Industries and workplaces all over the world are seeing a rise in diversity. As this happens, it becomes more and more critical for your employees to be able to work effectively with people that represent different genders, sexual orientations, backgrounds, races, and ages. The problem that often arises is preconceived notions that employees carry with them. Failure to address these things will seep into all aspects of an agency and erode agency culture.
Here are some key things you will want to consider when helping you and your employees move beyond their personal biases.
Accept That Everyone is Biased:
Either unconsciously or consciously. Accepting this is the first step to being able to start the process of shifting mindsets beyond those biases. Unconscious bias include stereotypes and opinions. These biases present themselves in daily interactions and influence the way employees to interact with clients and co-workers.
Encourage Employees to Recognize Biases:
The initial goal should be to help employees identify when biases are playing into their actions. Help employees tune into subtle behaviors even when it’s something as simple as being more aware of their tone of voice when they speak to colleagues and customers.
Teach Perspective-Taking:
Perspective-taking is simply a practice of stepping outside our individual experiences and into someone else’s, reflecting on their emotions and perceptions. Taking the time to analyze the perspective of someone else provides a way for employees to consider how others think and feel. It creates a system of recognizing that even when two people get the same information, they may interpret it differently based on several different internal factors.
Developing the perspective-taking skill will teach employees to appreciate the feedback and input of others who think differently than them. When this is deployed across an entire organization, more ideas are shared, and creativity and collaboration increase. It also helps create a stronger sense of acceptance and unity within your agency culture.
Generate Opportunities for Connecting:
When businesses are too siloed and segmented, employees do not have to work through their biases. Creating more opportunities for employees to interact with more diverse groups is the best way of breaking down the limitations of those preconceived notions they may be carrying. Agency leaders can accomplish this by bringing different groups together to collaborate on projects. Another great way to look at mentoring and cross-training teams as an opportunity to bring people from different backgrounds together to learn from one another and develop an appreciation for the unique skills other people bring to the organization.
Addressing personal issues of preconceived notions and biases is not an easy topic to tackle.
However, it is a critical step in creating a culture where people feel appreciated. Taking the time to do this will allow you to build an organization that stands out as an agency values and welcomes diversity.
About the Author
Justin Goodman has spent the past 20 years in insurance. He is the co-founder and CEO of Total CSR and co-founder and Managing Director of Project 55. By the age of 29, he was recognized as one of the top five construction insurance experts nationwide by Risk and Insurance Magazine. He also was named to Insurance Business Magazine’s Hot 100 and most recently the 2024 Insurance Journal Agent of the Year. Justin has trained over 50,000 CSR’s, account managers and producers through his work at Total CSR. He has a passion for developing the next generation of insurance professionals. When not with his family, he devotes his free time to speaking engagements and advising agency owners across the country.
