Have you ever thought about how your job affects your attitudes? When I worked with children in care, I came to believe that all children were passive and that every generation was doomed to be less capable than the last. Similarly, I knew a store detective whose default attitude to strangers was to be suspicious – not just on the job, but everywhere. These false generalisations were based on the small sample groups that we worked with.
Your approach to work can become your approach to reality. I spoke with a woman whose long-absent ex-husband refused to give consent for their 10-year-old daughter to be adopted by her stepfather, even though the girl truly wanted to be adopted. “He doesn’t care what’s true,” explained the mother. “It’s an occupational hazard. He’s a lawyer, and he focusses on who has the better argument, rather than who is telling the truth.”
Your work can shape how you measure success, too. An environmental campaigner described a project to stop pollutants from drains contaminating the sea. The working group, all ex-teachers, had declared 100% success, despite no evidence that pollution had decreased. Apparently, they had placed a picture of a fish on 100% of the metal stormwater grids and believed they had solved the problem by ‘educating’ people at all the drain sites.
In the same way, an accountant might think that balancing the books is all it takes to be a good boss; someone with a television background might think a well-produced public performance is what makes a good politician; and a hairdresser might think that having stylish children makes them a great parent. What about you? Are you caught in the occupational bias trap? Because what gets counted at work may not be what really counts at all.
Stephanie Hills ©