Implicit Bias and Its Influence on Promotions

One of the biggest hidden risks I have seen in leadership is confirmation bias—our tendency to look for what we expect to see in others based on the stories we tell ourselves about them. Once we’ve formed an impression, we subconsciously filter out anything that challenges it and only acknowledge that which confirms it. This is dangerous in management. Hiring, pay, developmental opportunities, promotions and terminations are all influenced by the lens we apply to talent. If that lens is clouded by unchecked bias, we risk overlooking potential, reinforcing inequities, and limiting our teams’ growth. The good news? Awareness is the first step. And as leaders, we can actively challenge our biases to make fairer, better decisions. Here’s how: ✅ Interrogate your assumptions – Ask yourself, “What evidence supports this belief? What might contradict it?” Seek out the full picture, not just what feels familiar. ✅ Diversify your data sources – Don’t rely on a single perspective. Get input from different people who observe the employee in varied settings. ✅ Track patterns in your decisions – Are you consistently giving certain people the high-visibility assignments? Are others always stuck with execution work? Look for trends and ask why. ✅ Commit to structured decision-making – Use clear criteria for evaluations, promotions, and feedback. When expectations are explicit, there’s less room for personal bias to creep in. ✅ Invite feedback on your own bias – Create a culture where team members feel safe challenging your perceptions and decisions. Self-awareness grows when we open ourselves up to learning. Confirmation bias is human. But great managers don’t let it drive their decisions. We owe it to our teams—and to ourselves—to do better. What strategies have helped you combat confirmation bias in leadership? Let’s learn from each other. ⬇️ #ExecutiveLeadership #DecisionMaking #TalentManagement #WorkplaceExcellence #ConfirmationBias

You pride yourself on being a fair leader. A logical decision-maker. A person who judges based on merit, not assumptions. But here’s the hard truth: No one is truly objective. Not me. Not you. Not even the most self-aware leader in the world. Because bias isn’t just a flaw in thinking; it’s how we think. It’s how our brains make sense of a world that’s too complex to process in real-time. And that’s where the danger lies. → You think you're choosing the best candidate, but you might just be choosing the most familiar one. → You believe you're promoting based on performance, but you could be rewarding personality traits that match your own. → You assume you’re listening to all voices, but the ones that challenge your perspective might be the first you dismiss. The real challenge? Bias doesn’t just affect decisions; it affects relationships, communication, and the trust your team has in you. The strongest leaders don’t eliminate bias. They recognize it, challenge it, and build systems to counteract it. How do you do that? 1️⃣ Slow down your decisions. Bias thrives in quick, instinctive choices. Pause before making a hiring, promotion, or business decision. Ask: What assumptions am I making? Who else should I consult? 2️⃣ Cultivate connection through communication. High-trust teams don’t happen by accident. Supervision, mentorship, and open communication ensure every team member feels seen, heard, and valued. Create structured feedback loops and spaces for honest conversations. 3️⃣ Question your “gut instinct.” Many leaders trust their gut without realizing it’s shaped by years of conditioning. If something “just feels right,” ask: Is it right, or is it just comfortable? 4️⃣ Make bias-checking a habit, not a one-time exercise. Bias isn’t something you fix with one training or a checklist. It’s an ongoing process of self-awareness, accountability, and structural change. The reality? Bias isn’t a leadership flaw; it’s a human one. Great leaders don’t pretend they’re above it. They do the hard work of confronting it, every single day. And in doing so, they build stronger teams, better relationships, and workplaces where trust fuels performance. — What’s one time you caught yourself being biased in a decision? Let’s talk in the comments.

Over the weekend, I read a column, “Work Friend,” where a guy wrote to complain that his coworkers giggled too much. His word not mine. Eric's colleagues' giggling really bothered him. At first, I thought, would this guy rather everyone be stony-faced and serious all the time at work? Lighten up, Francis (IYKYK). But Work Friend (new) columnist Anna Holmes surprised me with her response, which I should have thought of myself! She challenged him to consider that he was #sex stereotyping these coworkers. Holmes assumed the “people” that Eric refers to are female - she professed she “never heard the word ‘giggle’ used to describe a sound emanating from a man.” So she wondered if Eric’s real issue included that he did not like the way women sounded when they laughed. Then she told a personal story about calling out her dad about something he said to two loud-voiced women in a cafe that could be deemed to be sexist. Now, I don’t know if the “people” in this scenario are, in fact, women, but I’d bet they are. And, I don’t know if Eric is sexist or misogynistic or just irritable. I would bet, though, that #implicitbias, inherent sexism, is at work here (pun intended). Implicit bias is the natural human process of categorizing “like objects” together and the unintentional and unconscious judgment a person makes based on pervasive stereotypes. Like sex stereotypes. For example, a supervisor who perceives women as less confident than men can lead to women being passed over for promotions. As you can imagine, sex stereotypes harm women in the workplace. Just like microaggressions. According to last year's Women in the Workplace report, women who experience microaggressions struggle to feel psychologically safe and “self-shield” by muting their voices, code-switching, or hiding important aspects of themselves. Code switching is when women adjust their behavior, language, and communication style to fit in with the dominant male culture in the workplace. Look, I know that Eric’s complaint may be nothing. Of course! But it raises an important issue, and that is—employers would be wise to consider what role implicit or unconscious bias is playing in promotions, demotions, salary, terminations, and other terms and conditions of employment. What can employers do? 🤭 Be aware of the existence of implicit bias. Realize that judgments may be based on pre-formed ideas steeped in unconscious bias. Consider your teams, and monitor their decisions. 🤭 Educate supervisors and managers about inherent bias and discrimination. 🤭 Audit your workforce. If the impact of favoring or crediting your male employees over your female employees causes pay or promotion disparities, you may have a problem. Leaders can foster #inclusion so that employees feel they can bring their authentic selves to work rather than the type of “performance bias,” which may underly Eric’s complaint. What do YOU think? #emplaw

I mentor many incredible leaders and the most common question I get is about getting promoted. Excellence alone doesn't guarantee visibility or advancement. What truly matters is how your excellence is perceived. Your reputation, tone, timing, alliances, and even the framing of your results significantly impact your trajectory. Unfortunately, these credibility markers aren't openly discussed—they are implicit and often biased. Our brains are wired to categorize and judge quickly using heuristics (mental shortcuts) because constantly evaluating every detail is inefficient. These shortcuts rely on pattern recognition, which is heavily influenced by societal biases, stereotypes (conscious or unconscious), and past experiences. Credibility markers—like title, network affiliation, communication style, even appearance—become proxies for competence. This tendency is amplified by common cognitive biases. For instance, confirmation bias leads people to seek out and favor information that confirms their initial perceptions, meaning an early unfair judgment can become self-fulfilling. Similarly, the halo effect can cause one positive trait (perhaps an affiliation or communication style perceived as 'leader-like') to create an overly positive assessment of all other traits, while the horns effect can do the opposite. And the fundamental attribution error makes us more likely to attribute others' successes to luck or circumstance (especially if they don't fit our pattern of a leader) and their failures to character, while we often do the reverse for ourselves or those who fit our preconceived notions. Understanding these ingrained mental shortcuts is the first step to consciously countering their influence on how you are perceived and how you perceive others. Invisibility often isn't accidental; it's systemic. Think about meeting dynamics: who gets interrupted, whose ideas require repetition by someone else to be acknowledged, who gets assigned the 'housekeeping' tasks versus strategic ones? These aren't random occurrences; they are manifestations of ingrained biases playing out in real-time. Understanding these psychological and systemic roots is the first step to dismantling their power over your career. You can't fight an enemy you don't understand.

Bias is a bug, and humans have it. We, humans, are inherently biased when evaluating people. Decades of research confirm that the hiring process is biased and unfair. Unconscious racism, ageism, and sexism all play a big role in who gets hired. But it doesn't stop at hiring. The same biases creep into promotions, project selection, performance reviews, and learning & development decisions. Managers often favor those who feel familiar. The colleague who looks like them, talks like them, or has a similar background. Psychologists call this similar-to-me bias: people tend to give higher ratings to others who remind them of themselves. It's human nature, but it erodes meritocracy by rewarding resemblance over competence. Even well-intentioned managers can’t escape these cognitive traps. Halo effects lead us to overrate someone with one great quality, while horns effects make us undervalue someone due to one weakness. We form first impressions and then selectively notice things that confirm our initial opinion. Crucially, we’re blind to our own biases: a phenomenon researchers dub the "bias blind spot," where people (including HR professionals) believe they're less biased than others. In reality, the vast majority of us have biases we’re not even aware of. The result is that we miss out on talent. We make hiring mistakes. We promote the wrong people. We give growth opportunities to the familiar faces, not the best-equipped ones. And we perpetuate homogeneity at the expense of fairness and meritocracy.