Leadership & Change: Bias, Stereotypes and the Impact on Organisational Behaviour

Binna Kandola is Senior Partner and co-founder of Pearn Kandola. His areas of expertise are diversity and inclusion, equal opportunities, assessment and development. He is particularly interested in understanding bias and finding ways to reduce it through effective leadership.

In the video and presentation below, Binna Kandola cogently explains how leaders need to examine issues like bias, stereotyping, group think, how we attend to information which confirms stereotypes, how and why some workplace interventions might enforce unconscious bias and how valuing ‘difference’ can maintain stereotypes.

If I put to you this riddle, what would your answer be?

A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies instantly, and the son is taken to the nearest hospital. The doctor comes in and exclaims “I can’t operate on this boy.”

“Why not?” the nurse asks.

“Because he’s my son,” the doctor responds.

How is this possible?

Ultimately Kandola presents a challenge to engrained leadership practice, putting forward a new way of leading.   It’s fascinating stuff.   As marketers, leaders and as human beings, we are evolving.   There is still much to do.   Watch and learn.

And the answer to the riddle?   The doctor is the boy’s mother.   How many people tie themselves up in knots when the answer is actually very obvious and very simple, once you choose to step away from conditioned thinking.

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