It’s been exactly two years since I have been living a dual life. Well I have moved to Dhaka with my banker husband on a tenured assignment after more than a decade of work in Mumbai. This move happened just when I had taken the plunge into the entrepreneurial world with all the passion, energy and ambition. Interestingly, I have been managing my home and my work between both the countries pretty seamlessly.

A client of mine was visiting Dhaka on work recently and she reached out to me to take her around for shopping and sightseeing. She genuinely seem amazed that I knew all the correct places to shop and  have been managing a decent home in a foreign country while having a successful venture in India. The classic way unconscious bias plays out in my professional circle is “Can you have a career being based out of a foreign country ?”Not to mention the stereotypes that emerges when I talk about the place that I very happily call home. I still have well-meaning relatives enquiring when we are headed back to India from the very presumably tough posting. Dhaka seems to invite innocuous but puzzling images in their mind.

In my social circle the label that emerges on my frequent travels on work is of being a very ambitious women. Yes I am passionate about the work that I do and believe in, and I don’t find anything wrong in in having courage of conviction in the work that I do. But ironically the label of an ambitious mother automatically gets related to the associated stereotype of a not so committed mother. Coincidentally, I happen to be missing important school events due to my work assignments and projects. It’s quite interesting to note that that my male friends who travel quite a bit are attributed to having a successful career and are also empathised on not being able to spend time with their kids and family.

Over the recent years I have been noticing images, stereotypes and labels that people have on places, names and even on vegetables & fruits. My nanny who has moved with me from Mumbai still has a special view on Indian onions and tomatoes, than which she cooks and eats here. I can swear that they are perfectly fine, similar and maybe even better than what we get back home. My 9 year old son has a very positive image of Malaysia as compared to Cambodia even though he has never been to either of those places.

So why do we end up having a view or an image of people, propecia things and places that we have never encountered with. We can have endless debates about our perfectly formed views without really thinking from where they have taken roots from.  So are we biased ? Well most of us will say a resounding NO.

I know no one in this world gets up everyday morning and say ’ I will be biased today’. But it still ends up playing out in so many different and uncertain ways that one doesn’t realise, possibly not aware of and  most of the times totally blind about.

So why does this happen ?

Research says that we make patterns in our brains every second of our being and patterns get stores inside it. The process starts building from the time we start interacting as infants and goes on till the time we die. The structure which consequently is formed in turn helps us in making snap judgements. It comes unconsciously to us and is an integral part of our everyday life. We know we need to step aside if we see a vehicle coming towards us on the road, we know we need to stop when a traffic signal shows red and we will never knowingly put our hand inside fire as we know it will burn us. So we utilise our inherent bias’s to make decisions for us. Unconscious Bias are formed basis our upbringing, culture, social webs and the values  that we are exposed.

Inclusion is the area of work that I work in and believe in. Over the course of my work and research I came across the Cognizant tool developed by Dr Helen Turnbull who has dedicated her entire life in understanding unconscious bias. This leading edge assessment is completed online, and is designed to provide people with in-depth insight into their own hierarchy of unconscious bias.  It’s been a privilege for me and my colleague Sarika to have been certified in this tool and is available in India only via our organization.

The tool has personally helped me work on my personal biases. I have finally been able to understand my perceptions on the Brits as ‘being too stiff’ built over my decade long banking work experience. It has also helped me to pause and reflect on my reactions to colleagues from other cultures.

It’s still a long journey for me, but getting to know my bias has helped me unpack some of my judgements and also helped me put things in perspective. I now await to hear the reactions from my readers on this article while we alI get back to living with biases.