Well-managed, diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones, are more innovative and hard-working, and are better at making decisions and solving problems. There are a few reasons for this: gender-diverse teams tend to be higher in collective intelligence, or group performance on a wide range of tasks. Collective intelligence is enhanced by more communication, an even distribution of speaking turns, and being able to “read the mind in the eyes”–women tend to be more socially perceptive and strong in these domains. A group’s collective intelligence is more than twice as important as an individual team member’s intelligence in determining performance. As Woolley, Aggarwal, and Malone write, “Having a group of smart people is not enough, alone, to make a smart group.”
Other research shows that racially-diverse teams avoid group-think and work harder. One study found that racially diverse groups were better at considering the facts and made fewer errors in recalling relevant information. Another study found that racial diversity led to broader thinking and consideration of alternatives than homogenous teams.
Other groups that can feel left out during meetings are introverts–that includes a lot of engineers–and people raised with a modesty mandate (women, Asian Americans, first-generation professionals).
In an industry that’s 88% male and 69% white, telecom engineer managers have an important role to play in creating an inclusive environment for their teams. Our research shows that building in “Bias Interrupters” can increase inclusion, improve business outcomes, and help every group, including white men. Three strategies to help all involved are detailed below:
1. Equalize access to the career-enhancing opportunities. The right assignments can be pivotal to one’s career trajectory as they can provide opportunities to develop new skills and demonstrate one’s readiness for promotion. In our 2016 study of gender and racial bias in engineering, 85% of white men but only 53% of women of color reported that they’ve had the same access to desirable assignments as their colleagues. In addition, only a quarter of white men but over half of women and people of color said that they spend more time doing the “office housework”–the undervalued and unpromotable work.
Equalizing access to career-enhancing opportunities involves two steps.
- Step One: First, find out who is doing the office housework and how much of their time does it take up? This is the low-profile work that is necessary to the company and needs to be done well but doesn’t enhance an employee’s prospects of promotion. It includes roles such as:
o Scheduling team meetings
o Tracking budgets and documents
o Taking notes at meetings
You can distribute the Office Housework survey available at www.biasinterrupters.org to find out. Then, implement Bias Interrupters, such as establishing a rotation for common office housework tasks and requiring accountability.
- Step Two: Identify the “glamour work” opportunities in your department using the Assignment Typology guide available at www.biasinterrupters.org. This is work that helps the employee get promoted. It includes roles such as:
o Opportunities to gain new knowledge or become a subject matter expert
o Opportunities to display knowledge to important audiences
o Opportunities to develop relationships inside the company that are important for promotion/compensation
o Opportunities that grant access to business development resources
Then keep track of who is getting those plum assignments and look for demographic patterns. If you notice the pool is lop-sided, zero in on what the reason is. If a diverse pool has the requisite skill set, you can set up a formal rotation to make sure everyone is getting their fair share. If the pool is not diverse, examine how the pool was assembled in the first place.
Relying on self-promotion or volunteering, will often disadvantage women and people of color. If the pool needs to expand, identify what the essential skills or competencies are for the assignment and develop a plan to help a wider range of employees develop those requisite skills. It may be as simple as having them shadow a more senior employee to see how it’s done. Expanding the pool of people who have the skill sets for high-level work is important for other reasons too: you won’t find yourself in a sticky situation if your go-to person suddenly leaves the company or goes on leave.
A group’s collective intelligence is more than twice as important as an individual team member’s intelligence in determining performance. In other words, a group of individual smart people is not enough alone to make a smart group.
2. Run inclusive meetings. In mixed-sex groups, women tend to be interrupted more than men. In our engineering study, nearly half of all women reported that they are interrupted in meetings more than their colleagues. Only 16% of white men said the same. Women and people of color were also more likely than white men to say that other people get credit for ideas they originally offered. As a manager, you can set the tone for the meeting. If you notice that men are consistently interrupting women during meetings, a simple “Let her finish” will send the message to most. If you notice “the stolen idea” say something like, “Yes, I agree that Maria’s idea was a good one.” If this continues to happen, you may need to take the person aside and politely tell them to stop this behavior.
Women engineers also reported having their expertise discounted. Prior research found that, while male experts exert more influence, female experts actually exert less when teams operate in a default mode without attention to inclusion. Aside from being annoying, it can jeopardize the quality of the team’s product if, for example, a quality control engineer is ignored. To avoid this, you can simply call on someone with expertise to contribute if they haven’t spoken up.
Other groups that can feel left out during meetings are introverts–that includes a lot of engineers–and people raised with a modesty mandate (women, Asian Americans, first-generation professionals). Simply sending a meeting agenda around ahead of time can help everyone–including the quieter members of your team–prepare their talking points ahead of time. Lastly, make sure that the time of the meeting doesn’t make it difficult for certain team members to attend. Consistently scheduling meetings at drop-off or pick-up time can make parents feel unwelcome.
3. Give effective (and honest) feedback–to everyone. People can’t improve if they don’t know what they need to work on. High-performing teams receive positive and negative feedback at roughly a 6:1 ratio–meaning that in your day-to-day management, you need to provide lots of positive feedback to encourage people to keep doing the things they’re doing well in addition to critical feedback designed to help them improve.
Before conducting formal performance evaluations, educate yourself on the common forms of bias that can impact evaluations. In one lab study, we found that simply reading our two-page handout on Identifying Bias in Performance Evaluations led participants to give higher performance evaluations ratings and bonuses to white women and black men and women.
The bottom line is you don’t have to (and probably won’t be) a perfect manager. But you can take these steps today to ensure that everyone on your team is getting the opportunities and feedback they need to develop and advance in their careers. And the payoff is well worth it: your team’s performance will improve as well.
REFERENCES AND NOTES
Phillips, K. W. (2014). How diversity makes us smarter. Scientific American, 311(4), 43-47. Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/
Smith-Lovin, L., & Brody, C. (1989). Interruptions in group discussions: The effects of gender and group composition. American Sociological Review, 424-435.
Thomas-Hunt, M. C., & Phillips, K. W. (2004). When what you know is not enough: Expertise and gender dynamics in task groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(12), 1585-1598.
Williams, J.C., Li, S., Rincon, R., & Finn, P. (2016). Climate control: Gender and racial bias in engineering? Center for Work Life Law. UC Hastings College of the Law. Available at: https://worklifelaw.org/publications/Climate-Control-Gender-And-Racial-Bias-In-Engineering.pdf
Woolley, A. W., Chabris, C. F., Pentland, A., Hashmi, N., & Malone, T. W. (2010). Evidence for a collective intelligence factor in the performance of human groups. science, 330(6004), 686-688.
Woolley, A. W., Aggarwal, I., & Malone, T. W. (2015). Collective intelligence and group performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(6), 420-424.
Zenger, J. & Folkman, J. (2013). The ideal praise-to-criticism ratio. Harvard Business Review. Available at: https://hbr.org/2013/03/the-ideal-praise-to-criticism.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Joan C. Williams is the Founding Director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings Law and author of Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and for Good. She is widely known for “Bias Interrupters”, an evidence-based, metrics-driven approach to eradicating implicit bias. Williams co-authored two influential studies on engineering titled “Climate Control: Gender and Racial Bias in Engineering?” and “Walking the Tightrope: An Examination of Bias in India’s Engineering Workplace”. Mikayla Boginsky is the Policy and Research Fellow at the Center for WorkLife Law. For more information, visit https://worklifelaw.org/. Follow Joan on Twitter @JoanCWilliams. Follow WorkLife Law on Twitter @WorkLifeLawCtr and LinkedIn @WorkLifeLaw.
Tools for interrupting bias in assignments, meetings, and performance evaluations are available at www.biasinterrupters.org.
