'The deep rooted unconscious bias that effects our career decisions'

Following on from my article last week, today I wanted to stay on the topic of unconscious bias, but this time looking at how we let our unconscious biases influence the decisions we make about our own careers.

We are all impacted by what we see, read, hear and experience all of which knowingly and unknowingly help form our subconscious opinions. Unfortunately, the extent of unconscious bias is not limited to how we perceive others, but can also impact the way we see ourselves, from our self-esteem levels to the decisions we make about our careers.

I am the third child to first generation Bangladeshi migrants in London, whose expectations of all 5 of their children were that we weren’t to waste the great opportunity we had. We were to go to university and lead a comfortable life – as a minimum. I am grateful to my parents for pushing and having faith in us, and as a result I have always aspired to do well.

My elder brother was a doctor and my aspirations were to study medicine and become a doctor like him, a dream that was shattered when I was merely 18 based on a crappy A'level exam! However, I still wanted to stay in the field of healthcare and decided to study a similar subject at my first choice of uni in the hope that I would find a way back to medicine. By the time I had studied 5 years for my degree, it became apparent that settling for second best was not the right choice for me, and medicine became an impossible dream. I was shattered, I had failed.

Dejected I started to look around for alternatives to bide my time, whilst I figured out what I was going to do with my life. It was pure luck that my first visit to a grad fair led me onto a graduate management program at Endsleigh insurance, where I was lucky to have managers that recognised my skills and helped me progress up the ranks, all whilst entertaining my new ideas and curiosity for marketing. Little did I know that 5 years later that management training and little experience of marketing would help me blag my way into the world of Digital Marketing and Sales.

Having stepped into the world of digital, I was content with developing my knowledge and running and growing the very small sales team I had. I was excelling and growing the business, but I still didn't recognise my potential. So much so, that when I was offered the opportunity to lead the agency, I actually declined it. What crazy person declines the opportunity to take a massive promotion! Someone who has never considered the possibility of entering the world of leadership, I didn’t think I had it in me, and didn’t want to make a mess of it and look silly. Of course, hindsight is a gift we never have and today I know I should’ve tried... Maybe my career would have taken a different course - who knows.

My point is that growing up, whenever I thought about what I would want to be, I would always end up considering a vocation such as medicine, speech and language therapy, or teaching, why? Because they were perceived as prestigious and it was what everyone ‘wanted’ to be. Why did I not consider a career in sales and marketing? Looking back I see now that I didn't have any roles models around me that were female and in these positions. I grew up seeing and hearing that successful salespeople were men and the obvious ‘car salesman type”. That was definitely not me.

Even when I was a successful manager, managing multiple teams across several offices and smashing targets, I never dreamed that I could ever be part of an executive team leading a business. Why you ask, because growing up I was not exposed to any female leaders within my immediate community, and there weren't many famous leaders that could aspire to. I mean we had good old Maggie, but coming from a family that supported Labour, I never really heard anything nice about her. There was Indira Gandhi who I admired, but I knew that she came from a powerful family which I did not. Unfortunately, beyond these two amazing ladies there weren’t any others that I can remember. Lack of exposure meant that I did not associate leadership with myself, my gender or my ethnic group.

A career in digital marketing was also not my first choice, to be fair it was never really an option because, like most people, I had never heard about it. Although I was only 11 years old when Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web, and I was at uni when the dot.com boom was in full swing, digital marketing was not a thing for me.

The sad thing is that in these 15 years not much has changed in our industry or in my community. The children in my community still aspire to be doctors, lawyers and accountants, when I tell them about what it is I do, it becomes apparent very quickly that they are hearing this for the first time and although they are intrigued, it is too alien for them to see it as a real career path. And what can I say about our industry, is that we haven't moved on much, there are still far too many men in senior leadership roles as a whole and the women that are, are so few and far apart that feelings of tokenism and imposter syndrome are almost a given with the role.

The problem is not only that women are not being given those opportunities, but like me 12 years ago, many women are still not comfortable putting themselves forward for such roles, for fear of failure, and unlike our male counterparts, we want to make sure we are 100% ready. For those that are ready and want to put themselves forward, there isn't always a clear pathway to achieve this and a lack of female sponsorship only add to this barrier.

A change is long overdue, a change that will inspire more women to take the plunge and put themselves forward for leadership, roles which are well within their reach and capabilities. That change starts with us. More female leaders need to acknowledge the issue and actively combat it. Be a sponsor (internal/external) and help pave the way for more women to grow into leadership roles. There wasn’t a blueprint for us and there still isn’t, but what’s stopping us from creating a blueprint for the generations to come?

I want my daughter to grow up believing that she can be and do whatever she wants, and to be exposed to all that is possible. However, I know that merely telling her that it’s possible is not enough, she needs to see that is possible.

The time has come for our industry to mobilise, spread the word and encourage more women to be part of this amazing industry. The time has come to tell our up and coming generations that there is a career path for them, and we have created he blueprint for it! We need more female leaders and for that we need to show them it's not a dream, it's a reality.

In preparation for International Women’s Day, I am telling my story in the hope that I might encourage more women to get out there and talk about the amazing work they are already doing, to inspire and create our next generation of female leaders and encourage them to do better than us. Maybe we will break the vicious cycle of unconscious bias and self-doubt that is stunting diversity in our boardrooms.