This is a hot topic right now and one of personal relevance to me. My mother spent a large part of my childhood a female engineer working through the 90s and 2000s. I watched her struggle with having her skill accepted and heard her frustration when she got home. I never understood it. There are numerous benefits to a diverse workplace.

For me, she was the source of help with my math homework (having a masters in mathematics) and always knew how to help with science homework (also having duel bachelors in electrical engineering and math). This idea that women couldn't do technology baffled me as it was against everything I knew growing up.

I have had the privilege of working with and employees many very talented women, but they were always the minority in the office. Like most men, I didn't think much about it. I considered these women peers, and treated them as I did any other peer, what was the issue?

Turns out I was an anomaly in this and as such I started to be confided in. I saw the things my male peers did and heard how it effected my co-workers. I got angry as anyone who cares about another and is seeing them mis-treated would be. I tried to explain only to receive blank looks from male counterparts.

Then the world shifted. Unconscious bias became the word of the day. No longer was it a blame game and the conversation changed, became more inclusive and acknowledged that people were not doing these hurtful things on purpose, simply that they didn't know they were doing it. This made a lot of sense to me, I was sold. I started sending my employees to trainings and saw the results, the changes in behavior. I was not angry, I was helping. This felt good.

So when at Medallia this discussion inevitably came up, as it is wont to in a company with a female President, I was all in. The VP of Engineering asked me how I had an IT team that was half women. He wanted to understand how my group was different than the other groups in his department. I told him about my mother, he told me how he wanted his daughter to grow up equal and how he was just started to realize how he was influencing her. It was a conversation that ten years ago would have never happened between two men. It was a good conversation.

At this point you're probably wondering, as interesting as this story is, what's the point?

The point is what happened next that lead me to a revelation. I was energized, I wanted to help and make a difference. I wanted Medallia to be a place my mother could have worked and succeeded.

So I went to my team and asked the women how I had done it, mostly because I honestly had no clue. I wanted to discover some secret nugget and solution for unconscious bias that I had unconsciously implemented. Their response was not what I expected. It was basically "We like working in this group because no one cares that we're women. You treat everyone the same." When I asked what we should do to hire more, "Nothing, we don't want special treatment or for anyone to think we are subjected to lower standards or got hired just because we are women."

I was baffled. Ok... so how do I do this then? How do I help women in technology if the best thing I have ever done, the secret to my success on that front, is ignoring the fact they are women? This bothered me for some time as it was a conundrum. I saw the viewpoint of not wanting special treatment, but then how do we encourage? At the same time Medallia struggled with the same catch 22. More women were speaking out and saying no special treatment, while everyone wanted to do the right thing and promote diversity.

It wasn't until I realized something that the answer dawned on me. I noticed the same thing missing from the discussions as an astute reader will have noticed was missing from this narrative. Why were we only talking about women, and not racial minorities?

The answer, no one was thinking about it as it didn't matter to us. We had Chinese, Indian, Mexican, Lebonese etc employees in abundance and no one thought of them as different. Bingo. This was the key.

Everyone identifies with traits they have, and how important those traits are to you determines where you see similarities and differences. I'll explain.

I took out a set of 3x5 cards and began to write down things about myself. Traits that mattered to me about myself. Engineer, moral, husband etc. Then I realized this was incomplete and I started to write down things I was not in a different column; racist, poor etc. I looked at this and put them in order.

The two things I identified myself the strongest as were an engineer and a nerd. Yes, they are different. I thought about this and the people I knew and interacted with. If someone I met possessed one of these traits, I immediately stopped considering other traits. They were a kindred spirit. In my world being an engineer trumped race, gender etc.

I went down the list and examined my life and the theory held near universally. The higher something was on the positive side, the easier it was for me to identify with someone. This fit perfectly into unconscious bias.

Then the reverse... the things I was not. These traits where things that were important to me that I was not in the same way the other list represented things that mattered to me that I was. If someone were racist for example, I could not identify with them. I would never connect with them because they possessed a trait I was inherently against. Poor being on the list bothered me and I was forced to acknowledge bias there. I am a bit classist, which is odd for someone solidly middle class. But this project showed that and I can now work on it.

Now if I see someone and react negatively because of an item on the "I am not" list, I can very purposefully go down my "I am" list and find a point of connection. THIS is how you find new ways to connect with people and begin to treat them the same. It's also how you can slowly make less relevant the negative.

I encourage everyone to do this. Take 20 3x5 cards, post-its, whatever and make your lists. First words that pop into your head for "I am" and "I am not". Write it down and then order them. Next time you meet someone, look for the "I am" and find where you connect with them. Discuss it :)

How is this relevant to the workplace you ask? Well... if you can find this point of connection with someone you are interviewing, and account for the "I am not", your hiring will begin to reflect this and your diversity will grow. Understanding what is important to you, both positive and negative, is the first step towards conquering your biases.