[Music] I'm talking about anger inequality now yesterday Mike talked about unconscious biases that we all have whether we like it or not it doesn't mean we're not good people and he talked about what Facebook is doing to try to get people to have crucial conversations with themselves right and with others to make this problem discussable because if it isn't discussable it certainly isn't solvable right then we heard Susan Cain talk about similar kinds of unconscious biases and lack of self-awareness around introverts and actor for extroverts and how that can get us in trouble now these situations with unconscious bias they're unfair they're unjust they're wrong but they're real they're there and we don't really know how to change it in society we don't have a BS answer at this point right so Joseph and chase and I thought how did we make this link with unconscious bias to Crucial Conversations how does it affect crucial conversations and how should it affect the kinds of skills that we try to offer an individual who finds himself or herself it working in an organization that has lots of unconscious bias in it where he or she can't change that bias not on their own but how can they survive it how can they cope with it does that make sense so we set up an experiment and I'm gonna tell you about the research we've been doing video at the last few months it's not done yet it's done enough to publish but there's a lot more work to be done so let me introduce you to Sharon now let me describe who Sharon is Sharon's of course an actor right and the best lines we had written for her chase McMillan wrote they're the ones you're gonna hear her using right now we had about 2500 people watch Sharon in different interactions and judge her they only saw one clip no one ever saw more than one but I'm gonna group you into third so this group here this to the two rows of tables here Susan is a manager who's going to be joining your organization next week and she's her role will be that she's your boss okay she's coming into the organization she'll be your boss okay the middle two tables she's a manager she's joining your organization she's going to be a peer of yours you're both managers you both have staff and you'll be collaborating and working together with Susan right the last group Susan she's a manager she's gonna be joining her organization next week she's going to report to you she's gonna be your subordinate make sense so let's see Susan she's in a fairly routine conversation kind of a status update not a crucial conversation no big disagreement no big emotional thing here she goes I can report on the Clark project we finally received the specs and we'll begin the design process this Wednesday Mike said he'll need my design outlined by this Friday if we're going to hit deadline my calendar is blocked out and I have all the resources I need so I think we should be good to go does anyone have any concerns that's OOP that's Sharon now I want to have you do a poll so take out your smartphones or your computer if you're using that hopefully you signed in yesterday that should still be good for today now what I want you to do is I want you to evaluate Sharon based on that little bit that you've seen of her around how much status power and independence to share and deserve status power and independence where II would be very little a would be very much we can see the scores starting to come numbers are jumping up this is good now we're seeing a fairly positive impression of this manager who's going to be joining our organization and we saw this in our research right now I want to move to the next video now if you've seen the first video you'd never get to see this one so it's a whole different group of people saw this next video this is a crucial conversation you're gonna see that she disagrees with a group and that she seems to believe the stakes are high and you're gonna see some hear some emotion in her voice here goes I'm not on board with the direction this decision is going we're chasing a market that doesn't exist it's as if we're completely ignoring the data I wouldn't say we need to make significant changes to the existing plan or do additional testing until we find more convincing trends even if it does take more time and expense no wait I'm not finished I won't back down from this position and I'm not going to commit my team and resources to this project until we have more conclusive evidence to work with period now for this group of people Sharon's gonna be your boss starting next week for this group she's gonna be a peer where you work with for this group she's a subordinate who's going to work for you so see I'm moving to the next Pole am i there seeing how the scores are dropping a little not a huge surprise right she didn't do the best in the Crucial Conversations course right maybe she hasn't mastered all of her stories some emotions kicking in we described it as being she's being very forceful right she's also being kind of abrupt she's being not a real good listener right it's real it happens it could happen to any of us out there okay now it's dropped fairly substantially I want to show one more scene with her ask yourself what's different about this scene the script is exactly like the one you just saw I am NOT on board with the direction this decision is going we're chasing a market that doesn't exist it's as if we're completely ignoring the data we need to make significant change to the existing plan or do additional testing until we find more convincing trends even if it does take more time and expense no wait I'm not finished I won't back down from this position and I'm not going to commit my team and resources to this project until we have more conclusive evidence to work with period what was different we didn't just you Sharon we also used a guy right when it was a guy his status the status the power the authority that they thought he should have the independence he should have dropped pretty fast and had dropped in a straight line depending on how emotional how forceful he was so there is a backlash when you move from a normal conversation to a crucial conversation when you disagree and to the extent that you show that anger that for the extent that you haven't mastered that story you're gonna get punished by the people watching you now let's watch for Sharon for the woman that's the gender inequality effect they get dinged far worse than the men now we've got thousands of subjects right this is a profound effect we're not the first people to find it right but we're the first people to see it in the context of Crucial Conversations and i want to add some some tentative 'no stu this okay when this person Sharon or Trent was the guys that the actors name when they were your boss there was no sex effect and the drop in status was far greater when it's your boss you're kind of like oh that's my boss tomorrow that's gonna be my boss right it it's it's so severe that the sex effect is washed out when it's appear that's when the sex effect is really strong when it's a subordinate we found the sex effect there too so we asked ourselves what's going on we try to get inside the head of the observers okay so you're observing this person and you're and you're telling yourself a story right what's the story you're telling yourself that causes you to drop their status as much as you do what is it well we have some clues we have clues from prior research this research done at Yale by bresca land Ullman and one of the findings that they had was that the derogated women that that that loss of perceived status was highly correlated with whether they thought the woman had lost her temper or was out of control so we looked for that as well and we found it in fact the observers judgment that the man or woman had lost control and lost their temper was a better predictor of their drop in status than whether they were a man or a woman so it's not are you a man or a woman it's have you lost control here's where the sexism comes in our observers were much quicker to judge that a woman had lost control that a woman being a little bit assertive had lost it right that's what we want to deal with how can we if if that's the world you're living in is there something you can do short of fixing that world which is what we'd like to do long-term is there something you can do to survive and succeed in that world that's where we wanted to test the first thing we tested we called it a behavior frame so this is a little statement it lasts about four seconds and it goes in front of this angry statement in the laboratory what we did was we simply recorded it and then we edited it in front right watch it and listen for the impact that it has and to express my opinion very directly I'll be as specific as possible I'm not on board with the direction this decision is going we're chasing a market that doesn't exist it's as if we're completely ignoring okay that was the behavior frame here's what our theory was when we when we tried that we thought what the behavior frame would do is it would signal deliberation and intentionality right if the concern is that someone has lost control that they're speaking off the script that they're speaking spontaneously this statement says oh no this isn't spontaneous right this is intended deliberate and so what it does is it prevents that judgment that they've lost control now did it work it did it works for both men and women and it worked pretty well but what we are seeing here is a hundred percent would be a hundred percent of the loss of status and so it didn't prevent what it did is it prevented about 10 percent of that loss in status so it worked it worked at a highly significant level but not at an outrageously important level and here we had even more subjects we had nearly 8,000 observers so this is really solid kinds of data so you'll see behavior frame the next thing we tested we called it a value frame now here's what we're thinking over the value frame first just as any of these frames its signals deliberation and intentionality it prevents the the notion that she's lost control but it does something in addition it explains her emotion it explains it it doesn't just describe what she's gonna do it explains why she's being forceful or angry and it makes it a virtue here's what it sounds like I see this as a matter of honesty and integrity so it's important for me to be clear about where I stand I'm not on board with the direction this decision is going we're chasing I see this as an issue of honesty and integrity it's like explaining why you're going to show your emotion it requires a level of self-awareness that's we don't always have in the moment but if we do have that moment if we can frame it it's a little like a contrast statement but a little different it's explaining what we're gonna do and why before we do it now I want to show the example with our male actor because it worked there as well here's what it looked like I see this as a matter of honesty and integrity so it's important for me to be clear about where I stand I'm not on board with the direction this decision is going would you right so when we look at this the value frame worked substantially better than the behavior frame for whatever reason it worked far better for our male actor than it did for our female actor I don't have a good clue as to why that is they're using just one male and one female actor there are obviously differences in acting that are hard to predict if we if we had 20 actors in each condition maybe we'd see something a little different but I think this data shows that the value frame works really strongly I want to show one more this is a risky one it's an interesting one we call it an inoculation frame what it does is it again at signals deliberation and intentionality it prevents this lost lost temper judgment it also warns about implicit bias it warns use be on the lookout here's how it sounds I know it's a risk for a woman to speak this assertively but I'm going to express my opinion very directly I'm not on board with the direction this decision is going we're chasing a market that doesn't exist it's I know it can be a risk for a woman to speak this assertively look how well that worked it cued people that oh my unconscious bias could judge her here maybe I should correct for it now here's a concern remember the the the book influenced by child Eenie talked about the Hari Krishna's who used to go into airports and take advantage of reciprocity they go in and they pin a flower on your lapel and then ask you for money and the reciprocity norm here in the u.s. is someone gives you something you should give them something in return and it worked people open their wallets and gave them money but they didn't feel good about it they felt manipulated by it and so they also lobbied Congress to force the Hare Krishnas out of airports that's why you don't see them there anymore right so the inoculation statement might be like that it may work in the moment but could it cause long-term problems for a woman who uses it could it be seen like using the gender card we don't know we haven't done the research what would you recommend that a woman do good a hand raise how many people would encourage anis to use this skill how many would ink how many were encouraged them not to use this skill in a frequent way frequent many say not using it frequently now let me give a counterpoint I was talking to an executive at a Silicon Valley company and he said I could imagine since we're trying to change our culture and try and we're trying to admit and talk about unconscious bias I could imagine a woman saying you know this is gonna sound like a broken record because I'm always going to remind you that it's risky for a woman to speak up in our culture we're trying to change that here and he said there might be a way that a person could use that repeatedly as part of a strategy to change the culture I don't know let's go to the BS guys take on this this is meant to be a quick and light summary of this research you [Music]