Biasphere: The Four Quadrants

Image courtesy of @SimonBerger

So we all have viewpoints and express opinions, right?

No one is uniquely immune to the attitudes and beliefs of another.

But how many of us emerge from the depths of the daily grind to truly consider the impact of our belief systems?

Even through our decision-making and subconscious actions we can adversely impact others.

Within organisations, there are countless subliminal messages being sent and received by people across all levels. This is in spite of the fact that we often believe that the prejudice we are projecting onto others is wrong.

To progress people and PX outcomes, and decision-making through bias mindfulness, we have derived four overarching quadrants to our aptly named Biasphere:

Unconscious Bias: Our people have NIL awareness of how their attitudes and behaviours impact others 

Conscious Bias: Our people recognise how their attitudes and behaviours impact others Here we recognise the biases 

Conscious Inclusion: Our people recognise their attitudes and modify behaviours towards others 

Unconscious Inclusion: Our people instinctively empathise with others 

Within each of these quadrants rests an assumed level of behaviour and awareness of our conditioned attitudes and beliefs that determine our day-to-day decisions and choices.

As people, our decision-making is much more effective when we have heightened awareness of the interference bias plays, and challenge these through critical thinking.

Just as with the Earth’s biosphere, the sustained positive functioning of an organisation’s Biasphere is highly dependent on the decisions we make, as well as the close interactions among the inhabitants.

Human interactions within any organisational ecosystem are largely responsible for energy flows. They have the potential to unwittingly disrupt or even eliminate pockets of our populations that are of great importance to the performance of the overarching ecosystem.

Bias awareness and training should not be reserved purely for leadership circles. It is important to share this message across the entire scope of an organisation in order to build and maintain a strong culture and business results.

As we step through each phase of the bias landscape, the focus becomes a desire to modify behaviour.

In order to do this, it is important to reward, emphasising the benefits of positive behaviour for reinforcement.

As with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, on the infinite journey towards unconscious inclusion, we will be faced daily with circumstances that shift us contextually between needs levels and bias quadrants, impacting our behaviour choices.

Significantly, countering this is how quickly and often we catch ourselves and exercise the willpower to make the necessary adjustments to our conduct.

As confronting as it may be, following through on a commitment to unconscious inclusion requires an appreciation that empathy is a prerequisite for inclusion.

Next time you make a decision, will you keep your attitudes in check?