Bias Mitigation Series

Although NTIRE has trained over 100,000 people across the U.S. and around the world, many of our partners do not have the time develop a detailed plan on how to best manage or reduce personal and organization bias. As part of their Brake Your Bias curriculum, Dr. Marks and the NTIRE team have developed deep-dive, 6-part virtual training series that will provide participants with a step-by-step process toward bias management and reduction. Dr. Marks and the NTIRE team will provide these trainings virtually over the course of several weeks. If executed properly, the strategies taught in this series will very likely enhance participants’ ability to provide quality experiences, services, and products to employees, customers, and stakeholders.

The six sessions can be spread across several days back to back, several weeks, or several months. Virtual format with rare exceptions for in-person sessions.

Each session will provide step-by-step recommendations of how to reduce bias at both the individual and organizational levels. Recommendations for individuals are usually free or inexpensive (renting a movie) and can be implemented by any participant if they are willing to expend the time, energy, and adjustments necessary to form a bias braking habit. The extent to which organizational strategies can be implemented depends on each participant’s ability to influence decision makers if they do not have complete autonomy over their respective organization.

Session #1: Identifying Bias

Before we can manage or reduce bias, we must identify the biases we have. This session will provide specific strategies for identifying various personal and organizational biases, including but not limited to race/ethnicity, gender, age, and disability as well as hiring, talent development, promotion and exiting an organization.

Session #2: Removing or Avoiding the

Bias Trigger

To a significant extent, bias is based upon stereotypes—exaggerated associations of certain groups with certain traits. This session will provide participants with strategies that will either remove or avoid awareness of a person’s group identity, resulting in stereotypes being unactivated, and bias becoming a non-issue.

Session #3: Discretion Elimination or Reduction

Individuals make decisions in their personal and work lives on a regular basis. Most decisions are based upon combinations of objective and subjective information. Bias is more likely to influence the processing and weight of subjective information. This session will provide strategies that will enhance the reliance on objective rather than subjective information.

Session #4: Accountability

People are less likely to act on their biases when there is a known consequence for doing so. This session will provide strategies for creating and implementing consequences and incentives that will decrease the likelihood of participants allowing their behavior to be influenced by their biases.

Session #5: Education and Cultural Competence

Individuals are less likely to act on their biases when they learn about and respect the history, culture, and achievements of other groups. This session will provide concrete strategies that will enhance participants’ knowledge and understanding of and empathy toward groups toward whom bias may exist.

Session #6: Mindfulness

Bias reduction and management is a marathon, not a sprint. Thus, it is necessary to implement certain strategies on an ongoing basis. This session will teach participants several mantras they can add to their daily speech and how to use physical and digital resources to keep bias-reducing practices top of mind.

Trainings Will Include:

Innovative, engaging, humorous, and motivational delivery of content
Highly interactive and introspective exercises
Small group dialogue
The use of compelling videos, images, and other media
An overview of national, industry-specific data disaggregated by race, gender and other demographics
A discussion of implicit bias from the target’s perspective
Participants completing a measure of implicit bias and discussing the results

Anonymous audience polling and display of results in real-time. Responses are used as a basis for discussing sensitive topics and to allow participants to see how their attitudes or experiences compare to others. These results are saved as graphs and provided to the organizers.

Format

Virtual

Audience size: up to 300 per session (each participant should attend at least four of the six sessions)
Length: 90 minutes per session

Recommended Audiences

Implicit bias training is strongly recommended for law enforcement, education, judiciary, corporate, non-profits, philanthropy, community, city/county government, and healthcare organizations as well as other entities in which implicit bias has been shown to significant impact important life outcomes for large groups of citizens.

Bias Mitigation Series

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