This is The Coaching In, a podcast from 3D Coaching. I'm Claire Pedrick. Welcome to The Coaching In. Today I'm speaking to Smitha Tharoor, who comes to us from Delhi. So Smitha, tell us a little bit about you. Hi, Claire. Thank you for inviting me to this conversation. Yes, my name is Smitha Tharoor. I am currently in lockdown Delhi, but I usually live in London. I'm a coach. I...
I'm a speaker on the unconscious bias, I advise organizations on the unconscious bias, I'm a mentor and I guess those are the few things that keep me very busy. So I'm enjoying and looking forward to having this conversation with you, Claire. Brilliant, thank you so much. So we're going to be thinking about unconscious bias, which I think really connects into ethics. I love that quote from R .D. Lang who says, well it's not apparently, it's from Daniel Goleman who wrote it in the style of R .D.
Lang. And it says, the range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. It's beautiful, isn't it? I love it. And I like Daniel Kahneman in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, where he's essentially saying this, but in many more pages and many more examples.
And he just talks of how when we jump to a conclusion, that's what I call unconscious bias, and he talks about thinking fast or thinking slow. It's actually our brains. And we've got the fast brain, we've got the slow brain. And we need both. Both are very important to our lives.
But sometimes the fast brain allows us, jumps in and allows us to make a decision without us realizing that maybe that decision that we've made, whether we're in a coaching context or any other, may not be the right decision. So the quote is actually, is a great open for this conversation on the unconscious bias. So what are the things that we need to be paying attention to, Smitha? It's not things as much as listening.
And whenever I say listening, what I'm talking about, and I don't know why, I always visualize Dumble the Elephant's Ears, not to make us fly, but to actually listen as much as you can without allowing your own thoughts to come in the way when you're listening. Because unconscious bias essentially is... You're talking to me and I am not really listening to what you're saying.
I'm listening to how I can respond to you because of my own narrative, my own experiences, my own story that I want to share with you as well. Don't listen the way you're saying your story. And that's one. It's about how we listen when we're having conversations. And the second is reflection.
So that when we're going away and we've had this conversation with somebody, you can reflect back on it and wonder whether you did really listen with what I call the dumbbell ears or did you actually bring in your own story when you were talking to the other individual? So whose lens are we listening through? Yes, exactly. We're trying to listen from their lens and not from our lens.
Because not that they won't have their own unconscious biases, of course they will, every one of us do, including you and I, but that's not the point. If we're talking about unconscious bias and coaching, which is the context of this conversation, then it is very much about, I'm the coach, I'm coaching you, you're talking to me about X, Y, O, Z. I need to be aware that I have unconscious biases.
Therefore, when you are saying something, I might jump to a conclusion about something else and not listen the way I should be listening as a coach. Let me just try and think of an example to make it more contextual. I've actually been, as you know, doing a series of interviews for my podcast on the unconscious biases.
So let me share a story that somebody shared with me, where he is a working class, these are his words, not mine, working class Irish man, and he runs a project on racism in Ireland, sports and racism, S -A -R -I, sports and racism Ireland. He talks about the fact that, He met, he was working with some young children from a fee -paying school. And because they were from a fee -paying school, his unconscious bias kicked in. His job, sorry, I should repeat what I'm saying.
The purpose of him working with these young people was he was doing something around the United Nations model, and he was doing some work with them around racism. These young people happened to be from a private school. Therefore, his own unconscious bias jumped to all kinds of conclusions about how they would be reacting and thinking and approaching what he was talking about. Whereas his job was to actually listen to them and get the best out of them for the project that he was doing.
The reason he had that unconscious bias was because he sees himself as a working -plus balkan island and he felt that those young people who went to a fee -paying private school would have privileges that he never had. Does that make sense? Yeah. I'm thinking as you're talking about that, I've been watching the Malorie Blackman, Noughts and Crosses drama on BBC One. We're watching it on iPlayer.
And that's really interesting on kind of prejudice and unconscious bias because... I want to watch that, except being in lockdown Delhi, I don't have access to BBC iPlayer. Indeed. So I am looking forward to coming back, who knows when. It's really interesting because it enables you to notice so much that you fail to notice. For example? Well, I've lived in, I lived in a village in Africa in my early 20s for two and a half years and was the minority. So I've inhabited the role of the minority.
and experienced a small part of what that feels like. A very small part. And it was just interesting to be watching this thing where that's kind of the volume on that is turned up significantly. And it's very challenging and useful and yeah, it's useful. No, it makes sense. I mean, having not seen it, but I can imagine what you're saying. And I'm always thinking about those kinds of stories.
I remember I was speaking at a conference in the United Kingdom and a young white woman English woman came to me with large concerns about how she was going to bring up her son because she's a practicing Muslim, because she's married to a Muslim and she would like to bring her son up as a Muslim. But when she was talking to me, it was very clear that she was worried about how her society, the society she lives in, would approach her son in school. That was her main worry.
And so she said, how do I protect my son and yet bring him up to be a practicing Muslim? It's a very difficult one. But there were so many things at play here. At one level, her own belief system and what she wants to do. And at the other, Having lived a different life where she was not a practicing Muslim, and the kind of things that she's reading about in society, in the papers, in the press, on television about Muslims, she has her own unconscious bias.
So it was a strange contradiction that she was having within herself, that she was fighting with. I really felt for her. So it's not so easy. No. Sorry, go ahead. An unconscious bias about her own stuff. Yes. So it's very nuanced. What is unconscious bias? It's very, very nuanced. I always visualize an onion that never finishes peeling. You take one layer off and then you've got another layer and then you've got another layer. And because life keeps changing, right?
So this young lady, if we continue her story, from zero to, I don't know, making up an age, give or take in her early 30s. So let's say zero to 25, she lived not in practicing the Islamic religion and she chose whatever she knows to do in that life. And then she met and married who she did and lives a very different life. And all of these things will impact us. But what kind of stories had she experienced from zero to 25?
will continue to impact how she's thinking from 25 to whatever age she is today. But are we reflecting? That's why I'm saying listening and reflecting. These two big ones, are we reflecting enough? Are we looking back and recognizing that we are constantly changing as human beings? So what I thought, I mean, especially now, especially in lockdown land all over the world, we've got the opportunity to stop and to think and to reflect. to genuinely do it.
Can't say, God, I've got back -to -back meetings, I've got them stuck in the tube. We don't have any excuse anymore. And how much do we reflect? How much do we look back on six from now on the comments we had yesterday on the phone, whatever it might be, and learn from it for our own growth and development? I don't know. It sounds maybe a bit idealistic, but I think very important. Yeah. And. owning our intersections. Yeah, that seems to be a very popular word these days, intersectionality.
Yeah. What do you understand by it? that we belong to lots of different groups. That's what I understand by it. And that everybody... And some of those are visible and some of those are invisible. Yeah, exactly. But it's just interesting how language changes because this word intersectionality, I don't remember using it certainly not even three years ago. No. As you know, just naturally, like you said it naturally. you didn't even think about it. And it's suddenly become a very often used word.
And I think that's a lot about the world at large, different parts of the world, whether we're talking India or London or United States or any other country that you want to throw in the mix. We're all looking at ourselves, at our countries, whichever country we are at, seeing how we are as human beings and reflecting it at a larger level and recognizing that maybe, the way we behave 20, 30, 40 years ago was not the right way to behave.
Whether it was the Weinstein kind of example or whether it was something else. Because the kind of stories that we have heard about somebody seeing someone as a one -dimensional human being and then showing extreme bias is no longer seen as the right thing to do in so many regards. And that's a brilliant thing. And that's why we talk about it.
intersectionality because here you are a white English woman visually to look at but yet you know but most other people wouldn't know that you know what it feels like to be in the minority to live in a country amongst black people where you stood out and people looked at you differently and you know what that feels like but why would anybody know that they would look at you and they'd assume see white English woman what would she know about me if I'm talking about somebody's
not white so that's that's really interesting. Sorry, did I digress? I think I went down a different path. No, it's just that I think it's fascinating and we all have these, well we have hidden loyalties, don't we? So where does it come from? Loyalties, I like what you said, so hidden loyalty. So where do you think our hidden loyalties come from? Can I go on a tangent? Yes, please.
You talked a bit earlier about how we might feel or behave now is different from how we may have felt or behaved in the past. And I just wonder whether that also brings us, as well as hidden loyalties, it brings hidden shame that there would have been seasons in our lives when we will have behaved in certain ways towards towards certain groups of people, which came from the person we were then and the things that we did or didn't know at that point, which in our present, we regret.
But we did our best. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And that's about, what I would add to that is that in the present, what I would say, and I say to myself and to anyone else who's listening, we reflect on it, we regret that we may have chosen to behave like so, but don't berate ourselves about it. Exactly. Because that will then destroy us as human beings. Yeah. I looked at face on. regret it, learn from it and then move on. That's really important.
Yeah. Which is almost notice it and name it and move on. Name it. Exactly. Name it. Name it to yourself. Even if you don't have the courage to name it to anyone else, you can just say it loud in an empty room. Just you yourself and you. Yeah, absolutely. So what? Yeah, go ahead. I was just wondering what we were saying when I took us off on a tangent.
Loyalty, you said hidden loyalties, which is not really tangential actually, because whether it's hidden regrets or hidden loyalties, hidden loyalties will be there too, and I understand that, but I was wondering whether you could, I'm happily interviewing you now, but not, perhaps you could share a story about what you mean by hidden loyalties. Well, if you go back to my experience in Kenya... those friends that I made then stand with me in some encounters that I have and our hidden loyalties.
Right, yeah. So it comes down really to memories, doesn't it? Yeah. Or for want of a better word, our narrative, our life story. And our life story changes all the time. Who would have known that I would be in Delhi for two months or maybe three, who knows, when I arrived in the country for three weeks.
And then those three months that I will experience before I come back to London will also influence all kinds of things, including both positive and not so positive memories of the, you know, looking back one year from now, I look back to my few months in Delhi and that would have impacted and influenced how I behave one year from now. I'm certain of it. I don't know what that will be and I don't know how it'll look, but it will influence me in some way.
Yes, and you spoke before we started recording this very deeply about the stories of some of the people that you've heard of in India returning to their family homes because of coronavirus. Well, it's exactly, and the haves and the have -nots and the acknowledgement of the fact that I am privileged. And I don't know what to do about it other than articulate it for the moment. But I'm lucky. I have a home, I have food, I have electricity, I have internet.
You can interview me, sitting in the United Kingdom, and I'm in Delhi. And there are people dying because they can't get home. And they're walking. It's just sad. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's about reflection. It's about values. When we're talking about unconscious bias, it is also about our values. And I think when we reflect and I say the kind of things I've just said, or you think something else about hidden loyalties and all of that, it boils down to our values. What's important to us?
And I don't think we have the right to suggest to anyone in any kind of court or otherwise that your values are not the right values because they're yours and they're your story and they're your narrative. I may or may not agree with it, but that's not the point. So I think that's really important to recognize in a coaching or understanding of unconscious bias. Yes, and some of us are very clear on our values, aren't we?
And then sometimes we have values that we only fall over and notice them when they're challenged. And you think, I didn't know that that was something that was so important to me, but now it's been challenged. My goodness, that's a value. In fact, it reminded me of something that I do in one of my workshops, because I, as you know, I also do liver training. And one of my workshops, what I do depending on the length of time I've got is I give a list of values.
I think about 40, I can't remember now, about 40 and it's things like I want to have friends, I want to be wealthy, I want to have integrity, I want to be good physically fit. I'm just trying to think of some more off the top of my head. Well, things like that, all kinds of different 40. And then what I do is, and I've got to say a group of 15 or 20 people, and I give them a piece of paper and ask them to look at the 40 and ask them to choose the top eight that really matter to them.
So they tick, you know, and I say, read them all, read them, and I give them time to do this. And then they tick the top eight. And then I give them a piece of paper, ask them to turn it into four pieces. And I say, from that top eight, take top four and put them into four pieces of paper. which they do. And then what I do, which is what you were just saying, is that I then go around with literally, literally with a dustbin in my hand and ask them to scrunch one up and throw it in the bin.
And you see some of the people, I don't want to throw this away, please don't let me do it. You've got to do it, you've got to throw it, this is the game we're playing. You've got to throw it in the bin. And some of them are like literally, you know, holding it to their hearts saying, I will not give you this, that's too important, I don't want to throw it in the bin.
But they do because I force them to do because that's the game you play and at the end of it they all have one key value amongst that list. I'm not suggesting it's a definitive list, of course not. But there's one thing on that list that is really, really the must number one for them. And then I get them to all read it out aloud. I promise you, I have never, with a group of 20 people, I've never had more than maybe three people about the same value. Wow. So what does that then say?
What does that then say about how we communicate with each other? So I think that my top value is making friends. You think that your top value is being rich and that so -and -so in our tables' top value is having high integrity. And they are looking at you to think, what? What kind of person is she? And we're having our own value system judging the way we are having an opinion on somebody else. Is that a joke or what? An ironic joke.
I've been thinking for quite a lot of our conversation, Smitha, about Argyris's ladder of inference, about how we move from real data to making assumptions and beliefs and conclusions so, so quickly. And often when I'm teaching coaches, we do a huge amount of work on as much as we are possibly able work in the realm of real observable data. Because there's a lot of fantasy up that ladder that I make assumptions about somebody else and all those kind of things.
So how interesting that in a room of 20, you barely get three with the same. Yeah. And then, it's so interesting because you see their faces and then they suddenly realize that, yeah, so everyone, you know, religion is another one that a lot of, you know, many people find is the number one value for them. So, you know, each of us have their own thing that you don't realize until you're forced to choose. We don't think about it. We just live it.
That's what you were saying earlier on, which is why I just went there. I was immediately visualizing a training room on the people in there. when you said that because we just limit. Yeah, so one of the, in the, in the ICF ethical thing, one of the things it says is that the coach is sensitive to the client's identity, environment, experiences, values and beliefs. And I want to kind of put in brackets, even if they don't know what they are and you can't see them. Exactly, exactly.
Because you can't see them and it might be just a turn of phrase or a sentence or one word they choose to say while they're being coached that pings in your head that may not sit with your values or may allow your unconscious bias to suddenly jump in. And it's really, that's why I keep saying listen to the Dumbo ears. You really listen. Otherwise, an easier said than done as you know very well because you're an outsider.
So I know that, but I mean, it's, you've got to keep saying it like a mantra to ourselves. And when we are talking to somebody, really listen, but not so easy sometimes. So you've talked back. Especially with family, I was thinking. my goodness. Yeah, I'm learning to live with my mother again, who I loved dearly. But I have not lived with her for three months at a stretch for a very long time. So I'm learning.
Yeah, that I mean, that raises all sorts of other things, doesn't it, about who do we become in a relationship? Yeah. And that's also true about who do we become in a relationship when we're coaching somebody? Because I imagine that between you and your mum, there's some daughter, mother thing going on. Yeah, they're very different characters.
So it is really about my respecting the fact that she is very different to me and accepting her belief system and her values, rather than her trying to make a change to my belief system or my values, which of course is easier said than done when you're with people you love. under pressure. Yeah. So what is that? Yeah, go ahead.
We came into this conversation and you, you talked about the value of Dumbo ears and the value of, of reflecting after conversations about where, where, where, what did we fail to notice effectively? I'm just wondering in terms of live in the room in a conversation, what are the things that you're learning? that we can pay attention to actually in the room that enables us to notice what we fail to notice. I'm thinking aloud.
Again, it depends, it's a coaching situation with one person or whether we're having a group supervision or I mean group coach with more than one person. We make a big difference in what we're noticing in the room. Just expressions of people, movement, how people sit, how people... Just the general feel. I don't know how to explain it. You would do better than me to explain it. But you can feel something in the air when you're talking to somebody.
I don't know if I'm making any sense when I'm saying that. But it's something about the environment that makes the individual that you're speaking to more relaxed, more comfortable, just by how they're sitting, how they're looking, their expressions. how they're communicating all of that.
We'll tell you, even if they haven't opened their mouth yet, or they're keeping quiet and listening to you, they don't have to talk for you to understand that they're going through X, Y or Z. I don't know, am I making sense? Yeah. And one of the principles that I like to use in coaching is notice, don't diagnose. So what you're describing there is notice what you see or hear or sense. Yeah, feel it, feel it.
And that's why I'm saying you can actually feel it in the air, it sounds really ridiculous. But you can, if you really concentrate and you're really listening with dumb boy ears, you can feel that there might be a change in the way the individual is speaking to you. And if that is the case, then you've got to listen even harder, is what I say, because we don't know why there is a change, obviously. And notice it in relation to them. Yes, exactly. That's the spectrum.
It's the spectrum of what you notice that they're on rather than comparing them to others or projecting or whatever. Then of course we've come in with our own stories, haven't we? why is she looking like that? That reminds me when I spoke to so -and -so yesterday, they were looking like, no, you've gone. That's the end of that session. But it's very easy for us to advise. I'm telling myself that because I know that the reality is not that easy.
I know that we're at the end of the day, only human beings and you know, whatever, we just jump in. Can't help it. And Dumbo is, Dumbo is takes a lot of energy, doesn't it? It's, it takes an enormous amount of energy. I don't know how you managed to, to, you know, I don't know how many clients you coach one day, but. You're probably like a wet rag at the end of it, because I'm sure you use your dumbbell ears. I know how you coach.
So it's, you know, you're kind of sitting there, collapsing a heap, because you have listened and listened and tried very, very, very hard only to listen to them and not bring anything else of yours into it. But as with anything, whether you're baking a cake or whether you're coaching, the more you do it, the more that the idea of dumbbell ears and reflection and so on. will become easier. Early on it's going to be hard bloody work, let's put it mildly. Yeah and I liken it to Teflon, Smitha.
There's something about giving somebody your full attention and really noticing and really listening and not taking it in. That's a very good point. So I think that if you do the Dumbo ears and you internalise everything that you hear or see, you'll be like a wet rag very quickly. Yes. What I do, if you want my top tip, is that I give them my absolutely full, unconditional attention. I call it being attentively not bothered.
So I will give them my full attention and I will notice what I notice, but I don't take it in. So what one of the things that I notice is I can't remember after coaching sessions, what the person, the detail of what they said. But that's a skill that has to be learned Claire, it doesn't come easily.
It doesn't come easily and it actually means that the data and the work resides where it resides and we only notice the things that are most useful to notice and of course that's never perfect and we always miss things because we are human and that's how it is and that's okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Keep the Dumbo years, but don't internalize. Listen, focus, but don't internalize. Which I truly, looking back on my coaching sessions, is actually what I do instinctively.
I didn't quite realize it the way you've said it though, but I'm going to add the Teflon to my Dumbo years wherever I go. Because that's very, very important, because it can be very draining otherwise. Some days I get Teflon and some days I don't. But it's very important. It's not for us to take the stuff home. Of course it isn't. We're trying to help them. What's the point of taking it home? Then we can't help them the next time we meet them. No, so if we take it in, then we will take it home.
Exactly right. So true. Wow. Well, thank you, Smitha. Is there anything else that you'd like to share this morning? This afternoon. This afternoon. There, that was a piece of unconscious bias. No, not at all. No, in fact, I'm about to be starting a webinar on the conscious bias. So that's the new world order these days, as you know, which is great. And I'm looking forward to that. It'll be interesting to see how we do that.
No, I think really, for me personally, conscious bias is such a powerful, yet such a simple topic, which is why I'm doing this podcast series on it. You know, if more people were to become aware of the power of our own narrative, our own life story, call it what you like, if you don't want to call it out, call it as bias, and how our life story influences us without us realizing it, you know, we would make our life so much easier.
So on a very selfish level, it's important for us to understand this, because we will be happier people in our relationships and anything we do. That's, I find, the power of this. of these two little simple words. But I know I've enjoyed very much talking to you. And you. And that's interesting because you've taken us right back to our D -line because we fail to notice that we fail to notice there's little we can do to change until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.
Well said, exactly. Thank you. Our D -line? Always a Daniel Kahneman. Whoever is. Thank you so much. How do people contact you or listen to your podcast, Smitha? Well, my company is Tharur Associates. So it's the same as my surname for those of you who can't spell it. If you know my name, it's Tharur Associates. And my company essentially offers advice on the unconscious bias, including training and coaching and so on. Podcast has not been launched yet. Watch the space.
When I do, I will shout out from the rooftops and hopefully, Claire, you will tell all your friends and colleagues too. I will. I will also put it on Twitter, my Twitter hashtag is Smitha Tharoor. So I put it everywhere I can. But my website is there and that would be a best place to start, I guess. Brilliant. Thank you so much. It's been really great talking to you. Thank you so much. I'm Claire Pedrick and I was talking to Smitha Tharoor.
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