Diversity, Equity & Inclusion For Dummies

Chapter 15

Understanding Implicit Bias and Its Impact in the Workplace

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding where bias comes from and what purpose it serves

Seeing how bias shows up in everyday life

Getting a handle on different types of biases

Looking at ways bias can affect decisions in the workplace

Discovering how to make less-biased decisions

In my business, I travel nearly 80 percent of the time delivering presentations all over the world. When traveling within North America one of my preferred airlines is Southwest, which doesn’t assign seats. It assigns passengers to zones with a numbered position. Most of the time I remember to check in within the 24-hour window to get in zone A or B. But a few times I’ve been late checking in online and ended up in zone C, in the last position. You can imagine where most people who are in zones A and B sit: in the front of the plane, in the aisle seats, and in the window seats. So what’s left? The middle seats. And this is where my biases kick ...