Are Your Leader’s Unconscious Biases Leaving Employees Feeling Gaslighted?
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When the level of diversity within an organization declines and begins trending toward homogeneity, is it the fault of Talent Acquisition? And, does hiring more individuals who identify as LGBTQ+, women, people of color, for example, solve the downward trend?
Years of experience has taught me that the answer is…NO.
People often forget that increasing diversity is not just about recruitment, it is also about retention. It does not start with who gets hired into an organization; it starts with the retention of those currently employed. And if you shift the blame, focusing only on Talent Acquisition as the scapegoat, you may find your company overshadowing a larger issue…
Retention.
There is no way to increase diversity if your company is a revolving door for employees from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Strive for inclusion to increase retention and then focus on hiring. It is not the other way around. This is one of the first philosophies I teach in our diversity recruiting training programs.
"There is no way to increase diversity if your company is a revolving door for employees from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Strive for inclusion to increase retention and then focus on hiring."- Jenn Tardy
One specific area affecting retention that gets talked about, but not often addressed in the workplace is gaslighting. According to Wikipedia, gaslighting is defined as a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgment, often evoking in them, cognitive dissonance and other changes including low self-esteem. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and misinformation, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's beliefs.
Image Credit: Introvert Doodles (Source)
In this article, I want you to consider how unconscious bias contributes to the gaslighting that is causing your employees to leave and ultimately negatively impact your ability to increase diversity. Everyone has unconscious biases. The challenge is this: when you are in management, these unchecked biases can shape the way in which you manage and what you judge as an issue or a non-issue and what you recommend as the solution. These perceived issues and non-issues and the solutions that ensue can leave your employees feeling like their experiences are not valid, or that they are—quite frankly—losing their mind.
Image Credit: Inner Integration (Source)
Let’s try an exercise. Imagine being an employee and experiencing one of these scenarios that I hear all too frequently from the job seekers I coach.
Scenario #01: You received an announcement that your peer was granted a promotion—the same peer you often find yourself cleaning up their mistakes. When asked, why them and not you, you are informed that they have strong relationships with the right people and those leaders supported the promotion.
Unconscious Bias: No person should be promoted solely based on others acceptance of them into a network, especially an exclusive one. In this scenario, the decision to promote an employee was based on other leader’s affinity to them rather than if they had the knowledge, skills, and abilities to do the new role.
Gaslighting: You know that “the right people” have exclusive, homogenous networks and they only let people in that leave them feeling comfortable. You struggle with the idea of changing yourself to fit in or remaining yourself and continuing to watch your peers get promoted.
Scenario #02: When you disagree or challenge a concept during a meeting, you are criticized, but when you receive your performance review, you are told that you do not engage enough during meetings.
Unconscious Bias: Communication styles vary from person to person and culture to culture. Some are more direct while others are more indirect. In this particular scenario, a decision is impacted based on the person’s preference towards a specific communication style.
Gaslighting: When you are told that your style of engagement is wrong, it makes you second guess the “correct” way to engage—if at all.
Scenario #03: Although you continue to meet and often exceed expectations on your performance review, when you bring up the topic of a promotion, you are continuously told that you “aren’t quite ready yet for leadership”—with no explanation of what is missing.
Unconscious Bias: In this scenario, a decision to promote is impacted by an unarticulated trait that is averse to the manager’s preferences in a leader.
Gaslighting: With no clear indication of the gap in knowledge, skill, or ability, you begin to think that something is wrong with you—that you are the problem.
Scenario #04: Your annual performance review is the first time you discover that there is a problem with your performance. It appears that even though your manager has been telling you how well you have been doing, there is “someone with influence” who does not perceive you as being as engaged as you should be which has affected your overall performance rating.
Unconscious Bias: In this scenario, the manager is influenced by the people around them regardless of their own personal beliefs and observations of the employee’s behavior and performance.
Gaslighting: The way in which the feedback is presented (i.e., anonymously) can leave one feeling paranoid, wondering who is speaking negatively about their performance, how much power others have to shape their rating, and what they need to do in terms of professional development to have better performance.
Scenario #05: You share with your manager an exchange between you and another employee that was a clear microaggression and your boss says, “I don’t think that’s what they really meant,” and proceeds to convince you to see things differently.
Unconscious Bias: In this scenario, the manager is discrediting the evidence that does not support their view of the other employee, closing their mind to the information presented about the microaggression.
Gaslighting: This is an invalidation of your feelings and experience and may make you question whether you are being too sensitive while on the job.
Image Credit: @Ogorchukwuu (Source)
Consider the psychological danger these employees experience in the above scenarios. No one wants to work in an environment where they do not feel valued, seen, heard and supported. As I mentioned in an earlier newsletter edition, The Hiring System: Part II How Career Coaches and Employers can Support Keesha, here are some ways employers can create stronger environments that increase employee retention:
Hold leaders accountable for the environments that they are creating on their individual teams
Ensure that each leader takes a pledge to, “first, do no harm” to their employees
Ensure that your managers understand gaslighting and how unconscious bias can perpetuate it
When you are in management, the multi-intersection of gaslighting and unconscious bias is a dangerous combination and can quickly affect your ability to retain solid employees and ultimately increase representation. To increase retention, take a moment to pause and listen. Then, act as a support and empower the team to effectively resolve the challenges they face. Always remember, if you are working to increase diversity within your organization, stop trying to fix people and instead, fix the problems they face and watch the positive change that happens.
Join the conversation in the comments. Do you have an example of gaslighting? How do you also believe it affects the ability to retain employees in the workplace?
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