Breaking Bias in Your Team Culture

Implicit bias has become a common buzz word in diversity, equity and inclusion trainings for teams.

Since the murder of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, universities and corporations have been scrambling to prioritize equity, education and awareness. But how does implicit bias impact the volleyball community? And how can teams work to dismantle their own biases?

To break implicit bias in your team culture, let’s start by answering a simple but critical question. What exactly is implicit bias?

Implicit bias, also referred to as unconscious bias, is a learned habit of thought that affects the way we perceive, reason, remember and make decisions. Implicit bias: 

• Includes the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner; 
• is outside of one’s consciousness and develops over time from the repeated reinforcement of social stereotypes; 
• can be either positive or negative; 
• impacts everyone (The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity, 2017).

The consequences of implicit bias and implications of racial profiling manifest across industries, from access to higher education, quality health care, housing, employment and sports. Yes, even sports. Especially sports. Disparities exist within every field and aspect of today’s society.  It impacts athletic directors, coaches, players and referees. Implicit bias plays a role in who gets hired as the head coach, who gets promoted and who gets recruited. Implicit bias impacts everyone, no matter what industry you’re in.

Through my personal experience as a collegiate and professional volleyball player and a cisgender lesbian, I’ve witnessed how the stereotypes associated with gender identity, regional background, race and sexual orientation have a significant impact on performance and retention of both players and coaches.  According to Athlete Ally, LGBTQI+ youth are twice as likely to drop out of sports compared to their heterosexual peers and over 80% of LGBTQI+ athletes have witnessed or experienced homophobia in sports. 

Disproportionate drop out rates and discrimination are a common story for Black female athletes as well.  To be successful in their sport, Black female athletes oftentimes have to overcome the psychological impact of microaggressions from teammates and fans, negative stereotyping in the media, and the racial disparities that exist in leadership positions within their program or organization. 

So what can you do to dismantle the implicit bias that impacts your school or program?

Here’s 5 strategies to break implicit bias in your team that we shared with the university admissions team.

1. Self Analysis

Re-examine your experiences, your education and the stories that shape your worldview. Reflect on how your attitudes and prejudices were formed and how you’ve been part of the problem both personally and systemically. It’s really important to interrogate and understand your personal story around race.

2. Develop Intercultural Competence

lntercultural competence is the ability to communicate, act appropriately and work effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds (Adapted from Leung, K., Ang, S. and Tan, M.L., 2014). When seeking to develop intercultural competence, always seek out multiple perspectives. For example, if you want to learn about Black history then you need to learn from Black authors. Also, seek out information on things like; gender-based issues and roles in different cultures, differences in conflict resolution styles, differences in language and communication styles, sources of racial anxiety, and misinformation around a culture or community.  

3. Perspective-Taking

Perspective-taking is the practice of imagining life from other people’s viewpoints and lived experienced (The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, 2015). There are things in our society that white people never have to worry about that black people have to worry about all the time. If you are white, try to imagine what it’s like for black people to live in a perpetual state of anxiety in this country. If you are straight, try to imagine what it feels like to have the Supreme Court vote on whether or not you can legally be discriminated against in the workplace on the basis of your sexual orientation or gender identity. Perspective-taking is absolutely critical to break implicit bias in your team.

4. Individuation

Individuation is the practice of being curious about people as unique and complex individuals and not as representatives of their race or group (W.S Xiao, 2014). In general, society tends to generalize the individual negatives of people color while individualizing the negatives of white people (Kendi, 2020).

5. Stereotype Replacement

Stereotype replacement, or counter-stereotypic imaging, is the practice of replacing societal or media stereotypes (Patricia G. Devine, Patrick S. Forscher, Anthony J. Austin, and William T. L. Cox, 2012). You can do this with somebody you know personally or a respected celebrity. For example, if you see a racist portrayal of a Black person on television or in a book, first stop consuming the content and then replace it with an antiracist image or narrative like a book written by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, Barbara Smith, Audrey Lorde, Bell Hooks, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Brittany Cooper, Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, N. K. Jemisin… or any of the books on the reading list of the Well-Read Black Girl Bookclub.

For a more in-depth analysis, have your coaching staff and team take the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) Test. It’s a 50-point questionnaire accessible online that takes less than 20 minutes.  The I.D.I website offers tons of resources and data on how to create a cultural competent environment and the consequences of failing to do so.  Jennifer Jacobs, one of the co-founders of Inclusion Inroads, is an IDI Qualified Administrator. Contact us today about scheduling an IDI test and assessment for your team.