Leave your Ego at the Door

As a psychologist, I understand only too well our innate human need to feel good about ourselves and to appear good to others. However, sometimes this requires us to avoid acknowledging our weaknesses to escape the negative impact this would have on our self-worth. Instead, we put on our rose-tinted glasses; inflate our positives and downplay the negatives to satisfy our ego. This is what is known as the Self-Enhancement Bias, and it is a win for our self-esteem!

Take driving ability for instance… studies have shown time and time again that drivers rate themselves highly on both their driving ability and their likelihood of not being involved in a crash. Not only do they rate themselves highly but as better than the average person. And you don’t need to be a statistician to know that not everyone can be better than average!

But how does this relate to workplace diversity and inclusion?

If self-enhancement bias means we are willing to inflate our driving ability and view ourselves as better than average – the same can be true when in conversation about inclusion and fairness at work.

“I’m a fair person”

“I treat everyone equally”

“There’s nothing I can learn that I don’t already do”

These are words I regularly hear when I facilitate our workshops.

Inevitably there are always a small handful of participants who struggle as to why they need to participate in a workshop about treating people with equity and promoting belonging. They believe without a doubt that they treat everyone, no matter their race, gender, sexuality, age, disability etc, equally and with respect... but this self-enhancement bias talking. No one wants to believe that we live, work, and operate in an unfair context, so we over-inflate the positives that we have seen and downplay the negatives. But through this lens, it is impossible to see the need for further progress.

Breaking through the Self-Enhancement Wall

The Self-Enhancement Bias creates a clear barrier to building inclusion and therefore must be tackled head-on in workshops. We need to create a space where this innate bias which acts to protect our ego is left at the door and participants are willing to look within themselves, at their workplace and at society to acknowledge that there is much room for improvement that can no longer be ignored. We need to fight the bias in this context to allow for open and honest conversations which move organisations towards #CompleteInclusion with fully committed leaders and staff.

At Avenir, we aim to do this by facilitating guilt-free and blame-free spaces where we tackle systemic issues at the root and open individuals’ eyes to societal inequity and their own biases. The aim being that those who previously refused to see the world and their actions as anything but fair and just, begin to acknowledge their own blind spots and how their perception of justice differs to others. 

So yes - everyone has biases and no - not everyone treats people unfairly. But failure to acknowledge that it isn’t humanly possible for us to refrain from acting on biases unless we consciously choose to do so will stifle progress towards inclusion. This serves only to protect individual ego’s whilst neglecting the needs of discriminated groups. Everyone has something to learn and it is therefore crucial that everyone acknowledges this.

We need to use our innate motivation for self-enhancement to act, not to satisfy our ego.