Episode 31:
Sara Taylor earned a master’s degree in Diversity and Organizational Development from the University of Minnesota. She served as a leadership and diversity specialist at the University of Minnesota for five years and as director of diversity and inclusion for Ramsey County, Minnesota for three years.
Sara is the founder and president of deepSEE Consulting and has worked with companies as large as Coca-Cola, General Mills, 3M Company, AARP, and numerous others. She has a new book, “Filter Shift: How Effective People See the World,” that explores how our unconscious is actually making choices and decisions for us, all without our knowing — and how to change that.
What you’ll learn about in this episode:
- Why “systemic filters” are really just shared patterns of unconscious judgment across a group, and why systems are perfectly designed to create the results they create
- How 95-98% of Fortune 500 CEOs are white males, how 58% of them are more than six feet tall, and why this is an example of a system at work
- An example of unconscious filters creating a real world impact, reflected in the extreme disparities of the initial price a car buyer is given based on their race and gender
- Further examples of how racial, gender, sexual orientation, and body weight bias are factors considered in many different scenarios
- What the Harvard Implicit Associations Test (IAT) is, and how researchers at Harvard use it to test unconscious associations we make automatically
- How the Harvard IAT test results teach us that the vast majority of us hold to the stereotypical bias, and very few of us hold to the opposite of the stereotypical bias
- How systemic disadvantage and systemic advantage create strong disparities between advantaged groups and disadvantaged groups
- How systemic advantage and disadvantage have far-reaching implications up to and including mortality rates
- What the “three sees” are and how they can help you recognize systemic bias, recognize the part you play in the system, and recognize how to take action to change the system
Additional resources:
- Website: www.deepseeconsulting.com
- Twitter: @deepseesara