This episode is the first in the Series on Navigating the Male Dominated Fields of Procurement & Supply Chain.
Today we are going to talk about unconscious biases and how it affects women like you.
Unconscious bias, in the simplest terms, is the hidden beliefs that impact your perception of others.
Unconscious biases:
- can be subtle or obvious
- happens outside of your control
- is automatic and is triggered by your brain making a quick judgement or opinion
- are shaped by your background and your life experiences
Two key takeaways:
- Your story creates your biases, and
- Everyone brings their unconscious biases to the workplace
Your biases influence your behaviors and decision-making in the workplace
When I first read this, my first impulse was to challenge it. I did not have any biases!
Then I found a simple, but insightful exercise that demonstrated how everyone carries their own biases.
The exercise was to identify 4-5 non-family member confidantes in my life. What it quickly revealed to me was that my go-to network was basically a replica of me:
- Professional woman in her 50’s
- Trying to juggle work and family
My unconscious instinct was to identify with women like me! I had to ask myself: how might this show-up in the workplace?
I invite you to try this exercise and see what it reveals about you
Women in Procurement & Supply Chain face unconscious biases both inside the organization and outside in their supplier community.
Think about the amount of time and energy women in Procurement must spend to overcome the Double-Whammy!
While there are many stories I can share from my own experience in the Function, the one that stands out relates to a challenging negotiation back in 2009-2010 when I was at PepsiCo.
- We had been working on a long-term agreement with a strategic supplier in the Ingredients Industry
- The team had taken the negotiations as far as they could and as a next step, had engaged me as the head of the Category and the President from the supplier
- Although I had been in and out of the Ingredients Industry for over 10 years, I was new to the role of Vice-President of the Category:
The first female leader representing a customer for the male dominated Category!
- The President of the supplier was fairly new to the Industry and he and I had not had a chance to form any sort of foundational relationship. Basically, our introduction was the negotiation.
We started off the phone conversation with the traditional niceties and segued into our understanding of where the negotiations stood. After 15-20 minutes of dialogue, we were able to make some progress, but a gap clearly existed.
While I had hoped that we would work towards finding a compromise, the conversation came to a screeching halt when the supplier declared:
“I feel like I am negotiating with my wife”!
You can only imagine what was going through my mind when I heard that! I could’ve reacted; I could’ve shown my frustration.
And although it took everything in me not to engage, I calmly stated that the conversation was over and that if he wished to resume talks someone else should reach out to me.
Needless to say, I never heard from the President directly again, BUT we did conclude the negotiations in PepsiCo’s favor a couple weeks later with the President’s right -hand guy!
Unconscious biases:
- are underlying attitudes and stereotypes that people unconsciously attribute to another person or group of people
- affect how they engage with a person or group
- can be subtle or it can be obvious
- adds up and can have a big impact
I invite you to give some thought to:
- how your own unconscious biases show up in the workplace
- how much of your time and energy is spent navigating of the “Double-Whammy”
What would you do with the extra-time if you didn’t have to navigate the Double-Whammy?
