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Today I attended the webinar "Your Brain is Good at Inclusion... Except When It’s Not", a talk by Dr. Steve L. Robbins. Dr. Robbin's focus as a neuroscientist is to understand the brain. In this webinar, he addressed not only the physiology behind unconscious bias, but it's impact on people and the hit to productivity in the workplace that happens when unconscious bias excludes a person.

In the starting minutes of the talk, Dr. Robbins introduced himself. Speaking in a very heavy Asian accent, attendees had an immediate reaction. These reactions certainly ranged from "Sigh, this is going to be a long hour if it will be this hard to understand him" to "Asians make good scientists, so I'm sure he knows what he's talking about". Our first reactions can be positive or negative, but not always right. Dr. Robbins was born in Vietnam and is of Asian descent, but has no accent as he was raised in the USA. His accent was his best Mr. Miyagi impression!

Dr. Robbins next explained that he sees the issues before us requiring a stronger focus on inclusion than diversity. His reasoning reminded me of when a panel speaker at the 2019 PDD said (in my paraphrasing), that diversity in the USA is here. It is how we deal with it that has impact. Dr. Robbins recommended that until an organization is inclusive, adding more diversity would simply mean more people feeling left out. In his opinion, we need to work on inclusion first.

As anyone who has had unconscious bias training knows, our biases are built over the years, and we often don't recognize them. Most unconscious bias education helps us recognize that this is true. Dr. Robbins explained how the brain uses patterns and familiarity to take shortcuts for making decisions. Those shortcuts are based on years of experience and learning, much of which occurs in our childhood. Based on our family, TV shows, comedians, school mates, etc., our brain forms patterns to help us make quick decisions without lengthy analysis. For example, we might not jump to the conclusion that Dr. Robbins' family (he's Vietnamese) has owned a restaurant, laundromat, or nail salon, or that Dr. Robbins is excellent at math, but based on our experiences or learning from others, it would be unrealistic to think that we would be shocked by learning this. Note: Dr. Robbins is good at math; none of the rest apply.

Most educators in the unconscious bias space will emphasize that your first thought based on your bias is not "your fault", but that your words and actions are your responsibilities. This is true -- you can't simply change years of brain patterns, but you can change how you act on them. In this talk, however, Dr. Robbins focused on the impact to the person receiving the impression of being an outsider. And isn't that what is it about? Our brain patterns tell us who to trust, who is an insider, and who we can't trust, or an outsider.

In a study, researchers showed that the areas of the brain that feel physical pain react the same to social pain of being an outsider (excluded). Those who feel excluded are distracted in the same way that they are distracted by physical pain. During that time, people are 20-30% less efficient in their work. If for no other reason, companies will benefit from employees working at top capacity without this distraction.

You might not be able to change your company, and if you could, it wouldn't be overnight. Dr. Robbins recommends being curious and open minded. Ask these questions when you have a strong opinion in opposition to someone else's:

1) What journey did that person walk?

2) What journey did I walk?

3) Why am I so certain about things that I cannot prove?