Let's talk about combatting bias from your boss

Our bosses have a lot of say and sway when it comes to our pay, promotion and career progression. Unfortunately, as in all walks of life, some bosses may have inherent biases. You might feel you’re constantly being underestimated because of your gender, age, height or ethnic background and you're not getting the career opportunities you deserve due to bias.

Feeling like you're being discriminated against is awful. And I'm not going to gaslight you - research absolutely shows that bias due to gender, age, height, ethnicity, and more (such as hair type!) can occur in the world of work.

However: you can't change these things about yourself. So until the system and society changes, you have to focus on what you CAN control and change. And that is your confidence, self-love and self-acceptance. 

The power of self-perception

Oftentimes, the perception we have that we're being discriminated against is because the external world is reflecting back to us our OWN insecurities. When you accept yourself as you are, and believe in yourself, your skills, experience, background and value, discrimination may still occur but you won't notice it as such AND it won't matter to you.

For example, I'm female, relatively young compared to many of my consulting clients and peers, short, have curly hair, and look Indian. But because I'm adopted and grew up in a white Australian family, I don't actually see myself as Indian or from an ethnic background! In my mind, I'm white. And for this reason I can't identify a time when I've been actively discriminated against due to my skin colour. I'm SURE it's happened - but it doesn't make up my model of the world so it doesn't affect me.

The power of self-acceptance

Additionally - when you own the things that you think make you a target for discrimination and bias, no one can hold that against you. For years in my corporate career, I was embarrassed about my curly hair. Professional women are meant to have sleek, smooth, straight hair, right? I’d spend hours with a straightening iron trying to tame the frizzy, frazzled mess that is my hair.

But when I embraced my curls, and learnt how to maximise the ringlet and volume to wear my curls as big and as full as possible, I started to show up more confidently. Now my curls are part of my personal brand and people are always commenting on how much they love them. I could have kept spending my life straightening my curls - wasting my time, effort, energy and never feeling good enough. But instead I realised these made me unique, they were my superpower and if I embraced and centred them, they'd help me get roles and clients (and they do!!).

The power of embracing difference

Accept that discrimination and bias exist. You'll always be too old, too young, too tall, too short, too ethnic, too white, too female, too male, too experienced, too inexperienced, too [something] to someone. You can't please everyone and anyone who does discriminate against you for who you are is not your person and is not your leader. Find what's unique in you and double-down on it - own it, shout it from the rooftops, bring it to the fore, and share it with pride because when you start to believe in yourself and back yourself, bias disappears because you're vibrating at a different energy and better opportunities and bosses come your way.

My book "Pioneer Your Career Change" (available in print and eBook on Amazon, and all audiobook platforms including Spotify and Audible - find your local distributor here) has some great bonus tools and meditations for building confidence, self-esteem and self-acceptance but some things to try could be EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), Coaching, an NLP Breakthrough Session, acupuncture, meditation, affirmations, and more. And if you’re job-hunting, not only is my book perfect for you right now, I’d also recommend working with recruiters because they’ll be more neutral than your current employer! 

You just gotta find the tools that work for you. 

You got this and you got me and I believe you.

All my belief,

Lata xx