Ep 58 Leadership: Confronting gender bias

In this important episode of The Crazy One, Stephen Gates opens up a necessary conversation about gender bias—its conscious and unconscious expressions, and why it’s a critical issue that needs addressing, especially by men. Stephen breaks down the nine types of bias, discusses why tackling gender bias is essential, and explores realistic outcomes for change. Tune in to gain practical insights on identifying, confronting, and reducing gender bias in the workplace to foster a more inclusive environment.

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Stephen Gates : 0:00

What's going on everybody, and welcome to the 58th episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership design, and all kinds of things that matter to creative people. Now, I've been working on this show, honestly for quite a long time. And it is a beautiful day here in New York City, but it is after I've literally spent 24 hours in the dark. That's not a metaphor of somehow being unenlightened about something, but actually because of the nor'easter that blew through. I literally had no power at my house for the past day. The side effect of that was that it finally gave me the time I needed and it gave me the space free of distractions, quite candidly free of excuses to finish working on the show. And it's honestly why there's been such a gap between this show and the last one because this one I've been writing and rewriting and thinking about and debating and doing a lot of different things because there aren't many times That I find intimidating. This is one of them. And I'll be candid that doing this show probably scares me more than a little bit. But in doing this podcast, I've tried to take on a number of things that I think we don't talk about, or things that I think we don't like to talk about. And the reason why I do that is because I often think that through exploring these tough subjects and drawing this stuff out into the light of day, I think those tend to be the areas where we grow the most, I tend to be tend to think that, through that difficulty through that struggle through that enlightenment, we all get better, and we all grow. This is absolutely one of those topics. And at the end of the day, I feel like since I have this platform, that if I don't at least try and talk about it, then I'm part of the problem. And so today, I want to talk about gender bias. Now look, I'm aware there are a million reasons why A white male executive usually goes running screaming from this topic. But before we even get started, I want to make sure that everyone is clear about the title and the intent of this show. We're talking about gender bias, which is the way that you treat people, which is the way that you think about things what I am not talking about. I'm not talking about discrimination. I'm not talking about harassment. We're not talking about any of those things, because to me, there's not a discussion to be had there, because those actions are wrong, full stop and have sentience and have discussion. But the reason why I want to talk about bias is because I think that there has been a ton of attention on discrimination, sexism, harassment, a lot of these sorts of things, but I think, bias honestly, maybe just as big I have a problem. And the reason why is because I think what made me want to talk about this show is that there is a very, very strong, very brave woman who asked a question after one of my Adobe max sessions this year. And you know what I think the best thing to do is, is this is actually, you can hear me repeat the question, but then answer it, and then the reaction that we get from the crowd. So that was really the impetus for the show. But let's just listen to that for a second for where this started. So the question was about being a woman establishing yourself in a leadership position. I have thoughts. I mean, look, I am not. And I'll tell you this, right. This is a very place where I tried to tread very carefully. The leadership team that I had, whenever I was at Starwood was all female. I have seen firsthand where if I say Something in my head of design said something. It was heard very differently. And it had to be coached. And it had to be working with her about the fact that she couldn't be herself because she was far too easily dismissed. It is infuriating. It is a cultural bias that I think that we all have to fight against. But for me, at the end of the day, the thing that is irrefutable are the work, the numbers, the proof in the research, because I think those are the things at the end of the day that aren't about gender, they aren't about anything else. I don't have advice on how to be able to fight that or be able to fight the boys club. I think that it is it is an unfortunate part of this industry. And I think to kind of humiliate her, there's a woman who is putting her hand up right over there, whose name is Trina Cintron. Trina was that woman who worked for me for nine years. She's one of the strongest women I've ever worked with. And I think she went through an incredibly unfair time at our company because of that, and it took a lot of time for her to find the respect that she needed, I would highly encourage you to talk to her because I think she can speak about it with far more authority than I can. But the only thing that I would be able to tell you is like I said, is that how do you put it into the place that is irrefutable. The numbers, the research, the work, where it's not an opinion about those things? And the other thing that I would tell you is that, if that continues, get the hell out of there. Because I think your talent needs to be someplace better. I know that a lot of people want advice that there's some magic bullet, but at the end of the day, they don't deserve you to screw him go someplace better. Now, I give that woman a tremendous amount of credit, because I think in all the years that I've been speaking that I've been teaching that I've been doing anything else, it's the first time anybody was ever brave enough to ask me that question directly on stage. People have asked me know forms they've done in other ways. But the thing that really had the impact on me was after I got off stage, so many people came up to me afterwards to say thank you for what I said. And I've gotten probably more emails and more comments about that question that I think honestly, I've gotten about the entire talk itself. And the reality is that I do have a platform. And if I don't use it to talk about real problems, then I'm letting you down. And more importantly, I feel like I'm letting me down for taking the easy road. And that question really brought up that she asked, it really brought up a lot of interesting feelings with me, I'm gonna be honest, I think it's brought up some guilt with me. It's brought up a lot of things that I've been thinking about because the reality is, is that no matter what you believe, and this is, this is mainly aimed at the men who are out there because I think that's what this show is going to be for a man I don't know. understand the problem firsthand. So I don't think I can speak about it eloquently, realistically firsthand. But what I can tell you is that gender bias is real. I've seen it. And now the reality is, is that, you know, in some cases, bias is done intentionally. I've seen it done by people, mostly men, who, you know, maybe sometimes it is very conscious, but I think more times than not, and maybe this is because I, I will occasionally try to believe the veteran people. I think they do it because they simply don't have the self awareness to understand what they're doing. And for me, this, the fact that this bias exists, isn't up for debate. And I'll go in to a lot of detail shortly about what are all the different types of bias. But we need to start by saying that out loud that it is real, because I think a lot of us will try to say there's a problem. But I think that the problem that we have is that we don't know how to start a conversation. about it. We don't, as men understand how to be vulnerable about it, we don't understand how do we fix what we're doing? I'm not even sure we understand what women go through, or that we really even understand what our reaction to that be. So to the men who are listening to this episode, before you make any assumptions about what this episode is going to be, I would just ask that you listen, even if you don't agree with anything that I have to say, and just hear me out on what I have to say. I think like I said, that I have some small amount of empathy for this situation, because, you know, for me, I've talked to a lot of different women. I've seen things firsthand, that have gone into the thought that went into this show. It doesn't make me an expert. And it doesn't give me the ability to pretend that I know what it's really like. And I guess the reason why I've rewritten the show so many times, is because I want to talk about this But I also want to be clear that I don't have the answers to this that I wish that I did. I think this is hopefully the start of an awakening, I think it's hopefully the start of a conversation. But I think it's something that all men, especially in leadership positions, need to hear. And the thing is, is that bias is real. If you look at how few women are in leadership positions, if you look at how they are paid, if you look at how they are treated in general, these are things that are not up for debate. The research shows at the same point, though, that men don't see bias. Because the reality is that we don't see it because it doesn't affect us. And that so often, reality is shaped by the cultural cues of the world we surround ourselves with. It's shaped by the norms that we were raised with it shapes by a lot of the things and this is the thing that we tend to surround ourselves by similarly like minded people with like minded attitudes. It is a natural kind of thing to be able to do But it's something that I really became aware of whenever I worked at Starwood. And the reality was, I think star was incredibly progressive company. It was incredibly design driven company. But it was also a very male driven company. And for the nine years that I was there, my leadership team, for the time I was there was majority female for the entire time. But it was completely female for about half of the time I was there. This was a very interesting and enlightening time for me, because I slowly became aware of the fact that these women and I thought alike and we saw things alike 99% of the time, especially the woman who is my head of design. Yet the thing that I started to see and grow increasingly frustrated with was that we were equally talented, had equally strong opinions. In more cases than not, she was probably better than me but This was something that if she made something, if she gave feedback on something, versus when I did it, it was seen heard and action very differently than I would say the exact same thing. And this started to really open my eyes because it was one of these things where I just started to glaze over it before because I think whenever you are the dominant opinion, you will simply assume that there is fairness and everything. Whenever you're the majority opinion and or the minority opinion and something then I think you're much more aware of what goes on there. And that's why I said before, these women, especially the woman who's my head of design, were some of the most creative people I've known. She was honestly the best creative partner I've ever worked with. And we worked together for nearly nine years. She continues to be a massive inspiration for me. But at the same point, whenever I went to this episode, she was somebody that I turned to to just simply ask in those nine years, what were the things What were her struggles? What were the things that she really struggled with? Because I think we had some conversations about it. I don't know that I think I failed in the fact that I never took on that subject so directly as to ask that question that pointedly because I don't know that I really wanted the answer. I don't know that I really wanted to admit that that problem was there. But that's the thing is whenever you talk to somebody, and you genuinely ask what it is that they're struggling with, to hear how she would talk about the thing that I've started to recognize about a lot of the characteristics and the things that were celebrated in men were not and they're almost looked down on whenever they were being done by a woman, how she would talk about how she would need to actually think about the way that she dresses and the image that that would convey so it doesn't come off as too sexy or too feminine. These are the sort of things that as men, at least for me, never have crossed my mind. Maybe it's just not a blind arrogance, maybe I don't know what it is. But I think that this is the reality of this that there are the very blue Very easy to vilify things of harassment of discrimination of the things where this is a conscious bias where someone is going out of their way to demean and lessen another sex, another gender, another sexual orientation, anything like that. This is more subtle. But because of that, I think it's much harder to talk about. And because it's much harder to talk about, I think it goes much more unaddressed. And so I think it has to beg the question of what do I think or what should we think we should expect this episode what is a reasonable outcome? Now, I will openly admit that if you want to find something wrong with this episode, if you want to make me the bad guy, if you want to pick apart my word choice or my phrasing or the way that I did something, I will guarantee you that there will be plenty of ways to do that. I know that because honestly after every major talk, I get I get plenty You have emails from people who will point out the flaws, the mistakes and the biases in the presentation I gave. And that's why I just want to get out there and say that those mistakes may still be there. I'm not perfect, and I don't have all the answers. Perfect is a goal. But I think that it is an impossible standard. No one is going to be perfect. No one will ever act perfectly. But we can be better. And so I hope that the standard that we can walk away from from this is to how do we start a conversation and to start to find a way to make things better. The place where I have struggled as being the recipient of some of those emails is that I have in the past. one that comes to mind most recently was I did a session at Adobe max on building your own personal brand and I there's an exercise in there about building brand archetypes. I got an email from a woman who rightfully pointed out, and it was something that never occurred to me that the majority of the archetypes that were in there, the majority of the examples that I used were men Very fewer women. She was absolutely right. It was not anything that I had done consciously, but it should have been a better mix. The problem was when the email then veered into how I was how I was a chauvinist pig, how I'm so male centric, how I'm blind how I'm part of the problem. And I think this is where we tend to get lost on difficult subjects. Because I think that we are in such a rush to celebrate differences to point out problems, that I think in many cases, it crushes the ability to see another perspective or to have a conversation about that problem. Because it made it very difficult for me to write back to her to be able to say, you know what, you're actually right, that you know what, I was actually biased in the way that I built those archetypes. Because then I have to address the accusation that's there. And how do you deal with that? And I think a lot of cases you do what I did, which is where you just you feel like you're either gonna make it worse or there's not a Way to have a conversation over email. So what do I do? And I've talked before about how change happens from a lot of little things, and how it's like becoming a friend or how it's like falling in love that those little things add up to something big. And I think that that is going to apply here as well. Because I think that there are a lot of people out there who are hurting people who are a part of this problem. And don't necessarily know it. I think that there are plenty who do. And like I said before, this is not for them. This is those are people who I think, for me, that is not part of this debate. But for the broader group. It's just to start to think and be aware that this stuff goes on because there are two types of biases. There's the conscious bias and that is just what it sounds like. It is a decision or behavior that you are actively aware of. I have decided that I'm going to treat somebody as less than me I've decided I'm going to discriminate against somebody based on These certain criteria. And I think that most decent people think that they're unbiased. They think they are that way when the deal in the way that they deal with other people, and they think that they're that way, especially in the workplace, I fell into that category. But as I said before, I think the thing that you will see, and the thing that you find is that it's rarely the case. Despite our best intentions, most of our biases are unconscious. And as a result, I think then that good ethical behavior is not then is quite as easy as it may appear. And consciously wanting to believe that you're acting ethically isn't enough. And I think that's why I wanted to do this show is because I think, one it's an incredibly hard subject to talk about, if you're talking to a lot of people whose initial reaction was probably going to be that they don't have a problem. I was one of those people. But I think that you have to actively manage your unconscious bias and really figure out how can you remain vigilant about the ways your decision making is compromised by forces that you may not even be able to control. And I do want to make the point here because I think it's easy for us to think that well, since this is unbiased, there's nothing I can do about it that you know, if I listen to this episode, then I'm off the hook and I don't have responsibility, you know, to do or anything or to be a part of this. If you know me, if you listen to the show at all, you know, that is absolutely not going to be the case. The reason why I wouldn't bring it up is because I think we're all flawed. believe whatever religion you want believe whatever approach you want. A lot of them will tend to embrace that core belief. But we need to start to understand these things so that we can start to figure out how can we be better at it. Now, I did a lot of research going into the show again, this is what I said this is why some of these some episodes take me an hour to write some will take me months this falls into the latter category. But in doing a lot of this research, I really found it was surprising To find that there are actually nine different major types of biases that I think affect most people. And so I just want to kind of walk through these. And whenever I'm going through these, I want you to think about whenever you've hired people, for your team, whenever you do promotions, whenever you do reviews, even down to whatever you do conversations, which of these might be influencing you, which of these might be forces that are starting to act on these things. And so the first one is going to be a conformity bias. And there's a very famous study that's been done and it's been around for decades that conformity bias really relates to a biased caused by group peer pressure. And that is the fact that even if you aren't sexist, even if you want to treat everyone equally, if you're surrounded by leadership team, if you're surrounded by peers, if you're on social media, if you do if you really surround yourself with With a group that only thinks in a certain way, there is then the pressure to conform, to think and act the way that they do. Even if it's against your core beliefs, even if it's against to be what you want, you will fall into line because it's just simply again, easier then to stand up to the group. And so I think that this is something that happens a lot of times, if you see, you know, a lot of times if you have a boss that has a very big personality, if you have a boss as a very particular sense of humor, a certain approach, you will look at the one downs from that person and you'll start to notice them change, they'll start to take on that sense of humor, those mannerisms, that those sort of things because they want to conform because then through conformity, they're more easily accepted or more easily recognized because they're acting the way the superior or the group does. And that really is a problem. Now another one, and I think especially this conversation becomes very relevant is that there is a beauty bias This is where we tend to think that the most handsome person will be the most successful. There are studies that will show that taller people, you know, people who are better looking, tend to be the ones that that will be more ultimately more successful. And this can also play in, in terms of just like the physical attributes that people may have. But this is why I think that for us, especially with what it is that we do have the ability to not let this affect us. Because whenever we're doing something that is creative, whenever we are creating anything, we should simply be focused on the work. We should be focused on what that output is, we should be focused on what is the process of the person that is doing that work, the physical appearance to that, again, we're not in a modeling agency, we're not in something else, where that is going to then be a part of the career conversation, which makes it much harder to then disentangle that from a bias. But again, it's just simply looking at do you treat people who are better looking. Do you think that they're smarter? Do you think that they're more successful, as opposed to people who may not traditionally fit into those norms? And how are you acting according to that? There is something called an affinity bias. And this is something that happens, I think a lot in recruitment and affinity bias occurs when you see somebody that we feel we have an affinity to. This could be from a lot of different things. This could be that they went to the same college that we did. Maybe they grew up in the same town, maybe they remind us of somebody we know, maybe they went through a similar struggle had a similar upbringing, there is something where we feel a connection to them. You'll see this a lot of times in sports fans, you know, there are certain teams that I root for. If I see somebody wearing the hat of my team, I have an affinity towards them, even if I don't know them. Because I think that we then have something in common. There's a similar set of core beliefs. There's a similar, you know, point that we can all rally around. But the problem is that here again, especially when you're recruiting people that can blind you to who they actually are that can blind you to make sure you're hiring the best person, not simply the best thing that you're the most affinity towards. And I think especially whenever it comes to creativity, finding the most diverse team, you can, I think creates a huge amount of power. Because if I get people that all think the same, if I get people who are all kind of looking at the world the same way, the ideas are very vanilla, they're very one dimensional. It's in the conflict. It's in the difference. It's in the finding people who had a very different upbringing, who went to a very different school who believe in things that are very different than me. And that's the part where the more interesting work comes out of it. Now biases may also come in things that maybe are a little less, I don't know what viewed as a bias there may be a little bit more of like an effect. So there's something that the whenever you research that is actually called a halo effect, and a halo is when you see one great thing about a person and you let that one great thing, that halo effect Your opinion because that's the only thing you see about that person. And you're of all you really in all of them, you admire them because of that one thing, and you ignore everything else. I've had a lot of personal experience with this with leaders who came from particular school that worked at a particular place. I've known dumb people that work at Apple. I've known people who are not very good at their job who worked at Google or Facebook, like, because but that's the thing is when people come in, they're like, Oh, my God, they worked at Apple, oh my god, they worked at Google, Facebook, like whatever it is, whatever the thing is, whoever their mentor was, whatever that is, where you just suddenly become blinded to everything because you just naturally assume that since they were there, well, they had to be amazing. Yeah, I know plenty of people with big titles, plenty of people who have worked in big companies, who are not amazing. But that's the thing is that again, you have to treat people as people, not as this sort of effect not doing the sort of thing where you become blinded to the reality of it. There's been an inverse of that. And I think that this tends to play out probably a little bit more whenever you actually work with people, which is there's a different effect called the horns effect. And horns not as being like a trumpet, but horns as being like, you know, the horns that come out of your head. And this is the direct opposite of the halo effect. Because the horns effect is when you see one bad thing in a person, and you let that cloud your opinion, to all their other attributes. They do something that annoys you, they do something that you don't like. And so again, this becomes a real problem, because then that again, so completely colors, your perspective. And so I think that in these cases, we need to be a little bit slower to judge, we need to make sure that our opinions are a little bit less rounded or a little more rounded and are things that, you know, maybe aren't such quite snap judgments about the way people are. There's also then a bias, quite a similarity bias. And this is the fact and we talked about this a little bit already that naturally you want to surround yourself with people who feel safe similarly to the way that we do. And as a result, we want to work with more people who are like us. I think that you've seen over this last election cycle, how this has really played out over social media. Because I think that a lot of people will want to surround themselves with people who have the very definitive and strong opinions that matches theirs. It's very understandable because that you get a sense of comfort, you get a sense of being right you get a sense of community, you get a lot of these sorts of things, because of the fact that I surround p, you know, myself with people who agree what I believe, they say what I say they post the same articles, they do a lot of these things. But then again, the world becomes very one dimensional. And I think that this, as we talked about gender bias really plays out here because if as a man, you're only hanging out with other men who think the way that you do, your opinion becomes very one dimensional, it can become very distorted, it can become part of this conformity bias. And again, I think the thing that you will start to see is that there are a number of these, that when we're talking about conformity bias or an affinity bias or similarity bias How these may start to overlap, how they may start to kind of border in on each other. Because these really are a lot of just the standard social cues or the standard social structures, that is part of human nature. And the challenge is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, to reach out to look at different people to talk to different people to bring in different perspectives. And I've seen people who like to do this because they want to have a fight. I don't know that I've ever seen the conclusion of one of those where if somebody thinks that something is red, and somebody thinks that something is blue, at the end of that discussion, one person has changed their mind. I think that what we need to do here with a lot of this stuff, is to understand that there are differences, but it is the conversation about these, it's the ability to see the other side. It's the ability to understand that there is validity and the other side is where we may find progress. And I think that that is a key part of a lot of this because like I said, I think a lot of men are incredibly intimidated to go up to a woman and say I think that, you know, maybe I'm being biased because they, I think a lot of cases, they feel like that admission will somehow get them taken straight to HR and fired. I think that you we all hear cases that may reinforce that what I think is a false stereotype. Again, we're not talking about discrimination, we're not talking about harassment, if it is just simply bias and that there are ways that you can be better supporting people the other gender, then I think that's a conversation that we need to have so that people improve and we don't immediately vilify them for it in this case where they may be doing things that they aren't aware of. Another effect is that there is something that is called a contrast effect. And this is where we judge whether or not the person in front of us did as well as the person that came before them. When really the only thing that we should be comparing their skills or attributes to is each individual as opposed to doing it in comparison, because that's the thing is when we start to do This comparison between one to another, we're not being fair, we're starting to become biased because maybe we had more affinity for one person, maybe we, you know, something that we want to surround ourselves with somebody who's more like us, as opposed to judging each person on their merits. And I think that, you know, again, as we talked about gender, that's a lot of what I think we need to think about our conversation that we need to have is that when we look at the work, honestly, are we judging a man's work and a woman's work to be able to look at that free of the gender and say, which is better, as opposed to the bias of again, well, if Amanda must be better. That's not obviously, the way that we want to go about this stuff. And so I think that, you know, for us, it's about hiring the best person, it's about looking at the person who did the best work and looking at it as an individual body of work, to be able to do that to be able to try to align to these sorts of things where we can set a standard as a creative person for what is the target that we want to hit, and then judge those things objectively, against That without having that sort of like a contrast effect in place. Now, there are two more biases to talk about. And I think these get a little more interesting to talk about. The first one is an attribution bias. And this is when we do something, well, we tend to think that it's down to our own merit, and our personality. I always think about this as whenever I see anybody who reads an autobiography, the written Autobiography of Steve Jobs, they will then come back and talk about how you know that they have all of these similar characteristics how, you know a lot of what they did, well, you've done that same thing. So how much they're like Steve Jobs or whatever it was. And so whenever things go, well, it's all about us. We did it. We were the strong one. We were the great one. But then the inverse of that is it's also equally interesting for me to watch that when somebody does something badly. How the event tend to believe that the failing is down to external factors, like people who are adversely affected them and prevent Have them from doing their best. And I think that's the thing is that when it comes to other people, we tend to think the opposite. If someone else has done something, well, we consider them lucky. And if they've done something badly, then we tend to think it's due to their personality or their behavior. So it's interesting how there's this complete opposite that internally, failures are of our successes of our own making failures or for everybody else. But to the outside, it's seen as the exact opposite. That you know, it's when somebody's successful, and I've talked about this before, how they're lucky how it's just, it couldn't have been just what they did. But when it's badly than it is, it's all completely on them. And that I think, shapes a lot of what we do, I think this is where you'll see people who will, you know, become too egotistical. These are people who you'll see will come far too down on themselves. You know, because I think a lot of cases whenever people perform badly whenever people aren't doing well, we like to make it easy. We'd like to make it easy on ourselves for how we're going to dismiss them. Again, this is why, again, having a woman, women in my leadership team, it was amazing to see whenever they didn't do things badly whenever they stood up for themselves, how easily they were marginalized. They're called hormonal, they were called a bitch, they were called all these things to just easily write them off and discriminate against them and to to make that lesser and to somehow justify what that was. But I think also, regardless of whatever the gender is, it's also amazing to me, whenever things go, Well, how few times people say that we did something because again, if we're doing something creative, your success is never of just your own making. But also whenever things go badly how we never want to go ask why. We want to blame we want to vilify, we want to come up with actions and action plans, all these other things but we never sit down and just ask what's going on? You're doing okay. Are you happy? anything going on at home? Is there anything I can do to help? How did we end up here? What do you think is going on? We're very quick to rush to assign the reasons we're very quick to take the easy answer and the easy way out of things. And I think that's where we all get into a lot of trouble is because, one, I think we need to have a broader perspective about what this attribution bias is to understand what is actually going on. So that one we are more inclusive in our successes and that we are less holistically critical of ourselves and our failures. But I think that it's it's just again, part of the human nature, but it's something we need to be more aware of. And the last of these nine biases is a confirmation bias. And what this is, is when we make a judgement about another person, we subconsciously look for evidence to back up our own opinions of that person. So we talked about a halo effect, you're talking about a horns effect. This is where a confirmation bias comes in. And we do this because we want to believe that we're right. Again, it's part of human nature. It's part of our ego and all these other things. But we want to believe we need to believe that we're right, and that we've made the right assessment of a person. I think this comes down in creativity. I think it comes down in work. I think it comes down in gender bias, all these other things, because I think that if you want to find a problem, you will, if you want to find something you need to work on. You will. But I think that so many people are so good at rationalizing why they do things, and what their judgment was and the way that they treated somebody the way that they're going after their career in a lot of these other things. And so I think that it's one of these things whenever I talk about it from a career standpoint, you've heard me talk about success is a choice because That's the problem is that if it is not a choice, you can very easily have a confirmation bias of why the decisions that you're making have or unsuccessful they might be. Well, they're probably the right ones for you to make. But I think that the bigger problem here and for the subject of the day is that whenever we talk about gender bias, as men, we need to think about are we being objective, go out and ask other people's opinions go out and talk to that individual person of the other gender to actually get real evidence, get a broader opinion, don't just simply make a snap judgment and then kind of bathe in the glory that you think is the reason why you're justified in making your decision. So I said, I have done all these things. I didn't do it out of malice. I didn't do it out of intent. You can believe me on that, whether you want to or not. But ignorance is just as big of a problem is anything. And that's really again, I want to repeat that again. That I want to Make the point here that we are all flawed. We all have biases, but we all cannot just simply say, well, it's unconscious, there's nothing I can do about it. We've got to do better. I think for men who are in leadership positions, we are the ones that have to affect and help affect this changed through conversation through equal opportunities through. But that being said, this does not mean that women are somehow some damsel in distress. The women I've worked with are probably far stronger than I am, in many cases far more talented than I am. They didn't need me to come rushing in to solve their problems. Don't feel like you have to ride in and save them. You don't. That's not what I'm advocating here is that, you know, well, men will come in and we'll fix the problem. We understand our biases. What I'm saying is that you have two groups that should be on equal footing, who should be having a conversation about how do they stay on equal footing, and then in some cases may not be on equal footing. And because one side may have to intentionally or unintentionally, not understand why that's happening. And so that I when I think about what can you do about it, because awareness is not just simply enough, I think it is the start of a conversation. But it's not enough. And so like I said, I I have tried to be the person who doesn't want to come like writing in and save them to try to empower every person to to be part of their own leadership to empower every person to be part of their solution, whether or not that was comfortable for them or not. But the things that you can do, to try to help fight this, the things that you can do, to be able to go out and to try to figure out if you have a problem and how can you change it by For starters, a great way to do it is to hold people accountable for bias behavior, and what it is they do. An example being that one of the things that I started doing with that woman who was my head of design was whenever she would say, literally what my opinion would be word for word instead of me going In saying the exact same thing, and then going, Okay, now we get it. The conversation needed to be different. What I hadn't needed to happen was I needed to go in and say instead, why didn't you listen to her? Why wasn't her word enough? Why wasn't her opinion? Good enough? Why? Why do we have to have this follow up conversation where you're looking for me to say, the exact same thing? And then then it's okay, then it's blessed, then we can do it. And I think that's part of being the solution. It's not going in and writing it down with some white horse to save her it wasn't going in and saying the same thing. what it was was really trying to empower her to empower her opinion to make sure that if I saw us as equals, why the fuck didn't everybody else, and to make sure that they knew that there was a problem with that, and that if that behavior continued, they're going to continue to be problems. Because this was a behavior that did not need to happen that should not be happening. And that short opinion was every bit as valid, every bit of smart every bit as good as mine. And that, you know, it's fine. She and I can have a conversation separately, make sure we're aligned, we can handle all that stuff out of the spotlight. But it was to hold those people accountable for why the hell were they doing that? Why were they treating her differently, and to get answers for that and to pull it out into the light of day, and to be able to continue to do that, until she started to be viewed as my peer not as my subordinate until her opinion started to be viewed equal to mine, not lesser than. And, you know, that's the places where, again, I think just something that simple can make a huge difference is that if you see it, in any person, if you see it in any place where that is starting to creep in, it's wanting to know why and and holding those people accountable for that treatment. I think the other thing that I've tried to work to do is to really look at how do you calibrate your team to almost a universal standard for their work, if I took gender out of the discussion and if I set standards for the team that calibrated that at the end of the year, whenever I'm going to rate them whenever I'm going to look at how do they perform that year, that it is based on tangible, measurable and clear goals that are irregardless of gender that are equal from position that are equal across teams, and then at the end of the year, look at that work against those standards without gender personality or any of those other things. Because what I want to try to make sure that I'm doing is that there isn't an affinity bias. There's not a horns or halo effect, it's in there, that you know, I'm not doing a contrast bias or things like that there are very clear standards. So that you know, for us, the ratings are one, two, a five one is fantastic five is you're about to be fired three as you came in and you did your job. But if I looked at the performance of someone who is a three across the team, that that held universally, regardless of again, their gender, their personality, anything like that, that there is a standard that I am clear on that all my leadership is clear on about What is it that we're going to hold them to, to try to again fight that bias to keep that from coming in. And the last thing is, I think that there are things that you can do, there are little things that you may do that need to change that you need to think about where there is bias. One of the things that I've recently become very aware of as I walk into a room full of people, and I will say the words Hey, guys, remember men room of women, to gender bias, it's a problem. It's because again, I have a male bias point of view. And so again, that is the affinity bias that I go to is just simply refer to everyone in a male sense. It's not okay. And it's not done to be hurtful. It's not done to be malicious. But it just also is one less thing that needs to be done. And so again, I think that these are the sort of things is think about the words that you use. Think about the way you characterize people just stop you know, and listen to yourself in a conversation. Again, are you helping to support other people? Are you having to support? What is they're doing? Are you propagating that gender bias? Because again, you know, from my point of view, I'm a leader of a lot of people. And if I come in and use a male term to do those things, that's a bias and it's not okay. And I think that these are the things we need to think about. These are the things we need to work on. But I think a lot of it is also to figure out how do we start that conversation? Because this is another one of those things. Another one of those topics for me that is painful and frustrating Lee, probably overly generic, and it's advice, because I think the reality is that you're going to find we all have found that the situation, the struggle, the issues, the things like that are going to be different person, by person, group, by group, company, by company, but it's about how do you start the conversation? How do you find a way to reach out and to be able to acknowledge that there is a problem and start to work on the ways of fixing it? Because that's the problem is working too afraid to start to have that conversation, it's much easier to name call, it's much easier to ignore. And so that's the thing is go out. Sure, man. Figure out how to start the conversation. Go out and sit down with one of the women on your team and just have a conversation. Ask them is there what are the problems that they're facing? What are the things that they're struggling with? You know, if you're in a leadership position, what should you start doing? What should you stop doing? What should you keep doing to help support them? It's not coming in and saving them. It's not coming in and doing those sort of like male macho things that we've all been kind of trained to be able to do. But it's recognizing that there's a struggle there. It's a silent struggle. It's a struggle that I think too many people are struggling with. And that's what I said is that I've seen it in the emails in the reactions in the conversations. The women that I've talked to, in the lead up to doing the show some of the strongest, most talented, most vocal women who will all say that they're struggling with this. And again, how do they start that conversation? And as opposed to that, how do we start this conversation? How do we start to figure out how to make things better? How do we, you know, do these sorts of things so that there is more awareness. So there's more support, so that if you can have people that are of different genders, they can again, be seen for the creative work that they do for the spectacular gift that this is for the incredible fun that it can be. But do it on equal footing, to do it in a way where again, we can figure out how can we all become better. And for the ones that want to have the conscious bias to continue to show them that there's just no place for it. That day is past the time is gone. It's to what I said. to that woman whenever she asked me about the boys club she was in. If you're in that situation, if you can't find a way to start that conversation, if there are people that are going to continue to look down on you to minimize you to do those things, fuck them, take your talent someplace that'll appreciate it. Because, you know, in some cases, I've seen it as painful as it is, Forrest Gump was right. You can't fix stupid. But if there's a conversation to be had, if there's that way forward, try to have it, try to figure out what that is. And again, even if you don't have the answer, it's amazing what happens whenever you just will simply show some vulnerability acknowledges a problem and try to figure it out together. Because I think vulnerability is the strongest and rarest quality and leadership, your ability to just simply extend your hand and say, Look, I don't have the answer, but I know that there's a problem here. I know that I may be a part of it. I know that we need to work on it. Can we figure out how to do that together. hard, you face rejection, you might face ridicule, but the outcome of it is worth it. And so I'm incredibly curious to hear what people think about this to hear what do you think so this is gonna be the usual thing. I'm on all the social media channels, you can email me, we got the Facebook page, all that stuff. I'm not saying this to show any of that stuff. But I'm curious to hear what other people done. How have you had that conversation? what's worked for you? What are those areas where you have found success? What are the places where you got to where you've had to leave? Are there people who are struggling? Who need to get out of the situation they're in and how can all of us help them to find something better? And so, we're going to skip all the usual schlock at the end of the show. Legally the people everyone down and legal wants to me to remind you that these views are all my own. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. Outside of that we're skipping all the rest you know, the site, you know, the social media, you know, all that stuff. But I don't know. I that's why I said, I don't feel like I have the answers I should. I know that I've been part of the problem, unintentionally. But for me, it's about how does crazy go beyond something that sounds funny? How does crazy go? Beyond? You know what we normally talk about? How does it become something that can make a real difference? This is a real problem, and people are in real pain. And people are being stressed out and having a cause deal with things that they shouldn't. I've heard it in too many the voices of the people I've talked to, and I realized that that's why for whatever risk there isn't this show. If it helps one person and I lose 1000 others, I don't care, because it's worth it, and we need to start to figure it out. So I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to figure out how do we work on this together? How do we go forward on this? How do we take this to conferences or other places? How do we start to have this conversation start to make a difference? So we have a Have those thoughts, right, reach out, do whatever you want. And so until then, and as always, stay crazy