Reducing Bias in Decision Making

This workshop offers an introduction to how human beings operate with unconscious bias. Participants learn how bias impacts workplace relationships and decision-making and are provided tools to mitigate bias with the self, teams, and the enterprise. After this session, participants can return to their workplace and make changes.

Research on decision-making reveals that when individuals are highly aware of their decision-making process, they can see how non-determinant data influences their thinking. This awareness improves decision-making by developing a more extensive set of choices to reach intended outcomes.

Experiential learning is integral to the workshop and the participants’ learning experience. This session includes simulated experiences that transform participant behaviors through awareness. The experiential learning model builds insights by having participants do the actions in a training space that reduces biases in decision-making. Participants have many opportunities to experience their unconscious bias and priming bias directly. They can take a firmly held assumption and deconstruct it using deductive reasoning.

Time Requirement
60, 75, or 90 Minutes. Portions are removed depending on the allotted time.

Learning Objectives
Through this workshop, participants will:
• Learn how priming bias works;
• See how bias can affect their choices at work;
• Conduct a personal social network analysis;
• Develop new practices and skills to minimize bias in business decisions;
• Learn how unconscious bias affects diversity and business strategy and
• Develop a business case to integrate diversity strategy throughout the organization.

Participants will explore the following questions:
• What is unconscious bias?
• How does unconscious bias affect our lives and the workplace?
• What biases do I have?
• What tools are available to me to reduce the effects of bias in my workplace?

Creating Psychological Safety

In this experiential workshop, Lorne guides participants to a new awareness of psychological safety to support a culture where they feel safe sharing their ideas with freedom. We will discuss the literature explaining what psychological safety means, how it improves DE&I, and practices to show managers and employees how to create it.

Google’s research on their highest performing teams uncovered it wasn’t team members’ education, experience, or place of origin that drove their success. Critical success factors were the team members’ levels of communication, empathy, and sense of psychological safety with each other. In today’s fast-paced, high-stress environments, the need to build context so teams can work effectively together has never been more critical.

Clear guidelines for engagement create the foundation for highly effective teams. Boost team efficiency, trust, and alignment with strategies for collectively identifying what is vital to your teammates and building team commitment to using the co-created guidelines for success.

Using stories, dialogue, and appreciative inquiry techniques, you will learn what’s important to other participants and how you could work together in mutually supportive ways if you were part of the same team. You will take away tools that you can use to bring your team to its next level of performance.

Learning Objectives
• Explore what psychological safety means and looks like in the workplace;
• Develop new language and awareness about psychological safety;
• Create a plan to develop psychosocial safety in the workplace; and
• Gain skills to work effectively with coworkers to establish psychological safety in the workplace.

Participants will:
• Create a team charter drawing from the needs of the people in the room;
• Prepare by reading academic and business literature before the workshop;
• Answer several written questions before the workshop to prepare;

Participants learn and experience the meaning of psychological safety and how this concept is a tool to engage employees and drive productivity, innovation, and collaboration.

Collaborative Communications Workshop

This 90 to 120-minute is a highly experiential, hands-on workshop based on Marshall Rosenberg's work on communicating and listening more effectively using Nonviolent Communication (NVC). We will cover the four fundamental steps of nonviolent communication: observing without judging, expressing feelings when observing, expressing and clarifying one's needs to the feelings they observe, and expressing specific requests.

Collaborative communication skills are examined and practiced to have strategies to meet the fundamental needs of all of the people in a conversation. This style of dialog requires building a safe space and trust. When you and your teams feel heard by others, trust will rise.

Learning Objectives:
• Develop the courage to listen without fear.
• Develop a framework to ask for what you want.
• Create a deeper understanding of self.
• Discover unknowns & form new understandings.
• Creating a culture of innovation & psychological safety.
• Improving productivity and revenue by sharing mistakes and finding solutions.

Participants will:
• Learn the four easy steps of collaborative communication;
• Practice communicating in small groups;
• Participants will learn how to use language and dialog to improve performance, reinforce positive behaviors and improve negative ones; and
• Become eligible to participate in small learning labs to continue their practice.

Removing Bias from Job Descriptions

Unconscious bias shows up in job descriptions, which has informed our hiring decisions and diversity makeup. Lorne facilitates a workshop where participants learn how to analyze and write job descriptions to mitigate as much bias as possible. You will learn to highlight invisible diversity dimensions crucial to job success. They include learning & conflict styles, life experiences, attention to detail, ability to grow into the position, and professional skills. Data shows that the greater the diversity dimensions represented, the more productive and robust an organization is. You will practice a critical job description review to develop questions for the hiring manager and coworkers to help you bring salient clarity to the job description to hire the most diverse people available now.

Organizations seek to become more diverse to expand their hiring pools and gain diversity advantages. Job descriptions are the leading edge of the hiring process, facilitating people to join your organization. They demonstrate the organization’s values, the tasks that need to be accomplished, and what they are looking for in the person who will best fit the role. We break through the old job descriptions model to create a diverse workforce.

• Participants will learn to create job descriptions that reflect the position's needs and mitigate dimensions of diversity.
• Review and highlight bias in job descriptions.
• Create critical questions to uncover the goals the position seeks to attain.
• Learn what words, phrases, and themes contain biases to embrace and avoid.
• Develop a palate of questions to take back to your office and discuss them with your hiring managers.
• Compile uncovering questions to elicit critical stakeholder data into the job description.
• Focus company job descriptions to be seen and read by more people.
• Make distinctions between company values and culture to mitigate bias.
• Bring the hiring manager and coworkers into the job description writing process.

Global Bias Impact Report - Keynote

Lorne shares the results from his Global Bias Impact Survey. In 2022 and 2023, we asked hundreds of professionals from around the globe to share their insights on the impact of Unconscious Bias in the workplace and what they are doing to mitigate it. This talk presents a summary of what the data revealed. Lorne is committed to improving our ability to relate to one another, learn how to learn, and slow down our thinking to uncover and mitigate our unconscious biases.

Description
For centuries marginalized people have been crying out for justice, freedom, and an opportunity to be heard. Those who do not feel heard have turned up the volume most recently experienced after the murder of George Floyd.

My report honors the marginalized people on our planet, including people of color, the LGBTQ community, non-native-born Americans, women, the elderly, and everyone who wants to be seen and accepted for who they are.

Discrimination and dysfunction in the workplace stem from a lack of diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI). Unconscious Bias is one of the biggest influences on this set of problems. Improving the choices we make will improve DEI and business outcomes.

I want to share with the public what people see as the impact of unconscious bias in their workplace and what they are doing to mitigate it to make our work world a better place.

Developing Your Ethical Mindset

This is an experiential, hands-on workshop based on applied and normative ethics. Participants learn the fundamentals of ethics and how to create a framework communicating their organization’s ethical standards. We cover the history of ethics in business and use experiential exercises to uncover and illuminate the participant’s ethical mindset.

Ethics is a branch of philosophy that involves recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior.
Ethics has taken center stage as a component of an organization. Ethics has become an essential pillar of an organization’s holistic operations, from its brand to how they treat employees and stakeholders. Ethical behavior aligns the values of an organization with its outward expression in the form of products and services. The closer the alignment of an organization’s ethics is to its business model, the more ethical an organization can be. Ethical statements can reassure stakeholders about their fears. For example, “We are reassuring people, It is OKAY to be here.” And “We will protect you from that which you fear.”

Consciously Manage Complexity

Consciously Managing Complexity is an experiential, hands-on workshop that equips business leaders with tools to navigate and manage complex systems using adaptive, creative, and strategic approaches. Consciously managing complexity in a business context is broadly a function of four different strategies or tactics, which are:

1. Recognize which type of system you are dealing with.
2. Develop a “manage, not solve” approach.
3. Practice a “try, learn, and adapt” operating strategy.
4. And develop your “conscious complexity mindset.”

You'll engage in simulations to practice categorizing different systems, utilize checklists to manage simulated simple systems, and collaborate with fellow participants in expert groups to tackle complicated scenarios. Emphasizing a 'manage, not solve' philosophy, you'll navigate complex situations through role-playing exercises and develop your “complexity mindset” with creative problem-solving tasks. You'll be equipped to recognize, understand, and effectively manage various systems in your professional environment.

Learning Objectives:
• Understand the differences between simple, complicated, and complex systems and categorize management issues within these types.
• Develop skills to manage each type of system, from simple to complicated.
• Learn how to navigate complex situations by focusing on management, incorporating flexibility, and preparing for multiple outcomes.
• Enhance your ability to adapt to changing environments.

This workshop teaches you to master essential skills, including critical thinking, adaptability, problem-solving, and digital literacy. These skills are crucial for effectively navigating and addressing multifaceted challenges without being overwhelmed by information overload or being confounded by our problems.

Time Requirement
60, 90, 120, to 240 minutes. Portions are removed depending on the allotted time.

Breaking Bias – How Technology Became Addictive and How to Break The Habit

In 2009, Stanford researcher BJ Fogg introduced a simple model for behavior change: motivation, ability, and a trigger. His goal? Help people build better habits.

But tech companies saw something else—a system they could use to capture attention and keep us coming back. The result: a global shift in how we think, feel, and focus. Dopamine-fueled feedback loops—likes, pings, unread notifications—exploit our brain’s reward system, creating compulsive behaviors that mirror addiction.

In this keynote, I draw on neuroscience, behavioral psychology, and real-world stories to reveal how persuasive tech hijacks our cognitive wiring—reshaping our habits, reducing our ability to focus, and altering our sense of agency.

But we’re not helpless.

This session provides practical, science-backed strategies to break these patterns and regain control. You’ll learn how to identify digital triggers, apply low-tech rituals, and redesign your environment to support clarity, focus, and well-being—for yourself and your teams.

In this eye-opening keynote, discover how persuasive design hijacks your brain—and walk away with science-backed strategies to reclaim your focus, well-being, and control over your digital habits.

Learning Objectives
By the end of this keynote, participants will be able to:
• Explain how persuasive design leverages dopamine feedback loops to shape behavior;
• Identify how digital tools apply the Fogg Behavior Model to create compulsive use;
• Apply neuroscience-based techniques to reclaim attention and mental clarity;
• Design simple, low-tech rituals that promote presence and productivity;
• Establish healthy digital boundaries that support team focus and well-being.

Guiding Questions
• How does digital design hijack our brain’s reward system?
• Why do email and social media feel so compulsive?
• What strategies interrupt the cycle of digital distraction?
• How can I help my team build a healthier relationship with technology?

This keynote is for anyone who’s ever said, “I can’t stop checking my phone”—and meant it.
Let’s stop being users—and start becoming designers of our own attention.

Brains, Bias & Breakthroughs: Science to Supercharge Your Team

Unconscious bias isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a hidden force shaping decisions, team dynamics, and organizational performance. In this interactive workshop, participants will explore the neuroscience behind how bias forms, how it hijacks decision-making, and how to interrupt it, both individually and collectively.

Using the latest findings from cognitive neuroscience and behavioral psychology, we’ll unpack how our brains create shortcuts that impact hiring, communication, collaboration, and trust. But this session goes far beyond theory.

Participants will walk away with practical, science-based tools to:
• Recognize and reduce bias in real time
• Create a psychologically safe environment for collaboration and innovation
• Improve communication by understanding the brain’s response to threat and reward
• Foster inclusive, high-performing team habits

This workshop is designed for intact teams, cross-functional groups, or departments seeking to foster stronger collaboration, make better decisions, and achieve higher engagement.

Learning Objectives:
• Understand the brain mechanisms that create and sustain bias
• Identify common team dynamics that activate bias and reduce psychological safety
• Apply brain-friendly strategies to build trust and collaboration
• Build a shared vocabulary around bias and behavior change
• Strengthen team resilience and communication

Experiential Exercises Include:
• Bias-in-Action Simulation: Teams analyze real-world scenarios to identify where bias shows up—and practice shifting behavior in real time.
• Neuroplasticity in Practice: A guided reflection and partner activity showing how even small changes in mindset and behavior can rewire team dynamics.
• Psychological Safety Mapping: Teams identify threat and reward cues in their environment and co-design rituals that support inclusion and engagement.

Unconscious bias silently shapes how we work, connect, and communicate. This interactive workshop helps employees understand the neuroscience of bias and equips them with practical tools to reduce it, build trust, and contribute to a more inclusive, collaborative team culture.