Your Workplace Conference 2009: Dr. Steve Robbins

Internationally known for the groundbreaking concept of “unintentional intolerance” and his work linking inclusion to innovation, Dr. Steve L. Robbins is widely recognized as a speaker who inspires, moves, and educates people for the exciting challenges of a 21st-century world.
Dr. Steve Robbins travels a lot. In the past year he has logged hundreds of thousands of kilometres of flight. He does not like to fly, however, so he has a little routine that he has created to comfort himself: As soon as he steps onto the plane, he takes a little look into the cockpit to assure himself that he has competent pilots at the controls.

Now Dr. Robbins is not a pilot and doesn’t know what “competent pilots” would look like, but every time he has looked into the cockpit he sees “white guys”, and the plane has always taken off and landed safely.
Dr. Robbins uses this anecdote to illustrate the topic of “unintentional intolerance”, the notion that we are all biased and, in many cases, unaware of the biases that we hold. Because one day, Dr. Robbins took a flight, looking into the cockpit, and saw a woman pilot and thought “Oh oh!”

The audience laughed appreciatively at his mistake – and it brought home the point that if a diversity expert, such as Dr. Robbins, can have a gut reaction out of a bias like that, then so can we all. And the issue is not having those gut reactions or those moments that he refers to as the “uh oh” syndrome, but the problem comes when we are too NICE – “Not Inclined to Critically Examine” those biases and reactions.

Two factors contribute to create “unintentional tolerance”: mindlessness and multiple redundant messages. To illustrate from Dr. Robbins’ travel story: the mindlessness comes from the comforting routine that he had created for himself – looking into the cockpit to seek the competent pilots – and the multiple redundant messages came from always seeing “white guys” (and those are Dr. Robbins’ words) at the controls. Dr. Robbins had created a mental script for himself that automatically played a message something like, “If there are white guy pilots, then the plane will be safe” and that worked in his favour–until there was a female pilot.

Dr. Robbins spoke humorously about this serious topic, and he encouraged all of us to examine our own mental scripts that play mindlessly in the background of our lives. The only way to be more aware is to stop and critically examine ourselves, seeking out new experiences and information, most likely from other people and their different experiences, which may directly contradict those scripts.

In the 21st century, there will be more and more people who are “outsiders” and unlike us – presenting more opportunities for us to experience and appreciate diversity, and practice mindfulness and intentionality. As Dr. Robbins quoted, “You walk on a path cleared by others, so it is your responsibility to clear a path for others.” We tend to clear a wide path for those who are like us – but the more you care for others, and the wider the path you can clear for everyone, the more mindful and open you will become.

AUTHOR: LISA SANSOM