1. Secret Weapons of the Best Teams
Mitigate Negative Effects of Bias
Make a checklist
Delay decisions
Ask questions:
Who speaks up the most?
Who sits next to whom?
Who is listened to?
Who gets the credit?
Organizational Awareness
Request Navy Culture Workshop
Value Command Climate Survey
Support Command Resiliency Team
Leadership and Communication
Demonstrate Competence & Character
Advocate for the One Navy Team: Active, Reserve and Civilian
Cultural Awareness
Be curious
Use CNO’s Professional Reading Program
Serve as and seek out mentors
As leaders and team members, your secret weapons are with you at all times… Let’s talk about
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The first one - Mitigating Negative Effects of Bias:
What is your thought on bias in the Navy? Choose the answer that you feel best resembles our great Navy.
It does not exist and is not a problem
It exists, but I do not have any biases
It exists, and I realize that I may have some biases of my own
We all have built-in biases that influence our choices and decisions. Many of them are unconscious - mental shortcuts that bypass the logical decision-making process. Like any shortcut, they save time, but also cause us to miss something along the way. Most people recognize bias exists, but they generally believe THEY aren’t biased – it’s everyone else! This is a form of bias in itself – it’s called overconfidence!1
To mitigate the negative effects of bias, here are some things you can do:
Make a checklist in advance of a major decision to make sure you understand the risks / rewards
For non-critical/time sensitive decisions, set the decision aside for a while and come back to it. This will allow you to ensure that you gather all relevant data and make a decision that is not fueled by emotion
Ask questions and challenge your organization to be more inclusive. Get another perspective from someone else, preferably more than one person and at least one who has a different background (eliminate blind spots). Probe the daily operations of where you work, like your meetings. Who takes the majority of airtime? Who paid the most attention? Who interrupted? Who got interrupted? Who did you not hear from? Who got invited to the meeting, and who didn’t get invited? It is up to leaders to cultivate inclusion and identify and eliminate organizational processes and habits that act as barriers to inclusion. (Source: Dolly Chugh, “The Person You Mean To Be: How Good People Fight Bias,” 2018)
The next tool for your toolkit is Organizational Awareness: Understanding what’s going on in your shop, division, Department or command.
For Command Triads: Schedule a Navy Culture Workshop – they’re designed to help the command by providing candid feedback directly to the CO and this assessment is stays INSIDE the lifelines.
The DEOCS Command Climate Survey – TAKE IT SERIOUSLY and answer the questions honestly to help your leadership team address deficiencies.
The Command Resiliency Team (formerly Command Assessment Team). Volunteer to be a part of this important group of people. You will have direct input into addressing items identified during the DEOCS survey.
Leadership and Communication:
Trust is the foundation of strong teams - we can’t win tough fights without it. Trust is earned by demonstrating competence and character, the two paths of leader development.
Advocate for the “One Navy Team:” Our active, reserve and civilian shipmates. Each of those groups bring a unique perspective to the table – seek out those differences and learn how they can make the team stronger. Advocate for these team members - this means taking an active role and speaking up on behalf of someone when you learn about an opportunity for which they are qualified. Pick up the phone, have a quick conversation to let someone know about a great Sailor that has what it takes and should be given a chance.
and finally, Cultural Awareness:
Be curious about the different cultures in your workcenter, your wardroom and on the mess decks – if you were born in the US, talk to a shipmate who wasn’t. If you’re from a big city, talk to a shipmate from the country. What brought them to the Navy? learn about them: Get outside your comfort zone - ask questions. It’s amazing how people will open up to you when they know you sincerely want to learn, and you may find you have more in common than you expected.
Dive into the CNO’s Professional Reading Program – you will learn a great deal about Navy history and warfighting, and about things that contribute to the Navy’s culture
Seek out a mentor and be a mentor. Mentors can play an important role here - they help us understand how things work and give us feedback. Again, look for mentors with different life and career experiences than your own. Their different perspectives can help you overcome your bias.
Consider concept of reverse-mentoring – where the mentee gives guidance and insights to the mentor!
This stuff isn’t rocket science, but sometimes it’s harder than rocket science because it’s all about the human dynamic.
To wrap up, I’ll leave you with words from CNO: Actively being inclusive and open to diverse perspectives will produce leaders and teams who are ready for decisive combat operations. Let’s get to it!
1: McKinsey & Co, The Business of Logic in Debiasing, May 2017
Everyone should have mentors and should mentor others. Your mentors and protégés shouldn’t all have the same background and they shouldn’t look the same.
You also should be a career sponsor for those top performers you know: This means advocating on their behalf when you believe they are the right person for an opportunity.
There is a lot of research and work in neuro-science and unconscious bias, and you’ll learn more about it at DivO school, Department Head school, PXO/PCO and Major Command courses.
Leaders and teams who are ready for decisive combat operations