Explore your own biases and learn to combat them

Learn how unconscious bias shows up and build strategies for responding.

Before You Start

Goal: Learn from engineer Yassmin Abdel-Magied how unconscious bias can surface in everyday moments, and build practical strategies for naming and responding to it in your workplace.

Meeting Agenda · Approx. 60 mins

  • Member Updates · 10 mins
  • Icebreaker · 10 mins
  • Key Takeaways · 5 mins
  • Discussion Questions · 20 mins
  • Write It Down · 2 mins
  • One Action · 10 mins
  • Wrap-Up · 5 mins

👋 Member Updates · 10 mins

Go around your Circle and share personal updates. Keep them brief and focused on significant changes or important decisions since the last time you met. It's OK not to have one every month. If you have a One Action update from last time, share that too.

🧊 Icebreaker · 10 mins

Invite everyone in the group to share. Keep answers to one or two minutes per person.

Think of a time someone got the wrong first impression of you, based on how you look or sound. How did you feel? Did their first impression ever change?

💡 Key Takeaways · 5 mins

Unconscious bias isn't a flaw in bad people. It's a feature of how all human brains process information. Understanding it is the first step to countering it.

  • We all carry bias. About race, gender, class, religion, age, and more. Even people who are deeply committed to fairness hold implicit associations shaped by culture and experience.
  • First impressions are often biased. The brain makes snap judgments in milliseconds, before conscious reasoning has a chance to intervene.
  • Bias has documented consequences. Many studies have shown women with identical resumes tend to be paid less than men or assumed to be lower performers.
  • Awareness changes behavior, but only with practice. Simply knowing about bias is not enough; changing it requires deliberate effort, along with company policies that reduce opportunities for bias to have an impact.

💬 Discussion Questions · 20 mins

Move through the questions at the pace that suits your Circle. You don't need to cover every one. Pick the prompts that resonate most.

  1. Yassmin says we all carry bias — about race, gender, class, religion, and more. What's a snap judgment you've made that, looking back, may have been rooted in bias?
  2. What have you done to become more aware of your own biases? What steps have you taken to overcome them?
  3. Yassmin is open about both the barriers she faces and the advantages she has. What biases do you navigate at work? Where do you also hold advantages others may not?
  4. Have you experienced gender bias at work? How did you respond — and would you respond differently now?

✍️ Write It Down · 2 mins

Take a few minutes to connect the discussion to your own life.

Think about one decision you've made — in hiring, assigning work, choosing who to amplify in a meeting — that could have been influenced by bias you weren't fully aware of. What would you do differently to make sure bias had less impact?

🎯 One Action · 10 mins

Commit to one concrete action — big or small — you'll take before next meeting. Go around the Circle and share (1 minute or less per member). Vocalizing it helps hold each other accountable.

Before your next meeting, take one concrete step to challenge bias — in a conversation, a decision, or a relationship. Example: "I realized I've never intentionally sought out a mentee whose background is different from mine. My One Action is to think of one person I could reach out to this month and make that introduction."

📅 Wrap-Up · 5 mins

Before you break, plan your next meeting and close on an energetic note. Go around your Circle one by one and finish the sentence:

Now I am feeling… (choose one word).

  • Set the day, time, and location
  • Choose the next topic or resource
  • Confirm who's leading the discussion
  • Decide how you'll stay in touch in between