How to avoid saying the wrong thing

- The number one way to stop saying the wrong thing is to just slow down. And I know that's hard sometimes for people to do especially because the scientists that study unconscious bias tell us that our unconscious thoughts are the better predictors of our behavior than our expressed views. So you don't even know what's rushing out of your mouth half to the time, so if you can just be on the lookout for the bias and if you think possibly you may be jumping to conclusions too quickly, just slow down. Sometimes you're going to get information or data or someone's going to say something that gives you some information that will cause you to adjust what you were thinking and what you were more importantly saying or doing, so that's I think a really important thing. I also think we just have to be a little bit more suspicious about what we think we know. We often think I know who this person is or I understand this situation. Someone says to me sometimes, "I just know in my gut. "When someone comes in and I interview them, "I just know in my gut "whether they're going to make it or not." And I'm thinking, "Your gut has a lot of biases in them. "Are you sure you want to go with that?" So I think we have to just be more suspicious of our sense of knowing. And then I think we have to be more curious and what curiosity looks like is asking open ended questions, where you're asking for people to give you information rather than asking through presumption. You're from the south. Therefore, you must... As a person who is 50 or over, you have... Instead of saying how do you feel individual person and then listening very carefully for what they give back to you, those cues, what people say about themselves are really helpful. The other thing I would say is when we're talking about cultural lens, say your lens out loud. So you might say, "As a person who grew up in the '60s, "the way I think about things is..." So at least you're saying to that person, "I know that what I'm about to say "is coming through a very peculiar lens. "You are welcome to tell me what your view of it is." So at least you're kind of giving a context for what you're saying because a person might say, "You know what, that's slightly offensive, "but I actually get now, "but I know why you're saying it the way you're saying it." Because ultimately what we're trying to do is not be perfect, we're trying to establish this connection that allows us to keep talking, keep learning more, and keep creating a space for a place where people feel included and respected. And we can't do it unless we are willing to give each other, sort of a back and forth, the benefit of the doubt, and then we also need people to use some smart skills. And a lot of times people are like, "I'm a good person and isn't that enough?" It is really not enough to be a good person because good people still make these mistakes. You have to be a person who wants to do the work and the work is examining yourself in your own biases, in your own lens, and then being really interested in how other people see the world which means you've got to connect with them. You've got to go around other people. You've got to read. You've got to show up at films that you wouldn't choose necessarily because it's not your group. You've got to read magazines that are not about your group. You've got to actually listen to different news outlets than the ones that agree with you. There are all these ways in which you have to expose yourself to other ideas and other ways of doing things and that causes you I think to hesitate in pronouncing things or concluding things. If I would say there was any daily practice, it would be curiosity, but then also the willingness to do the work of understanding others.