Last month, I ran two workshops about fighting bias in the workplace for the Hello 50:50 World communities in Zurich and Bern. I loved seeing so many people choosing to spend their free summer evenings learning about bias and becoming better allies rather than jumping into a lake or river! That’s true commitment!

I’ve walked away from these workshops with three takeaways.

One of them is that even when people want to fight bias when they see it, they are not exactly sure what to do.

There is often a fear of not taking the right action, accompanied by guilt and shame for not reacting on the spot.

That’s why I like to teach about the 5 D’s.

It’s a framework originally developed by Right To Be, a nonprofit organisation started by a group of young adults in 2005. Over the years, they have taught hundreds of thousands of people how to stop harassment through their Bystander Intervention Trainings.

The 5 D’s to fight bias in the workplace 

The 5 D’s to fight bias in the workplace and beyond are adapted from their framework. The idea is simple: when you witness bias as a bystander, choose how to act by following one of the 5 D’s: 

DIRECT INTERVENTION:

act directly by pointing out a biased belief, offer a different point of view and suggest a better approach. Use with caution because a direct action can escalate the situation and you need to be ready to face the consequences. Choose your words wisely and address it in a way that is respectful of everyone involved. Remember that most people don’t want to hurt others on purpose and are keen to work on their blind spots, but no one likes to feel attacked. Ask yourself if you think that the person who is experiencing prejudice would like you to speak up, or if they would prefer not to draw attention to themselves, and instead move the conversation forward. 

DISTRACT: 

If you feel that a direct intervention isn’t the best course of action, of if you are shy or aren’t feeling ready yet to address the issue head on, you can distract the speaker who is biased by changing the subject of a conversation. This offers a brief relief to the person who is experiencing prejudice and signals that you have noticed bias and find it inappropriate. This is especially powerful when you combine it with the next D: delay. 

DELAY: 

sometimes the situation where we witness bias passes before we are able to gather our thoughts to act against it. In other times, we may choose to delay our actions on purpose, especially if we believe that a 1:1 conversation with the person who said something inappropriate can be less confrontational and more impactful than addressing it in the open and when it happens. You can also minimize the trauma of the person who is affected by bias by checking in on them later, saying that what they experienced wasn’t OK, and asking if there’s anything that you can do for them.

DELEGATE:

in cases of repeated offence and clear discrimination, you may want to delegate taking action to a superior or an HR division. However, check first with the person who has experienced the discrimination if they are ready to make it public and argue their case. In some cases, and specially when the affected person doesn’t believe that it is going to change anything, the stress of taking this approach might not be worth the outcome.

There’s also a fifth D in the Bystander Intervention Training from Right To Be, which was added later to the original 4: 

DOCUMENT: 

take notes or record the harassment, but only if the harassed person is receiving help already from someone else, and never share the documentation without a consent. In the context of fighting bias in the workplace, use this D if you consider Delegating or if you’re building your own case to protect yourself and your position at your company. Make notes of discriminatory comments and actions and get them on an email if you can. 

So there you go: 5 D’s to fight bias in the workplace. 

If you would love to take this conversation about unconscious bias and how to fight it to your company but you can’t facilitate it on your own – contact me and we’ll discuss how I can help. I work in-person and online, and I can run anything from an hour introductory session to a full day workshop for your employee resource group or your leadership team. My calendar for autumn and winter is filling in nicely, so if you know that this is something you want to look into, don’t wait with reaching out, so we can have plenty of options when it comes to picking a date for our joined training.

Thanks for reading!

It was January 2023, and I was excited about the new year, a clean slate and an opportunity to reach new, bigger, bolder goals… Now, 6 months later I looked at my very short list of yearly goals, and I’m not even close to being half-way there 😅 

This made me think of this famous quote by Bill Gates: 

Half-year is such a great moment to take stock of that progress you have (not) made and to re-calibrate to reach you yearly goals. 

I’ve made a quick template with 7 questions to help me to that, and you can download it for free below as well. 

If you’ve been hanging out with me for a while now, you won’t be surprised to see that the first question is about looking back and being grateful for all the goodness in the first half of the year. 

And just because that quote from Bill Gates really scared me of not dreaming big enough for the next 10 years, the last question will help you do exactly that. 

FREE TEMPLATE

Set a timer for 20-30 minutes, get curious, and answer these quick 7 questions to design the second half of the year to be as you want it to be. 

In other news, last week I went to Phillip Morris International to deliver a training on inclusive leadership for 100+ global leaders. It was a live-broadcast from their studio in Lausanne, and I was told not to wear white or green (still don’t know why!). I was a bit nervous about three cameras and an army of technicians, but as soon as I stepped in and saw that it was just a small and cosy room with everyone else behind the glass, I completely relaxed. 

One of the people whom I follow on LinkedIn is Lily Zheng (They/Them) – author of “Deconstructing DEI’ and ‘DEI Reconstructed” – and a queer, nonbinary trans person of color.

Their recent post has been on my mind the whole week, coinciding with big events around equality in Switzerland. We had the Feminists Strike (renamed from Women’s Strike) on June 14th and Zurich Pride on June 16th and June 17th 🌈

The quote that really stack with me is this one: 

Zheng has succinctly put into words what I’ve been hearing a lot in my conversations with individuals from underrepresented groups at work. 

LGBTQ+ people, Black people, women, and people with a disability have all told me how tired they’re of being invited to panel discussions just “to share their stories”. The company ticks off the “increased awareness of biases” box without committing to any actions, whereas the individual walks away labelled as whiny, angry, needy and – oh, irony – asking for unfair treatment, which creates backlash, and in extreme situations, leads to hate. 

Zheng reminds us that merely highlighting the LGBTQ+ community (or any other underrepresented group) without implementing substantial changes can inadvertently increase their vulnerability.

As I’m preparing my training about inclusive leadership for Philip Morris International later this week, I’m taking all of it into account. My training will focus on the everyday actions that we can all take to lead in an inclusive way, and to show up as allies at work. 

The training session will be live-streamed from the state-of-the-art studio located at PMI’s headquarters in Lausanne, connecting me with up to 150 leaders joining remotely from various parts of the globe. 

Apparently the ‘studio’ is like a TV set, with 3 cameras pointed at you, multiple screens and an army of technicians. My heart rate increases just thinking about it 😅 I’ll let you know how it went. 

On a different note, thanks so much for everyone who has reached out with feedback on my last (and first!) newsletter! On top of the many encouraging things you’ve said (thank you!), many of you have pointed out how I completely forgot to include the link to my brand new website (thank you for that as well – you live and learn!) 🙈 

I had been self-employed for over 10 months when my personal website went finally live last week. 

The one thing that I’ve learnt from NOT building my website for so long is this: 

You don’t need a website to book first customers.

It was more luck than a strategy, but I booked my first customers at the back of a conversation and a pretty(-ish) one-pager. This was truly eye-opening because building a website seemed like a wise first step on my path to entrepreneurship, and one that I wanted to take but didn’t know how. 

Getting clients before having a website showed me that my network and courage to act and to fail, could potentially play a bigger role in my success than my website or anything else, for that matter. 

💡 What I’m taking away from this is to look for shortcuts.

Next time I think I really need to do something before I can have something else, I’ll remember to flip the script and see if there’s a quicker way to get where I want to be.

Why a website now then, you ask? 🙂

In short – I feel ready. 

I have clarity about what I bring to the table, I have client testimonials that I’m proud of, and my services don’t fit on a one-pager anymore 🙂 None of that was true when I was starting out, so building a website felt like walking in circles. 

But now – I WANT a digital home for all of it and much more in the future.

That doesn’t mean that making it was easy 😅

Here’s what I’ve learned: