The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Thinking at the Speed of Bias: How to Shift Our Unconscious Filters by Sara Taylor

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

Thinking at the Speed of Bias: How to Shift Our Unconscious Filters by Sara Taylor Amazon.com Deepseeconsulting.com A practical guide to tackling unconscious bias in a polarized world. Learn to recognize your unconscious bias and create positive change. Respected DEI expert Sara Taylor presents a down-to-earth guide on how to tackle unconscious biases and foster true equity in our rapidly changing world. Through relatable examples and practical strategies, readers learn to deliberately slow down their thought processes and become aware of their filters in various situations. Taylor encourages readers to question their own assumptions by asking, "Do I know that what I'm thinking is actually true?" and "Why might I be reacting this way?" The book demonstrates the importance of a clear set of competencies, skills, and strategies for addressing unconscious bias. By developing a culturally competent mindset and using a shared, holistic language to discuss these issues, readers gain the tools to understand, discuss, and implement change both at home and in the workplace. This approach avoids blame or shame, making it accessible and empowering for everyone. The book's insights extend beyond individuals; it demonstrates how organizations can scale up cultural competence to transform their structures and systems. With a strong sense of hope, readers are empowered to make a difference, creating a more just and equitable world for all. About the author Diversity and inclusion strategist, renowned for her visionary work in culture competence, nationally recognized speaker, and bestselling author Sara Taylor is dedicated to changing the world through the workplace by making organizations across the globe more effective and inclusive and their leaders more culturally competent. She founded deepSEE Consulting in 2002 to provide insightful consulting and strategic diversity training, paired with measurement tools to build individual and organizational cultural competence. In her deepSEE Consulting role as President, Sara has worked with hundreds of national and global companies and their executives, including Chief Diversity Officers, Organizational Development and HR leaders as well as staff at all levels throughout the organization. She helps them to understand the full complexities of today's diverse workforce and to build the competencies necessary to create inclusion and equity. Her clients over the years have included reputable companies such as Walmart, 3M Company, AARP, Cleveland Foundation, Coca-Cola, Marriott International, General Mills, United Way Worldwide, National Credit Union Administration, Ingersol-Rand, Seagate Technologies, Thompson Reuters, Thrivent Financial, among others. Prior to deepSEE Consulting, Sara was the Director of Diversity and Inclusion for Ramsey County, Minnesota, where she established a new department to lead D&I efforts for 5,000 employees. She began her career as a Leadership and Diversity Specialist at the University of Minnesota, where she developed state-wide diversity and leadership programs, created and managed a grant program to fund community-based diversity initiatives, and directed the activities of diversity and leadership educators. Sara's forthcoming book, Thinking at the Speed of Bias: How to Shift Our Unconscious Filters (Berrett-Koehler), helps individuals tackle their unconscious bias and empower organizations to scale cultural competence to transform their structural and systematic landscapes to become more effective and equitable. She previously authored the 2017 bestselling book Filter Shift: How Effective People See the World, which is used by numerous individuals and organizations across the globe to increase success and create greater effectiveness. She has been an active member of the Society of Human Resource Management, Twin Cities Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Practitioners, Human Resource Professionals of Minnesota,

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Ladies and gentlemen, the Iron Lady sings, and that makes it official. Welcome to 16 years on 2000 episodes of the Chris Voss Show. We certainly appreciate it.

We crossed the threshold in August and we're on our way to, I don't know, thousands more of interviews. Stay tuned for those and probably another 16 years if I live that long. How old am I? 56, 16. What is that? 74, 73, 72. I don't know. I lived from second grade, as you all know. I don't know. I looked flunked to second grade, as you all

know. I don't know what's going on. Anyway, we always have amazing authors on the show. We have another one today who's going to lighten and brighten your mind and make you smarter. And if not, we're going to have to pull up in the car and come back there and realign your attitude. Go to goodreads.com for us as Chris Voss. LinkedIn.com

for us as Chris Voss. Chris Voss won the TikTokity. All those crazy places on theoss. Chris Voss won the TikTokity. All those crazy places on the internet. Today, we have an amazing young lady on the show, Sarah Taylor. She has her book that just came out July 9th, 2024, called Thinking at the Speed of Bias. How to Shift Our Unconscious Filters. And boy, do we have a lot of bias and filters. I got a lot of filters going on. i go on i go on tiktok and dating sites there's even more filters there that's a dating tender

joke anyway lots of filtered pictures so sarah's with us she's renowned for her visionary work in cultural competence nationally recognized speaker and best-selling author is dedicated to changing the world through the workplace by making organizations across the globe more effective and inclusive and their leaders more culturally competent she founded deep c that's d-e-e-p-s-e-e consulting in 2002 to provide insightful consulting and strategic diversity training paired with measurement tools and to provide individual and organizational cultural competence. Welcome to the show, Sarah.

How are you? I am fabulous, Chris. How are you doing today? I am fabulous, my dear. Wasn't there a show? I think my mom used to watch a BBC show where there was two ladies and there was one. I'm fabulous, darling. I'm fabulous, darling. I'm simply

fabulous. I think one was an alcoholic. But if you remember the show, the two ladies on BBC. So, Sarah, give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs? Yeah, you know, Great Spot is my company, deepseaconsulting.com and then LinkedIn

is also a real good spot to find me linkedin it's such a great place it's the business world of craziness in social media so give us a 30,000 overview what's in your book thinking at the speed of bias yeah absolutely essentially we have so many organizations rightfully saying okay we know that we've got disparities. We've got advantage and disadvantage for some groups. We want to stop this. We think it's driven by unconscious bias. And so then what do they do? They say, just stop doing that. Just stop having unconscious bias. My book is about, that really describes our unconscious filters that help us to understand where our bias relies. And then through really digging into three functions of our filters, three types of our filters, giving practical tools to get in front of it.

So no more of this just, yeah, just stop being biased. Instead, let's use some tools and let's actually get in front of it to create more equity. Yeah. Because when people tell you, you know, hey, stop being biased, eh? You're like, I don't even know what that means or how to do it or what I'm doing or I don't know, what am I doing wrong? Yeah. And because it's coming from our unconscious, we don't know that it's there. And what can be in our unconscious is beliefs that we don't consciously believe. And so that you tell someone, stop being this unconscious bias, they're going to say, but again, I'm fabulous. I'm wonderful. I'm respectful I'm you know

the funnest person on the team it's not me it's my co-worker Joe we're always going to blame it on Joe it's my co-worker Joe or Bob the callback on the show is we always blame Bob for everything oh it's Bob

on the show you can use what you want my apologies to Joe then Joe's an asshole too Oh, it's Bob. On the show, you can use what you want, but on the show... My apologies to Joe then. Joe's an asshole too. He's got some problems. He needs some help. He's been written up three times here in the office, so you're not that far off.

It's either Joe or Bob. It's one of the two. Fucking Bob. Anyway, so you're billed as, you're, you're billed as a D-I-D-E-I expert. Is that correct? Is that a good analogy to use? I want to make sure. Well, yeah, I have been a practitioner for 35 years.

So if I'm not an expert by now, put me in the timeout corner with Joe and Bob, you know, because seriously, I've been doing it enough times. Yeah. I've had everything from, I was a chief diversity officer, I was a diversity specialist, and then I started my company 22 years ago. Oh, wow. I've worked with companies across the globe in this work. I mean, you work with Walmart, 3M, Company AARP, Cleveland Foundation, Coca-Cola, Mariana International, General Mills, United Way, National Credit Administration. We work with some really cool companies to help them deal with their things.

What do you find most people when you come into a situation where you're trying to maybe get people to embrace DEI or try and understand it and have discussions about how it impacts the workplaces and how bias can be communicated that maybe you don't want to have happen. What do you find most people struggle with to do with that? Is it trying to monitor their own self-behavior? Is it trying to be like, why is this important? What do you find is usually like some of the top things that maybe people are struggling with? There are a number of things. One of the first the first though before we really get started working with them is a feeling of resistance because it's you know again like i was saying you know this isn't me and so if you're

going to tell me it's me then you know you're telling me i'm racist or sexist or homophobic or whatever is to Nick and there is. And so people are kind of defensive coming in. And so our approach is very much no blame, no shame. This is just the way our brains work, all of our brains. And let's figure it out. And also the way we frame it is, yes, this work does help. Because if you take unconscious bias, if you can get in front of it and you can make less biased decisions, you're going to have a different impact in the organization that's going to help with equity. Absolutely.

And guess what? You're not going to be a puppet to your unconscious. Like, hello. And so we really take it from that perspective, too, of what's in it for you as an individual. Who wants to be controlled like a puppet by their unconscious? You know, when we ask that, nobody raises their hand. So that's one of the ways that we approach, too, just to be able to be more accessible and approachable yeah and and to not

not say shit that pisses people off or hurts their feelings and you know it's so funny because people automatically assume that that's what we're going to do you know assume that either we're going to start off with holding hands and singing kumbaya or we're going to sit them down and say okay yeah we already know yep you're the most racist and then you're the second most and then the third fourth and fifth you know that kind of approach doesn't work for anyone so not the approach we take yeah especially if hr is filling out that form you are the most racist person in the office two more warnings and you're out we're just we're gonna put you under that what's that thing that hr puts you under where it's like you get heavy monitor and

really it's just a setup to get you out the door. A performance improvement plan? Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, yeah. I run this company and I've written myself up with that five times now. So just waiting to get fired at any moment. And you still haven't given yourself the advice you need to do better, huh? Why should I do that? You probably read your book to find out, huh?

I do a lot of sexual harassment on myself, but that's another story for another show. Sorry, I couldn't let that joke die, but I don't really know what that means anyway. So how did you get into this? Tell us a little bit about your background. How did you go through your upbringing, your career? What kind of motivated you to shape you to get to this point in life? And what was your journey there? Yeah, I'll tell a quick story. You know, for folks that are just listening, not watching, what you don't see is that I'm a white woman. And, you know, most folks don't think about a white woman doing this work, especially for 35 years. In actuality, I have been, since I was in middle school, I was doing speeches in competitions about discrimination and stereotypes and bias. But the story I always tell

at Deep Sea, the definition we use for diversity is differences that may make a difference. You know, you think about that, it's pretty contextual. In one setting, the difference that might make a difference might be my age another it might be my race another might be where i grew up where i grew up i actually grew up on a farm outside of a tiny town in the midwest and youngest of 10 kids can you guess what religion i grew up chris take a guess it's a it's a real stab in the dark Mormon? I grew up Catholic Catholic? Catholic youngest of 10 kids

I guess they do I didn't know the Catholics I mean they had big families I guess back in the day do they still have big families? Oh yeah I don't think the Pope has yet to give the blessing on birth control oh that's true

you want to be a good catholic you don't use birth control i do believe that is still the case what is that old monty python i think it was from the the the life of brian where every sperm should be waste shouldn't be wasted. That's the belief. The baby drops out while the mom's cooking. Can you get that? Right. That's pretty much how Utah works these days.

You just have more than one wife. I think that's the difference between us and Catholics. Yeah, that's the big difference. That's the big difference. You still have 10 kids. You know, I grew up with being Catholic. It was, you know, Sarah, no matter what you do, just don't date a Lutheran boy. You know, no matter where you live, no matter what career, just don't do that. They didn't say anything about not dating a Lutheran girl, so I did do some of that.

But then I go off to the Peace Corps, to the Dominican Republic, and instead of a Lutheran boy, I came back with my black Latino, only speaking Spanish at the time, divorced with two kids' husband. That's a little bit more of my backstory. Good news about my husband, he's Catholic. It just blends right into the family photos you just don't even see any of the differences because that catholicism and so how did you get into you know the specialty you're in that you launched your first company i think you said 20 or 30 years ago yeah so after the peace corps I came back and got a diversity and inclusion job, mainly just because I spoke Spanish. And so I was doing a lot of outreach for the University of

Minnesota Extension with immigrant communities and was a diversity and leadership specialist and did that for a number of years. And then from there was a chief diversity officer for Ramsey County, which is the county seat of St. Paul, Minnesota. And then from there started Deep Sea. Wow. Yeah. So you were kind of ahead of the DEI market, really. Oh, yeah. I mean, I literally, first of all, when I got that first job with Extension, A, that was pre-internet.

So that gives you a sense of just how long ago it was. We had moved beyond stones and sending messages in carvings and rocks. I'm still doing that, though. Not quite to the internet yet. And so I literally remember going to the library like what am i supposed to do what is this diversity stuff what am i supposed to be doing and there was nothing there really was nothing at all and because it really was a new practice then yeah do you think that you mentioned that you did some Peace Corps work and traveling and stuff.

Do you think that helped shape your understanding of different cultures, different races and their cultures? Oh, absolutely. And, you know, have empathy for them, see maybe their struggles, see areas where they were, you know, afflicted with bias or racism, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And in some ways, it started when I was younger because even though I grew up, you know, small, small town, only 1,000 people on a farm, my mom would always make sure that we had exchange students from around the world. They'd come in and they'd live, and I really feel sorry because it, we had a boy's room and a girl's room. And so depending on, you know, we were, we were a tiny little farmhouse and here they're coming from across the world and

they're having to stay in this, you know, old rackety farmhouse. But that's where it first started. Me just like observing and seeing all of these differences from across the world coming into our home. And then in the Dominican Republic, I was able to do more when I was the one that was always the outsider. I was able to do more to just kind of step outside and think, you know, how is it that others perceive so very differently? And start really thinking about that from a place that isn't judgmental. You know, it's not good or bad. We just see things differently.

And that's true even if we grew up in the same town, we are going to see things differently. And that's true even if we grew up in the same town, we are going to see things differently. We don't have to grow up on the other side of the world for that difference to come into our lives and into the workplace. Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the problems like we had Eddie Glaude Jr. on the show, and I think we've had a few other black leaders on the show, we've talked about how, you know, one of the problems with our society over the last 400 years we've been dealing with racism in America is, you know, with redlining, we don't live close to each other. You know, redlining and freeways actually separated a lot of poor and wealthy communities. We've had folks that have come on and written books about how hard it is for, you know, when white people take over, you know, new housing neighborhoods, it's hard for black people to move in, sometimes by affordability, or at least it used to be. And then, so a lot of times, you know,

we're still in our neighborhoods staying within our same racial bias, and we don't understand each other very well because we're not going to barbecues with each other. We're not going to our next door neighbor going, hey, how's it going? That sort of thing. Yeah. You know, I remember, gosh, it's probably 20 years ago now. And a woman that, you know, just in kind of a, it was a local diversity group and she got an award. And so she's, you know, standing up doing the quick speech. And I feel really bad because I don't remember what her name

was, but I quote her all the time because she said that same thing that you're saying, Chris. We live still in very, not everyone, of course, but in very segregated communities. We still go to places of worship that are very segregated. We go work out in places that are segregated over and over and over. We live in very segregated communities and experiences, except we come together in the workplace. when workplaces aren't doing the work that they need to, to make sure that people understand each other, you wonder why there is conflict and misunderstanding. Pete Most definitely. I think it was in Martin Luther King's junior speech, Knock at Midnight, that he did, I believe, in the Birmingham jail. And he talks about how, you know, even back then, we don't pray together in church.

Pete Yeah. Pete Of course, one of the issues he was addressing was the black and white separation of church and how black people just had to go form their own churches so they could pray together. But, you know, not a lot has changed, really, when you come down here. No, it really hasn't. there was one study where it asked folks how many, and we're talking race now, but of course there are a gajillion other differences that we talk about and that we need to learn how to interact across. But when you look at just race in the U S can you take a guess how many folks have significant relationships with someone of another race? Any guesses?

What percentage have a relationship yep i'm gonna tell you it's low either or a significant relationship i would say maybe five percent yeah less than three in some cases yeah i was close yeah yeah we we've had this discussion several times over DEI on the show. And yeah, we don't interact with each other. We don't understand each other. Our cultures are still very different. You know, I still don't listen to rap or get into rap.

I'm an old school rocker. It's not because I'm racist. It's just I don't get it. But it's kind of every generation has their music per se. But I mean mean it seems nice from afar yeah yeah have fun do what you do yeah yeah and you know an exposure is only one very small step and the real piece is how do we develop an actual competence to be able to see the complexity of differences and interact and be our most

effective selves. So why, what are the, you talk about something called civility and you talk about incivility and civility misperceptions. Can you flesh that out maybe a little for us so we can understand how to be civil? Because a lot of people aren't doing it on X right now. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And in so many places, folks aren't. So a couple of things. First of all, when I hear folks kind of complaining about the current situation, I hear it referred to civility and civility almost like it's a switch. Like we either are civil or we aren't.

And like it's just kind of, yep, we have it, no, we don't. And in actuality, what we know from our field and specifically from the field of cultural competence, what we're really looking at with civility is, is someone respectful? Is someone effective as they're communicating with you? And guess what? That's determined by our cultural groups. It's determined by the groups that we're a part of. And so what we know is that it's not a switch, I have it or I don't. It's a developmental ability. I develop my competence to be able to see and respond to a deeper complexity of differences. There are actually five stages of this ability. So, think about anything else that you develop, you know, like from beginner to intermediate and advanced and so on.

The first three stages, our unconscious is in complete control and making decisions for us on a moment-by-moment basis. We can dig into that more if you want to, Chris. And unfortunately, the vast majority of us are in those stages. And the second stage, so think about it. Let me just kind of step back a bit. If you think about what we're asking everybody to do is operate in a situation that needs a fifth stage level of development. But when we have folks that are, what some would say, incivil, that's actually a marker of the second stage of development. A second stage where it's all about, I'm right, you're wrong. I'm good, you're bad. And I'm going to shove this in your face. And I'm just going to prove to you how I'm right and you're wrong.

That incivility, if you would, if you want to use that particular term, is actually a reflector of a lack of cultural competence. And so instead of imagining we can just flip the switch, now let's make them civil. Instead, we need to realize that what actually needs to happen is folks need to develop progressively this skill of being able to see the complexity of differences around them and then respond to be more effective. Ah, that'll do it. So as people, do you get into the microaggressions thing? I know some people talk about that. Tell us about what microaggressions are and maybe some examples. Yeah, absolutely. Microaggressions, I take a look at it from the perspective of our unconscious filters again, create them. So our unconscious filters decide all of our actions. Let me get

at it from a question, actually. This will get at the way our filters work, Chris. So can you guess how many pieces of information do you think our brains take in in just one second? Consciously or unconsciously? We can start unconsciously. I suppose visually you're taking in a lot of data. Like right now I'm looking at my screen, but I can see out of my side vision, you know, my different things in my office. I can see the light coming in through the window, so I'm kind of monitoring what time it is there's a lot going on i'm i'm not millions trillions billions maybe 11 million

11 million i need to go take a nap i know right i'm tired i know you've worked hard taking in now that that's every what did you second? Every second. But it's like you said, you know, when you first asked, that's unconsciously. Consciously, we take in only 40. So, there are all of the… Not 40 million, just 40 the number, right? 40, just 40 the number. Yeah, that's because… So, that means my unconscious filters are taking in 10,999,960 pieces of information every second

that I'm completely unaware of. Holy crap. And then our unconscious filters are what sorts through all of that information. And then the third function I'll get at with a question again, can you tell me what your next thought will be? And you can't, can you? And not because you're muted. You're not muted. Because we know from brain researcher Benjamin Libet, our next conscious thought is created by our unconscious.

Oh. So every single thought comes from our unconscious and every single thought creates our actions, which means every action, whether it's inclusive or not, whether it creates a microaggression or not, whether it's effective or not, originated with our unconscious filters. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so think about that again. Unless we can check and challenge those filters, we don't know whether we're being effective. We don't know whether we're being offensive. We don't know whether we're creating a microaggression.

And we can certainly dig into that a little bit more if you'd like what those are. Yeah. Let's do that. Let's flesh those out because you know a lot of people one of the things i did it was a kind of an interesting experiment that i did but back when donald trump was elected in 2016 i had heard that these people called white nationalists had brought them in had you know come out and voted and and i was like what are white nationalists what's going on why why is suddenly everything going racist why are where you know within that that night i mean people they're lgbtqs q their cars got spray painted rocks thrown through windows jewish cemeteries got tipped over and stuff and i was like what is going on and one of my friends who

was one of my friends who is who is i believe what was next to iraq that iraq invaded in the 90s iraq iran there's a it was the little country that they invaded little kuwait kuwait yeah she was from kuwait so she wasn't black but she was dark skinned because she comes from Kuwait. And she got thrown out of a taxi that night by a Pakistani man who called her the N-word. And it was just going off the rails within 24 hours of that thing. And so I sat down and I started reading about all these tropes that, you know, these races had. You know, our heritage, our heritage our country you know different code words that they were using and so i started looking at them after studying this and i was like do i have do i still have bias because i've used the word culture and and and and our our history and stuff

but i don't use it in it's ours is referring to it's just white people's you know and so i'm like man i gotta take a look at some of these words and see if i can get them out of my vocabulary i don't want anybody thinking i'm with them and i started this weird experiment where i started going to the store anytime i went in public i started listening to my brain and what my brain made of assumptions of people that i was seeing. And I started really focusing on it. And when I walk into the store, you know, there'd be people coming at me from out of the store and I would start listening. And, you know, I remember there was a Harley Davidson looking guy and I remember thinking,

oh, he's probably done prison time and probably has a weapon, a gun on him. It's probably, you know, deals in meth. You know, I've had a lot of the a lot of the hell's angels and stuff i've been busted for that and and then i i stopped and i went wait you know i don't know anything about this guy he can't just be a guy who likes leather and motorcycles and harvey davidson's and i know a lot of guys who like that they're not hell's angels they're not cooking meth and they're hell's angels whatever i think i'm gonna get a call from the hell's angels here in a bit i'm not going out at night anymore but basically i you know and and other people of different races

and things and i really started listening about this the shit that my brain would come up with because you know we do judge i mean we're designed to judge what's coming at us, to design if, can I trust this person? Do I need to fight or flight? Are they a danger to me or not? Because back in the old days, maybe you were wandering around, you didn't know if this person was your tribe or not, and if you weren't, they were going to kill you, like the bloods in the crypts or something.

It was really eye-opening to me, and I started really waking up to my own biases and being like, damn, you really assume some stupid shit. You don't know anything about this person. And you're just making these judgments up that are so far probably removed from reality if you ever met that person. And so I really started to tune into that. And that really helped me. Absolutely. Yeah. And what you're doing is talking about, because you think about those three functions, take in exponentially more information. You know, we can kind of influence that by taking in positive information, but not really.

The second function to explain and evaluate all the information that is there, we can't influence that at all. You're talking about the third function. That's where we can intervene. When our filters create our thoughts, we can check and challenge our thoughts. Why am I thinking that? Where is that coming from? And that's exactly one of the significant tools that because it's so true

we are because our thoughts i mean there are thoughts right so it's of course they're true right we don't naturally challenge them but when they're coming just from my experiences pretty likely they aren't true yeah it Yeah. And most of us have limited experience with other people. So we don't really know. Yeah, absolutely. You know, if you go back to, again, if we don't have exposure to other groups, how are we going to know? How are we going to know anything about their experience and their reality right how will we know we don't and that's why you know one of my favorite lines from i believe it's am Lincoln is he goes is one of the lines of i don't like that man which means i need to get to know him better

oh that's fabulous it's not a direct quote but it's close enough i love that yeah i don't i know i don't like that man so i must get to know him better or something along those lines oh i need to find that quote i love it i'll pull it up as we're chatting here yeah i think do you want to give us some examples of some of the microaggressions there yeah absolutely you know i'll I'll actually give you some real specific ones. Someone that I know that is a Latino immigrant shows up to the HR office for an interview for a management position that he's been preparing for for weeks. And he's greeted with, oh, thank God you're here. Our copy machine has been broken for a week how long is it going to take you to fix it it's right down the hall so the automatic assumption of course he's not going to be a manager he's the copy repair guy they always think i'm the janitor around here

or the woman who is hired woman of color hired hired as a VP in her organization and brings along her assistant of many years who happens to be a white guy. And they show up to meetings and folks go to him thinking that he's the manager, the new VP, not her. Wow. Over and over again, these situations where those unconscious filters are making decisions and creating actions that are actually harmful because those filters have created associations. Associations of if you're the immigrant, you must be the repair guy. If you're the new VP, you must be the white guy. Those kind of associations, I always joke.

It's just like the association. I say peanut butter and what are you going to say? Jelly. Yeah. You're not going to say say i don't know hot dogs you know gross does that sound gross yeah that sounds awful yeah exactly so it's like all right what is what is the association my brain goes straight to it goes straight to that association and the same thing is true for people. We do the same thing for people. We make associations, whether they're true or not.

And that's where those behaviors come from. Yeah. I do a lot of dating coaching and I have huge dating groups and singles groups. And you see a lot of that in dating too. And it's kind of really amazing how fast people move they'll really assume someone before assume stuff about oh yeah for even going out with them and I like you're like and in a lot of itself sabotage and different things like that but yeah you'll see you just and in the old days you know when I in the old deal days of dating which is like the 90s I guess or

2000s according to me but in the old days you know people go on multiple dates try and get to know each other now everyone's just swiping on tinder and making assumptions about people they've never met never seen probably swiping by all their their their soul mates yeah and they have, and they have no idea. They have no idea. And then they're going to be sitting along with cats going, what happened? We need to get rid of bias.

We need to get rid of unconscious filters. People can check that out with your book, Thinking About the Speed of Bias. Let's get into promoting some of the things you do on the website, some of the service you offer. I see you've got a podcast here. You've got several different books you've written. Talk to us about how you consult with people.

I see a free consultation available here. How do people onboard with you? What sort of clients do you work with, et cetera, et cetera? Yeah, wonderful. We work with, honestly, organizations across the board, private sector, public sector, across industries. And we also work with folks wherever they are kind of in their DEI journey. So those organizations that are just getting started, we can do needs assessments with them, strategy development, training, coaching,

all kinds of assessments. And essentially all of it though with the purpose of making the organization and all of the individuals within it more effective this is not because i think that's one of the things that folks particularly that are resistant to this work they think this is all about you're going to ask me to give up, give up my job or give up my way of doing things or give up this or give up that. Actually, no, we're giving you an opportunity for more, an opportunity to be more effective yourself, an opportunity to work in an environment that's more engaged and more inclusive and more equitable who wouldn't want that i mean honestly you know raise your hand if you want to show up and work in a place that is really exclusive and and everyone is mean you know i want to work in a

toxic environment wait i do that now that's what we do here on the christmas show this friday yeah so you've got the podcast too. Do you want to give us a plug to the title of it so people can Google it? Absolutely. It's What's the Difference? And all kinds of perspective on DEI in the workplace. So fabulous for whether you're just working in a workplace or for DEI practitioners or anyone that is DEI curious, lots of information about how we do this work in organizations. And again,

about how we as individuals can be more effective. Be more effective and do better. Yay! Absolutely. It's the way of the way. Very true. So is there a certain income level or a certain size of company people need to have to work with you? No. We have worked with, I don't know if you mentioned them, we've worked with the largest private employer in the world, which is Walmart. And we've also worked with organizations as small as 10 people. The real piece is, do you want equity? And do you want transformational change? That's what we're about. Organizations that are kind of just doing a check the box, we don't do as much of that.

We can provide some one-off trainings, but we're really about the organizations that really want to transform because that's what we can help you do. So you can come in. If they have a DIA project working, you can integrate with that maybe? Yep. Or do you need to start on your own? Because, you know, imagine, like I said, I've been doing this for 35 years. So I know how to get started from scratch with nothing. And I also know how to really expand programs, even if they're already started, or tweak

them because we see a lot of organizations that have started this work, but it's kind of stalling and they're not getting the impact that they want. So really anywhere folks are in that DEI journey, whether as an individual or as an organization. Anything more we need to know about you guys and what you do before we go out? We are, I think you mentioned it in the intro, our mission is to change the world through the workplace. So if you want to be involved in that, join us. Let me also put in a plug for a project that I'm, it's not a part of Deep Sea, but that I'm a part of. If anyone wants to join us, I am leading with ASTM, which is a standards creator, standards maker organization. I'm leading the committee that is creating the standards for DEI.

So if anyone wants to be involved in that, just contact me. Go to our Deep Sea website and contact me, and we'd love to have you involved. Awesome sauce. It was fun and insightful, Sarah, to have you on the show. We really appreciate it. Yes, thank you. So much fun to join you, and thanks to all the listeners. Thank you.

And thanks, guys, for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4SXCrispFoss, and all those crazy places on the internet. Pick up the book wherever fine books are sold. Thinking at the Speed of Bias, How to Shift Our Unconscious Filters, out July 9th, 2024. Sarah Taylor has been on the show with us today. Folks, go to goodreads.com, fortune.chrisfoss, linkedin.com,

fortune.chrisfoss, facebook.com, fortune.chrisfoss, and all those crazy places on the net. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time. And that should have us out.