This year many companies made public commitments to fight racism in their workplaces. But what progress have these organizations made in the six months since the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless other Black people furthered efforts toward racial justice? And how are these high-level promises and internal actions affecting individual women’s lives and careers?
We hear from four Black women about their goals, their work experiences over the last several months, and their concerns and hopes for the future. Then, we talk with an expert in diversity, inclusion, and belonging about the progress companies are (or aren’t) making, the type of support we can give women of color, and how they’re managing the exhaustion that comes with waiting and advocating for long-overdue change.
Guest:
Stephanie Creary is an identity and diversity scholar at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Resources:
- “How to Be a Better Ally to Your Black Colleagues,” by Stephanie Creary
- “Is Your Company Actually Fighting Racism, or Just Talking About It?” by Kira Hudson Banks and Richard Harvey
- Race at Work, from HBR Presents
- “Even at ‘Inclusive’ Companies, Women of Color Don’t Feel Supported,” by Beth A. Livingston and Tina R. Opie
- “Women of Color Get Less Support at Work. Here’s How Managers Can Change That.” by Zuhairah Washington and Laura Morgan Roberts
- “Do Your Diversity Efforts Reflect the Experiences of Women of Color?” by Ruchika Tulshyan
EMILY CAULFIELD: You’re listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I’m Emily Caulfield.
AMY GALLO: I’m Amy Gallo.
AMY BERNSTEIN: And I’m Amy Bernstein. Organizational change is often slow, so it makes sense that progress toward racial justice in the workplace would be a protracted undertaking. And that transforming any company whose culture is systematically favored white employees, into one that gives equal opportunity to everyone, would take time. We tell ourselves to be patient and that our patience will eventually pay off.
AMY GALLO: But as we wait for company leaders to make good on the promises they made earlier this year, discrimination continues to hurt lives and careers. Women of color are often paying the price for our patience.
EMILY CAULFIELD: In this episode we’re focusing our attention on how four Black women make sense of the progress, or lack of progress in their organizations. Their descriptions highlight the gap that often exists between high level intentions and meaningful impact on people’s lives.
VALERIE: My name is Valerie. I work for a convenience store chain. My store is in a tiny little suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I am a supervisor there. So, I’m not technically a boss, but I am the manager on duty when I work. I’m in business school right now. My job has a partnership with an online university that does one class at a time for five weeks, and it’s completely online, and it’s really working out good for me. But the best part by far is that my job pays for it completely. So, it’s not a reimbursement program. I pay zero dollars out of pocket. Of course, the caveat is for managers it has to be something that is applicable to my position and my future positions. So, I’m doing organizational management. And then after that they will pay for me to get my MBA. I also don’t want to stop at store manager. I want to work my way up to corporate. My stretch goal is to be the COO.
It was probably two weeks after George Floyd, the CEO sent a memo out taking a very strong stance in support of Black Lives Matter. Additionally, they did bring in a Chief Diversity Officer. She did a video which was really cool for me, actually. I texted my best friend. It was like, one of our videos, there’s a Black woman, and it’s the first Black person that I’ve seen in these videos and I’m getting a little bit emotional about it and I feel silly, but it is a big deal. It was like one of those moments where it’s like this shouldn’t have such an impact on me, but it really, really did, just because that representation, it home a lot more than I thought it would. Just because it was a place where I work personally. They also sent out Black Lives Matter pins for us to wear at work. They’re apparently starting a new mentorship program, specifically for minority groups. So, not necessarily just Black people, but also our LGBT community. So, they’re doing a lot of things, but it’s all kind of in progress right now. Soon we will have a mentorship program. Soon our managers will have diversity training. Soon they’ll be doing all these things. My life right now doesn’t particularly look any different except that I have a pin to wear.
There was actually one instance. An associate made this really terrible joke to me right after George Floyd. And I had to go to my manager, and he didn’t really do anything, so then I went to my general manager and he immediately reported it to his boss and to HR. The initial response that they told me the day of the report to HR was that it would be a long wait anyway because as soon as they sent out the Black Lives Matter pins, they got this huge flux of people reporting incidents. So, I think it was very empowering for a lot of us to start speaking up about the things that were happening on a daily basis. So, there was the incident that I mentioned, and then one of my managers on Juneteenth asked me if I had ever heard of Juneteenth before. And it was one of those times where I laughed, but I kind of wanted to call him a name. I was like, “Yes. Yes, I have. I learned about it when I was very young from my family. My mom taught me.” Just trying to keep it light.
But I said to one of my managers about how absurd it feels to be the token. And I’m not. I’m not the only person of color on our management team. But it very often feels like that because of incidents like that. People will feel very comfortable asking me a blatant question like that, whereas they wouldn’t for the other people of color on our management team. So, I was just like, yeah, you know, just ask Val, the Black one. It’s like my worst nightmare, being the Black one. It’s like being the loud one or being the mad one. We had somebody who is the mad manager. I don’t want to be the token, and I’m nice enough that it inevitably happens.
So, a lot of what I do, I kind of call quiet advocating. So, I will go out of my way to defend or highlight or stand up for my people of color, especially the women. Everybody knows Val’s got her squad girls, through I have just gotten promoted, almost all of them. It’s a big achievement for me. But I never do it in a way where it’s like, this is a person of color who needs particular support. I say, this is a very hard worker who I think has management potential and they just happen to be the people who I know are from marginalized communities. So, it’s within the realm of possibility that we could have open and honest conversations about race, but it’s a really distant possibility just because there’s no time for it. If we could have a meeting outside of work or something, but in a retail environment we don’t have sit-down time. We don’t have let’s have a chat time. It would have to be intentional and scheduled, and outside of our scheduled shifts.
So, the onetime probably in my history of retail employment that I really stood up for myself, there were three stores in the area that lost power in this really bad storm. So, we had four stores worth of people flooding our store. I was off that day, but they were short-staffed and already four-times as busy as they would be on a normal day. And they called me to ask me to come in. And I have come in on my off days anytime I’ve been asked. I stay late, I come in early, I work doubles if I have to. I’m that guy at work. And honestly, I don’t mind. This just so happened to be the day of the Breonna Taylor trials. And I just couldn’t do it. I had nothing in me to give, and I needed my days off. And they didn’t, like, give me crap for it, but there was definitely a feeling of attitude. But also, I don’t think that they knew what was going on. They didn’t know that it was a particular day for anybody. And one of the articles that I was reading that day, it was an HBR article about how to support your Black employees right now. And one of those things was giving time off and I was like, like I had my finger on the send button and I was like, you know what Val? Just let it go. Just don’t show up. Just let it go. We don’t have to do this right now. And I really regretted it. I really regretted it a lot. It’s like, we didn’t have to have the conversation. It could have just been like you need to read this. and you’ll understand why I’m not there. And it would have been a great way for me to advocate for myself and I just didn’t because I didn’t want to take on the emotional burden of having to talk about it later.
Every day I’m at work I feel like I live in a double consciousness. Like I have to be a different person than I am, while still being myself, because we talk about authentic leadership. But there’s only so much of me that I can bring to my job and still be able to do it well. And on days where my full self really needs compassion and quiet, I cannot do my job. I really can’t. And it makes for just the worst and most exhausting kind of stress that I have felt as an adult. You can promote Black people. You can give us free things, or incentives, or whatever, but mostly I just need a break. I just need a nap. I need to be with my family. I need to talk to my friends and not be in charge of something because I’m just so tired. I’m so tired. And at the end of the day there’s nothing that they can do to help me with that except to let me just go and live life quietly for a day.
PATRICIA: So, I’m Patricia, and I work in the hospitality industry, and I work and live in the UK I work within finance, and I have a large team, and we are responsible for ensuring that financial transactions are going through the system in a timely manner. I’m now early 50s. I’m thinking about, I’ve still got lots of time left. I’d like to still climb the career ladder. So, it’s just really thinking about what path I’d like to take. So, in the industry I’m in, I don’t see anybody like myself in the positions that I’m trying to aspire to get to. So, that’s a challenge. My company is only this year started to do anything about it. So, I’ve been as I said, I’ve been at the organization for around four years. And I’ve been talking to them at the highest level for over a year. And prior to that, I’ve been highlighting that there’s not anybody that looks like me above my level. I’ve also been highlighting that whilst there’s a number of women in the organization, particularly there’s no women of color at a higher level than me. That took me on a journey to explore with some other team members about how they were feeling, and it opened up a can.
So, the business is now talking more openly about it. We have a diversity and inclusion included on our newsletters. Our organization has signed up to a charter to say that they are going to do more to be more of an inclusive organization. But I’m finding it’s very, very difficult. And I find it difficult because I feel the majority of the organization don’t feel there’s an issue. There is no diversity within our guests and our customers. There’s not much diversity within our team at our head office. And there’s no diversity in our team on-site. But the majority of people don’t see that there’s a problem. And I guess it’s only people, the minority, people like me, people of color, people who are not English white, they see that as an issue. But as the time has gone on and in particular, since we’ve been at home in COVID, particularly since the George Floyd situation, more people have come together. All of us want change. We don’t just want the organization to be doing tick box exercises like putting everyone on bias training and that kind of stuff. Everybody wants to see a more inclusive organization.
This isn’t just for Black people. It’s for all people. If we go to the same agencies to do our adverts and we’re recruiting the same type of people, we’re going to get the same outcome. If we’re going to the same recruitment agency to recruit, we’re going to get the same outcome. It’s actually consciously saying, we’re going to look in a different pool. We’re going to look down a different road. We’re going to go down a different avenue. As is in life, it’s harder to do those things. It’s easier to carry on doing the same thing. But I think there has to be conscious effort accountability. This has to be driven from the top, giving our leaders accountability to make sure that they do these things. Otherwise, we won’t ever see any change. People will just carry on doing what they’ve always done.
I’m trying to help the organization, that’s the way I look at it, to become a place where people like me want to work, Black people, Asian people, all kinds of people, and they can see that this organization is a place where they embrace all kinds of people. When they look at the organizational structure, when they look at their adverts on TV, when they look at their website, they can see that there is a place that is a diverse organization. They can see people that look like themselves. They can see people who don’t all look the same, from an outside person looking in. From a person within the organization, I want to look at my organizational structure and see that there are people like me in the higher positions. Not all of them in the lower positions. And currently that’s what it looks like. And when I say it’s hard, it’s because I feel like I take a step forward to try and help and support, and I feel like I’m being knocked back, where I’ve not been included. And I just feel like I’m constantly sending the email, I’m constantly saying, how are we doing with this? I’m constantly saying, can we have a catch up to follow up from our last conversation? And I feel like it’s hard. And then it makes me feel like this is why us as Black people haven’t progressed, because we’re always being held back, pushed to the back, and not being heard. And on the flip side of that, whilst that makes me feel like, “Oh my God, why am I doing this?” I also feel like I’m not going to give up because this is what you want me to do. You want me to give up. You want me to just stay in this position forever and a day, and I’m not going to do it. I’m going to keep going.
It is going in a direction that looks hopeful. In the whole time I’ve been at this organization it’s only this year where I’ve seen things I’m thinking actually, yeah things are going in the right direction. I accept it’s going to be slow. I accept it’s going to take some time. But I still think we could have made further inroads, and it’s almost like the CEO or the senior leaders are still questioning whether we should be doing this or not. But there could be other initiatives where there’s no question, and its gone full steam ahead in five seconds. I think, well hold on a minute. Why are you still questioning this when you know it’s real? That’s the hard bit, and that’s where I wonder whether the organization are really taking it seriously.
I’ve progressed in the sense that people know me. My network has grown. I have a very supportive manager who is encouraging me and with this DNI initiative, my name is getting out there. So, that’s a good thing. But that’s a lot of me pushing that and me pushing my own development because I find that very important and I encourage my team to do the same because I’m very passionate about that. I want to set up some group and say we are a DNI group, whatever we want to call them, ERGs, Employee Results Groups. We’re here for anybody that wants to come and share experiences, talk to us. I want the senior leadership team to endorse that and say, “Yep, we’re onboard. This is a great thing for us to be doing.” And I want teams to feel that they are able to come and talk to us if they have any kind of issues. It’s not about wrapping it up somewhere else. It’s about being explicit and showing people that actually we’re taking this seriously. This is our DNI agenda. This is the thing we’re going to be working on, and I’d like that out there visible.
EMILY CAULFIELD: The next two women both work in the tech industry. Rukayat in the UK, and Melanie in the U.S. The field is notorious for its underrepresentation of women and people of color. But at the company Melanie recently joined, she’s seen progress. And Rukayat, as you’re about to hear, plans to build the change she wants to see.
RUKAYAT: I definitely want to be working for myself in a couple of years. I think off the back of COVID and everything that’s happened, I really started reevaluating what actually makes me happy and what drives me and motivates me. So, something I know that’s very important to me is about bringing more people that look like me, not necessarily only that look like me, bringing more people that bring different voices.
For a long time, I just thought I was the worst employee. A lot of that had to do with the fact that I was so outspoken, and I have, since I started working about eight years ago, continuously been like, “Hey, there were some cultural issues here.” And then when you start banding the word around like casual racism, like or aggressions, all of that it does not tend to go down well. The amount of people that have been like, no it doesn’t exist. So, a lot of that left me very isolated and me being like, oh, I’m just not easy to manage. But randomly my little sister, I was speaking to her about this, and she was like, no, no, no. You are a good employee for a good manager. And I had never thought of it like that.
I for the safety of my own mental wellbeing, removed myself from a lot of the diversity and inclusivity discussions. I can’t keep having discussions. I can’t keep talking and trying. For me to share my trauma, to teach you, there needs to be a lesson. There needs to be a point. Otherwise, I’m just opening my wounds. Like my trauma is not for public consumption. It is something I can choose to or not to share with you.
I don’t think I’m one of the people who can change things from within the structure. I think I want to build my own structure. And, when we have all these things happen, I would like to believe they would have a company that can put out a statement because they’ve already demonstrated those values. I would hope that my Black community specifically wouldn’t have to beg for that statement or wouldn’t have to beg for the understanding of the issue. There just needs to be more diverse voices and more diverse voices with influence. There needs to be a better understanding of what it means to be, for me, a Black Muslim woman. What does it mean to be a Trans Black woman? What do all of these identities mean? I’m interested in learning not only how to protect myself and be safe for myself, but also be allies to other communities. I think there just needs understanding and like a willingness to listen.
MELANIE: My name is Melanie. I am located in the Midwest, and I work for a tech company. At the company that I was at, there was a lot of conversation around the Black Lives Matter movement and what that meant. So, what we did internally was have essentially a town hall style meeting where individuals could speak up and say what they wanted to say and what they felt like was appropriate or what was on their minds at the time. And I think just having a forum for employees to give that transparent and candid feedback was really useful. And I was pretty tenured, so I’m not someone that always speaks up, but when I feel like I do, I want to do it in that moment and so, it was a bit of personality, but then I also felt obligated to do that for the other people of color that were also on that call. I also wanted to express that you have to learn about the topic before you go and have these conversations with people, especially people of color that are living that experience. And not just saying, “Oh I had this experience, or I’ve never treated anyone of color poorly.” That’s not the way to come to these conversations. There’s systems and processes in place that put us where we are in America today. So, that was just one piece of context I wanted to bring to the conversation because I think more often than not, it just turns into a conversation where white people feel like they don’t know what to say and they’re powerless, and there’s systems in place that affect all of us and making sure that was the lead of the conversation, it was really important for me.
As I’ve gotten older, I want to have of a location agnostic career. and this new opportunity allowed me to do that. And also wanted to make sure that I was in a growth opportunity. So, given on what this company was able to offer, especially when you’re talking about things like antiracism and diversity and inclusion, it aligned more with my personal beliefs and then also from a career perspective it just was a good fit for me. I’ve been there. It’s been about a month. So, I like just started. So, I know that they had really built out ERGs, employee resource groups, and some of those are just recent. And I know some of them are even a response to the Black Lives Matter movement and creating groups for Black employees. So, I think that’s really telling, and then within my first month I had antiracism training. Someone from our diverse and inclusion team spoke to us, our orientation group, my first week as well, just so we could get to know what that means for the company. So, for me the fact that they’re signaling it so early, and then it’s something that is constantly a top of mind. They do employee surveys every quarter. They include that in there and then also in terms of Black Lives Matters specifically, talking about that, and saying, “These are the steps that we took once this happened. This is how we’re trending to that, and these are the things that we want to do in the future.” So, actually seeing measurable things of what they’re going to do, and I think just that level of transparency is something that I’ve never experienced. And to me it really has shown that it’s something they’re committee to doing, even if it is hard and even if it is a journey that’s not quick at all. It will take a long time, but having it top of mind is going to be really important.
Yeah, I have one individual that’s on my team that now, and him and I have been talking because he started a little bit before me. And one thing that we noticed is that pretty much everyone that’s been hired on our particular team has been Black or Brown in the last six months, or three to six months. So, I think just that signals to me that they’re dedicated to it and that they’re focused on it. And it’s something that you’re not used to seeing, especially being on whole teams where it’s majority Black and Brown. That’s very rare. Especially in the U.S. So, I think for both of us there was a little bit of a shock in our system, but also something that is refreshing to see that they see that it’s a problem, and they’re able to work towards it, and even if it’s not perfect, that they’re really making the effort to reach out to other networks outside of where they might usually reach out or even just rely on applications and just people coming in. I would say my company in general is very, it’s a very liberal environment. I think we’re very inclusive. We care a lot about equity and inclusion. The words match the actions in our organization, but I think if you think about the U.S. and what we’re going through right now, the actions and the words are not always there. I think especially if you’re thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement and all the protests that we had in summer, and everyone was so excited and White people were being awake and talking to their colleagues. And now we’re at towards the end of the year and you barely see it on the news. You don’t hear people talking about it. So, it’s like will people lose momentum internally within their companies like we are in society because we want the quick fix of we need this fixed tomorrow and that’s not going to happen with systemic racism. Or are people ready to take that low and slow approach to eventually get there and make incremental change?
AMY GALLO: Thank you to Valerie, Patricia, Rukayat, and Melanie for contributing. Your observations shed light on where we are in the fight for racial justice. We wanted to talk to an expert who studies leader’s efforts in this area. Stephanie Creary is a Management Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Her research focuses on identity, diversity, and inclusion and relationships across differences. She spoke with me about how all of us can continue to push these efforts forward and why she’s hopeful that the next six months will bring positive change. Stephanie, thank you so much for coming on the show.
STEPHANIE CREARY: It’s so great to be here. Thank you for having me.
AMY GALLO: So, we just heard from four different women about their experiences over the last six months. It felt like progress, I mean with the exception of Melanie who’s at the tech company. Progress felt really slow. And I’m curious if that echoes what you’re hearing in your research.
STEPHANIE CREARY: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’ve been at this, applied in academic research adventure with respect to diversity, equity, inclusion since around 2007. So, I’ve seen a lot and I’ve experienced a lot. And regardless whether we’re talking about race, or whether we’re talking about gender, or we’re talking about LGBTQ, it’s slow. And at times feels painfully slow. But I think people who are in the positions who have seen evolution over 10 years will say, but it was worth it. And so, when I listened to the women of color talk about how slow it is, to me that’s par for the course. It’s certainly the work because as we reflect on some of what they shared, not everybody gets it. Not everybody understands that there is a problem and may not recognize that there is a problem to be fixed. And when you don’t understand or see that there’s a problem, it’s going to be even slower.
AMY GALLO: I appreciate you reminding us that that progress is slow and yet, I also hear a lot of frustration and exhaustion in these women’s voices. What’s your advice for being patient and also getting through this?
STEPHANIE CREARY: Yeah. I was thinking about the exhaustion as well. I also, I thought about the collective emotions that these women were experiencing which I think stood out to me as being pretty common for women of color in these positions. It was loneliness, exhaustion, yet optimism. When I think about this idea of being patient. It’s almost as if it’s like the paradox of patience and impatience. Because you have to be impatient enough to keep it moving, but you have to be patient enough to realize that this is going to take a long time. So, I think there’s the duality of patience and impatience that’s necessary in order for people to still feel like they can thrive. Because I think it’s when you, when your impatience overtakes your ability to be patient, is when you burnout very quickly. But I do get the sense that for some of these women they were in danger of facing burnout, much more quickly than others because of the, “is anybody actually listen to me?” There’s, I think there’s only so much that Patricia can do on her own without getting positive feedback from elsewhere in the organization. I also think about some of the hesitance that some of the woman have around being part of the diversity initiative with this idea of feeling compelled, that I should be part of the initiative and I think certainly in Patricia’s story that came clear that the advantage for her was her name was getting out there. She talked about that. And her managers are being somewhat supportive of her. So, if anything, maybe she may not change her organization, but at least improve sort of the sets of supports that she needs in order to thrive in the organization. So, I think what you hear, and that’s part of the optimism is. it’s not entirely optimistic that my organization will revamp itself and obviously become an equitable place for women of color. It’s that something good, even if that something good for me, might be able to come from this situation. I think that that is quite the common set of experiences or justifications that I think individuals use when they’re trying to figure out why am I doing this, if I’m not getting the positive social change signals from my organization.
AMY GALLO: Yeah. Well, and there is a difference between these commitments that many companies made back in June and July, or recommitments they made in September, October. These initiatives that they’ve sort of launched and then the on the ground experience. I mean I think about Valerie saying, “Well really all that’s changes is I have a Black Lives Matter pin now.” So, the difference between progress at an organizational level and then the impact on a Black woman’s experience, daily experience at work, it’s very different.
STEPHANIE CREARY: Yeah, these are two different phenomena. Is my company from the outside or even internally might be feeling happy because we’re now moving in a direction? But just because we say we’re going to implement all these programs doesn’t mean the daily lived experiences of women of color actually change. I was fascinated by Valerie’s commitment to, she called them her squad girls. Getting all of these women of color promoted by narrating them as people who she thinks are very hard workers who she thinks has management potential. And she says, “I don’t say they’re marginalized women of color.” So, doing all this covert work around supporting the advancement of other women of color and what’s interesting is I think she starts off sounding like extremely optimistic and happy and at the end she’s like, “I just need a nap. I need a break. I need to be with my family. I need to not be in charge of something.” And I think that speaks to it is you can be this champion go-getter and as many women of color have to be for other women of color, and you’re doing all this work, but sometimes you need a time out. And she’s clearly asking for a time out for a little while to take a break so that she can dive back in. And I think that resonates with me and so many of the other stories that I’ve heard from my research as far as what it feels like to have to be that person. Valerie also talked about not wanting to be the Black manager. She talked about all these personas that could exist. But she is seen as many people’s sources of support and she is I think driving the cause for women of color in her organization. So, I think that stood out to me as being really remarkable, but also unfortunately a common experience for women of color who are making it, if you will, in their organizations.
AMY GALLO: Yeah. You know, there’s been a lot of talk in the past six months about trying to center the experience of Black people at work and also not wanting to burden them by doing this work. I think Valerie’s experience of going from “I’m doing this, I’m watching out for my squad girls” and then like you say, “I need a nap” is a good depiction of how you sometimes want to step in and sometimes you need to step out. And I’m curious how you make sense of that, of trying to keep the experience of Black women in particular central to the work that the organization’s doing around racial injustice, but also giving them space to rest and process and recover.
STEPHANIE CREARY: Yes. So, I’m going to shift to Melanie’s story for a second because there was something that she said in her story that gives I think sage advice. And basically, she was telling white people, do your homework first. Go read. There’s a lot of information out there before you show up and ask the Black woman to say something or do something. Make sure you’ve adequately prepared yourself for the conversation. So, it’s this idea that it’s not, I would say from my research from these women’s experiences, I don’t think they’re asking to not be contacted, or not to be included. They’re asking to not be the first person who you go and find with a question that you could have found the answer to if you’d just done some homework. And so, to me, and I think that that’s part of the exhaustion is Black women being involved end to end. So, from the minute we have a spark of an idea, of something we want to do, let’s reach out to Black people and ask them what we should do and trying to, I think carry through that entire experiences alongside the other jobs that they’ve been tasked with. I think that’s where the exhaustion comes. It’s not the one time ask. It’s the repeated end to end, from the start of the initiative to the end of the initiative that creates the sense of exhaustion.
AMY GALLO: Yeah. Well, and also that sense which I think two of the women talked about of like, we told you already. We’ve told you what we need. That frustration must be quite intense, especially with so much national attention and global attention on this issue right now.
STEPHANIE CREARY: Yeah. And I think you’re certainly right. And so, to have this experience of constantly narrating your experience, the same thing over and over again. Rukayat talked about her trauma. That was so remarkable. That actually got me. She says, “My trauma is not for public consumption. To teach you my trauma there needs to be a point of this.” And I think that’s something that people should really recognize. It’s traumatizing to have to continue to relive what it’s like to be a woman of color in any job, including corporate America. And every time there’s a well-meaning white person or somebody who does not have that information, you’re asking people to relive traumatizing events. And so that I think is something we all need to stop and think about. How do we not continue to have that be the answer? And I actually, as I was listening to her say that, I thought it was so fantastic that you’re doing this work that you are where we could hear them talking, because that’s how it lives on is, we might be just talking about four women, with specific names, but they’re stories are pretty universal. So, how do more organizations create a repository of resources where you could just listen to those four stories over and over again, if you actually want to know the extent of the issues?
AMY GALLO: Stephanie you wrote an article for us back in July about how to be a good ally. I know a lot of your research focuses on that, or how to be a better ally. And I wonder if you could walk us through that framework because that is of course one of the questions I’m left with hearing these four stories is well what can I do, especially as a white woman, or what could non-Black people of color do differently?
STEPHANIE CREARY: Absolutely. So, the framework is a framework that I’ve been developing for some time, the LEAP framework. The L stands for listening and learning from our Black colleagues is just stop and listen for a second. Listen and hear what I am saying and what I am telling you is happening and suspend your disbelief, your sense of disbelief that it may not be happening. Because it actually is happening in my organization. So, as white colleagues or anybody else who is not Black, who is trying to be supportive of someone Black, taking the time to actually put yourself in a position where you can actually hear. First hear and then learn from what your Black colleagues are saying, is absolutely vital. And many of the Black employee resource groups and organizations have created a platforms or avenues or Zoom meetings with the idea that if you want to come and listen in on what we’re talking about, feel free. But that’s different than saying, “OK, Black employee resource group, could you organize our town hall for us and then tell us all these things we want to hear?”
AMY GALLO: Right. So, listen is the first step. What’s the second one in your fame work?
STEPHANIE CREARY: Yeah, so it becomes really important is to actually engage with your Black colleagues. Understand that there are spaces that Black colleagues are already creating and some of them are very informal. Coffee chats, if you will on Zoom, and some of them are much more formal settings. So, actually connecting and making that connection in the spaces that are being created by your Black colleagues, the openings that they are creating to have this conversation, is really important as well.
AMY GALLO: Yeah. And then the third step?
STEPHANIE CREARY: Yeah, so this is about asking. So, there was a lot that happened before I would suggest asking Black colleagues about their experiences. But one of the boundary conditions of this step is to please ask them about their work first. Increasingly, Black colleagues report that they’re being asked about things that are happening, how their sentiments on the murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, or they’re being asked about what does it feel like to be a woman of color. And again, let’s remind ourselves that you’re asking somebody about something that’s traumatizing. Starting there is probably not the most effective way of building a relationship. Ask them first how things are going workwise. What are they working on? What excites them? What are they looking forward to? Is there anything that they could use some support on? And then you can say, I’ve also been thinking about you a lot as these events have unfolded in our society, and I just wanted to know, how are you doing? Like that’s a not out of the gate question. That’s a warmup when you’ve established connection and some rapport type of question.
AMY GALLO: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And what’s the next step?
STEPHANIE CREARY: Yeah, so the next step is this idea of actually offering or providing support and there’s clearly different ways in which you can support someone. Runs the gambit of just providing encouragement, saying nice things, wishing someone well to things like advocating if a woman of color or a Black colleague expresses, “I’m really having a hard time getting my manager to listen to my ideas, or getting them to support my goals that I have for professional development.” How can you help to advocate to the extent that you know that manager, or you know the manager’s manager, how do you find a way to use your position of power and privilege to provide some extra support? Now, I do want to give the caveat here is that we’re not aiming for white saviors. So, it’s not, how do you save someone, because part of this is about asking permission. That’s part of the ask, but also part of the providing is saying to your Black colleague, I just heard you express that you’re having some difficulty. If you want, I’d like to be helpful. Here is a number of things that I can do. And if there’s any of these you would want me to do, fine, I’ll do them. But if you don’t want me to do any of these, I won’t do them. So, I could reach out to your manager. I actually know them, and I could put in a good word for you. I could talk to someone else in the organization to see if they could get you as part of their program. So, giving options and then saying, “Would you like to pursue any of these?” is definitely how we calm that and circumvent that idea of a white savior, which is often the criticism when we start to talk about allyship.
AMY GALLO: Yeah. Stephanie, I want to go back to this idea of progress. Part of the inspiration for this show was to check in to see has the experience of Black women in workplaces changed in the last six months. And you talked about progress being slow. Back in June and July, if you had sort of thought ahead six months, would you have expected to hear these kinds of stories from women or would you have expected to see more progress, less progress?
STEPHANIE CREARY: So, let me define what progress has been made first. Women of color are more visible. Black women are more visible. People are actually willing to identify Black women and their experiences as potentially being unique for their own. And they’re acknowledging, I think which is a very important point, is that many Black women have been resilient and have persevered, and have been champions for this diversity, equity, inclusion work for decades. So, behind this movement whether there’s been progress or not, has been the work of many Black women. So, recognition and acknowledgement for work that has often been made invisible and relegated to the things that we don’t want to talk about, that’s really important. However, does that mean that Black women have been promoted for doing this work? I think the jury’s still out on that. Does that mean that this work that they’ve been doing has been valued more highly in their organization? Well, no, not quite there yet. Does that mean that the things that they are asking for outside of being acknowledge have actually come to fruition? No. So, the first step is we acknowledge that this work is important and the people who are doing it are valuable to our organization. But as far as the needs being met, they’re not being met in many organizations yet. There’s a plan to meet these needs. I know a lot of women of color who’ve I’ve talked to are saying it’s almost as if COVID and racial justice are in a horse race. And which one is going to win people’s time and attention? And sometimes I think the guilt, or the concern associated with is how much should I be pushing racial justice in the workplace when we have this larger crisis? But what my advice is to step back and think about the fact that these are not two different movements. They’re one and the same. As we think about the COVID crisis, it’s disproportionately effecting people of color including women of color too. So, the more that we separate and create a false binary or a competition of sorts between COVID and racial injustice, I think that’s the more that we have less support for each of these movements as well. So, it’s a little bit of progress, but obviously not to the same lengths with I think which all of us would like to see.
AMY GALLO: Yeah. Does the amount of progress however inadequate that we have made, or you’ve seen organizations make, make you hopeful about the next six months?
STEPHANIE CREARY: So, I’m always hopeful. I think I take my tips from the women of color who you interviewed, is that if we stop being hopeful then the exhaustion and the burnout wins. So, what’s my hope? So, what am I latching onto? I think for me there’s a history of having watched a conversation about race be squashed and undermined for so long in organizations. I’ve watched companies as they’ve thought about how they want to talk about diversity outside the U.S. say let’s not talk about race because people don’t like it, or they don’t think it’s relevant. Let’s just talk about gender. So, I’ve watched the competition between a gender conversation, or race conversation happen and the fact that it’s different now, the fact that we’re acknowledging that there are people outside of the U.S. who believe that there’s racism and it’s not just our version of racism. It’s their version of racism in whatever country they’re in. To me that gives me hope. Because I know how different things looked even last year. I will also say that having a new administration coming into the U.S. that has centered race and scholars who study race and practitioners who study race as part of their life’s work, to me also makes me optimistic.
AMY GALLO: Yeah. Well, and to have a woman of color as Vice President is a pretty huge step.
STEPHANIE CREARY: Absolutely huge. I did not think we were ever going to see that in our lifetime, so it’s just, it’s deeply meaningful. We were talking about that with the women of color who were interviewed as how much it meant to them when there wasn’t one present and then certainly Valerie saying, I saw, there’s one, this is so exciting. I mean that’s I think the experience that many of us had when we were able to witness this change. So, I think it’s about embracing the moment, and I think the hope and optimism comes from, let me just be happy for a moment that we’ve accomplished something. Obviously, there’s always a long term vision here, but how do we celebrate the small wins? They’re actually not small wins. But they’re not the biggest wins that we would like, and I think for me and for other women of color, Black women, it’s about understanding that it took so much to get this far. Let’s honor that and then keep it moving onto the next hurdle that we need to jump over.
AMY GALLO: Right. Lots of work for us to still to do. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a really great conversation.
STEPHANIE CREARY: Well thank you so much for having me. I enjoyed being here.
EMILY CAULFIELD: So, I think for me after listening to all of the women’s accounts and listening to your conversation with Stephanie, Amy, I realize how important women of color in the workplace have been to me, like women who have been in higher up roles because they’ve sort of been mentors at times. And they’ve had similar experiences to me where being a woman of color is very much part of your identity because you are different in the workplace.
AMY GALLO: And have you had that in your workplaces? You know, someone who looks like you in positions of power?
EMILY CAULFIELD: Not always. I haven’t had like a woman of color in a position on my team who’s been in a higher up position since college. But I know that at HBR there are other women of color who are managers, but definitely not in the highest of the high ranks. And I think having other people who look like you in those roles is not just about being inspired by those people, but it’s a sense of safety that you get from seeing somebody who’s been able to succeed, and seeing somebody who’s able to be themselves, and seeing somebody who’s able to achieve. I think it just gives you a sense of safety.
AMY BERNSTEIN: That point about safety Emily, I’d love to understand more about the safety element here because we heard that from the women who we talked to about this. They mentioned safety. Some of it was psychological safety, but I’m wondering if you’re thinking of it in a different way.
EMILY CAULFIELD: Yeah. I’m sure it’s like multilayered, and I’m sure the other women probably have different experiences to me, but I know for myself that I know I definitely don’t feel like my truest self in the workplace. I don’t feel like I can talk the way, like not that I talk completely differently outside of work, but I definitely have a different personality in a nonprofessional setting. I’m a little bit goofier. I’m not as afraid of making mistakes or sounding silly. But in the workplace, because I know that I am this representative of Black women, or this representative of people of color, because there aren’t a ton of us in the workplaces that I’ve been in, I want to be on my best behavior, and I don’t want to reinforce anybody’s negative stereotypes about Black people. I don’t want to reinforce any, anything. I want to be the best representative. That’s a lot of pressure I think to put on oneself, but I think that that is kind of part of the sense of safety that I feel. It’s like there’s safety in knowing that you can be yourself. And not that anybody necessarily does anything to make me feel unsafe in a real overt way, but I know that there aren’t many of me here. So therefore, I need to censor myself in some ways. And that’s like just maybe the tip of the iceberg is like censoring yourself. But that’s I think a big part of it.
AMY GALLO: Does seeing a woman who looks like you in power make you feel like you can be more of yourself?
EMILY CAULFIELD: Definitely. I definitely think it does that. If I see a woman in a position of power it maybe, sort of, gives me the sense of, it’s not just me. There’s somebody else with more pressure here than me. And that person is succeeding. So, that person who’s in this leadership role, who’s a manager, there’s a lot of pressure on her. And so, because I know that there’s a lot of pressure on her, I know that I can deal with whatever pressure is on me. So, there’s something impactful about that.
AMY GALLO: I was also struck by Stephanie’s commitment, I felt to being hopeful and recognizing the progress we’ve made and continuing to push forward, and I felt like overall she felt like we were headed in the right direction. I found that encouraging because I find myself more impatient about where we are than hopeful or optimistic at this moment. How about you all?
EMILY CAULFIELD: I feel pretty hopeful. I mean it’s a lot of mixed emotions, but I definitely feel like I’ve never seen something like this before. I’ve never seen so many people become part of this movement. And whether or not some of it is performative, now people can be held accountable going forward. I hope that there’s real lasting change. We’ve already seen a lot of positivity, but I’m hoping that people having taken a stance and having shown up will continue, and when they don’t, I hope we call each other out on it.
AMY BERNSTEIN: Yeah. What you just said Emily, made me smile because I think you’re right about that. That we’re now sort of publicly accountable in a way we haven’t been before. I almost, I’m hopeful, but I’m weary. And I don’t want to be seduced by the hope because it’s, we’ve seen it before, and what I really hope happens is that we understand that this is going to be uncomfortable. And I really hope that we are willing to subject ourselves to the discomfort for the good that will come out of it. The work is still ahead of us.
AMY GALLO: Can I tell you one small thing that made me hopeful? This weekend was, we had a family Zoom call and my nieces who are Black, both had t-shirts that said, “My VP looks like me.” And I just, there’s the smiles on their faces when they were telling us about the t-shirts. It just to me, I’m with you Amy B. in that I don’t want to be seduced by hope, but I do hope we can celebrate these moments that are real genuine progress.
AMY BERNSTEIN: I agree. And then get back to work.
EMILY CAUFIELD: Yes.
AMY GALLO: Always, always. That’s our show. I’m Amy Gallo.
EMILY CAULFIELD: I’m Emily Caulfield.
AMY BERNSTEIN: I’m Amy Bernstein. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoch, Adam Buchholz, Rob Eckhardt, and Tina Tobey Mack.
EMILY CAULFIELD: The women we heard from in this episode got in touch with us after reading our newsletter. It’s written by our producer, Amanda, and comes out monthly. If you aren’t already receiving it, you can sign up at HBR.org/newsletters. It’s a great way to stay in touch and find out what we’re up to.