17631: On Complaints, Crisis Management, And Conversations.

 

Advertising Age published a thoughtful perspective on cultural cluelessness, unintentionally underscoring how bias can come from the offenders and offended alike.

A complaint about your ad is information—it is not a verdict

By Stephen E. Terrell

In the fall of 1994, I put a naked man on a billboard in Fort Lauderdale. He lasted six days.

In fairness, he had already lasted 158 years. He was the young man seated by the sea in a Hippolyte Flandrin painting from 1836 that hangs in the Louvre, where to my knowledge nobody has ever called 3M about it.

The board was for Page & Associates, a Cleveland company that bought life insurance policies from people who were dying, so they could have the money while they were still alive to spend it. In 1994, that mostly meant gay men with AIDS. The copy ran five words: “Terminally ill ... there are options.” Then a phone number. No logo the size of a Buick. No starburst.

I chose the painting because my audience already knew it. For years, a print of it on a gay man’s wall was a signal flag hidden in plain sight. Any other gay man who walked into that home knew exactly what it meant. Everyone else saw a nice museum reproduction. I took the flag off the living room wall and ran it up a billboard. A man driving past did not need a headline to tell him who the board was for. The same ad had been running in gay magazines. Companies like mine were buying so much space there that Ad Age covered it that May. The billboard was that magazine ad with the volume turned up. The University of Miami Business Law Review later recorded it as the first billboard for a company in that business.

The location was not an accident, either. I put my boards in the gayest neighborhoods I could find. This one was aimed across four lanes of highway at the Copa, the biggest gay disco in South Florida. You find out where your audience dances, and you face the board that way.

It also happened to stand directly above a sports bar.

The owner complained. He told the local paper that the message was one thing but the naked man was tasteless. 3M, which owned the board, took it down six days into a 60-day contract.

Today, that is where the story ends. The brand posts a statement. The creative disappears. Somebody junior gets blamed, and everyone is at lunch by noon.

Here is what happened in 1994. The board went back up the next day. Nobody apologized. Nobody painted on a fig leaf. The company’s attorney made a call, and then a 3M representative did something radical. He sat down with the bar owner and explained what the ad was for. According to 3M’s spokesperson at the time, the owner had not fully understood it. Once he did, he agreed to have it back.

One conversation, 24 hours, same naked man.

That bar owner taught me three questions I still ask before anybody touches a campaign.

Who is complaining? The man downstairs was not my audience. My audience was across the highway, in line at the Copa.

Do they understand it? He saw a nude. He did not see men in his own city who were out of money and out of time. Somebody told him, and he changed his mind. People do that more often than a crisis plan assumes.

Is the audience you built it for complaining? Because when they are, you pull it, and you say thank you. I have done that, too. Years later I tested a Betty White radio spot on “The Rush Limbaugh Show.” It delivered 20-30 solid leads every time it aired. Then her fans started calling with one question: “Does Betty know?” I pulled it. The numbers said stay. The audience said go. The audience outranks the numbers.

Treat those two complaints the same way and you will kill your best work and keep running your worst.

Brands spend years and millions asking people to trust them. Then one stranger raises his voice and the brand drops its own work like a hot casserole. The audience notices. If you will not stand behind your ad for 24 hours, why would anyone stand behind your brand for 24 years?

The painting, for the record, is still in the Louvre. Still naked. Still up.

16898: AI & A-Holes.

 

More About Advertising noticed B&T—Australia’s leading publisher for advertising, media, marketing, and PR news—ran a story on Omnicom planning to acquire IPG.

 

The content featured an Adobe Firefly-rendered portrait of WPP CEO Mark Read, Publicis Groupe CEO Arthur Sadoun, and S4 Capital Overlord Sir Martin Sorrell (depicted above).

 

Much has been published on how AI fails diverse audiences; however, the B&T image demonstrates White men benefit from the technology—especially based on the portrayal of Sir Peanut.

 

George Parker commented, “Is that how the ‘Poisoned Dwarf’ AI’s himself before hitting [Shepherd Market]?”

16825: Failing To Tell The Real Story On Book Banning.

 

This National Coalition Against Censorship campaign from INNOCEAN USA speaks out against banning children’s books, emphasizing the titles typically targeted by interest groups and politicians present LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC themes.

 

Yet the Villains Against Evil imagery and overall message arguably do not strongly address such cultural issues, opting to depict White villains from classic Eurocentric fables and fairy tales. Or was the intent to symbolize that most book-banning fanatics are White people?

 

The headline states, “The most evil villains aren’t in books—they’re the ones banning them.” Okay, except banned books on critical race theory prominently feature real-life racist villains.

 

In short, the campaign fails to tell a true story in compelling, provocative, and inspiring style.

 

 

16822: Chatting About Bias In AI.

 

Adweek published a perspective on addressing bias in AI. Written by an experiential creative and copywriter at Monk, the exposition presented challenges that emerged during the invention of AI-powered robot Sir Martian, named after Sir Martin Sorrell. Um, it sounds like AI bias inspired by a biased A-hole.

 

 

4 Ways to Mitigate Bias in AI and Close the Diversity Deficit

 

Key lessons from a 2024 Cannes activation

 

By Larissa Pontez

 

Feed a prompt to an AI image generator and you’re bound to encounter an insidious pattern: Do the people look … too stunning? Perhaps even wanton? 

 

Gender, race, body type, nationality, religion—you’re almost guaranteed to get prejudiced and outdated stereotypes when using these descriptors in prompts. And “wanton” is a deliberate adjective; it’s mostly used pejoratively toward women, and AI tends to oversexualize female images. These glaring imbalances showcase a recurring problem with AI outputs: the replication of societal biases, which can be harmful to actual people and communities. 

 

I wrestled with this firsthand while helping develop Sir Martian, one of our key AI demos featured at Cannes earlier this year. Sir Martian, playfully named after Sir Martin Sorrell, is an AI-powered robot in the form of an alien caricaturist. Throughout the festival, he invited attendees to sit down for a quick chat and a sketched portrait, based on their appearance and tastes. 

 

I’m proud that the demo was a success, because as you can imagine, this interaction was more than a simple conversation. And it taught me a lot about the privileges and responsibilities of shaping a new technology. Here’s what I learned. 

 

Words matter—your data sets the tone 

 

Most AI tools available for the general public are trained on datasets that aren’t accessible or visible to users, so I feel particularly fortunate to work at a company that creates and trains its own models. It really is a “great power, great responsibility” scenario. 

 

The foundation of any generative AI model should be diverse and comprehensive. By expanding the range of base images and training materials, developers can create AI systems that represent a broader spectrum of human experiences. This enriches outputs and helps combat entrenched biases. 

 

With Sir Martian, specificity was essential for aligning user inputs with desired outputs. After some trial and error, we found that we had to train the model combining visual input with very precise text prompts in order to get it to represent people accurately. 

When given a picture of a Black woman and the prompt “woman with braids,” the AI model automatically defaulted to a woman with German-style braids. We had to train and fine-tune it using specific terms like “cornrows” and “box braids” to get it to create accurate drawings. Giving the system a wider variety of terms to connect to visual references was crucial to getting more diverse depictions. 

 

This step was humbling because I encountered my own limitations in the process. For example, we don’t have a large Muslim population where I’m based in Brazil, yet a global audience traveling to Cannes would likely include women in hijabs or chadors. This prompted me to research the nuances between different articles of dress that, to an untrained eye, may have been seen as interchangeable. The experience highlighted the importance of stepping outside of our bubbles to recognize what we don’t know, in order to learn and incorporate diverse cultural elements that better serve global users. 

 

Diversity is (and isn’t) everyone’s responsibility 

 

As the only woman on the team building Sir Martian, the problematic depiction of women raised alarm bells for me early on but didn’t faze my male colleagues until I brought it to their attention. We need more diverse teams who can authentically lead AI in the right direction. But at the same time, the onus shouldn’t be on minorities alone to fix biases that have affected them for generations. 

 

Overcoming these biases demands collective effort. After I discovered flaws in Sir Martian’s AI model, I partnered closely with a developer on the project who was dedicated to addressing these issues. I reached out to a Black co-worker and Muslim women in our global community for their feedback on whether Sir Martian’s drawings were respectfully reflecting their identities. These are just some examples of the cross-disciplinary collaboration that needs to happen in order to make a change; once you flip the switch and understand what needs to be done, the rate of progress is astounding. 

 

The industry has a ways to go, but we’re seeing positive change. Since Sir Martian launched, we’ve instated a global AI policy to help staff become more conscious of common biases that occur in AI systems, such as data bias, algorithmic bias, and confirmation bias. Perhaps more importantly, fostering an inclusive environment encourages a shared responsibility in creating AI systems that accurately and fairly reflect diverse experiences, ultimately benefiting everyone. 

 

Know where to draw the line, and back up your decisions 

 

Our industry celebrates how AI will unlock personalization for everyone, but there are limits. The unfortunate reality is that, when it comes to accurately depicting everyone, we can’t perfectly address every difference on every project. But we can try to be as thorough as possible given the limits of technology, time, and budgets. 

 

When it comes to being more diverse and inclusive, for example, people naturally focus on accounting for a variety of skin tones. That’s great, but it’s often as far as we go. What about different body types and sizes? How might a generated portrait differ when someone is sitting in a wheelchair instead of standing up?

 

We should not only address these questions, but also begin asking them at a project’s inception. Those of us developing consumer-facing generative AI activations must be conscious of where our parameters fall, as well as able to justify the decisions we make. 

 

When working on Sir Martian for the demo in Cannes, we decided to leave children out of the training data, knowing that they were not our target audience. This was a conscious decision rather than a blind spot in our process, as representation and inclusion so often are in AI projects.

 

It’s time to do better 

 

We all know that AI is an amazing tool that has progressed by leaps and bounds over the last few years, but one thing it can’t do is correct our own blind spots. That’s on us to identify and address. 

 

AI serves as a mirror to our society, reflecting both its progress and its persistent challenges. If left unchecked, biases can become even more ingrained through AI. Tackling this issue isn’t a task for minorities alone—it’s something we all need to work on together. This shared commitment can help genuinely turn AI into a force for positive change. 

16641: Ad Age’s Annual Ageism Advertorial.

 

Advertising Age published another odditorial from anonymous scribe M.T. Fletcher, who supplemented his previous rant with admansplaining on ageism.

 

Seems like age advocates in Adland created a template for viewpoints on the topic:

 

1) Blast and blame finance-driven White holding companies for unloading the larger salaries of veteran staffers

 

2) Gasp and moan that staffers over 50 are woefully underrepresented in White advertising agencies

 

3) Assert and insist that veterans deliver experience and professional poise that younger generations cannot match

 

4) Acknowledge and salute prominent celebrities who found fame in their later years

 

Fletcher even poured the following fuel on his bonfire of the vanities: “Ageism in advertising is as much a part of the diversity dilemma as race and gender, with representation more out of whack relative to the general population, yet it rarely gets discussed because of financial pressures that make it palatable to agency management.”

 

The topic actually gets plenty of discussion, now that Old White Guys and Old White Gals like Fletcher have injected themselves into the diversity dilemma, leapfrogging other groups that have experienced far worse bias from the oh-so-suffering veteran crew.

 

Why marketing is more ageist than ever—and what experienced talent needs to know

 

Ideas can come from anyone, young and middle-aged alike, but a brilliant execution comes down to craft, and that takes experience

 

By M.T. Fletcher

 

Mark Twain once said, “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

 

And yet age seems to matter a lot in advertising these days, so if you’re reading this, be forewarned you might be approaching your expiration date.

 

As agencies struggle to make their margins, senior talent is getting cut like razor wire at the border. From a financial perspective, it’s understandable. When your hot air balloon starts losing altitude, the first thing out of the basket is the biggest object. At an advertising agency, that means anyone earning more than a mid-level account director, which includes everyone in creative, strategy or account with more than 15 years’ experience.

 

That’s been the pattern for the past decade, and it’s accelerating at an alarming rate. It looks good on a spreadsheet and tricks holding company management into thinking they have a viable business model, but the consequence of this culling has been a constant state of chaos.

 

Shortened client tenure, erosion of agency culture, lack of mentorship and a visible loss of craft are just some of the consequences, but the real tragedy is how far downstream agencies have moved in their relationships with clients.

 

Wind the clock back and you’ll find agency founders talking to CEOs about their business problems, but today you’re more likely to hear anxious account executives listening to CMOs explain why they’re putting their business up for pitch.

 

To put this in perspective, download the annual report from any of the major holding companies and look for a pie chart visualizing staff demographics. The number of employees over 50 hovers around 5%, depending on the network, yet the percentage of consumers that age is well over 30%.

 

Ageism in advertising is as much a part of the diversity dilemma as race and gender, with representation more out of whack relative to the general population, yet it rarely gets discussed because of financial pressures that make it palatable to agency management.

 

Now, don’t get me wrong, young talent is essential, and the openness and curiosity new hires bring are the kinetic energy of most agency cultures. But an industry that once venerated seasoned creative iconoclasts like Dan Wieden and John Hegarty seems so obsessed with youth these days that we can’t tell the difference between shaping culture or chasing it.

 

And with younger employees so anxious over cancel culture that they routinely censor themselves, who besides a hardened pro—who doesn’t give a damn—can show them how to be outspoken, irreverent and contrarian?

 

There is also a difference between an idea and an execution. Ideas can come from anyone, young and middle-aged alike, but a brilliant execution comes down to craft, and that takes experience.

 

That’s why teams of junior talent working with veterans who amplify their ideas and show them the ropes have historically created the best work. Truly experienced creatives and strategists generate more ideas in an hour than their junior counterparts can in a month, because they see the angles more quickly and aren’t afraid of failure or throwing out a bad idea to find a good one. This is why independents like Mischief, L&C and others are gaining traction with clients—they offer the right mix of eager talent and experienced leadership who can solve problems quickly.

 

To post-rationalize the ongoing defenestration of senior talent, agencies often claim youth is key to understanding culture. But who’s culture are we talking about, exactly? The culture of someone standing on line for the next sneaker drop, the culture of someone buying a house or maybe the culture of someone deciding between a Lexus and a Tesla? Let’s face it, culture is as multifaceted as the varied consumer segments targeted by brands, so why wouldn’t agencies want employees who bring personal experience and empathy to every engagement?

 

Ironically, pop culture from the time when today’s 50-year-olds were teenagers has boomeranged back into fashion, with bands like Queen and The Rolling Stones bigger than ever, and brands like Stanley and Dunkin both timeless and trending. You’d think agencies would see the value of having talent who literally grew up with a brand to understand why it still resonates.

 

As for commercial creativity and what’s considered cool, that is certainly not the dominion of the young. Just ask Wes Anderson, Guy Ritchie or Christopher Nolan—all over 50. Choose your favorite action star, whether Tom Cruise, Michelle Yeoh, Dwayne Johnson, Keanu Reeves or Vin Diesel. (They all made a recent list of Gen Z’s favorite celebrities—and, yes, their 50th birthdays are all in the rearview mirror.)

 

The average age at consultancies is more than ten years older than most agencies, which explains their long-term, upstream relationships. Experience counts and wisdom is as rare as diamonds, which means you can charge more. By cutting senior talent, agencies make numbers work in the short-term but erode their value in the long-term.

 

Clients are no longer renting expert talent, they are negotiating for deliverables.

 

Welcome to “Logan’s Run.” For those of you not into cult science fiction movies, “Logan’s Run” is a 1976 film about a seemingly utopian city in which everyone is young and beautiful. The only catch is that when you reach the age of 30, you are sent to the Carousel, an arena where you take part in a spectacular ceremony of pyrotechnics that involves people levitating and exploding into atoms. In other words, this apparently perfect society turns out to be a dystopian nightmare where everyone is killed at age 30 to preserve the limited resources available. No one remembers how it came to this, and until our hero, Logan, escapes and runs away, nobody realizes there’s a better world beyond their own.

 

Sound familiar?

 

Ageless actress Sophia Loren said it best: “There is a fountain of youth. It is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of the people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”

 

Let’s defeat age together by protecting our most valuable resource—skill honed over a lifetime—and make sure it doesn’t get lost.

16569: Blacks Blocked By Barriers Of Bias & Bullshit.

Campaign published a perspective from Quantasy Executive Creative Director Terrence Burrell, emphasizing the barriers that Black talent still faces in Adland.

 

There’s nothing new presented by Burrell—and that’s the disturbing dilemma.

 

Former US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said, “The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.”

 

Adland has had a problem with diversity for many years—in fact, for many, many decades. Worse yet, the industry seems quite comfortable with its DEIBA+ measure of success, which is arguably total failure.

 

Regarding equality in Adland, the failure is immeasurable. And status quo bias for bias is the never-ending problem.

 

The barriers that still exist for Black talent breaking into the ad industry

 

By Terrence Burrell

 

Despite promises made in 2020, Black creatives at the start of their careers still face unique challenges.

 

Breaking into the creative advertising industry is challenging. Whether you're aspiring to be a graphic designer, art director, copywriter or creative director, the field is competitive.

 

But for Black talent, the difficulties go beyond the typical requirements of having the right experience, talent and a dedicated craft.

 

During the summers of 2020 and 2021, I watched as the industry made concerted efforts to recruit and elevate Black creatives. Talented individuals from multicultural and Black-owned agencies suddenly found themselves in high demand, with job opportunities plentiful. Agencies started addressing their diversity shortcomings, launching DE&I initiatives and investing in programs to rectify the imbalance.

 

Unfortunately, the pendulum always swings back, and many marginalized creatives quickly discovered that barriers to success are still abundant. Here are some of the obstacles recent hires I spoke with encountered when breaking into the industry.

 

Limited understanding of opportunities in the industry

 

The marketing and advertising fields are rarely represented or are completely absent from most career fairs. Therefore, many individuals, particularly those interested in pursuing a career in the arts, lack awareness of the opportunities available to them in advertising and marketing.

 

Aspiring talent may also find themselves influenced by traditional career expectations. Family members and counselors offering well-intentioned advice may steer them toward more conventionally stable careers, such as law, healthcare or accounting. Despite the creative arts being a viable and fulfilling career path, they often remain overlooked due to the “starving artist” stigma.

 

Many aspiring talents don’t have the access or network to pursue a creative career, adding to their challenges. Unless management intentionally provides networking opportunities or mentor and outreach programs, these prospects and outcomes won’t change.

 

Lack of leadership support

 

Businesses must realize that it will take more than making a few diversity hires in the name of checking a box to make a real difference.

 

Senior leadership may have diversity goals and programs in place to implement change. However, when they run into more junior creatives who may not always align with their viewpoints, those employees’ work is often pushed to the side, or their contributions reduced to being the token diverse employee in the company photo.

 

Ensure that everyone in the agency shares a commitment to common DE&I objectives so that the environment is one where young Black creatives feel empowered to learn, grow, occasionally stumble — and view setbacks as valuable learning experiences.

 

Implicit bias closes off traditional pathways to success 

 

For Black professionals, success in this industry often hinges on networking, creativity and adaptability. While their Blackness can offer fresh perspectives and insights, it can also lead to implicit biases or stereotypes that hinder their advancement.

 

Traditional pathways to success may not always be accessible to Black professionals, leading to feelings of isolation or imposter syndrome. The pressure to conform while staying true to one’s cultural identity can create both internal conflict and external barriers. Black professionals often walk a tightrope, striving to excel professionally while challenging systemic inequities.

 

The best way to address these obstacles is to listen, listen, listen — and work with these employees to create an action plan. Agencies can make a lasting cultural and social impact by actively hiring and supporting historically left out, ignored or suppressed individuals.

 

A diverse workforce isn’t good for PR. It’s good for business. Diversity within an organization brings different views, skills and solutions to the table.

 

Business leaders must understand that progress in DE&I initiatives requires time and dedication, and maintaining a positive outlook is crucial. While inclusivity may not offer immediate returns, its long-term impact is invaluable.

 

For my creatives, remember — Blackness is your superpower; don’t shy away from it, but don’t let it become your Achilles’ heel. What got you here isn’t necessarily what will keep you here. Step outside your cultural comfort zone, experience new things and ensure you’re continuously learning about the industry, consumers and your craft.

 

You may not have entered the industry through traditional means, but you’re here now — so embrace the opportunity to learn, grow and affect change.

 

Terrence Burrell is executive creative director at Quantasy.

16470: Ranking Bias, Playing Favorites—Or, Bias & BS.

 

Digiday Media’s Worklife published a report on the five most common biases prevalent in the workplace. While racial/ethnic bias and gender bias were noted in the opening, only gender bias made the top five list. This is sadly reflective of Adland, where White women trump racial and ethnic groups as a cause for committed concern.

 

Here are the five most common biases happening in the workplace

 

By Cloey Callahan

 

There are over 150 cognitive biases in the world. Out of those, there are around 25 that show up regularly in the workplace, including newer ones like proximity bias that surfaced after the hybrid work boom, and ones that we’re all familiar with like race and gender bias.

 

“When we hear bias, our minds immediately go to race, gender, maybe sexual orientation,” said Christy Pruitt-Haynes, global head of talent and performance practice at business and leadership consultancy NeuroLeadership Institute. “All of those are very real components of bias, however it’s really important for everyone in the workplace, especially leaders, to learn there are other types of bias as well that go beyond race and gender.”

 

There are five biases that are top of the list in terms of how pervasive they can be if they aren’t identified and mitigated as soon as the bias starts to happen. Yet, not all managers and executives are aware of all five and how frequently they impact the workplace. That’s why diversity, equity and inclusion leaders are calling for education and training around these biases.

 

“What’s interesting about cognitive bias is you can’t get rid of it completely,” said Tom Kilgore, senior director of DE&I at eCommerce fulfillment solution provider Radial, which hosts regular internal training sessions around bias in the workplace. “There’s no remedy, no pill. But you learn how to live with them and how to actually address them. By doing that, it can have a positive impact.”

 

And it’s something that people might have put on the back burner during the pandemic, but DE&I leader Jen Mahone Rightler says it’s important now more than ever to educate people around the different kinds of biases.

 

“There was such a focus on trying to figure out what the virtual space was going to look like that we relaxed a lot of the training around certain cultural nuances,” said Mahone Rightler. “We’re finding that as we’re coming back into the workplace, there are so many things we forgot about.”

 

Here’s a roundup of the five most common biases happening in the workplace, including what they are and how to mitigate them.

 

1. Affinity bias

 

Affinity bias is when someone has a natural affinity to someone. Kilgore says this unconscious bias shows up most frequently during the talent recruitment process. Someone might notice that the person went to the same university, is from the same state, or has similar hobbies, and then choose to hire that person instead of someone who might be a better fit for the job but doesn’t have any similarities to them.

 

“All those data points give us this huge endorphin rush every time when we connect to them,” said Kilgore. “Our brain starts to have this affinity towards that prospective candidate. As a result, when we talk about diversifying the workforce, you often hear ‘we are looking for someone who will be a good culture fit.’ And what happens is that you get clones of yourself.”

 

One way to mitigate affinity bias is to make sure that you are intentional with interview panels that are diverse, which would then help choose candidates that vary across race, age and gender.

 

2. Gender bias

 

Gender bias is one that people might be most familiar with. “It’s always going to be a big one,” said Mahone Rightler.

 

This bias can play out in multiple areas of the business, from hiring to project management. Kilgore says that an employee might see projects consistently assigned to men instead of women, which leads to a gap in representation.

 

“As we start to see that pattern unfold, we need to actually call it out,” said Kilgore. “It’s really important that we create a safe space where there is psychological safety where people feel compelled enough to do so.”

 

Bias disruptors are extremely important in the workplace, and can help someone realize they are leaning into an unconscious bias even if they don’t realize it themselves right away.

 

3. Recency bias

 

As the year winds down and performance reviews might be happening, leaders should be especially mindful of recency bias. Kilgore says that this is a hot period in which recency bias can thrive. While a leader is supposed to assess an employee for an entire year, they might focus just on the end of the year – the most recent events.

 

One of the easiest ways to mitigate this is to lean on technology’s help. Have a management tool to track employees’ work across the entire year, rather than just focus on the past few months.

 

Pruitt-Haynes says that this can also happen during the hiring process as well, where someone who is interviewing candidates might rate the person they interviewed last very highly because it was the most recent one.

 

“Have a set of criteria when you’re making decisions,” said Pruitt-Haynes. “If it’s a hiring decision, have a rubric that says we’re looking for these things, and take notes on how closely each of those candidates match up to what you’re looking for. That moves us away from making a gut decision, which can be influenced by bias, and shifts our decision making to fact-based qualities we can really measure.”

 

4. Contrast bias

 

Often common with learning and development goals, contrast bias is when managers compare employees against each other, even if said employees need different things to succeed. “A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work with learning and development,” said Kilgore.

 

The solution here is for managers to understand that everyone works differently, and to not fall down a path in comparing employees. Kilgore says that if leaders do this, it becomes a bandwagon effect that can have a larger impact.

 

“If you’re constantly comparing two people, you minimize one person’s contributions,” said Kilgore. “Then other leaders will adopt the same perception of that person and spread a false stigma that could stunt their growth within the organization and lead to a lack of upward mobility.”

 

5. Fundamental attribution error

 

This is a tendency to explain someone’s behavior based on internal factors like personality traits, while underestimating the influence of external factors.

 

And the external factors could be plenty, especially with the rise of remote work. For example, an employee might not have their camera on frequently during work calls. Someone with fundamental attribution error might say that person is quiet, shy, and not a team player. However, the reality might very well be that this person is dealing with taking care of their multiple kids during the call, or have other things going on behind the scenes.

 

“But you’ve created the perception that this person isn’t a team player,” said Kilgore.

 

Thankfully, this can be easily mitigated through things like one-on-ones with team members, using intentionality to ask what’s going on in people’s outside lives. That might also mean paying attention to nonverbal cues and opening up for an honest conversation.