Awareness Is a Leadership Practice: Bias, Belonging & the Human Side of AI

[MUSIC] >> Hello, and welcome to the Imagine Belonging Network podcast, brought to you by Rhodes Perry Consulting. I'm your host, Rhodes Perry, and I am so glad that you're here. So today's conversation is a part of the Lead Embodied Author Series, where I'm bringing together authors whose writing offers us different ways to think and feel about what it means to lead when the path forward isn't always clear. And today we're exploring something that sits at the heart of embodied leadership, awareness, because we can't interrupt patterns that we don't notice. And that feels particularly important when we're talking about bias. Bias isn't necessarily evidence that we're bad people. It's part of how the human brain makes sense of our incredibly complex world. And it seems like it's getting more and more complex every single day. So the leadership question that we're exploring today is, what happens when we become aware of the judgments and assumptions shaping our decisions, our relationships, and the cultures we're creating. And now we're navigating all of this in a workplace, increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, and an intention economy designed to capture and hold our focus. And that raises some important questions. What happens when the patterns we carry become embedded in technology? What happens when algorithms amplify judgments? We didn't even realize that we were making. And perhaps most importantly, how do we cultivate the awareness and agency to choose differently? So today I am thrilled to explore those questions with two generations of leadership thinkers who have a particularly unique perspective on this work. Howard J. Ross is the original author of everyday bias, first published more than a decade ago, and has spent more than four decades helping organizations build stronger cultures and more effective leaders. And now his son, Jake Ross, has joined him as co-author of this new edition, bringing a fresh perspective shaped by his work as a leadership coach, organizational consultant, and founder of Belong Together. So this is not only a conversation about bias, it's also a conversation across generations about what we've learned, what's changed, and what leaders now need to notice. So Howard and Jake, welcome to the show. It's great to have you both here. Yeah, it's always good to be here. I'm super excited. Yeah, yeah. Thank you, thank you. So Howard, you wrote the original everyday bias, and now more than a decade later you've returned to the book with Jake. And so I'm curious from both of you, what did you see in the world, taking place now, and then particularly in the practice of leadership, that's made you both feel that this was the right moment to revisit everyday bias. Yeah, I'll jump in, Rhodes. I mean, I think, well, first of all, thanks again for having us. It's really good to be with you, and it's a real pleasure to be able to do in this with Jake, of course. You know, I think that when going back to the book came out originally in 2014, and as it turned out, came out one month after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, when all of a sudden the entire world became interested in unconscious bias. But when I started writing the book, which was, as you know, it's a good year, year and a half before it ever comes out. You know, if you think back to where we were, Obama was still president. We were having certainly felt like our nation was moving in a positive direction relative to, you know, issues of inclusion and belonging. I'm not that we were in any way where we need to be, but we certainly felt like the trend was in a positive direction. And the book came out, and lots of people were excited and interested in it, and then, you know, it's really started to build momentum. And as you know, unconscious bias sort of took over the industry for a little bit, and you know, all that stuff happened. But we know that there's been a lot of water under the bridge since 2014, and some of the things that we assumed that we were passed were now dealing with again. And I think one of the real challenges that's come up is the notion of whether how much of this bias is unconscious is difficult for people to see, because it feels very conscious. And so when we were looking at the book, there were a couple of things we were looking at, the new book, there were a couple of things we were looking at. One was to go back and check some of the assumptions that I made when I did the original one, you know, 12 years ago, and see whether those assumptions still had out, whether that research still stood up, whether there was newer research and stuff like that, or whether there were other pieces. But both Jake and I and our personal explorations and our professional explorations have turned strongly into the conversation about belonging. As you know, my next book after that was our search for belonging. And Jake's already, you've already talked about the work Jake's doing, and he'll talk more about that. And so we wanted to tie belonging into it. We thought that was really important. And then the other really important component, it had to do with the fact that Jake is now working in the AI field. And as, you know, this whole question of how do these biases that we live with, how does this way of being really, because that's what it is, get infused into technology and get influenced by technology, and an age where technology is becoming much more important part of our everyday life, whether we like it or not. And that has been a real fascinating aspect of it, which is a little bit like one spoke of the umbrella, which sometimes feels like the whole umbrella, because it's so important. So, maybe Jake could talk a little bit more about that. And Jake, you know, I had a question related to this, which is, you know, what is it like to move into this work alongside your dad, and bring your own perspective to a book that's been a part of his body of work for so many years? So, so a couple of different angles for you to begin with. Yeah, pardon me. First, again, to mirror what Howard said. Thank you so much for having, for having us such a treat to be here. You know, as far as bringing the, doing the body of work alongside Howard's body of work, what's it like? I mean, it's, it's all, it's basically just building on my own, my own foundation, right? Because my own foundation came from the things that I learned sitting around at Cook Cross as a kid and, and watching the book process come together and listening to Howard on work calls while I was running around the house anyway. So, it's all things that were ingrained in my, in my consciousness as far as the work that I was doing. So, when my, my own trajectory started to, to lean that way through the, the psychology of belonging and things like that, I just started to notice all the stuff that I was already familiar with. And, and the book is no exception. I mean, there are, there are anecdotes in, in parts of the book that I was editing that are about me. So, you know, so, so it was, it felt very natural in the sense that there wasn't any part of me that I had to stretch to have it fit, per se. But the thing that's really interesting is that, you know, this, this belonging stuff is, I have, I've come my own way to finding that as a field of study. And our, our works have influenced each other, for sure. And bringing in the conversation of AI and the algorithmic bias and all that stuff, it felt like a really comfortable platform to get to talk about the things that I'm really paying attention to, you know, as, as Howard said, I work in AI safety. And so, in addition to my work with Belong Together, I work specifically in AI safety. And so, you know, this narrative of how do we cultivate a more meaningful relationship with ourselves and others in the face of these divisive technologies that are giving us the opportunity to pull away from each other. It's, it's important. And I feel enormously grateful that I have the opportunity to speak about it in such, at such a scale and with people who already have such an understanding of the, the very human elements of this. And, and it, I'm, I'm enormously grateful for the opportunity to get to have a broader reaching impact because I think that this is the kind of conversation that is arguably the most important conversation of our time. 100% and it's, it's great to have you here just to kind of pull the curtain back to hear, you know, to raise our awareness, you know, with the title of the show that there is a department, there is a focus on AI safety. So I'm grateful that you're in that role. And, and look forward to what you'll share as we go deeper in the interview. So just for like level setting, right, to kind of go into bias, you know, we know that this is a normal function of our human brain for better worse. And that can be a challenging idea because we often hear the word bias as though it describes something that can be fundamentally wrong with who we are as individuals as people, right. And so Howard, I know that you talk a lot about this. So, you know, what do you want leaders to understand about the difference between having bias and acting on bias that would be helpful for this interview? Yeah. Thanks, words. I mean, you know, I think the point that you just made is, is really a essential one, which is there's better fundamental flaw in the way we've related to this concept for the most part. And that is we hear bias as badness. And in fact, as, as you pointed out, it's just a fundamental function of the human brain that we literally could not live without. I mean, just imagine what happened if you came up to a street every day and you didn't remember to have a bias against big heavy metal objects with wheels coming your way. You know, I mean, if you had to, or if you had to relearn that every day, it would slow our life to a halt. And so, and so having this ability to quickly identify things, go back to our memory centers of our brain and see what that reminds us of and what we have to be careful about with that is an actual functioning, an important part of our brain functioning. It also is an incredible part of our feeling safe in the world. Now, it's pretty obvious. is how that can go awry if we make assumptions based on small numbers or based on stereotypes or things that don't apply to all kinds of people. And so it does have, it's shadow side, like everything else in life, it says it's valuable side and it's shadow side. But I think that because of the fact that we demonized bias, and when I say we are, also many of us who've worked in the space of inclusion and belonging and diversity and all these things have participated in that, you know, in a lot of cases. We've led, I call them, find them and fix some trainings. We're looking for who's the racists and who's the sexist and how are we going to drive it out there? Or when people raise questions, we shut them down because they don't go to orthodoxy. I mean, I'll give you an example. I had a guy know, not a friend, but somebody I knew through professional circles who were a very good guy, a long history of supporting diversity kind of related things and civil rights and LGBTQ rights and everything. And he called me one day and he said, you just needed some advice. He said he had remarried not long ago and his stepchild, it was 12 years old, it was thinking of transitioning. And he said he completely supported the child and whatever path they were going to take in life had no problem with that aspect. But was concerned about a child of 12 making some permanent decisions around that issue. And he just was concerned about that and sort of felt uncertain about it. Well, he shared this with some younger people at his staff and was immediately branded as a transphobe and people almost tried to cancel a matter of the organization. And I think that those kinds of reactions on our part in the DE and I space sometimes have contributed to what we're seeing now, which is this backlash, which you either agree with me or you're evil. And we know that these are complex issues and challenging issues of personal issue on a societal level, on a normative level. And often, people's confusion is misinterpreted as resistance. And so I think from both sides, we need to do a much better job. Oh, yeah. It sort of reminds me, we had a conversation I think years ago now around the moral matrix and that body for great. And really just the right versus wrong versus really seeing the humanity in each other and what's lost in that. So I appreciate you sharing that. And I think slowing down a bit, I mean, this conversation is about awareness. So Jake, I wanted to go to you. This is something that one of the core ideas in the book is that we can't interrupt patterns that we don't notice. And so you both offer the pause model, which I think is great. I like a good acronym. So it's pay attention, acknowledge your assumptions, understand your perspective, seek different perspectives, and examine your options. And so what does it actually mean to pause in the middle of a real leadership moment? You get grabbed by something, maybe in the example that Howard has offered some of the younger staffer just like they're caught in a grab. And they're not even in kind of the frontal lobe. They're just reacting. The lizard braid is doing its thing. So when we're under pressure, our brain is already moving quickly. So what's some of the guidance that you offer of like how to actually implement the pause model just to slow down a bit and to notice, right? To notice what judgments might be in front of us. So I'm open to examples from either of you all. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing when it comes to any given opportunity to practice our humanity is to practice our humanity by way of our role as a member of humanity. You know, there's a, I mentored Eckert Keltner did a bunch of research on awe. And his work on awe showed that when we feel a sense of awe and tapped into the grandness, you know, when we acknowledge the bigness, the magnificence of the world around us, the universe around that, we get into something called the small self paradigm. And the small self paradigm is this notion that we are actually a part of something much bigger than ourselves. For some, it's a community, a place, a race, a human race. And one of the things that is the most easily tick, pardon me, one of the things that is the most easily taken from us in the world of being lost in technology is our role as a member of the broader human race. And in these moments of leadership overwhelm these moments when we have something that grips us and grabs us and we need to take a pause, you know, I know it's silly, but eye contact, you know, touch, shake somebody's hands, like look somebody in the eye, if we're really spun up about something and we have the opportunity, Share a hug, take some deep breaths with another person, but really activate that oxytocin experience, that specific chemical that reminds us that we are one of many, right? You know, we have a chemical in our brain that reminds us humans that we are a part of a broader tribe. And when it comes to, when it comes to how to lead effectively, the best leaders remember that they are simply members of the same human race who are supporting others, not commanding them. Well, you know, the gift of leadership is to hold others up and not push them down. - Hmm, yes. - Roads, if I get to something else in addition to that, I think, you know, if we think about the leadership model that most of us been exposed to, you know, certainly in the US and maybe in Western civilization in general. It's very much a model that appreciates and values certainty and does not value contemplation. And so, you know, we see this all day. You know, I remember years ago, I was talking to a professor from India, an Indian professor who's here in the States and somebody asked me to meet with them and we were talking and as she said to me, you know, there's this joke we tell about Americans, but Americans never get the punchline. And I said, what's the joke? She says, the joke is, what do you definitely ask an American a question? And I said, what's the punchline you said, the answer? Because of course, in Eastern cultures, the contemplation of the question is the value. You know, the Zenkoan being the great model for that, of course, as well as other things. And I think what we see is that we tend to value leaders who are blunt and certain, look, I think this is a lot to do with Trump's appeal to many people. He just starts what there is to say with their people. We've heard how many times have we heard people say that, right? There's something that he knows what he's going to do. You know, there's a leader who stops and says, you know what, I'm going to need to think about that a little bit. Or even take some moments and says, you know, let me stop for a second. Let me just think about that. Oftentimes has a self-judgment associated that because of those expectations, am I going to look weak? Am I going to look weak if I don't have the answer right like that? And I think this is something that we suffer with. Not only that the leader suffers with in terms of making good decisions, but that we all suffer with because those decisions are often rushed and they're made with less information than would be valuable because we just can't afford to be looking like we're uncertain. And so I think that's important. - I'm really glad that you added that. And I think there's nothing more powerful than a question because it's not that we're going to arrive at an answer. It's just that it can generate more ideas. And on a team, you know, in a collective environment, that can be really powerful because collectively, there might be a shred of an answer in that, right? And Jake, I like what you were sharing about the oxytocin and bringing a pause back into the body as a marker to slow down. And that's where I want to go with this next question, which is bringing our bodies into this conversation. And so we often talk about bias as something that's happening up here in our thoughts, but our bodies can also respond before the conscious minds catch up, right? Often we're feeling something before our brains are making meaning of it. So we might feel that tension or like, attraction discomfort, something like the energy of the room is not quite right. And so I'm curious, you know, what can our bodies reveal about bias before our minds have fully put words into what we're experiencing? You know, is that something that you touch on in the book or do you have some insights on this that could just add to, you know, the conversation and where we're going? - Yeah, I think well, for one thing that we know that bias operates from the fear center of the brain larger 'cause it's a safety mechanism. So that, so what you said is in fact, we know scientifically true and that is that we experience those feelings before we know we are. Some studies show that we might be experiencing fear for as much as seven seconds before we have a sense of we're afraid, that we're actually beginning to exhibit the body sensations of it, which link very much to our emotional feelings about it and all of that, as you know, is an aromatic process that happens to body and the emotions are completely connected. And so the, and this is one of the reasons where the pause model came from because we began to see, you know, I mean, as I think, you know, I'm a meditation teacher also and I began to realize for myself that one of the tools I could use just kind of slowed down that processing was to, you know, I'm not gonna sit for 30 minutes and necessarily, but even to take one or two minutes and just to sit and say, all right, check in with my body, where am I feeling? Is I'm feeling some tension? Usually if it's in my throat, it means if there's something that needs to be said, sometimes it's a bit of a problem. if there's a whole system of the body, as you know, the somatic system that we can begin to learn. But the great thing is that the body is always happening right now, a breathing structure. And when we consciously say, okay, I'm gonna stop and slow down my breathing for a minute. So if everybody who's listening to us could, in the next 15 seconds while I'm talking, just notice your breathing. And as you're noticing your breathing, you'll begin to see that the body settles a little bit. And what eliminates is, oh my God, what's gonna happen? And oh my God, what happened? And because right now I'm here at the moment. And so one of the things that we should, so just to give you a very real example of this, I did a lot of work with police officers in the time shortly after George Floyd was murdered, particularly. And actually earlier, even after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, and over that time, I probably, I worked with hundreds of police officers. As a matter of fact, we used to do our unconscious bias learning labs and we made them free to anybody in law enforcement to come in to do those as well. And one of the techniques that I started to teach police officers was that when you're on the way to an emerging crime scene, to just focus on your breathing while you're, whether you're driving the car or sitting in the car, you don't have to close your eyes, just focus on your breathing. And it will just stabilize your system so that when you go there, you're just a little less likely to pull that hair trigger, you know? You're just a little less likely to react, to react rather than act, with a particular person you're dealing with. And it was amazing how feedback I would get from people that that's so simple, but it really works, you know? And that's the power of the body. So I think there's a huge opportunity for us to inquire into this more. Now, what are the challenges I have to say with this, of course, is this runs counter to the sort of corporate mindset that's come out of a little bit out of our sexual harassment work and all this stuff, which is don't touch anybody, you know? Jake talked about the power of a hug, for example. I mean, I remember when it was considered to be a good thing if your boss would offer you a hug because it meant that they were warm and welcoming. Now, it's like, you know, if you're a boss, you gotta, you have to have a little calculation, you're mind whether it's safe to do that, even if you genuinely feel those feelings. And so, you know, it's a little challenging when we have these competing dinners. - Yeah, I mean, this is a really beautiful progression in our conversation, and it connects to the series, which is all about leading and body, you know, awareness can create space, space creates choice and choices where discernment, I believe, effective leadership can really begin. And so I'm curious, you know, and Jake, I'd like to go to you, you know, in terms of, you know, once we notice, right, a bias or an assumption, what helps us create enough space to choose a different response rather than just simply, you know, as what Howard was saying, just kind of acting from first judgment, you know, letting the lizard brain take over and a reaction happens where it's like, you know, it might feel good in the moment, and then you're looking at kind of the impact and it's like, oh gosh, this is gonna take, it's sometimes years to repair, right, you know. - Yeah, well, it's funny, right? You look at, you look at what happens when the lizard brain arc got instinct takes over, and you know, in a case of being on a podcast with my father, what takes over is you're talking about the body and I have a call, oh, actually, I want it because I want to make sure that you hear that I have something to contribute. And so, you know, not two minutes ago, we just had this where I'm like, oh, pick me, pick me, because my inherent system is that I want to make sure that you know that I'm not just being here as my dad's son, that I actually have something to contribute. And the result is that my body jumps because I have something to say. You know, and so we look at this and it's wonderful to get opportunities to look at these things and remember just how magnificently human we all are, right? And that, you know, the one thing I will say about as far as how do we, I mean, you're talking about repair and the only lesson is the one that we, that we aren't honest about what it teaches us. Oh, I'm sorry, the only lesson that is a waste is the one that we are not honest with ourselves about what it teaches us, right? And so I think that there's two pieces of it, the question, which is how do we manage that instinctive reaction and that such that we don't respond in such a way? And, you know, I think for me, the key to that is always vulnerability and authenticity. Like, if I'm having a stressful day and somebody's coming and is jumping at me and knocking at my door, the door of my office six times in 30 minutes, it's like, get out of here. I got stuff to do, you know? Whereas if I come in and that person's like, "Hey, I'm gonna need to talk to you later." And I'm like, "Hey, I'm really stressed out. I wanna hear what you have to say." And I just need to, I'd like for you to meet me in that I'm a little overwhelmed right now. So let's work together on how we can be partners and me being overwhelmed and wanting to support you and you needing support and wanting to get the highest quality of my time and attention. And, you know, how we're touched on a point that's really important, which is that we do have this sense where we have to calculate as far as, you know, the appropriateness coefficient. But at the same time, there is a fun shift that I have noticed. Now, of course, my point of view is skewed because I live in the Bay Area. So my experience of the way the professionals relate to each other is very different than how a lot of the world does. But what I will say is that I have noticed a shift in the Bay Area and in other places around this invitation to be more human in the workplace, right? And I think that it's really valuable when we're talking about tapping into ourselves and about not having coming from reaction because pardon me, if we walk in and we're wearing three different masks on top of each other, then, you know, one of those masks is I'm a parent who has it all together and I'm kind of underwater. One of those masks is I'm a boss and I need to make sure that everybody knows that I'm well-structured and that I'm on the ball. And another one is, I'm this person's mentor and I have to make sure that I go out of my way to really uplift and coach and guide them. There's not a lot of space to actually know who I am that I'm offering, right? Like who am I authentically that I'm offering that? And the result of living inauthentic, the emphasis on that word was wrong. Yeah, the result of living inauthentically is that we lose sight of why we're doing these things. And when we lose sight of why we are where we are, we stop coming from who we really are and we start coming from reaction, protection, defensiveness, image management. And it's a lot of words to say, tell the truth. You know, if you're overwhelmed, the name that you're overwhelmed, you're a human. We're not supposed to be super human. Life or fighting has a whole song about that. - I love that. Thank you for just using yourself as a model too in this interview of kind of like when kind of getting stuck in a grab of, you know, strategies or ways to bring yourself back to the moment and notice what's happening to slow things down a bit and to be in choice, right? Not just to allow, you know, that reaction to overtake, real agency that you have and how you want to show up and how you want to be. So thank you. That's real time modeling. And I think that's the best way of sharing and connecting to those folks listening to really understand this in a different way. Yeah. - Rose, I just, I just want to comment on this. You used to term a couple of times and I love it, just turned what you said when the grab comes. And I think that's a really beautiful way of characterizing what happens when things like this happen, which is we do feel grabbed by something and in the case of bias, more times than not, we know way more times than not. We have no idea, it's not only do we not know what's grabbing us, we don't even know we're being grabbed because we tend to think of bias in terms of an action or an attitude about a particular thing, but actually bias builds our identity. You know, the Christian mystic Thomas Merton who's been one of a teacher who I just found beautiful to read over the course of my time with many others as well. Talked about this in terms of how we have one mask that we deal with the world and then we have our essential self and when that, especially when a mask is tied to our survival and when it goes on for long enough, we forget that the other part of us is even there, but that other part of us is still running the show. It's still pulling the levers. It's a little bit like, the metaphor I like to use is like in the Wizard of Oz when you put, when Toto pulls back the curtains and you see the Wizard with all the levers and all the big things, just fake. And so I love that idea that it grabs us. It just pulls us off our center and moves us into the direction it wants us to go. Whether that's appropriate for the circumstance or even certainly, absolutely. And that word, that way of relating that goes to Richard Strozi and his work from the Strozi Institute and I think it's, yeah. Yeah, and it's, it's, it's really helpful to understand and to have compassion when we're when we're in the grip of it, right? So I want to I want to pivot to what's in the book and what makes the second edition unique and you know there is a chapter that's focused on artificial intelligence and I think that's where this conversation becomes especially an on an urgent or relevant to these times, right? So we often talk about technology as though it's it's it's objective, you know, because it's mathematical, you know, or automated. And Jake, I know you're you're in the safety department of an AI company right now. You're seeing you are kind of looking here with Toto kind of looking behind the curtain a little bit. So you point out in the book that bias doesn't disappear when it's automated and this is the scary part. It can scale, right? So Jake, in your role, like what you're seeing now, you know, what happens when we outsource more of these nuanced decisions to AI systems that for many of us, we may not fully understand. Yeah, that's a great question, Roads. I think that one of the things that, well, there's a phrase that I've become fond of using which is weaponized confirmation bias and it's this notion that we can AI and social media and the two of them combined and that the way that social media has any given pocket of people on it that we can access who think like us. And an AI system in LLM, if you bully it enough, it will tell you that whatever you want it want to be the truth is the truth. And it's gotten better about this, you know, when when chat GPT first debuted, there was a number of legal cases because it fabricated legal precedent for lawyers. And you can look that up. That was a case that went to trial. So lawyers tried to go to trial with evidence that was false, that was fabricated. But, you know, when it comes to these conversations and we're engaging with the, you know, objective, true thing what it used to be, right? And there's this sense that we look to technology to, I mean, I'll probably catch flat for saying this, but we look to technology to be the God that we used to seek in religion, right? People came to religion because they saw guide, instruction, and an answer. And the problem is that when your God sits on a screen across from you, instead of high above you, there's a very different capability for relationship. And the idea that we can find a way to have anything that we believe be true means that we're not questioning anymore. And it's funny howard made the joke about what do you ask of an American or what do you get an American when you ask the question as you get the answer. But the truth of it is, and it's not just Americans, but it's what do you, what do you get when you ask a person their opinion? It's you get the answer. And that's where we're at right now is that we are not questioning anymore. And there's a particular flavor of necessity for this in the realm of epistemic humility. Epistemology, the study of how truth becomes truth. So epistemic humility is the idea that essentially it's a willingness to accept that we don't understand what the truth actually is and how the truth actually is the truth. And there's epistemic humility is becoming rarer and rarer because we can either track the entire history of how a subject came to be or we can prove ourselves right. And the result of that at a larger scale is that we stop questioning how do we be more human in one way or the other, how do we be a better leader for these people and instead look at how do I be better at being who I want to be right now? Yeah. So what's important here for leaders to understand, you know, before, I mean, using the word the God or using AI as a way of like being this all-knowing source, you know, before they outsource these kinds of decisions, what's what's really important here as a takeaway for for either of you. Yeah. What they did, one of the things is that we are using tools that are more powerful than any tools that we've ever used relative to in the domain of what they do with a aesthetically little understanding of what they are, how they run, and what they're actually doing. And you mentioned before, you know, people have this notion that, well, technology is free of, you know, all the distractions there for, you know, well, in fact, you know, we say artificial intelligence, we know the human intelligence includes some bugs and we just talked about that when we talked about bias, you know, that we know the bias is part of human intelligence. So we create artificial intelligence, we actually replicate the same thing and I'll give you, you know, my favorite example lately is this study that they found around what I'm calling algorithmic homophily, you know, the term homophily means love of self or love of same. It's the kind of thing that has us feel more drawn to people who are like us. And in fact, you know, one of the mistakes we've made often in accusing people of bias, whether it's racial bias or gender bias or like, is saying, you didn't hire the person because you don't like black people or trans people or whoever, you know, when in fact, they may have hired that other person because they were more like that they were drawn to somebody like them. That's what they were drawn away from the other person. Well, as it turns out, the AI systems have developed algorithmic homophily. And for example, something like 94% of major corporations now use AI bots of one kind or another to sort the initial sorts of resumes. You know, you get 500 resumes in the AI says here are the 50 you should look at, you know, tremendously valuable in terms of saving time and effort and all these kinds of things. And these, these things are built on different language models. So one of them might be built on chat, one of them might be both applaud one on German, I want to grok whatever, right? And of course, people send in their resumes and 9 out of 10 resumes today are also built on some or at least assisted by some language model. Well, it turns out that the language bots prefer resumes that were drawn on their same model. So in other words, if a chat rest based resume comes in to a chat based system, it's as much as two thirds likely to approve that. Whereas if a Gemini based resume comes into a chat based system, it's as much as two thirds less likely to. And so it's basically replicated this sense of homophily and how it plays out in terms of choices that it makes. It's quite extraordinary, you know, but the challenge is that we've jumped ahead to use these tools because they look so cool and they do provide us with them. I mean, it's remarkable what they can provide it with. And when one of the things that Jake and I were really careful to say in our writing and we say whenever we do talks like this is we are not pro or con on AI. We see both the value of it and the risks of it. And it's not going away anyway. And anybody who thinks that it could stop it from moving forward is just being silly. Somebody asked me recently, what are the five most important HR issues of our day? And I said, I don't know what the five are but three of them are AI, you know, because it is so much part of everything. And so I think that it's really important for people to take the time to at least get a rudimentary understanding of how these systems work. Just like we found that in our work on bias or belonging, that lifting the hood and understanding why humans do what they do was an incredibly important access to being able to address that issue. So thank you. I mean, this is now there's many other questions coming up for me. And it's this I imagine in the book, you know, as you're kind of writing about these things, you're offering your take on how to address this to scrub bias and if AI in all aspects of HR, just looking at the issue of resumes to give people a shot at being considered for different roles. What is when we talk about the attention economy, where should the focus be going to to ensure we're trying to scrub this out of these systems at scale? And Jake, I don't know like in the newer role that you're in right now around safety, if this is I imagine this is one of many conversations you're having. You know, this is a question I'm sitting with and I'm sure, you know, it's a question that many people in the audience are sitting with as well. So really interested in your thoughts here. Yeah, well, I do want to clarify one thing, which is okay, I'm not an AI safety researcher. I work for people who are way smarter than me who are doing that stuff. So it's not it's not mine to comment on the actual systemic operations, for at least not from that lens, but what I will say is that systems can't be scripted bias in the same way as humans can be scripted bias because, you know, we're training on historical data that is rich with bias, you know, and there's this experience that we talk about about this Zillow debacle. where Zillow built an AI to try and evaluate homes and without bias, because everybody had their historical racial bias about, you know, for a first specific, specifically in this case, his neighborhoods that were historic, the neighborhoods of color. And the system integrated pricing data over, you know, 7,500 years to evaluate the value of those homes without bias. Not, of course, knowing to, not, of course, not knowing to, not consider that particular influence on the value because it's not known as a historical, from a data perspective, it's not known as a historical framework, it's just the truth, right? And so these systems are telling the truth as they understand it, which is based on the historical truth, which is that systemic racism has been embedded in every different flavor of our culture. Now, there's currently a lawsuit against workday, I believe is the name of the company, that evaluated 1.1 billion resumes. And it was brought to attention because somebody had submitted like 150 resumes and every single one of them was rejected. And the lawsuit alleges that the AI system unfairly rejected people. And so there's now a lawsuit going on. And obviously, the lawsuit is in progress, you're not supposed to comment on whatever. But, you know, the point is that, if you're looking for ways to either make AI unbiased or use AI to de-biase your systems, you're seeking failure because there's no unbiased data set to train and LLM on, and there's no unbiased human to use as a frame of reference. So the narrative is not how do we de-biase ourselves and our systems, the narrative is, how do we bring them into consciousness, right? The awareness is the topic that we're talking about, how do we make ourselves aware of the ways that we are being biased, acting from bias, and how that's influencing the way that we show up in the future. - I think very similarly, you know, as you know, that often in the D&I space, I was asked, you know, whatever, 10, 12 years since we've been talking about, there were 20 years since we've been talking about the spiced conversation. There were many people whose attitude was, well, no, there's some conscious bias that just lets people off the hook. And I'm sure you've heard that as well as I have often, because it confronts our belief system that bias equals badness. And I think this kind of thing is built into our system. And so when you find yourself in circumstances, like Jake's talking about, you know, when you hear these discrepancies, the tendency is to go back to your assumed belief. And this could be true for any of him. And look, I had it happen to me the other day, the Atlantic, which I generally see as credible in terms of the, you know, the things that they print. And I'm not 100%, but, you know, but very much so. I've printed this art, as I said, I've been a meditator for 30 years now full time and plot meditation. And there was this woman who was a meditation teacher, a Buddhist meditation teacher, and a psychological researcher who was studying, wanted to prove the meditation could be good for people to help people sleep. And her research showed the exact opposite. And the story was about, you know, this whole thing. Now, I've only read about a quarter of it so far because I just have had a time, I'll ask a couple of days. But what I noticed in myself was that my first reaction was to be defensive, you know. And for no reason, other than it, you know, I've been saying it's good for us, so therefore this must be wrong. And I think that that, and that tendency can be built right into our systems. In fact, not can be, it is built right into our systems. That tendency to go back to what's comfortable, back to what we believe, and therefore to defend. And of course, the thing that exacerbates it right now is the cacophony of noise, light and information that we're confronted with all the time. And we know, 'cause research has shown, the condominium showed this in his research, that noise, and I mean, not just sound, but light imaging, all this stuff being shown at, actually decays our ability to make good decisions. We don't make good. This is why Las Vegas cacinos are so loud, noisy, and bright, is 'cause they know that, because you make bad decisions when you're in an environment where you're constantly being stimulated. But where are we constantly being stimulated today? - I mean, that's the other piece that you talk about in your book is the attention economy. And it's, you know, what happens to our capacity for awareness when our attention is constantly being shaped by the systems that are competing for it, you know? And then I'm curious about that. And I don't know if there's an answer to it. It's just a question that I have. Just noticing myself, you know, as I engage with social media and just, I'm curious. - Jake, you know, we talk about Barry Schwartz's work in that regard, 'cause I think it's really relevant. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely look very, Barry Schwartz talks about, he has a concept called the paradox of choice. And it's this idea that the more choices we have to distinguish between and to pick from, the more overwhelmed we get, and the less capable we actually are of making choices. You know, and you roll that into the narrative of attention span, right? The dramatically shortening attention span. I mean, there was a recent article that I read about how there was a film professor who was showing films to his students, and not a single one of them made it through the film without checking their phone, going to the bathroom, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, it just, we continue to lose our attention span because our attention is, yeah, commodified. But it is, our attention has commodified, and every, our, you know, this is the most valuable real estate on the planet, right? And so these dopamine hits, our systems are engineered for dopamine hit after dopamine hit after dopamine hit, and the result is that we don't have time to be aware. - And we can, most people who are probably, this interest have probably experienced this. I mean, one great example I have is with these things, you know, with their phones. You know, remember when the smartphones first came out, there were two or three kinds at first. There was the iPhone, the Galaxy, maybe one other. And so, you'd say, I'm gonna get a smartphone and people would say, well, let me see. Do I want to get an iPhone or do I want to get a Galaxy? You know, when you kind of study both. Now, it comes time to get a new phone. I'm kind of getting close to time to get a new phone. And there's now, I still have my iPhone 'cause that's what I choose. But there now, Godly knows how many hundreds of other choices there are. If, at this point, I can't even imagine going through the thing, I'll just go with the iPhone because it's easier. You know, it's easier because I know it, but I'm not gonna take the time to go through hundreds of different models. And I think that's a great sort of a metaphor for what we're dealing with in general with society, you know. We're inundated with so much information, for example, about the world, that what most people do, they actually more than before, when we have less information, go back to a single or a core source. So, it's just easier to watch Fox News or MSNBC all the time. It's just easier than it is to gather all this information, gather information from different sides and process it just easier for me with the 20 minutes a day that I have or 30 minutes a day, I have to do that to go to the same source all the time without even making the conscious choice to participate in my own brainwashing to that point of view. I'm participating in my own brainwashing, but I'm not even conscious that I'm doing it. I'm just making what feels like the easier choice in a paradoxical choice situation. - Okay, so I'm taking a moment for that. I'm just noticing in myself, like I've been grabbed right now. So, I wanna go to this, so are there ways that we can strengthen our awareness, right? Like is this, my argument is like this awareness is a leadership practice and we've talked about awareness of noticing bias, noticing assumptions, noticing where technology is shaping our attention, but awareness isn't very useful if it simply leaves us observing ourselves. So, what does it look like to turn awareness into a leadership practice? So, rather than kind of, I'm noticing what's happening to, I have enough awareness and choice to respond differently. - Well, yeah, I would push back a little bit. I mean, I think to a certain degree, all transformation begins and ends with awareness. And I think often we undermine the value of awareness by buying into the notion and awareness means just looking at things but in fact, what awareness often does is allow truth to emerge that we hadn't, that we hadn't noticed there. And that could be the truth about what's actually causing our reaction or the truth about what we might do to interrupt that reaction. But I think that, I think, or as you say, and I think that the most important component of this is that we recognize that this machine is always doing that. I've said to God only knows how many thousands and thousands of people over the years. The question you should not be asking the question, do I have bias in this circumstance? The question you should be asking is, what are my biases in this circumstance? Because whatever the circumstance is, there are always biases there. That doesn't mean they're necessarily bad. You may have a bias based on some real data from your background that says that this kind of person is better for that job than that kind of person. For example, if you've got a communications person, somebody who got a little bit, maybe a little bit more extroverted and introverted is more appropriate for that job. If you've got a job where people are dealing with a community That's very multicultural, or, or, or. Bilingual maybe having somebody who's bilingual is better for that community with those some of those biases are practical and useful But when we have a when we're aware that we have those biases when we're looking at them and seeing then we can say okay I have this bias isn't helpful in this circumstance or do I notice it but put it aside It's probably going to be there still chattering away, but that doesn't mean it has to run the show It's a little bit like when you put your car When you step on the clutch in a standard transmission car for those people listening who even know what a standard transmission car is anymore When you step on the clutch in a standard transmission automobile the engine doesn't stop the engine still running It just stops engaging the car and moving it forward and that's I think a good metaphor for for how And maybe just kind of reflect on the awareness Practices to have awareness and what you're saying is is noticed accepting that bias is here and is it helpful in the situation to not get run over a car Like the example you used earlier of crossing the street Or will it get in the way of showing up as the leader or the person that you want to be in that moment That might have an impact that would go against how you want to how you want to be in that particular moment So there is some You know, it came up it came up in a conversation Jake and I were in yesterday people were talking about hiring people for warehouses Where heavy lifting was necessary and how the pattern historically was this was man's job And I was sharing that I work with a utility company number years ago and they said this and so I went to the factory Or was it a show and I realized that they weren't even lifting they were using lifting machines now because of OSHA regulations And so there's no notion that a man not to mention the notion that a man is inherently stronger than a woman, which is silly anyway I mean, I know some women who would who is violate that notion really quickly But but even putting that aside for a minute Lifting wasn't even necessary part of this job anymore and yet because historically you had a strong man do it That's that was still a part of their hiring practices, you know, these things get stuck really deeply in our individual Yeah, that's a great example. That's a great example This is incredible. I'm so grateful that you both Put out the second edition of this book. It's so needed The sections on AI attention economy. I'm going to examine very closely I want it to like give you the opportunity of Getting to the heart of what the show is about which is imagination It's it's visualizing kind of the world that we want to live in the world that we deserve to live in and What are we doing in the present actively start to bring that in and You know Maybe imagining a world that where technology supports human flourishing Where difference doesn't determine who gets heard or valued and where leaders have the awareness to notice Assumptions or the power to to maybe choose differently So the question here is if awareness became more of a core practice if we had practices to be more aware You know, something maybe that we can measure. I don't know if that's possible But what kind of world might we create together if if we were just showing up more aware and willing to to engage in that kind of practice? I think that we get the chance to just be with each other You know, I so much of So much of what happens in the world on a daily basis that takes us out of our own experience of ourselves is Is this this part of losing that grounding of being human beings together, right? And so excuse me. So I think that especially as we come into this next stage of human evolution where we are Evolving alongside AI and evolving alongside these technologies I think that what really becomes possible as we see the next stage is that we either See it as a reason to become more human or less and and I think what's really possible as people Take on that awareness is that people will become more human We'll have more opportunity to really connect with each other. We'll have real deep high-quality intimacy Interpersonally, you know, and really really high-quality Relationships because we're actually learning more about where we are overstimulated and taken out of our our experience and our Consciousness and find ways back into it I think for me, you know the the fact that And these systems in particular I'm speaking about AI right now But the same thing is to grant any of these systems that that it allows us to do things so quickly so easily in such a massive scale compared to what we did before Is exciting and dangerous It's exciting because we could do stuff we didn't do before, you know what it takes, you know, to You know almost any part of running a business as you know You know there's things we could do now that we couldn't do before. I mean, you know I you know what I'm doing Of course design right now. I still do it fundamentally from my my background But I'll sometimes use AI is to support and certainly with images and things like that I mean you can do graphic images now that three years ago You have to pay people $5,000 for and you can do it in a matter of minutes on your own computer So all this stuff is there the challenge is as Jake says it's it's the because of the nature that we now relate to the computer rather than two people Can separate us and so I think I think the important thing is going to be that we recognize that the more We use these technologies the more we're going to have to consciously bring in the human side It's going to require us to do more of the kinds of things we've been doing in the belonging work in the inclusion work And I'm not talking about some of the questionable Practices that emerge in AI I mean in D.E. and I when people were finger pointing and blaming I'm talking about the really quality work Did so many people have been doing yourself included for so many years? Rose and that that work actually becomes more important and ever because our fundamental way of operating doesn't take us to people It take us to machines and so unless we take ourselves consciously to people and bring a human element in consciously Yeah, that is the message to end on so the the consciousness of keeping us at the center, which is so so critical and Sadly easy to lose sight of right now So I I really appreciate it and I appreciate you both painting that world of what what is possible, you know, if we have this as an organizing principle, which I would argue is really really important right now so Thank you both. Thank you both for being here Yeah, yeah Thank you Rose, really what place is great So, you know, I'd love to you know, thank you everyone if you've tuned in live. Thank you for being here And and just to remember that this conversation really brought together something deeply human With something that's contemporary, you know bias isn't new our brains aren't new our desire to belong isn't new But the environments in which we're making decisions are changing incredibly quickly And that makes awareness more important not less Because we can't interrupt patterns that we don't notice Awareness creates space space creates choice and choice gives us the opportunity to live and and lead differently So thank you both for reminding us that this isn't about achieving some perfect state of being unbiased It's about becoming more aware of ourselves More curious about one another and more intentional about the the cultures and the systems that we're creating together So again for everyone listening Thanks for being a part of this lead embodied author series. We have one more guest Jess Pettit who will join us next Friday And again, a special thank you to Howard and Jake For sharing your wisdom and the work And so for folks that are listening to this as an audio podcast You can check out every day bias in the show notes definitely get a copy And if this conversation resonated with you I invite you to explore my upcoming book lead embodied and lead embodied path Which is a six-week experience designed to help leaders cultivate greater presence Offenticity and ease as they navigate uncertainty and change especially in these times You've been listening to imagine belonging. I'm Rhodes Perry. Thank you for growing our belonging movement and remember that the leader that you've been searching for Isn't someone that you have to become it's someone that you're learning to return to [BLANK_AUDIO]