Yesterday, I explored what we mean by the word “prejudice” in response to my client’s question. Today I venture to ask myself why I or others might choose to manage my personal prejudices – and indeed, why we might choose not to.

I have to declare a bias! For all my instincts are in favour of being aware of my prejudices, of stripping them away, of letting them go… it is easy for me to make the case for managing one’s prejudices in a range of roles. I think of parents, leaders, teachers, coaches… Given my own bias, I want to recognise that there might be well-intended reasons for maintaining a prejudice and even that maintaining prejudice is inevitable.

What might be our reasons for maintaining a prejudice or bias? What needs might we meet by holding a prejudice? Yesterday I mentioned that generalisations simplify the act or process of living. It’s also easy to see how prejudice might be born of fear – a generalisation from one experience to protect us from similar experiences in future. It’s only a few steps, for example, from knowing that crime rates are high in xyz area to drawing the conclusion that all people who live in xyz area are dangerous and to treating them with suspicion. Even when we don’t hold a view we might choose to adopt it for fear of what happens if we don’t. Some of the most striking examples are visible in totalitarian regimes. Others are more subtle and can be seen by the discerning eye in our families, churches, workplaces and other communities. To maintain a bias may keep us safe from something we fear. It may also help us to maintain our place in a community.

What might our reasons be for choosing not to examine our prejudices and to manage them? One reason is that our prejudices are often unconscious, resting on beliefs we take to be truths – matters of fact. How many of us take “you have to work hard to succeed” to be the ultimate workplace truth, for example? Perhaps there’s another reason we choose not to examine our prejudices. For some of us at least hold the view that we are the sum of what we think. To open up our beliefs to examination can be frightening indeed – for who are we when our beliefs have been stripped away and found to be false? With what do we replace them?

Given the reasons we have to maintain our prejudices, why might we choose to manage them – to bring them into conscious awareness, to examine them, to let them go or at least to choose how we respond to them? It’s clear that there can be negative consequences from holding a prejudice, both for the person who holds it and for others with whom they are in contact. Consider the parent, for example, who forms and expresses the view that Johnny is the lazy one in the family (or stupid or ugly…) and that this is a bad thing or that Sally is the resourceful one in the family (or bright or capable) and that this is a good thing. Research in many fields suggests that such declarations tend to sow seeds for the behaviour of the children (or adults) involved. We can expect that over time Johnny and Sally will tend to conform to the ideas their parents have of them. In the field of leadership, research shows how the beliefs of leaders can have the same impact across teams or even whole organisations.

Even when the beliefs of parents (or leaders) are “positive”, they may have unintended and undesired (or undesirable) consequences. In the family Sally may feel pressure, for example, to live up to her parent’s description of her and may fail to ask for help when she needs it. Both Sally and Johnny may over time feel increasingly estranged from their true selves and from the adults who have labeled them in whatever way.

And what about coaching? It seems to me that any hidden assumptions, generalisations or beliefs held by the coach may limit what’s possible in coaching. It’s not that the coach’s experience counts for nothing – often coaching clients look to their coach for input and observations based on their own experience. At times, it’s the coach’s personal experience or experience of other’s progress that tells them that more – much more – is possible for a client. At the same time, when the coach presumes to have an answer, he or she may unwittingly limit the client in his or her progress or in the expression of his or her authentic self.

Perhaps authenticity is the hidden “plus” in all of this. For insofar as we value authenticity and see benefits in recognising and nurturing authenticity in ourselves and others, we are likely to want to go beyond our prejudices and to be open to a level of insight which cannot come from generalisations of any kind.

I wonder, what do you think?