Episode 90: Creating Better Workplaces by Tackling Unconscious Gender Bias in Biotech Startups

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Welcome back to BIO from the Bayou. I'm James Zanewicz from Tulane Medicine, one of your hosts.

And I'm Elaine Hamm, the executive in residence at Tulane School of Medicine, the other host for today. And today's guest is Carlo Odecino. He is the CEO and founder of One Team Partners, which specializes in helping early-stage startups bring their innovations to market while building the high-performance motivated teams. And today's topic of our podcast is gonna be a focus on gender bias, which I'm very eager to talk about. Welcome to the show, Carlo.

Thank you very much for having me, Elaine and James. Excited to be here.

Well, Carlo, we're super excited to have you, and we always like to get to know our guests a little bit first. So, as the founder of One Team Partners, I wanted to ask what inspired you to focus on creating better workplaces, particularly addressing gender bias?

You know, one of the things that motivated me to start One Team was just to stop back in 2015, when I was reaching burnout, that there just had to be a better way of working. And a lot of the sort of traditional thought processes needed to be recast in a different light. And as I dove in deeper into the concept of trying to rethink the way work was executed, both that worked for the company and for the individual, I really started just reflecting on all the people that served as mentors for me. And my work all were women. And so I wanted to dive into that and really kind of exploring more of what was it about them that I felt offered so much to me and my career growth and start bringing that to light. 'Cause I realized it was a very male-dominated viewpoint a lot of the times. And I was thriving under the guidance of a lot of very strong female influences from family members to teachers to coworkers. And they were, I always found that I would've gravitated to their way or their style of doing things. And so that's why I wanted to kind of frame it from that perspective.

That is 1,000% my experience as well. And it's funny, I just had dinner on Monday with one of my colleagues from Tulane, and she and I were talking about how we both have this similar experience where we each only had one same-gender boss that we really have clicked with and gotten along well. But the majority of our good professional relationships have been with people of the opposite gender.

Yeah.

I absolutely adore working with women. It's been something that I've really valued in my career. So, it's a little disheartening when you go into a career field where more than half of our workforce is women, but I mean, as you get up higher in the levels, it's only about 20% of women in the C-suite level anyway. And so, really thinking about gender bias, I think there's a little bit, people tend to sort of bristle at this thought of gender bias of, you think of it as the really overt types of issues of, Sex discrimination, sexism, those types of things. But really the bigger challenges I find as a woman is a lot of the sort of more subtle things, the unconscious gender bias that we can come across very subtly. And sometimes those subtle things are really challenging to articulate because they're easily dismissible. And then you, as a woman, sometimes you're called, oh, you're too sensitive, or you're crazy for thinking that. But there is a really strong issue of unconscious gender bias. And what are some of those examples that you could give us, especially as it relates to sort of the smaller company startup side?

Yeah. And I think that is the most important thing to start to look at. Overt bias is by definition easy to spot. And if you're not doing something about it, that's something that should be addressed head on. It's the unconscious. I'm not doing it intentionally. It's how I've grown up or how I've learned. And I find it's a balance of just helping people be aware of it and not have this reaction To when somebody points out, oh, you're showing a bias, not have that feel like it's a critique. It's just, I'm just highlighting that statement or the way you behaved is sort of unconsciously demonstrating a bias. I share with many organizations and with the internal team is everybody has a bias, but organizations can work to neutralize that bias by the different points of view that they choose to be part of that organization. So an organization can be actively sort of neutral on their bias, but an individual is always going to have a bias. And so how do you counteract that? It's just really inviting people in to then point it out. So as an example, one of the things, and this happened probably 8 years ago, Me having been so comfortable with mentors that are female never bothered me when I was in a room where I was the only man in the room. Never bothered me. But that's rare in a business context. But I've been in multiple business meetings where it was me, I was the only male in the room, and every single time, oh, we're sorry that you are the only male in this room. Until you brought it up, it didn't even bother me. It didn't even— but that was an example of just some unconsciously sort of apologizing for the space that they took up.

Yeah.

And I think on the flip side of that, the unconscious part is diminishing a person's way of interacting with the world because it's not masculine-like. Then I'm going to describe it as, oh, that is abrasive, or that is I don't like it. And really just pointing out, well, imagine if the same words came out of somebody's mouth that was male, how would you react to it? And, oh, I think the same way. Oh, that's interesting. 'Cause I just said those same words and you didn't react that way. It is one of those things where to start to unpack that, you really have to help people understand because I'm pointing it out, it's not necessarily a critique. It's just an opportunity to grow. Better communicating, just to sort of allow— I kind of roll my eyes more and more of like, oh, the person's getting very emotional, or I like to keep emotion out of discussion. And I'm saying, well, first of all, emotion drives a lot of what anybody does. Some people may be good at applying logic to that emotion, but it starts with emotion. So like, to try to avoid it seems silly. It's just, to me, emotion is just a source of information. That then once you're aware of what that information is telling you, then you have choices in front of you and you can either react in a constructive way or react in a nonconstructive way. And I would argue choose constructive.

Unless it's your nemesis, right, Elaine?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Different combo. But what are some of those examples of like unconscious bias? I mean, I think of like, sometimes there's labels that I think women get unfairly and probably men get unfairly too, of just being told that you're difficult or abrasive or not a good fit. There's all of these sort of code words of, like you said, if you'd said that to a man, you would call it something different. I've been called bossy quite a bit, and that term is an example, I think, of an unconscious bias of like, you know, you wouldn't call a man being bossy, you would leadership skills and whatnot. Do you have other sort of examples that you've seen of that unconscious subtle things that are really hard to pick up on?

Yeah, I mean, it's bossy versus, you would call that assertive, or somebody sort of standing up and having a clear stated opinion. Oh, they're very decisive.

Yeah.

If it's a man. And then for a woman, it's like, well, she's kind of coming across as abrasive, or she's very shrill. And this just, the pejorative adjectives or adjectives that can be viewed as pejorative come in. One of the things I see where organizations really try to say, hey, well, we want to try to be more diverse in our hiring practices. They're saying, well, we put out this job and only men applied to it. That's a subtle way of saying, well, we've done all our parts. And I've always said, well, you know, there's a difference between how job descriptions are written and how women respond to it. And so if your intention is to get more women, maybe rethink how you write the job description. There was a study I think that I read was job descriptions that are filled with like 20 bullet points of what they want. If a male reads it and they think they can do 50% of it, they'll apply. If a woman reads it and she thinks she can do 80 to 90%, she'll apply. If not, if it's less than that, she won't.

Yeah.

They'll self-select out when an organization may be, and I always say, why do you have 20? You're never going to find that 20. That, what are the key things that you're really important on and describe it more narratively, a way of communicating. I think those are the things that I think, just to answer your question directly, are those are the subtle questions or next-level questions you need to ask yourself instead of just doing the superficial thing of calling somebody abrasive. Okay.

Yeah.

What precisely did they do that makes you perceive them as abrasive? And address that because that helps build sort of, this is just an unconscious thing that I'm reacting to. You need to work hard to move the unconscious to the conscious so that they can make a different choice the next time.

We have a lot of our listeners that are larger companies and whatnot, but a good amount are smaller startup companies or academic labs potentially who are interested in entrepreneurship. And so I'm curious what you have found some of the initial steps that those startup companies should take to identify and address unconscious gender bias within their teams kind of as they're starting out and as they're building their culture?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. When I work with companies, I said, there's no better time to work on your culture and what you want to be than from like day one. A lot of companies dismiss it. Oh, we don't need culture until we scale or get bigger. Like, no, culture will exist regardless if you're intentional about it or not. So, I really think what smaller companies can do, because you can build trust so much faster, is just Start calling it out. We want to be a company that does not— that works actively against unconscious bias. And that can show up in gender bias. That can show up in different types of biases, how they look, all that kind of stuff. We want to just sort of consciously work on it. But in order to do that, we all need to trust each other that sharing insight or feedback is not an indictment, and we have to be comfortable. And when somebody inevitably may react to something being pointed out in a less constructive way, we have to have a way to sort of overcome that. It's not trying to be perfect in all interactions at all times. It's acknowledging that we will be imperfect, but we are intentional about continual improvement. And I would argue most, if not all, early-stage companies, you really need a strong commitment to actually learn. And with learning, you need to have that comfort with discomfort that we're going to do things that are uncomfortable that we're not used to doing. And that's okay because we'll be better off for it. And I really think that's a fundamental way of really addressing bias and particularly unconscious bias is saying it exists. And when it's pointed out, we should say thank you for pointing that out instead of saying, oh no, I don't have it. That's one of those things that Call somebody out if they're like dismissive of somebody pointing out something that they do. You may feel like you don't have it, but you need to explore a little bit more about what did I just say that caused you to have that reaction?

It's really challenging to have those conversations, especially— so, one of my first jobs coming out into the startup world, I worked at an organization. I came in at a VP level, and all of the management were older white men. And one of the things I noticed is that we were paying one of our female scientists differently from one of the male scientists that was at her same level. And it was a little bit of a tricky sort of conversation to have with— I didn't want them to feel like I was accusing them of sexism because I know exactly what happened. The man came in and asked for a raise and the woman didn't. And she actually outperformed him in all the ways, but she didn't ask. And so, it was difficult to sort of have that conversation with upper leadership without sounding accusatory of just like, hey, I found this discrepancy. And pointing out like that this isn't something they did, but this is something that we can easily, in being in leadership, that we can correct and make sure that we don't have that discrepancy. That gap is going to get wider and wider as, as it happened. Of course, I talked to the female employee. I was like, you got to start asking for raises. So, how do you help mitigate that gender bias from a leadership perspective? Because that can be, it's nice when you have females in leadership that they can kind of look towards those things.

Yeah.

But that isn't always the case.

I think it's 2 ways. One, you have to have a leadership team that is committed, and particularly whoever's leading the company that's committed to actively gathering the data and then looking at the data for what it is. And so, if you're really trying to acknowledge that it exists and acknowledging that it likely exists in your organization, then what can you start measuring that guides you where you can improve? Pay differentials is one of the easier ones to start to look at. And instead of trying to defend why something— it's okay, what's causing this? And ask for that underlying question of, well, we weren't intentionally paying this person differently, and we're not even arguing that the person who's getting paid a lower pay, that she's not performing really well. All of those we're accepting.

Yeah.

But we got out of sync because we didn't keep our eye on the ball of like, okay, let's look this cross-sectionally and say, okay, this person asked for a raise. We believe they are deserving of a raise. Is there anybody else who's not asking that is deserving of it?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think those are the things that the conventional wisdom, well, if they don't ask, you don't need to give it. I'm like, well, if you want to start overcoming something, then you need to start looking at it holistically. And I think those are the things that it's getting easier and easier to get at that data and having it more readily available. And there needs to be a commitment to using it.

Startups always think of that. We're saving money by not— if someone doesn't ask, don't worry about it. We're going to save that money by not paying that person. But when that person figures out that there's a gap, they'll leave. And then you have a huge cost sunk of trying to rehire somebody. And so to me, it's a cost savings by level setting everybody. And if you can't give A raise to all, maybe pause and wait until you can.

I couldn't agree more that because it's more difficult to quantify, but it is a higher cost. Experiencing turnover, particularly from a high performer, is far more costly than finding a disconnect. Oh, we can't afford both of them to get a raise. Well, if you can afford X amount and they're both deserving, split it. Right.

So, And I think this kind of gets to, you know, establishment of standards and values for an intentional workplace culture. And one way companies can do that, of course, is to hire One Team Partners. It's a great, easy way to bring someone in, not giving away the whole secret sauce. What are some tips for companies to integrate anti-bias principles into their culture effectively if they don't have you, you know, on board helping them to do that full-time?

Yeah, I think they really, I would, Suggest that you establish a value, a corporate value that really calls that to attention. So it can come in, never, never, people describe it in different ways, but we're committed to diversity of thought and diversity of background and experience. We want to be that way. And so that comes, and why do you want to do it? And then you just explain the why it helps us manage unconscious bias that might show up. By bringing in different perspectives. And so we will be intentional about seeking out folks that aren't necessarily 100% like— they value the same things that we value, but they don't need to have the same exact sort of resume or background and experiences. And so we're a consulting company that focuses predominantly, or a big part of our business is on life sciences companies. I am the only one in our company that has a life sciences degree. Because yes, that is valuable to understand what that industry is about, but I can teach that. But somebody that has a background in hospitality or someone who has a background in philosophy or someone who is self-taught, didn't even go to college, but is self-taught and learned that way, there's just tremendous value in that background and experience that makes us better for who we are. And so, that's just the intention you want to grow with, because a lot of what makes an industry specific can be taught. What's common across all industries are humans, and humans come with various different backgrounds and experiences that are tremendously valuable if you choose to leverage them.

Once you get these sort of best practices established and you're beginning to see the culture take root, How do you help organizations measure the impact of their efforts? I mean, I think there's some ways that, I mean, like with my example of the woman that was making less, once we kind of level set her, I saw her really step into more of a leadership role. So, there was this qualitative thing that we were seeing of her just like really feeling supported and more willing to speak out. She thrived after that moment, but that's more qualitative. What are some other ways that people can look at the impact of what they're doing in terms of addressing biases? to let them know that it makes a big difference in the success of your company?

Yeah, I mean, depending on organizational size, but I think some of the more quantitative things, obviously, you can look at pay differentials, and then you can look at population breakup by level, not just on the whole. So, I love the companies that say, well, you know, we're 50/50 men and women, and then you get up to the senior level, and it's very, very uniform. Or you can start to look at diversity by function. So a lot of the C-suite, the companies that do have women in the C-suite, I said, let me guess, they're either the chief human resources officer or the chief marketing officer. You rarely see the CFO or the CEO. They're there, but you rarely see them as being women, even when it's a female CEO. And so those are some of the more quantitative, but I guess I would Maybe push back a little bit on— there's value in consistently asking for qualitative feedback. And so do micro surveys of just asking simple questions, not to say, do you feel like there's a bias or not, but do you feel you can do the Likert type scale of asking, like, I feel at ease expressing my opinion.

Yeah.

And just see how that shifts over time. That's a way of changing qualitative feelings into, okay, is it trending up or trending down?

And that can lead to turnover and more quantitative things as well, too.

Exactly. Yeah. It's a way of basically turning in qualitative feedback into quantitative ways of looking at trends.

Well, do you have any last final words or advice you'd like to leave our listeners with as we, as it relates to gender bias in their companies?

Don't hesitate to ask the question. Bring thank you into your vocabulary more often. 2 examples of, if somebody points something out that makes you feel uncomfortable, say, thank you for the feedback. And this particularly to women in particular, when you're late to a meeting, don't say, sorry, I'm late. Say, thank you for waiting.

Those subtle things are important.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, we appreciate so much your time and for our listeners, we have more about One Team and Carlo and the work that he's doing in our show notes. Be sure to check them out so that you can learn more. And thank you once again for joining us.

Yeah, thanks, Carlo.

Thank you.

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