The Gatekeeper Blog
Insights into the chief of staff role

One’s awareness of a negative stereotype about a group to which one belongs can actually harm a person’s performance: fear of confirming the stereotype raises that person’s level of anxiety and makes it harder to focus. This can occur in people at all levels of organizations, including the top, so leaders must manage it in others and be aware of it in themselves.

In Whistling Vivaldi, Stanford psychologist Claude Steele describes how negative stereotypes inhibit people’s ability to do work they are more than capable of doing.1 He described a Princeton study in which students were asked to play golf. A group of White students were divided into two groups; the first was told the task was part of an athletic aptitude test, while the second was told nothing. The White students who were told the task measured natural ability tried just as hard as the other students. But it took them an average of three strokes longer to get through the course. The hypothesis was that stereotype threat (White people have inferior athletic ability) had hurt their performance. The experiment was then repeated with Black students, for whom both groups performed equally. The difference, Steele explained, was that the Black students didn’t suffer a stereotype threat when it came to athletic ability.

Steele ran a similar experiment at Stanford, only this time looking at stereotype threat related to intellectual ability. He brought together a group of Black and White undergraduates and asked them to complete a section of the Advanced GRE test. This test was beyond what they had learned, and Steele hypothesised that the frustration at not knowing some of the answers would trigger a stereotype threat related to intellectual ability in the Black students, and cause them to underperform. Indeed, the Black students did do worse than the White students on the test. To test his hypothesis that this was a result of stereotype threat and not intellectual ability or educational achievement, Steele repeated the test with a different group of Black and White students. This time, he lifted the stereotype threat by telling the students that the test was

not a test but rather a “task” for studying general problem-solving. He emphasised that it did not measure intellectual ability. This time, the Black students performed at the same level as White test takers, and significantly better than the Black test takers who believed the test was measuring their intellectual ability.

Steele and other researchers have tested the impact of stereotypes on a wide variety of different biases. In another experiment, researchers gave girls five to seven years of age an age-appropriate math test. Just before taking the test, some of the girls were asked to color a picture of a girl their age holding a doll, while others were asked to color a landscape. The theory was that reminding the girls they were girls would be enough to trigger a stereotype threat: girls aren’t good at math. Case in point, the girls who colored a landscape did better on the math test than those who colored a girl holding a doll.

Another group of researchers asked White men with good academic track records to take a difficult math test. In the control condition, the test was taken normally. In the experimental condition, the researchers told the test takers that one of their reasons for doing the research was to understand why Asian men seemed to perform better on these tests than White men. The theory was that the stereotype threat that White people aren’t as good at math as Asian people would harm the performance of the White men on the test; and in fact, this is what happened.

Part of a leader’s job is to recognise and eliminate the pernicious effects of stereotype threats for the people on their team. It turns out that regardless of the stereotype in question, good, candid performance feedback can go a long way toward eliminating this problem, by explaining clearly what the standards are and reassuring the person you as their leader have confidence in their abilities.

Steele describes the role of good feedback in helping people who are underrepresented overcome their stereotype threats. Straightforward critical feedback from Tom Ostrom, Steele’s PhD faculty advisor, helped Steele overcome the struggles he experienced as one of the very few Black students in his program. He also alludes to research that demonstrates this was true not only for him but also for Black students at universities around the country. Note that the feedback was about the work—not about their clothing or affect or something else that might reveal bias and trigger stereotype threat. Similarly, Stanford sociologist Shelley Correll’s research has shown that career success requires candid criticism—and that many women don’t get that kind of candor from their bosses who are men.2/3

There is considerable evidence—both anecdotal and research-based—that good feedback, a clear explanation of expectations, reassurances that an employee can meet those expectations, and guidance when a candidate falls short, are crucial in helping people who are underrepresented succeed in the workplace. Important note: feedback about how other people perceive a person because of bias is not helpful feedback. The feedback should be based on performance or behaviors that can be changed, not personal attributes.

And yet, the very people who would most benefit from good feedback get it least. Overrepresented managers are more reluctant to give feedback to underrepresented employees than to other overrepresented employees. White managers are often more reluctant to give feedback to Black employees than they are to White employees; managers who are men are more reluctant to give this kind of feedback to employees who are women, and so on.

Why? Because there is another stereotype threat at play here: fear of being seen as biased, sexist, racist. Let’s go back to John, who didn’t want to tell Susan about the problems with naming her project Rolling Thunder.He remained silent not because he was a misogynist intent on hurting her career, but because he was afraid his feedback might be interpreted as mansplaining or bullying. He is experiencing stereotype threat (“She thinks I’m a sexist”) and so distancing himself from the situation. A desire not to be seen as sexist leads to discriminatory behavior, a failure to give feedback to women. Therefore stereotype threat hurts the employee’s performance and also the boss’s feedback performance.

The fact that stereotype threat might prevent an overrepresented boss from giving critical feedback to an underrepresented person on their team is really unfortunate because it’s precisely that kind of feedback that will most help the person overcome their own stereotype threat and do great work.

If you’re a leader, get proactive. Make sure you are aware of and managing your own stereotype threat, and that you are giving everyone on your team feedback.

Remember that unconscious bias training is only a start

Bias awareness training can be very helpful in rooting out unconscious bias when it’s done well by people who understand the issues deeply and who are excellent communicators. But in practice it often feels like a sort of “check the box, CYA, protect the company from legal liability, but don’t actually try to address the underlying problem” exercise. The best unconscious bias training includes both an educator/facilitator and participation from leaders, to show real commitment. However, simply requiring everyone to go to unconscious bias training, even
a great one, won’t be enough.4 No training can possibly change deeply ingrained patterns of thought. Practice is key. Education without follow-through breeds cynicism.5 Therefore, as a leader, it’s your job to figure out how you and your team can interrupt bias when you notice it.

Interrupting bias is not something leaders can delegate. Leaders must be personally involved with both helping to educate the team during the training, and, crucially, figuring out how they and their teams will interrupt bias when it shows up in conversation, in meetings, in business processes. If leaders don’t take action to interrupt bias once they recognise it, their employees will notice and think, “There it is again and I’m powerless to do anything about it, so I guess I’ll just accept it.”