranks, writes Manjoo.
Google believes that exposure to the video and workshops
are motivating employees to audit their own behavior and that of others for
unconscious bias. During one recent promotion meeting regarding a female
engineer, for example, a senior manager warned his all-male colleagues that the
fact that they were all men could lead them to undervalue the different roles
women perform in work teams.
Such moments are just a start, but they could eventually
pay off in the form of greater diversity at Google. You may be able to guide
your organization toward more equitable policies as well that will lead to
mutual gains for your organization and employees in both business negotiations
and interoffice dynamics.
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