What If We Subtracted: Fragility
We can't add our way out of bias.
I’m not a soccer fan, and I’m not excited about the World Cup. But I always like to try to figure out why I might be wrong, so I listened to yesterday’s The Daily.
And thank goodness, because it provided real time evidence for today’s essay. The story they told wasn’t about embellishment on the field or scoring records. It was that people from all over the world are getting close enough to our American-ness to appreciate us as far more than the political headlines, media exports, or cultural stereotypes.
Argentinians are swooning over Kansas City barbecue piled obscenely high. Japanese fans are marveling at our frigid air conditioning, and grateful for ice-stuffed, manically refilled drinks. Scots have so thoroughly taken over Boston, even drinking it dry of beer along the way, that characteristically Bostonians have started calling it New Scotland. And the Algerian team, settled into Lawrence, Kansas for the tournament, found such open-armed hospitality they may book a return visit.
No one was argued into any of it. They were exposed — and exposure did what no diversity lecture or inclusion training could.
June has been Bias month here on Subtract to Succeed, thinking about racism, homophobia, and all the other biases we may have or be judged by. As well as the concept of bias more broadly (and of course the etymology: originally meaning a literal slant, which has come to mean a shortcut).
Over the month’s conversations (they were juicy — links are all below in the PS), and my practice, what emerged is that to outgrow the forms of bias we no longer want to be constrained by, we need to subtract fragility.
I want us to let go of fragility broadly, so we can recognize and value the full range of partners, ideas, and practices that will serve our aspirations. And I subscribe wholly to Nassim Taleb’s prescriptions for becoming anti-fragile, which are what we’ll come to shortly.
But first, in the realm of racism as a specific form of bias, this insight sent me back to Robin DiAngelo’s work, and her book, White Fragility. Her first paper defining this concept opens: “White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress.”
This accurate twenty-first century description of the (a?) root cause of White Fragility, and the cost it has to all of us, white and Black and otherwise, is an important clue about how we can subtract bias.
But first, this month, we zoomed way out to think about bias as a valence-neutral psychological concept. These cognitive shortcuts can sometimes save our lives, or at least mitigate decision fatigue at the grocery store. Kelly Wendorf reminded us that horses have become one of the most successful mammals in all of Earth’s history in part thanks to their bias against migrating during the onset of a thunderstorm.
So it’s not helpful to pretend we have freed ourselves from all bias, or commit to doing so. They are natural and sometimes helpful cognitive shortcuts. The problematic biases are the ones that prevent us or others from reaching our full potential, in service of the greater good.
With great appreciation for DiAngelo’s description of White Fragility, it is actually Nassim Taleb’s notion of fragility that emerged as what we need to subtract in an effort to drop those problematic biases. He describes fragility as undesirable, particularly in a context like today of high uncertainty, and recommends finding ways to be anti-fragile, where we can actually be strengthened by the regular (non-existential) stresses of modern life.
Taleb uses examples ranging from strength training to forests to immune systems to illustrate that when we add emotion or reactions (shame) or external correction (mandatory trainings), we introduce additional sources of harm, and increase fragility. Indeed, research published in Harvard Business Review showed that diversity programs based on pressurized learning, threats, or coercion did not effectively increase representation of non-white professionals in leadership roles over time.
We also create fragility when we try to protect ourselves or others from any level of stress or uncertainty. This is exactly what DiAngelo understands to be the root cause of White Fragility in particular.
The lesson from antifragility is not that proactive efforts to reduce bias are pointless. But that the preferential first line of defense is allowing, or even constructing, tolerable stressors in the form of engagement, exposure, and social accountability. Exactly the ingredients the Harvard research above found to actually move the needle in corporate settings when it comes to improving the share of non-white professionals in higher level roles.
Abi Adamson practiced engagement when she called out her CEO who claimed to have a diverse culture. That undoubtedly stressed him out a bit, but it also led him to give her the power to take over hiring, with incredible results for the team’s diversification over the next 18 months.
Exposure is just what Deb Shine Valentine recommended in our session: mix up the movies you watch, art you hang, books you read to reflect the full array of influences that match the world you want to help build.
And social accountability comes from exploring your antiracism (or people pleasing, or any other undesirable bias) in a learning community, like those that Deb and Kelly and Abi all facilitate.
Secondly, as we proceed down the Via Negativa, we remove unnecessary elements to conserve energy and reduce the risk of unintended consequences. This is what we see in Deb and Kelly both encouraging us to drop self-criticism and shame. When I asked for a single subtraction to move toward anti-racism, Deb answered: “The first thing that comes to mind is to subtract harsh self-criticism. It takes a lot of energy to be hating on yourself.”
These emotions merely redirect our energy away from the important work to be done, sometimes even shutting us down and leading us to turn away from our own biases and their costs all together.
And Abi’s subtraction of credentials that don’t actually correlate with performance. “In order for a garden to bloom, you have to prune. You have to remove the dead leaves or dead wood… so that the thing can bloom.” By removing these artificial hoops, she was able to identify talent that her company hadn’t been accessing. The under-recognized (read why this is an important linguistic choice in HBR here) folks who are an essential part of the contact with difference, increasing those moderate level stressors that lead to antifragile products, strategies, organizations, and selves.
What I’ve seen this month, thanks to these wise experts and my own practice, and the ways they stretched my thinking uncomfortably but without shame, is that we must shed our fragility to effectively counter the biases that are costing us — and the people we care about — the most.
Of course, if we are motivated to hold onto those biases to uphold a status quo that serves us, this is a different story, as Abi rightly cautioned. But for those of us with positive intent, who believe the science that shows diversity is healthy in all systems, whether a forest, a governing board, or an educational community, it is in our interest to work on eroding our biases.
This was never only about race, or any single -ism. Fragility is the thread under all of our biases. The flinch that makes us skip past the résumé with the hard-to-say name, dismiss the good idea shared by the wrong voice, bristles at the colleague whose desk always looks like a tornado came through, tune out the partner who always questions the status quo. Each is a small rejection of difference, and they all shrink the life and the leadership we can access. Shed the fragility in one corner and you feel it fade everywhere.
And remember, we can't add our way out of bias. The most potent antidote is exposure to difference, met with connection, and held in community, with grace. In Deb’s words, "We need to do better, but the path to better is grace."
The World Cup fans didn’t come to the States to dissolve their bias about Americans. They set out to see some soccer games, and the brisket, warm welcomes, and the overcooled rooms and drinks did the rest.
So, over to you. What bias will you poke at, by seeking out some new and uncomfortable-enough contact with someone, something, or somewhere new this week? Keep on rollin’,
Nell
PS If you missed the month’s Subtraction Sessions, cmon back and listen in. They were lively, often unexpected, and always honest.
Abi Adamson inviting you to prune to get the culture your people want and need.