SBI Participant Observer Paper: Implicit Bias Team Process, Observation Form, Leadership and Course Principles (Example)

Assignment 2: SBI Participant Observer Paper

Write a paper as a participant observer for your group as it co-creates the Implicit Bias Team Process paper. Create, complete and include an actual observation form. Also discuss:

• Your observations on how the group/team operated and its effectiveness.
• How your team used the SBI Feedback Process, and how you found using it in a team setting.
• The leadership of the team.
• How course principles “showed up” in the team dynamic, with at least 5 examples.

Group process: Meeting 1: introductions, roles, expectations and logistics; discuss implicit bias in workplace teams; select two Implicit Association Tests (IATs) from Harvard’s Project Implicit and explain why. Members then complete the IATs individually. Meeting 2: discuss IAT experiences (only what members are comfortable sharing); identify three takeaways about implicit bias and team leadership; practice the Situation–Behavior–Impact (SBI) Feedback Process with each member; reflect on communication, decision-making, leadership and dynamics.

Length: 3–4 pages, excluding title and reference pages. Integrate scholarly resources and current APA style, including page numbers.

Original example for study purposes (about 1,200 words of body text, roughly 4 double-spaced pages, plus the observation form). Team members are fictional.

Participant Observation of an Implicit Bias Team: Process, SBI Feedback and Leadership

As a participant observer, I took part fully in my four-person team’s work on the Implicit Bias Team Process paper while systematically recording how we communicated, made decisions, shared leadership and gave feedback. Our team included Jordan, who volunteered as facilitator; Priya, our scribe and timekeeper; Marcus, who coordinated research and document editing; and me, serving as observer and contributor. We met twice by video conference for about 60 minutes each and collaborated between meetings in a shared document. I used a structured observation form (see Appendix) during both meetings and wrote reflective notes immediately afterward. This paper describes how the team operated and its effectiveness, how we used the Situation–Behavior–Impact (SBI) Feedback Process, the leadership that emerged and five course principles that showed up in our team dynamic.

How the Team Operated and Its Effectiveness

Our first meeting began politely and somewhat tentatively. Jordan proposed an agenda, and members volunteered for roles that matched their strengths, which made role clarity high from the start. Discussion of implicit bias was thoughtful but cautious; members spoke in general terms about workplace hiring and promotions rather than personal experience. We selected the Race IAT and the Gender–Career IAT because all four of us work in organizations where hiring and advancement decisions are made in teams, and we wanted to explore biases that could influence who is seen as a leader. Selecting tests took longer than planned because two members initially preferred the Age IAT, but the team reached consensus after Priya summarized each option’s relevance to our assignment.

The second meeting showed noticeably greater trust. Members voluntarily shared general reactions to their IAT results, such as surprise, discomfort and curiosity, while no one was pressured to disclose specific scores. The team identified three takeaways: implicit bias can operate even in people who sincerely hold egalitarian values; structured decision processes reduce the influence of bias in team decisions; and leaders must create conditions in which people can discuss bias without shame. Overall, the team was effective. We met every deadline, produced a well-integrated draft and distributed work evenly. Our main weakness was a tendency to avoid disagreement in the first meeting, which I discuss below as an example of a course principle.

Using the SBI Feedback Process

During the second meeting, each member gave SBI feedback to every other member. The SBI model, developed by the Center for Creative Leadership, structures feedback by describing the situation, the specific observable behavior and its impact, separating facts from interpretation (Weitzel, 2000). We agreed to give one appreciative and, where appropriate, one developmental comment each. For example, I told Priya, “In our first meeting, when we were stuck choosing between three IATs (situation), you summarized how each test related to our assignment (behavior), which helped us reach a decision in five minutes and made me feel the meeting was productive (impact).” Jordan gave Marcus developmental feedback: “When we were assigning paper sections yesterday (situation), you took the introduction and conclusion without asking others (behavior), and I felt unsure whether there was space for me to contribute to the framing (impact).” Marcus responded by explaining that he had intended to reduce others’ workload, an example of exploring intent versus impact, and he offered to share the conclusion.

I found SBI valuable but harder to use than expected. Preparing statements in advance forced me to recall specific behaviors rather than general impressions such as “You were helpful.” Giving developmental feedback felt uncomfortable, but the structure reduced defensiveness because it focused on observable actions, not personality. In a team setting, SBI had a benefit beyond individual feedback: hearing everyone give and receive feedback modeled respect and accountability, which increased trust. A limitation was time; with four members giving feedback to three others, the exercise took nearly 25 minutes, and later speakers began to shorten their statements.

Leadership of the Team

Leadership in our team was shared rather than held by one person. Pearce and Conger (2003) defined shared leadership as “a dynamic, interactive influence process among individuals in groups for which the objective is to lead one another to the achievement of group or organizational goals or both” (p. 1). Jordan provided formal process leadership by setting agendas, inviting quieter members to speak and summarizing decisions. Priya exercised informal leadership through task structuring and time management, and Marcus led the coordination of the written product. When the discussion of IAT results became emotionally sensitive, Jordan acknowledged that the results could feel uncomfortable and reminded us that sharing was optional, reflecting a relational, inclusive style that is consistent with transformational leadership’s emphasis on individualized consideration. One area for growth was that Jordan sometimes moved to decisions quickly, which may have discouraged dissent in our first meeting.

Course Principles in the Team Dynamic

1. Stages of group development. Our team moved through Tuckman’s (1965) stages of forming, storming, norming and performing. The polite, cautious first meeting reflected forming; the brief tension over IAT selection and section assignments reflected mild storming; agreeing on feedback norms showed norming; and efficient, collaborative drafting after Meeting 2 reflected performing.

2. Psychological safety. Edmondson (1999) described psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking (p. 350). Making IAT disclosure optional and acknowledging discomfort increased psychological safety, which allowed members to discuss surprising results and to give developmental SBI feedback in Meeting 2.

3. Implicit bias. Greenwald and Banaji (1995) explained that implicit attitudes are introspectively unidentified traces of past experience that influence feelings, thoughts and actions toward social groups (p. 8). Several members said their IAT results did not match their stated beliefs, which led us to discuss how bias could shape whose ideas are recognized in meetings. We noticed, for example, that ideas were credited to whoever repeated them last, not necessarily to the person who first proposed them.

4. Groupthink risk. Janis (1982) defined groupthink as a mode of thinking in which members’ “strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” (p. 9). In Meeting 1, two members later admitted that they agreed with the facilitator’s first proposed structure to avoid slowing the group. In Meeting 2, we prevented this by asking each member to name one concern before final decisions.

5. Social loafing and accountability. Social loafing is the decrease in individual effort that can occur when people work in groups (Latané et al., 1979, p. 822). Our explicit roles, visible task list and SBI feedback created individual accountability, and every member contributed a comparable share of the paper.

Conclusion

Observing my team while participating in it showed me that effective teamwork depends as much on process as on content. Clear roles, shared leadership and growing psychological safety helped our team become productive, while early conflict avoidance showed how easily groups drift toward premature agreement. The SBI Feedback Process gave us a practical, respectful structure for accountability. As a future leader, I will use SBI regularly, build structured decision steps to reduce the influence of implicit bias and intentionally invite dissent so that every team member’s voice shapes the outcome.

References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (1995). Implicit social cognition: Attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes. Psychological Review, 102(1), 4–27. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.102.1.4

Janis, I. L. (1982). Groupthink: Psychological studies of policy decisions and fiascoes (2nd ed.). Houghton Mifflin.

Latané, B., Williams, K., & Harkins, S. (1979). Many hands make light the work: The causes and consequences of social loafing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(6), 822–832. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.37.6.822

Pearce, C. L., & Conger, J. A. (Eds.). (2003). Shared leadership: Reframing the hows and whys of leadership. Sage.

Tuckman, B. W. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63(6), 384–399. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0022100

Weitzel, S. R. (2000). Feedback that works: How to build and deliver your message. Center for Creative Leadership.

[Add your course’s SBI Feedback Model guide and any assigned readings.]

Appendix: Participant Observation Form