Shola Kaye explains how we can address biases in the workplace and create more inclusive environments with empathy.

Transcript – The Powerful Role of Empathy in Addressing Bias

[00:00:00] Empathy, Bias and the Wheel of Power and Privilege

This is the second step now in my empathy to equity blueprint. So we’ve looked at empathy in and of itself. Now let’s look at how empathy relates to bias. And some of you may have seen this chart. This is called the wheel of power and privilege. You may have seen this circulating on the Internet a few months ago. The link here is www.ccrweb.ca if you wanted to try and get hold of that for yourselves. But basically what this wheel shows is power in the middle. And then as we go out to the edges, we have more marginalized identities. And there are a lot of different ones here. I’m not going to go through all of them because we don’t have time. But just for example, we’ve got, able-bodied moving out towards significant disability. Or skin color, white moving out (and again, some of this is cultural, depends where you are in the world, of course, we have a global audience, but in the West in particular) we have white moving out to different shades, to darker skin color. Housing, owns property is closer to power moving out to sheltered or renting, to homeless. So this is a really useful chart to really get a handle on some of the different marginalized identities that we come across. It’s not all of them there. For example, age isn’t here. There are some others that aren’t here. But this is a really good starting point.

[00:01:25] Understanding and Tackling In-Group Bias

Now, as far as bias is concerned, and I know I’m sure many of you understand what bias is and how it originates. But one of the biggest biases is what we call homophile or in-group bias, where we are biased towards people who are like us, okay? And there are very I don’t know if I know of any societies where there isn’t this in-group bias because humans are programmed, right? We’re programmed to want to be with people who are like us, to want to give opportunities to people who are similar to us, to empathize with people who are similar to us. Thank you. So Elizabeth said yeah, large body size. Yeah. Hopefully, that’s going to change. But thank you for sharing that.

[00:02:17] Privilege and Bias: Using Empathetic Language

So from this concept of bias, we can then talk about privilege. And privilege is where there’s an absence of certain biases against us, often because we are in the in-group, right, or for a particular identity, we are in the in-group. So, for example, there’s so many different kinds of privilege, but able-bodied privilege or cis-gendered privilege or racial privilege, religious privilege, gender privilege, socioeconomic privilege. Okay? So there are a lot of ways that we can experience privilege. And sometimes the term privilege can be triggering, right? So, for example, we hear the term a lot, white privilege. And that can be triggering to certain individuals. So what we can do is to get the language out of the way. So we can be concerned with action and concepts. Instead, sometimes we use different language. So there’s a book by Dolly Chugh believe it is called The Person You Were Meant to Be. And she talks about using terminology like headwinds and tailwinds instead of privilege because a headwind is a wind that’s blowing in our faces and making it harder for us to proceed. A tailwind is blowing at our backs, making it easier. So if you have privilege, it’s like having a tailwind blowing you forward, helping you get on in life. So if we use language like headwind and tailwind, it’s less triggering, and then we can actually think about the action rather than people debating it, or should we use this term privilege or et cetera, et cetera.

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Hi, I’m Shola and I help you create a people-first culture. My work sits at the intersection of Inclusion, Communication & Emotional Intelligence.

My keynote talks and workshops help your leaders and employees create high-performing work environments where people feel a sense of belonging and psychological safety. Sessions are high energy, interactive, and every participant walks away with at least one practical framework for connecting and collaborating more effectively.

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