What to do if you have perpetrated a microaggression

The natural response from anyone who has committed a microaggression unintentionally is to be defensive. The best way to ensure a situation doesn’t develop and cause further offence is to work through the following steps. 

Step 1:  take a breath, resist any natural defensiveness and engage in dialogue with the person you have hurt. 

Step 2:  try to see the incident from their point of view and understand how your actions have affected them. Think about the impact of what has been said, rather than just the intent from your side. Remember, that it isn’t always easy for the other person to raise the issue and so they won’t be doing so lightly. 

Step 3: Once you understand how anyone can perpetrate microaggressions unintentionally because of privilege, thoughtlessness or unconscious bias, you have the space and information you need to address your microaggression more constructively.

The impact of microaggressions

“So an example of microaggression in the workplace for me...I was a lead architect of a project and often, you know, there'll be conversations and you know anecdotes before and after meetings just socially as you're gathering, and in this instance one of the design team commented on how a woman's place was in the kitchen. So, you can imagine, about to go into a meeting with a whole load of stakeholders, client, and design team, it really affected the tone, but also I had to sort of handle that in a way where I was able to then go into professional context, but felt like I really wanted to raise an awareness without totally, you know, pushing everyone away from relationally, from who I was.” -Grace Choi

“One example of a microaggression I've experienced at work is when people respond to me as if I'm being aggressive or argumentative. So, for instance there was an email I needed to send to somebody that set a clear boundary, it wasn't a big deal but to be safe I got two people to check the email to make sure that it was polite and factual, but shortly after I received a response from somebody else in the team saying that they weren't keen on my tone and that they could imagine that the recipient of the email would be quite upset by what I'd said.

Now, I explained further to clarify what I meant, they apologised, it was all resolved quite quickly, but when interactions like that happen quite frequently it can make it much harder to do my job because it means that day-to-day casual conversations are at risk of becoming heated. One of the issues with this is that if I'm constantly having to get people to check that my tone's alright it removes a level of independence and autonomy when I'm trying to do my work.” -Lydia Mills

“A microaggression that I experienced in the workplace recently was at design team and I was recommending some surface guidance because it was outside a glass building in a very sunny environment and the landscape architect actually said to me: "Why do we need to put this in I don't really want to put in a provision that nobody's going to use". So, aside from, it was undermining the fact that people might be visually impaired in the workplace, it was undermining my professionalism, totally unacceptable, I felt." -David Burdus

“I've experienced more age-related and gender-related incidents of microaggression and I think those things particularly within a more male-centric environment can really contribute to that feeling of like othering and exclusion. I've definitely experienced agism to the point of being literally called little girl within my workplace and being like “you wouldn't understand you're just a kid,” when actually as much as I'm early career, I'm still a professional wanting to be taken seriously, and I think those messages early on in your career can definitely contribute to a feeling of exclusion as you progress.” - Alanis Burgess