Stereotype Replacement, Courageous Conversations, Positive Afffirmation, and Goal Setting

Unconscious Bias Awareness Training Manual Paper
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Unconscious Bias Awareness Training Manual Paper
Unconscious bias (also referred to as implicit bias) entails how individuals unknowingly make assumptions about a particular group of persons to make decisions regarding them. This cognition type happens automatically, involuntarily, and without one being aware. Unconscious bias is triggered when an individual quickly evaluates or judges situations and people. This kind of behavior can benefit the organization, as it helps people become more efficient. However, unconscious bias can pose detrimental ramifications for the firm, particularly the leaders or employees who depend on stereotypes or assumptions to associate people with positive or negative attributes. These connections create social identity hierarchies that place more value on some workers over others. This awareness training manual addressed the role of stereotype replacement, courageous conversations, and positive affirmation and goal setting while recognizing the workers’ potential for professional and personal growth and committed action to foster new, positive beliefs and attitudes at the workplace, thus eradicating implicit bias.
Stereotype Replacement
One of the strategies to reduce unconscious bias at the workplace is implementing stereotype replacement. This entails replacing automatic biased responses with novel, automatic, non-biased responses. This would involve three steps: (a) recognizing that an individual’s response is stereotypical, (b) labeling the response as stereotypical and identifying the rationales for the particular incidence, and (c) considering alternative responses that organizational members should employ in the future to avoid the unconscious bias. The organizational members would be expected to apply these alternatives as non-stereotypical replacement responses (Devine et al., 2012). For example, one of the departmental managers happens to say, “I have an intern who is good in financial analysis and forecasting in my unit.” The other manager says, “Seriously! What’s his name?” The manager replies that a lady intern had recently graduated with a finance degree. In this context, the manager should acknowledge that his assumption that the intern was a male was anchored on a stereotype that males are better in accounting and finance than their female counterparts.
Accordingly, it is essential to reflect on the rationale for such a response, including the possibility that society consistently defines specific gender roles for males and females. These expectations could be emphasized via marketing and media. Lastly, the reaction should be replaced with a non-biased response. This process could be reinforced by credible studies indicating no discrepancies in accounting performances based on gender. Diversity training can also reduce unconscious bias among workers and managers (Paluck et al., 2021). In this way, the organization creates a feasible framework for stereotypical reactions appraisal and challenge. This constitutes the first step to mitigating stereotypical responses in the ...