Example of a Preference: Unconscious Bias Our understanding of unconscious bias has changed radically over time. In the past, we regarded our biases as aberrant, conscious, and intentional. Today, research suggests that human biases are normal, unconscious, and largely unintentional. This science of unconscious bias draws upon multiple disciplines such as biology, neuroscience, and cognitive science (cognitive bias), sociology (social cognitive theory), biology, and psychology (categories and implicit bias). From this growing body of work, here are some basics you should understand about the science of your brain and the science of bias:

• Bias Begins in the Brain—Humans face a problem: Our brains are exposed to more information at any one moment in time than we are capable of processing. Scientists estimate that, at any given moment, our brains are exposed to as many as 11 million pieces of information, but our brains can only functionally deal with about 40 things at a time. Consequently, our brains develop preferences—mental shortcuts about other people or groups—that save time and usually yield reliable results but do not always yield reliable results. Therein lies our biases. Human biases have evolved out of these preferences, shortcuts, and brain processes, whereas 95% of mental processes are unconscious; only 5% are conscious. According to Dr. Sondra Thiederman, “Unconscious Bias is a labor‐saving device. It enables you to form an opinion without having to dig up the facts.”²
• Bias is a Defense Mechanism—The human brain basically contains two different operating systems as shown in Figure 1.4. Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize–winning economist, has described these systems in his book entitled Thinking, Fast and Slow.³ The first of these systems, the “Thinking Fast” system, is located in the amygdala, which is also referred to as the “primitive brain” because it is governed by survival instincts.⁴ The amygdala is the oldest part of the human brain and controls our “fight or flight” impulses. It receives direct input from all sensory organs, enabling it to respond rapidly to immediate threats in advance of more elaborative cognitive processing. It plays a central role in arousal, attentiveness, and triggering the flight‐or‐fight response, reacting to social threats in the same way it reacts to physical ones. The brain therefore acts as a prediction machine that is wired for threat identification. Unconscious bias, then, is the immediate, reflexive, defensive reaction to people that we regard as being not like us or “other.” Our biases are triggered by the things we can see or hear. Seeing these people or pictures of these people immediately puts our brains on alert for possible danger. Moreover, our biases are most likely to be activated when four key conditions are present: stress, time constraints, multi‐tasking, and the need for closure.
• Bias Can Be “Outsmarted”—The second of these brain systems, the “Thinking Slow” system, is located in the prefrontal cortex, which is also referred to as the “executive brain” because it contains our higher‐order reasoning and logic skills (see Figure 1.4).¹³ In effect, this system allows us to “outsmart our brains” by taking the time to think about whether the “other” truly represents a threat to us. For example, when we think of people as individuals instead of as members of collective social or cultural groups (“individuation”), our brains can turn off the alarm signal from the amygdala and consciously override our unconscious biases.

Just as our preferences are learned, our biases are learned. You may have a bias or a preference for certain races/ethnicities, genders, ages, religions, nationalities, and so on. Oftentimes our biases reflect our personal identity and the people who surround us. We all have biases. To be biased is to be human. Like all preferences, a bias is neither good nor bad; better nor worse; right nor wrong. And because our biases are learned they can be unlearned. Among the best ways to mitigate bias are to raise your awareness of your biases from the unconscious to the conscious realm, slow down, be objective when making decisions, and, above all, interact with people different than you. Enter the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which measures unconscious and implicit bias.

Example of a Preference Scale: Unconscious Bias and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), “Harvard University experimental social psychologist Dr. Mahzarin Banaji is on the frontlines of the ‘implicit revolution,’ a paradigm shift in psychology that, since the 1980s, has been reconceiving the relationship between unconscious and conscious mental processes. Banaji and her colleague Dr. Anthony Greenwald [at the University of Washington] applied the concept to social psychology via the intertwined concepts of attitude, belief, and identity.”⁵ Banaji and Greenwald are co‐authors of the seminal book Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People. “In 1995, the duo defined implicit social cognition, introduced the term ‘implicit bias,’ and foreshadowed the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to detect and measure automatic, unintentional biases. The IAT and other methods have enabled Banaji and her colleagues to uncover hidden biases in the form of attitudes and beliefs (stereotypes) of gender, race/ethnicity, age, sexuality, and other common social group identifiers.”

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) “measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report,” according to Project Implicit, a nonprofit organization and international collaborative of researchers who are interested in unconscious bias.⁶ Project Implicit was founded in 1998 by Drs. Greenwald and Banaji and Dr. Brian Nosek at the University of Virginia. The mission of Project Implicit is to educate the public about bias and to provide a “virtual laboratory” for collecting data on the internet. Project Implicit scientists produce high‐impact research that forms the basis of our scientific knowledge about bias and disparities.⁷ “The IAT measures the strength of associations between concepts (e.g., black people, gay people) and evaluations (e.g., good, bad) or stereotypes (e.g., athletic, clumsy). The main idea is that making a response is easier when closely related items share the same response key. We would say that one has an implicit preference for straight people relative to gay people if they are faster to complete the task when Straight People + Good / Gay People + Bad are paired together compared to when Gay People + Good / Straight People + Bad are paired together.”

The IAT is available at no cost and can be taken by visiting: implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html. Multiple IATs are available including the following (preference scale in parenthesis as worded by Project Implicit):

• Native American IAT (Native‐White American)
• Gender‐Career IAT (family and females/career and males)
• Weight IAT (fat/thin)
• Sexuality IAT (Gay‐Straight People)
• Weapons IAT (weapons/harmless objects)
• Gender‐Science IAT (liberal arts and females/science and males)
• Race IAT (Black‐White)
• Religion IAT (familiarity with religious terms from various world religions)
• Asian IAT (Asian‐European American)
• Transgender IAT (transgender people/cisgender people)
• Arab‐Muslim IAT (Arab Muslim/Other People)
• Skin‐tone IAT (light skin/dark skin people)
• Disability IAT (physically disabled/physically abled people)
• Presidents IAT (popularity of current U.S. president)
• Age IAT (young/old People)

We use these tests quite extensively in our DEI and unconscious bias training at BCT. I've taken most of them, and they are not for the faint of heart! Be prepared for your results, which may be sobering and surprising.

Figure 1.5 shows an example of the report generated by the Black‐White IAT.

If this were your IAT report, it would suggest that you have a slight automatic preference for white people when compared to Black people. (Note: As you can see from the results of IAT research by Project Implicit summarized in Figure 1.5, 17% of people across all racial/ethnic backgrounds have a slight automatic preference for white people over Black people.) These results would not mean you are a good or a bad person or that you necessarily treat white people better than Black people. The results would mean that you are human—we all have unconscious biases—and, because unconscious bias is a preference, it may be reflected in your behaviors in ways that you are unaware and are unintentional. Therefore, if you were interviewing a Black person for an employment position, it would be important and incumbent upon you to take deliberate steps to mitigate your racial bias to ensure fairness.

The value of a preference scale is that it allows you to see where your preferences lie along the scale and, when combined with research like that from the IAT, how you compare to others. Additionally, preference scales can be combined to create a preference map that provides even deeper insights and understandings.

Understanding a Preference Map A preference map is a multidimensional landscape that locates you between several different preference scales. A basic example of a two‐dimensional preference map (a combined x‐axis and y‐axis) is shown in Figure 1.8.

As you can see, Figure 1.8 combines two one‐dimensional preference scales into a two‐dimensional preference map. For example, if preference scale #1 represented a preference for water with lemon and preference scale #2 represented a preference for water without lemon, while preference scale #3 represented a preference for cold water and preference scale #4 represented a preference for room temperature water, then Figure 1.8 would suggest that you have a slight preference for cold water with lemon.

Example of a Preference Map: Race IAT and Gender‐Science IAT In similar fashion to Figure 1.8, Figure 1.9 combines the previous examples of the one‐dimensional Race IAT and the one‐dimensional Gender‐Science IAT into a two‐dimension Race and Gender‐Science preference map.

If these were your results from the IAT, it would suggest that you have a slight automatic preference for white people and a slight automatic association of men with science. In other words, if you were interviewing a Black woman for a scientific employment position, it would be important and incumbent upon you to take deliberate steps to mitigate both your racial bias and your gender bias to ensure fairness. We will revisit these and other strategies in Step 3: DEI Insights and Step 4: DEI Initiatives. Moreover, jumping slightly ahead to Step 2: DEI Imperatives, which calls for you to develop personal DEI objectives and goals, based on these assessment results your personal DEI objective could be to mitigate your racial and gender biases to ensure fairness, and your personal DEI goal could be to improve your scores on a diverse 360° assessment (explained later in this step) with people of different races and genders in scientific positions.

One of the values of a preference map is that it allows you to easily and visually see interrelationships among your preferences, which mirror the DEI concept of intersectionality—that is, how different aspects of a person combine and create overlapping identities, experiences, privileges, and advantages/disadvantages. Intersectionality reflects the complex nature of our human experience and how people identify. Preference maps reflect the complex nature of our preferences against those identifiers and other salient dimensions of the human experience.

For example, I identify as Black, male, Christian, heterosexual, and able‐bodied, from among other identifiers. To understand my lived experiences is to understand how each of these identifiers has affected my lived experiences. Along the same lines, much as the previous example assessed preferences, or biases, along the lines of race/ethnicity and gender, it also offered a way of providing overlapping and layered insights to preferences, or biases, at the intersection of race/ethnicity and gender. These results can be extraordinarily valuable to understanding yourself and understanding how you may interact with others.

The IAT is used to assess people against a one‐dimensional preference scale. I have employed it here to explain one‐dimensional preference scales and as a building block to explain two‐dimensional preference maps. However, Project Implicit does not provide IAT results as preference maps, only preference scales. I presented combined Race IAT and Gender‐Science IAT results for illustrative purposes as a means to explain preference maps. To help make the concept of preference maps even clearer, my next and final example will introduce an assessment tool that is specifically geared toward generating a two‐dimensional preference map: The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument^® (HBDI^®). This is another good example because HBDI^®, and the Whole Brain^® Thinking model upon which it is based, are both rooted in cognitive science and characterize thinking preferences and cognitive diversity, which can be universally understood and applied to anyone.

Example of a Preference Map: Whole Brain^® Thinking and the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument^® (HBDI^®) According to the theories of brain specialization and lateralization, interconnected networks across different regions of the brain preside over different types of thinking (see Figure 1.10). People are said to prefer certain types of thinking over others, which is reflected in the way we communicate, what motivates us, what we learn, what we pay attention to, and more. This ultimately impacts our behaviors and how we interact at home, at work, and in the world.

Ned Herrmann, whose journey is captured in his book The Creative Brain, was the head of management education at General Electric in the 1970s and 1980s, leading GE's renowned Crotonville, New York, corporate university.^8,9 His background was in physics; he was also an accomplished opera singer, painter, and sculptor. This gave him an appreciation of different styles of creativity. During the late 1970s he led the efforts to update GE's management training programs to make them more reflective of individual differences in learning and thinking style preferences, based on the groundbreaking work of Roger Walcott Sperry. Herrmann's research with GE employees was shaped by Sperry's work illustrating the different processing specialties of key areas in the brain for logical/rational thought vs. intuitive/creative thinking. Herrmann also drew insight from Paul MacLean's work understanding distinctions between the cerebral cortex and limbic systems of the brain in abstract/theoretical vs. concrete/realistic thinking, respectively. This ultimately resulted in the Whole Brain^® Model with four quadrants, one for each cognitive system, which is described in Table 1.1 and depicted in Figure 1.11.

Buying a car provides a good example of how Whole Brain^® thinking works as shown in Table 1.2.

The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument^® assessment, or HBDI^® survey, is comprised of 120 questions that measure thinking preferences based on the Whole Brain^® model. Over 2 million HBDI^® assessments have been completed worldwide, and the HBDI^® has shown strong repeated evidence of validity in psychometric research, including very good test‐retest reliability and internal consistency. Face validity is extraordinarily high at over 95%. The HBDI^® Profile or assessment report represents a two‐dimensional preference map and provides the following key information about you (see Figure 1.12a):

• Preference Code: A classification of your overall preference score in each quadrant of the Whole Brain^® model. You will have a score here between 1 and 3. A score of 1 indicates a primary or high preference and relates to a score between 67 and 189 and above. A score of 2 indicates a secondary or intermediate preference and relates to a score between 34 and 66. A score of 3 indicates a tertiary or low preference and relates to a score of between 0 and 33.
• Profile Scores: Your profile scores for each quadrant under normal circumstances, ranging from 0 to 189. The higher the score for a quadrant the higher the degree of preference for that thinking style.
• Under Pressure: Your profile scores for each quadrant under pressure, ranging from 0 to 189. The higher the score for a quadrant the higher the degree of preference for that thinking style under pressure.
• Percentages: The percentages at the top and bottom show how much you prefer the cerebral mode of thinking (abstract and theoretical) vs. the limbic mode of thinking (realistic and concrete). The percentages to the left and right show how much you prefer to think (with the rational analytical and practical) versus the intuitive mode of thinking (experimental and interpersonal).
• Kite‐Shaped Figures: The kite‐shaped figure with a solid line visually depicts the four thinking preference profile scores under normal circumstances. The kite‐shaped figure with a dashed line visually depicts the four thinking preference profile scores under pressure.

If Figure 1.12a represented your HBDI^® report, you would also have a slight thinking preference for cerebral (abstract and theoretical) thinking (54%) and right mode (experimental and interpersonal) thinking (52%). Under normal circumstances, you would have a “triple dominant profile” of “1211” reflecting three primary and high thinking preferences (three preference codes of 1, namely, an “analytical” profile score of 73, “relational” profile score of 68, and “experimental” profile score of 79) and one secondary and intermediate thinking preference (one preference code of 2, namely, a “practical” profile score of 61). In other words, under normal circumstances, you may have a blind spot for matters that relate to practical thinking such as organizing, planning, and attention to details. Once again, jumping slightly ahead to Step 2: DEI Imperatives, if your personal DEI objective is to stretch and expand your thinking preference into the “practical” quadrant, then your personal DEI goal could be to complete a diverse 360° assessment (explained later in this chapter) now and one year later to see if family, friends, or colleagues have observed greater intentionality toward organizing, planning, and paying attention to details.

Under pressure, your preferences would generally shift away from experimental thinking (profile score decreases from 79 to 58) and analytical thinking (profile score decreases from 73 to 58) and shift toward practical thinking (profile score increases from 61 to 82) and relational thinking (profile score increases from 68 to 82). Figure 1.12b shows the preference tilt for your general score and your under pressure score—it visually depicts how your preferences shift when operating under normal circumstances to operating under pressure. As you can more clearly see in Figure 1.12b, because your preference tilt under pressure is toward practical thinking (the lower left quadrant) such as organizing and planning, and relational thinking (the lower right quadrant) such as matters related to interpersonal relationships and intuition, you could therefore have a blind spot for experimental thinking (the upper right quadrant) such as synthesizing and conceptualizing ideas, and analytical thinking (the upper left quadrant) such as matters requiring logic and ration.

Once again, the value of a preference map like the HBDI^® individual report is that it not only deepens your understanding of yourself, but that you can also generate an HBDI^® pair report that compares your profile with another person, and an HBDI^® team report that analyzes a group of people. This can lead to more productive communication, meetings, team building, innovation, and more. To take the HBDI^® inventory and debrief your results, you must engage an HBDI^® Certified Practitioner, which includes several professionals at BCT Partners.

While the preceding examples depicted two‐dimensional preference maps, preference maps can be multidimensional and depict any number of preferences using several axes and various shapes, sizes, colors, numbers, and more, on the map. Next, I will explain how to assess your competences against a continuum, which is relatively easier to explain.

Example of a Competence Continuum: Intrinsic Inclusion™ and the Intrinsic Inclusion Inventory™ (I3™) Whether it's conscious, unconscious, or implicit—to be biased is to be human. Despite this reality, some humans behave more naturally inclusively than others. Their internal motivation and drive to connect with others who are different from them is natural, intentional, and impactful. They practice key behaviors that disrupt bias and create inclusion. Based on the research outlined in their book, Intrinsic Inclusion: Rebooting Your Biased Brain, Dr. Janet B. Reid and Vincent R. Brown refer to this phenomenon as Intrinsic Inclusion™. They define the following five characteristics of people with an intrinsically inclusive mindset:¹⁰

• Naturally Seek People Who are Like and Unlike Themselves—seek to build relationships with those who are like and unlike themselves with the same amount of enthusiasm. This includes relationships with other people both personally and professionally.
• Naturally Curious—They have a natural curiosity and seek to gain a deeper understanding of people from cultures and with lived experiences that differ from their own.
• Not Afraid of Others Who are Different—They have less unjustified fear and negative stereotyping of those who are different. Therefore, they often build highly effective, diverse, and inclusive teams.
• Learn from Mistakes—They know they might make mistakes in dealing with those who are different, but that doesn't deter them from pursuing relationships. They readily acknowledge and learn from a mistake and act to rectify the situation.
• DEI Champions—They consistently deliver to their organizations the advantages of DEI, such as increased employee engagement, innovations, better problem solving, lower turnover, and bottom‐line benefits, while also appreciating and uplifting the importance of people.

Intrinsic Inclusion™ lies at the intersection of diversity, neuroscience, and bias.¹¹ Just as our individuality develops in dimensions—internal traits (primary), external experiences (secondary), and on‐the‐job classifications (organizational)—so does our unique set of biases. Bias is an automatic reaction to both inherent and learned preferences such as food, music, and status. Curious and adventurous personality types are intrinsically more inclusive when outside the social group to which they psychologically identify (i.e., their “in‐group”) and may pause their reflexive and automatic responses to act more reflectively and deliberately. Most people are unaware of instinctive preferences—unconscious and implicit biases—and may not recognize bias as a factor in their behavior. The good news is this: We can learn to disrupt automatic thoughts and consider new information. This is the basis of a concept known as “neuroplasticity” or the ability of our brain to form, organize, and reorganize synaptic connections. Empirical data strongly indicates we can grow new neural pathways for greater neural flexibility and cognitive function including behaviors that disrupt our biases.

Based on their research to identify ways to prevent our preconceptions from hijacking our thoughts and determining our judgment, Dr. Russell Fazio of The Ohio State University and Dr. Michael Olson of the University of Tennessee found that “motivation and opportunity can be determinants of spontaneous behavior.” Their theory, known as the M.O.D.E. model (Motivation and Opportunity can be the Determinants for Spontaneous Behavior), gives us a methodology for gaining control over our thought processes and their outcomes, as shown in Figure 1.14.

Dr. Fazio refers to M.O.D.E. as a “gating mechanism.” With enough motivation (i.e., any incentive that causes a person to stop and think about outcomes such as concern for safety, sticking to a budget, avoiding embarrassment, or important new information) and the opportunity (i.e., people having the resources to think clearly and consciously, meaning they aren't tired, in a hurry, feeling stereotyped, or distressed in other ways), our brains can shut the gate on, or interrupt, an automatically activated attitude. This allows new ideas to inform deliberate, better‐informed decisions and actions. With motivation and opportunity, people can develop a mindset of curiosity and intrinsic inclusion and embrace what Dr. Reid and Brown have popularized as “The Power of the Pause”—a deliberate pause that has power to stop automatic reactions, allowing our brain to consider biases and new information, and then to control decisions. Dr. Reid and Brown have identified the following four behaviors—or “inclusion accelerators”—that can cultivate the Power of the Pause, upend patterned thinking, and may reboot our biased brain (see Figure 1.15):

1. Shared Trust occurs when a significant relationship forms between people different from each other that allows them to be vulnerable. It has three components:
   1. Enables learning and growth
   2. Equally shared among all parties
   3. Shared definition and framework
2. Respectful Empathy occurs when a person embodies the perspectives and feelings of another and chooses to bond with them. It is not sympathy. Respectful empathy has three components:

   

   

   1. Cognitive empathy: intuitively knowing how another thinks
   2. Emotional empathy: understanding how another feels
   3. Compassionate empathy: wanting to connect with and understand another deeply
3. Significant Emotional Relationship/Event occurs when people who are different from one another develop deep respect, become close, and are concerned for one another. It has three components:
   1. Life‐altering impact
   2. Emotional connection
   3. Meaningful and enduring
4. Connected Understanding occurs when two or more people understand and appreciate how others different from themselves prefer to communicate and process information. It has three components:
   1. Mutual respect and understanding
   2. Communicating in ways that ensure all voices are heard equally
   3. Heightened attentiveness to the styles of others

Biases will always exist, but in changing how you think, feel, and act, these four inclusion‐accelerating behaviors can also change your personal and professional relationships and performance. By seeking experiences and opportunities to demonstrate these behaviors, you will lead a more intrinsically inclusive existence. Intrinsic Inclusion™ powerfully illuminates how individuals and teams can disrupt unconscious biases—unlocking improved decision making, communication, collaboration, innovation, inclusion, and belonging.

Dr. Reid, Vincent Brown, LaToya Everett, Patricia Melford, John Grooms, and BCT's Peter York, Dr. Miriam Sarwana, Dr. Astrid Hendricks, Phylicia Thompson, Dr. Lisa Kulka, E'Driana Berry and I conceptualized and developed the Intrinsic Inclusion Inventory™ (I3™). It is a statistically valid and reliable psychometric instrument that measures the competence or ability of people and organizations to be intrinsically inclusive by assigning a score or index to each of the seven different roles that inform the inclusion accelerators.

For example, looking slightly ahead to Step 2: DEI Imperatives once again, if your personal DEI objective is to improve your competence with demonstrating inclusive behaviors, then your personal DEI goal could be to complete the I3™ assessment six months apart and increase your score from one level to the next.

I3™ offers individual and group reports, which deepen your understanding of yourself and others such as colleagues, coworkers, and close friends and family. This can help you to become more effective in leading and working with others more inclusively, optimizing teams, and improving organizational performance.

Next, I will use intercultural competence and the Intercultural Development Inventory^® (IDI^®) as another example of a competence continuum. As its name implies, intercultural competence is not only a competence but also a concept that can be universally applied across multiple cultures and cultural contexts.

Example of a Competence Continuum: Intercultural Competence and the Intercultural Development Inventory^® (IDI^®) According to IDI, LLC, intercultural competence is defined as “the capability to shift cultural perspective and appropriately adapt behavior to cultural differences and commonalities. Intercultural competence has been identified as a critical capability in a number of studies focusing on overseas effectiveness of international sojourners, international business adaptation and job performance, international student adjustment, international transfer of technology and information, international study abroad, and inter‐ethnic relations within nations.”¹²

The Intercultural Development Continuum™ (IDC™) describes orientations toward cultural difference and commonality that are arrayed along a continuum from the “monocultural mindsets” of Denial and Polarization through the transitional orientation of Minimization to the “intercultural or global mindsets” of Acceptance and Adaptation. The capability of deeply shifting cultural perspective and bridging behavior across cultural differences is most fully achieved when one maintains an Adaptation perspective. This continuum is adapted from the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity originally proposed by Milton Bennett and includes the following five orientations:

1. Denial—An orientation that recognizes more observable cultural differences (e.g., food), but may not notice deeper cultural difference (e.g., conflict resolution styles) and may avoid or withdraw from such differences.
2. Polarization—An orientation that views cultural difference in terms of “us” and “them.” This ranges from:
   • Defense—a more uncritical view toward one's own cultural values and practices coupled with an overly critical view toward other cultural values and practices, to
   • Reversal—an overly critical orientation toward one's own cultural values and practices and an uncritical view toward other cultural values and practices.
3. Minimization—An orientation that highlights cultural commonality and universal values and principles that may also mask deeper recognition and appreciation of cultural differences.
4. Acceptance—An orientation that recognizes and appreciates patterns of cultural difference and commonality in one's own and other cultures.
5. Adaptation—An orientation that can shift cultural perspective and change behavior in culturally appropriate and authentic ways.

Dr. Mitchell R. Hammer, president of IDI, LLC, conducted the cutting‐edge research that resulted in the Intercultural Development Inventory^® (IDI^®).^13,14 The IDI^® measures how a person or a group of people tends to think and feel about cultural difference stemming from any aspect of diversity, human identity, and cultural difference. It assesses the core mindset regarding diversity and cultural difference and determines your level of intercultural competence along the IDC™. It is a statistically valid and reliable psychometric instrument that measures one's current degree of intercultural sensitivity and intercultural competence affects or “shows up” in your interactions (e.g., cross‐cultural communication) with other people.

Figure 1.16 provides an example of an IDI^® report, which provides the following key information:

• Perceived Orientation (PO): A measure of how you rate yourself in terms of your own capability to adapt to cultural differences along the developmental continuum.
• Developmental Orientation (DO): Your primary orientation or how you are more likely to experience cultural differences and similarities. This is a more accurate measure of how you experience and adapt to cultural differences and similarities. This is also how others likely experience you.
• Orientation Gap: This reflects the difference between your Perceived Orientation and the Developmental Orientation. Your Perceived Orientation score may be higher than the Developmental Orientation score or vice versa. This indicates that you may be overestimating or underestimating your level of intercultural competence.

If this were your IDI^® report, based on your development orientation (DO) score of 124.26, your primary orientation toward cultural differences would be within “Acceptance,” reflecting an orientation that recognizes and appreciates patterns of cultural difference in your own culture and other cultures in values, perceptions, and behaviors. Once again, looking ahead to Step 2: DEI Imperatives, if your personal DEI objective is to improve your intercultural competence and ability to navigate difference, then your personal DEI goal could be to increase your IDI^® score from Level 3: Minimization to Level 4: Acceptance in one year.

The IDI^® also offers individual and group reports. This can help you to become more effective in leading, working in, and succeeding in an increasingly diverse domestic and global workplace and marketplace, and enable your team to do the same. To take the IDI^® assessment and debrief your results, you must engage an IDI^® Qualified Administrator, which includes several professionals at BCT Partners.

As a final example of a competence continuum, I will use antiracism and the Antiracist Style Indicator (ASI), which measure antiracist competence.

Example of a Competence Continuum: Antiracism and the Antiracist Style Indicator (ASI) “Being an antiracist involves making intentional and conscious decisions to support policies, practices and procedures that promote racial equity in housing patterns, criminal justice system, wealth distribution, education, healthcare, and voting rights. Being an antiracist is also a dynamic process that plays out in your everyday life in your attitudes and beliefs. Beyond working to dismantle systemic racism, being an antiracist involves how you express yourself as a racial person and how you interact within a multiracial society with others who do not share your same racial identity,” according to Deborah L. Plummer, author of the Antiracist Style Indicator (ASI).

“Rooted in Gestalt psychology principles and family systems theory, the 70 items of the Antiracist Style Indicator (ASI) reflect the attitudes, knowledge and skills [KSAs] for being an effective antiracist.” The ASI assigns a score in each of three categories—Underfunctioning, Functioning, Overfunctioning—that represent the degree to which these characteristics show up in your lifestyle. Underfunctioning and Overfunctioning both represent lower levels of competence while Functioning represents the highest level of competence as shown in Figure 1.17. “Functioning antiracists are effective disrupters and eradicators of racism who turn us and them into we. They recognize and understand the structures that shape and maintain racism. They understand racial dynamics and treat associated tensions as challenges to be mastered with education and learning and work to stay updated on contemporary scholarship,” says Plummer, “The ASI does not predict success or failure in being an antiracist. As a self‐assessment tool, it is designed to help you focus on specific aspects of your personality, behavior, skills, and knowledge as areas of strength and weaknesses. You can make your own interpretations about your scores and determine choices for your growth areas. It is an ipsative measure rather than a norm‐based assessment, meaning your score only applies to you and you can take it again over time to see if your scores change and improve.”¹⁵