Implicit Bias Awareness & Workshops
Fundamental Advisory engages with businesses, municipalities, law firms, and non-profits for a variety of DEI efforts including creating custom tailored workshops entitled “Conversations on Implicit Bias” in addition to other trainings sessions in the areas of cultural competency, creating an inclusive workplace, sexual harassment, and power dynamics at work.
Fundamental Advisory engages with businesses, municipalities, law firms, and non-profits for a variety of DEI efforts including creating custom tailored workshops entitled “Conversations on Implicit Bias” in addition to other trainings sessions in the areas of cultural competency, creating an inclusive workplace, sexual harassment, and power dynamics at work.
The trainings sessions are given to both management and individual contributors and are done both to create a more inclusive workplace and offer an innovative professional development experience. All trainings are developed after an assessment and to create an organization-specific program that creates lasting growth. During the assessment phase, we meet with key leaders to better understand the organization’s goals and overall mission in the area of Diversity and Inclusion. These conversations open many doors for us to explore and create programs around. These are done so the organization receives the most custom-tailored experience.
Our “Conversations on Implicit Bias” are developed to meet the specific goals and demographics of the organization. We begin with an assessment to identify goals and pain points wherein we talk with key leaders and those in HR. Our philosophy is that until the issue of how Implicit Bias affects in your organization is addressed, inclusion and diversity goals will not be achieved. Through collaboration and open communication, we will tackle these issues in an impactful way. These can be tailored in any way to ensure the best attendee experience. These qualify for MCLE credits as well.
Additionally, we offer a wide variety of trainings for implementation after the “Conversations on Implicit Bias.” These are 201 and 301 level workshops that are fully customized for your organization. These trainings are often focused on creating an inclusive culture, sexual harassment and abuse, ethics in the workplace, cross-cultural dialogue, ethical implications of bias, managerial-specific trainings, and more.
What is Implicit Bias?
Implicit bias refers to unconscious attitudes, assumptions, and stereotypes that people hold about certain characteristics like race, ethnicity, gender, age, appearance, sexual orientation, and disability, amongst others. These can either evoke positive or negative feelings about a person or group of people. And because these biases lie deep in our subconscious, most people are unable to easily understand and confront them. These attitudes form over the course of our life and are influenced by early life experiences and societal or community attitudes we were subjected to.
Who does it affect?
EVERYONE! Implicit bias lies within all of us. Even those who strive to have commitments to openness and a nonjudgmental mindset, often harbor as many as anyone else. And that’s okay because the more we know, the better we can do. If these unconscious attitudes are not in line with our chosen beliefs, we can grow though recognition of our biases and stop them before they influence our decision-making. Through education and awareness, we can address these lurking attitudes and assumptions before they affect our professional and personal decisions. In every interaction we have with another person, these unconscious attitudes and stereotypes are making split-second decisions about how we will engage with that person. This can be on a social level like meeting a new person at a coffee shop, to who we hire or promote, to how we engage with customers and even how professionals handle client advice or patient care.
We Can Change our Brains and Behavior!
Our brain is a work in progress, always growing and learning. Our brain can be taught to stop, recognize a bias, and not act on that instinct. Although implicit bias is part of our unconscious mind and is not subject to intentional control, we can gradually train our brain to disassociate with certain biases. We can also reach a level of awareness that allows us to make decisions without the overriding influence being our unconscious processes. With time and attention, we will grow.