This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - QUALIFIED: How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work with Shari Dunn | 284

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

In this episode, we delve into the concept of being "qualified" in the workplace, examining who gets labeled as such, who doesn't, and the underlying reasons. We explore "competency checking"—the practice of scrutinizing individuals' abilities—and how it disproportionately affects underrepresented groups, often going unnoticed or unchallenged. Our discussion aims to redefine qualifications in a fair, equitable, and actionable manner. Our guest, Shari Dunn, is an accomplished journalist, former attorney, news anchor, CEO, university professor, and sought-after speaker. She has been recognized as Executive of the Year and a Woman of Influence, with her work appearing in Fortune Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Ad Age, and more. Her new book, Qualified: How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work, unpacks what it truly means to be deserving and capable—and why systemic barriers, not personal deficits, are often the real problem. Her insights challenge the narratives that hold so many of us back and offer practical solutions for building a more equitable future. Together, we can build workplaces and communities that don’t just reflect the world we live in, but the one we want to create. A world where being qualified is about recognizing the talent and potential that’s been overlooked for far too long. It’s not just about getting a seat at the table—it’s about building an entirely new table, one designed with space for all of us. Connect with Our Guest Shari Dunn Website& Book - Qualified: https://thesharidunn.com  LI: https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/sharidunn TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thesharidunn  Related Podcast Episodes: How To Build Emotionally Mature Leaders with Dr. Christie Smith | 272 Holding It Together: Women As America's Safety Net with Jessica Calarco | 215 How To Defy Expectations with Dr. Sunita Sah | 271 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

I am Nicole Kalil and you're listening to the This Is Woman's Work podcast where together we're redefining what it means, what it looks and what it feels like to be doing woman's work in the world today with you as the decider. And on today's episode, we're talking about what it really means to be qualified. It's a word that's used in business a lot, but I'm not sure we all agree on what it actually means, or more importantly, who gets to decide. Too often, qualified becomes code for maintaining the status quo,

for creating more of the same, and for keeping certain people out while ushering others in. And let's be real, it's not always about skill or ability. Sometimes it's about bias, assumptions, and deeply ingrained systems that were never built to include everyone in the first place. We've all heard phrases like that talent pipeline is broken, or there just aren't enough qualified candidates. But is that really true? Or is it a convenient excuse that ignores the very real systemic barriers keeping qualified people, especially women and people of color, out of the room altogether? For far too long,

these barriers rooted in outdated beliefs and biases have determined who gets to rise into positions of power and influence. So today, we're pulling back the curtain on what it really means to be qualified, who gets labeled as such, who doesn't, and why. We'll dig into things like competency checking and what it is and how it disproportionately affects underrepresented groups in ways that often go unnoticed or unchallenged. And what about imposter syndrome? Is it really just a personal struggle so many of us deal with,

or are we avoiding talking about the bigger issues? Maybe the problem isn't just an internal one. Maybe it's the system, structures, and environments that are making people feel like they don't belong in the first place. This episode isn't just about asking questions, it's about redefining what it means to be qualified in a way that's fair, don't belong in the first place. This episode isn't just about asking questions, it's about redefining what it means to be qualified in a way that's fair, equitable, and actionable.

To help us unpack all of this, I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Sherry Dunn. Sherry is an accomplished journalist, former attorney, news anchor, CEO, university professor, and sought after speaker. She's been recognized as executive of the Year and a woman of influence, and her work has appeared in Fortune magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Ad Age, and more. Her new book, Qualified, How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work, unpacks what it

truly means to be deserving and capable and why systemic barriers, not personal deficits, are often the real problem. Her insights challenge the narratives that hold many of us back and offer practical solutions for building a more equitable future. So Sheri, thank you for being our guest. And I wanna start by asking you to share a little bit about just this word qualified. What does it mean and how is it being misinterpreted? Well, first of all, Nicole, thank you for

that wonderful introduction. It's a summary. Hearing somebody summarize your work or your book is always exciting. And I was like, yes, yes, yes. So thank you for that. I really appreciate it. Yeah, the question about what's qualified is at the root of this, right? I have a chapter in my book called The Myth of Qualifications. And in that chapter, I really deconstruct the mythology behind qualifications.

And this is not to say that people should not have qualifications for a job. I'm not saying that. What I am saying is that how we decide who is qualified has shifted over time, depending on who is seeking entry to the thing. So if we look at higher education in the United States, especially elite universities,

initially in order to be qualified to attend those institutions, you just had to be rich, white, and Protestant. And it really wasn't about grades. And one thing we know is that grades are not always dispositive of a person's ability or skill, right? So a person could have great grades and not be good at doing a particular thing.

A person might not do well in school, but might be very successful later. So, but making grades an indicator of qualification became more important when what I call outgroup people, people on the outgroup, sought entry into elite institutions. So we go back to the 20s and, and this is when Jewish folks sought more entry into elite institutions. We see a shift in what it means to be qualified to enter those institutions, setting up more barriers such as the SAT, more testing, more requirements. And so everything we think about today, for example, of what it means to be qualified to get into college admissions is really related to anti-sympathism

and trying to keep a particular group out. Previously, the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant folks, you just had to be rich. You just had to be from the right family. And it's not to say that they weren't successful and creative people, but the standard shift. And so that's just one example. But when we take it to the modern workforce, we see the same thing happen. We see in certifications and in the trades, we see that shift. When African Americans try to get access to the trades. We then see this professionalization.

You have to take this test, you have to take that test to get in. So the question about qualifications depends on who's seeking admission. The standard of qualification seems to change. Okay, so I wanna make sure I'm hearing you correctly. You said the out-group people are seeking entry into something, maybe for the first time or they haven't been historically included. And it's in those periods

of time where new, and I'm going to put in air quotes, qualifications all of a sudden pop up that make it more challenging, more difficult or create barriers to entry. So, and I don't know if this is the best example, but as an example, you think of women entering the workforce. I don't know if this was part of the qualifications earlier on, but I feel like more, I see more and more qualifications that tend to be more masculine in nature. Decision making, influence, problem-solving. And not to say that those aren't important to roles or to jobs,

but there are other skills that often don't get mentioned that maybe tend to be thought of as more feminine. And it just creates a sort of barrier for people. What are your thoughts or reactions as I'm thinking out loud? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think there are a myriad of ways that this has shown up, right? And more than likely, it could definitely be part of that. But, you know, a perfect example would be the LSAT,

the law school admissions test, or the bar exam. Each of those things comes online as more people from an out group try to get access. So after World War II, you had more ethnic white Americans, more lower income folks taking advantage of the GI Bill. So they started to get more opportunities. So whoa, whoa, whoa, we got to have less people. So we start to raise the barrier of what we call qualification. You see what I'm saying? And so, and when it comes to job descriptions, this is a separate but equally important question. We really need to interrogate whether the things we're putting in job descriptions are even necessary. They form

unnecessary barriers. And is that conscious or unconscious, or is it the system itself? Because the system, in my opinion, is kind of a living thing, and it's kind of in motion. So it starts to protect itself in ways that we have to consciously disrupt, because it could very well be that many of, and people have started to talk about this, many of the requirements you see in job descriptions are unnecessary. They're not relevant to the job at hand. This is really important to note. The issue is qualifications can come in a variety of ways,

but when the people seeking entry are outgrouped people, we'll call them that, women, people of color, somehow the qualifications tend to be higher, harder, and more complex. Okay. So, what would you say to leaders, because I'm sure you're hearing this, I know I am, that say that there is a broken talent pipeline or that there is a lack of diversity

or diversity with talent or any leader that says to you like, I can't do this. So what I would say is there isn't a broken talent pipeline and there actually isn't a broken rung. I know a lot of women talk about the broken rung. Some people talk about the broken talent pipeline empty. It's blocked, it's blocked. There are blockages in that pipeline

that we are not acknowledging and we are not seeing. And I talk about it as inside the pipeline is a fine wire mesh, you know, a little fine mesh and it exerts an extruding force that people can't get through. So at the end, it gives you the perception that there's nobody in there or that there's a broken run when in fact there's blockages set up in there.

And one of those blockages that I talk about is what I call competency checking. And so that blockage is in there blocking what should be a natural flow of diversity, both gender and race in the workplace. Here's the thing, it takes a lot of effort to prevent what actually should be the natural flow of diversity.

If we remove these blockages, we would have a lot more of the natural flow. So the pipeline is blocked, it's not broken. Okay, so let's talk about removing some of these blockages. And I really want to dive into competency checking. I don't know if this is just ignorance, but I'd never heard of this before. So can you explain what competency checking is

and how it's creating a blockage and what we can do to remove the blockage? Yeah, so competency checking, I'm happy to say, is a piece of original scholarship from me. So this would be your first time hearing about it, or first time a lot of people hearing about it. And really, it came to me as I was, as a consultant, talking to women and people of color

about their experiences in the workplace, my own experiences, and also looking at other research. And what I found was that we are assuming certain things that are incorrect. So we assume that there is not a pipeline of Black folks, other people of color, and women. And what the data tells us is that's not true. The Economic Policy Research Institute in 2019

did a Labor Day study. And what they found specifically with Black workers is that their Black workers tend to be underemployed and unemployed at higher rates. And the underemployment was the interesting one because what they found was that Black workers with education, skills, and experience equal to or exceeding their white counterparts tended to be underemployed, meaning they were in

jobs that weren't commensurate with their experience knowledge or skills. So that tells us, wait a minute, there are people out there and they're not getting through. What is it that, why aren't they getting through? Well, one of the reasons they're not getting through is because people of color and women are being held to higher, harder, more complex standards. They are questioned more about their qualifications. They have to have more experience. They have to have more skill. They have to have more knowledge. And it becomes elusive, right? Because every time they get near it, it's another level that they have to get.

So competency checking is the ways in which black, other people of color and women are checked repeatedly for their competency, knowledge and skills and being held to a higher, more complex standard for hiring or advancement and retention. And that can show up in ways such as quizzing, how do you know what you know, a demand for more knowledge, education and time, and a hostility once you are in positions of authority if you don't belong there. So this type of competency checking, checking your competency at every step makes it harder.

I always say to people, if you're looking for a mistake, you're going to find one, right? If you're looking harder for a mistake, you're going to find one. So the typical example a lot of people may have heard is there's a couple of studies, one with lawyers who wrote a memo and the memo was the same. It was supposedly a black law associate and one was a white law associate. Everything is same, nothing different, it's just made up that they're told they're different races, same name, everything. And the partners that got the memo that they thought was written by a Black associate

found all of the errors plus things that were not errors. And the ones who got the memo that they thought was written by a White associate did not find all the errors that were in there, right? So it's the, they raised their bar of what they were looking for when they thought it was a Black associate. And there's another study that was done regarding research assistantship and women. When the research assistant was thought to be a man, he was offered more pay, more mentorship, but the woman was offered less. It is the shifting of standards and setting that higher bar that is causing the blockage. Okay. Two things popped into my head first. What you're saying speaks to a personal experience.

I'd love your opinion on if this falls into what you're talking about. I can remember very frequently feeling like my male counterparts were often identified, promoted, and given opportunities based on perceived potential, whereas I felt like I was constantly needing to prove myself over and over and over again. Is this maybe an example of what it feels like when you're being competency checked? Is this what we're talking about? Yes, that is exactly what I'm talking about. I mean, you know, you are in a situation where some people are given the benefit of the doubt. And one of the things I say in my book is ask yourself a question. Who gets the benefit of the doubt in your workplace? And who doesn't? Who gets opportunity to fail and who doesn't? Because a companion

piece to competency checking is the inability to fail because failure is necessary. But people who are being held to a higher standard, women and people of color, have way less wiggle room to failure. Whereas you see men, white men and white folks writ large more, having more wiggle room to fail. And that is also an element of competency checking. And what you just talked about, which is like, you have to prove yourself again and again and again. In the book, I talk about the movie, the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind or Groundhog's Day. It's like Groundhog's Day. It's like you live in Groundhog's Day

over and over and over. And there seems to be no retention of knowledge of your competency. Each time out is like the first time. And that's a signal that competency checking is happening. Right? And it's, and you know, you can see it's not happening in the same way to others. It feels so obvious when you're experiencing it.

Am I in the Twilight Zone? How am I having to prove this yet again, where this person hasn't proved it as far as I know at all, and yet they're being given the opportunity? And I like the question, who gets the benefit of the doubt? I feel like that's a good, one of those initial questions that you can start asking yourself because, and Sherry, feel free to completely disagree with me,

but I operate under the assumption that there are some assholes in the workforce, and there is just no if, ands, or buts about it, regardless of gender. But for the most part, I think people have good intentions and are unconscious to a lot of these things. And so for that category of people, people who are doing this unconsciously, what might be some questions to ask,

some things to look to, some ways that you can catch that this is happening and then remove that blockage? I do say in the book, the question is, are there people toiling their mustaches, like the villains in the old movies on the railroad track? That is super old reference, but- I love it though. It's a good visual. Yeah, but are they doing that though. It's a good visual.

Yeah. But are they doing that to prevent people from getting jobs? Sure, there are some people doing that. But to your point, the majority of people are operating on assumptions they believe to be true. And because they believe these assumptions to be true and they're not questioning them, they're not seeing the ways that they are creating blockages. What I say is people need to audit themselves. They need to audit their processes and their instruments. They need to audit how they decide who gets promotions, who, again, who gets to fail.

You can actually track this. You can see who gets promoted most in your company and what are their levels of skills and knowledge and what was the deciding factor. You can look at that and see. So you can see, is there a pattern? Is there a pattern that men are getting the benefit of the doubt more than women?

That white folks are getting the benefit of the doubt more than people of color. And then there are other things you can look at. For instance, we really want to try, in my opinion, to reduce the amount of folks we get through what I call the shadow hiring pipeline, which is the referral-based system. The referral-based system tends to favor white people because it's just a numbers game. And there's a whole bunch of historical issues related to housing patterns, housing segregation, friendship groups, who we know, et cetera. But as a result, and it also tends to favor men. So if we need to, and then women and people of color have to come in the more formal front

door. And so because of that, their path in is narrower. And then we know that a significant portion of hiring actually happens through referral-based hiring. It might be as high as 40%. And referral-based hiring folks tend to get hired and they tend to stay at a company longer because it's that kind of inside baseball.

So companies can look at their processes and their procedures and say, well, who is succeeding here and who is not and why and what is in the way? They can also ask the people there of what are the blockages that you are encountering, right? And then they can take affirmative steps. I ask companies to also look at the people they work with, people who, companies have these folks who are supposed to be assessing executive potential. They have assessment tests they give people. Are you interrogating those instruments and those people for their inherent blockages or biases and asking them not just, oh, we have a lens, but how specifically are you accounting for the different ways women and men show up in interviews?

How are you accounting for the different pushback? For instance, there's research that shows that when Black folks and women promote themselves in the workplace, it does not go well. It is not met in the same way. So a lot of times executive coaches and folks like that will say to you, you should promote yourself. Well, that's terrible advice for women and people of color, depending on the situation they're in. It actually can be significantly to their negative to do that, right? So what I suggest companies do is audit their processes,

audit their instruments and audit their results and ask key questions. Who succeeds here? Who doesn't? Who can fail? Who can't? Who gets the benefit of the doubt and who doesn't? And what is it that we can do to change that? Yeah. And I think it's really important

that multiple people be involved in this auditing process. Like when you were talking earlier about qualifications and sometimes don't even have anything to do with the job, it's like one of the auditing process, like when you were talking earlier about qualifications and sometimes don't even have anything to do with the job. It's like one of the auditing things, can we look at all of our job descriptions or the qualifications that we look for and pull in multiple people, especially the people who are actually doing the job and really talk about what does it take to do this particular role successfully and whatnot. I also bring that up because I think there could be a tendency for people listening in to think of this as white men need to do this work so that everybody else doesn't have these

blockages. And in my experience, women can be sometimes just as big, if not worse, contributors to this idea of holding other women to unreasonable standards or having a different set of circumstances about who gets the benefit of the doubt and whatnot. So I guess is that true? Are we all contributing to this in some form or fashion? Like this is not the white man villain twiddling his mustache, as you said earlier. We're all contributing. We all need to be aware and auditing this.

Is that a fair statement? No, that's an absolutely true statement. I mean, the research report I mentioned, I referenced about the study about the research associate who would one would be a man, one would be a woman. Again, it was just all the data was the same, right? It's the same with the law memo. All the data is the same, but people pick the man. Women researchers also pick the man.

So it wasn't just male researchers, right? So we are all bathed in, eat the food from the soil of patriarchy and white supremacy. I mean, that's just the way it is. We are all washed in it. And so all of us have to be alert to it. And women in particular have to think about the ways in which they enact patriarchy on other women. And women are uniquely situated to have an impact because women primarily sit in HR roles, which actually has to do with, I term it ghettoizing of women's jobs. There's nothing wrong with HR, I'm not saying that, but I am saying there's a reason women make up the majority of HR because it is seen as a woman's role in corporate spaces.

And so because women, particularly white women, tend to make up such a large, have such a big impact in HR, they are uniquely situated to have a big impact here. If they also engage in learning and understanding about the ways in which competency checking blockages are showing up and they can become not just allies, but co-conspirators with each other to help remove some of these blockages.

Okay, I cannot let you go without asking about imposter syndrome. Yes. I'll be upfront. It's a term that at this point makes me roll my eyes in the back of the head because I'm just so tired of it. I'm so exhausted with all of us running around

talking about having imposter syndrome. And I get, you know get we all struggle with confidence at times and we're all new at things at times, but sometimes I'm like, I don't even think it's imposter syndrome that we're talking about, or this has become this excuse or this catch-all. How are we mistreating imposter syndrome from your perspective? Yeah. I have a chapter in the book called Unmasking Imposter Syndrome. And I analogize it to a Scooby-Doo villain. You know, the Scooby-Doo villain and you pull the sheet

off and it's just some guy. Well, imposter syndrome is just patriarchy and white supremacy repackaged. And it's covered in this thing called imposter syndrome. And what I mean by that is that to your point, we all feel insecure. Everybody feels insecure sometimes. You come into spaces, you're like, I don't know anybody here, I don't know. We are confusing insecurity, natural insecurity,

with the impact of patriarchy and white supremacy in spaces where we were never designed to be, right? So I go back to the original research. The original research was done by two researchers in the 70s, from 73 to 78, I believe, so four or five years study. And this is relatively small research. And the women who were a part of it were generally upper to upper middle class white women. And the strange thing about this research

is it never talked about the times in which the women lived, right? So the women in this research period go through really the biggest change in women's lives since the industrial revolution, really. So 73 to 78, women, white women in particular, come into the workforce in full force and they don't come into a workforce that's trying to accommodate them. They come into a workforce

that they have to accommodate themselves to. And so what imposter syndrome has done is misidentify the illness, right? The problem is not that your insecurity is what's making you feel like an imposter. What's making you feel like an imposter is being in spaces that are hostile, that are not designed for you, and that don't want you. And so of course you're going to feel uncomfortable. What's making you feel like an imposter is what you described earlier. How come every time I have to prove myself and other people seem to be advancing and not having to prove them, that's going to mess with your mind and that's going to mess with your feelings

of being secure or insecure in spaces. And this really became a big issue for me when I was talking to a potential client who wanted me to talk about a foster syndrome. And I told her, I said, you know, I think it's a misidentification. I don't think it's, I think it's cause women, particularly white women to blame themselves for what are systemic issues and cause them to seek individual solutions when collective action is what is needed to deal with how they feel in the workplace. Right. And so the woman says to me, well, I had another consultant who told me anybody who doesn't admit to imposter syndrome is a narcissist or a liar.

And I was like, wow, we have gone way too far down the rabbit hole, right? Because to admit to it, it's not a psychological disorder in the DSM. So the diagnostic manual, it's not a disorder. But what I am saying is that this misidentification has caused women and particularly white women to put the entire burden of fixing themselves instead of fixing the places where they work, which is a quote from some other writers who talked about this.

But we need to turn our gaze away from the mirror of self-talk and making ourselves, oh, I'm an imposter, to what is it about this place that I am at that is making me feel like I don't belong? And how can I collectively work with other women, women of color, to change that? And that's what I want to shift that conversation around imposter syndrome. I love everything that you just said. And I feel like it speaks to this sort of like

working theory that I have that when people throw out the word imposter syndrome, or when they use the term, they're typically talking about like one of three things. The first is this idea that we've created that we somehow are supposed to feel confident 100% of the time, which is complete crap. Because when you're new at something, when you're trying something different, when you're taking on a challenge, when you're doing something you've never done, like, of course we're going to have moments where we feel insecure or uncomfortable or whatever. That's not imposter syndrome, that's just fricking life, right?

And then there's this other category, which you spoke to so beautifully where it's, we've made it this internal thing that we need to fix about ourselves as opposed to an environmental or systemic thing where it's like, of course you don't feel like you belong because you're being made to feel in so many different ways that you don't. And then there's this third category of maybe it's actually imposter syndrome, but I think

that there's a very small percentage of people who actually fall over there. And the vast majority of us are using the terminology to explain the other two things. Yeah. And I think even for those who may legitimately feel like they're imposter, that still comes from environment. So if I am in an environment where I don't see people like me, I may feel like an imposter, but that's still a result of an inequitable space where if you came into that space and you saw more people like you, you would less likely feel like an imposter. You know what I mean? So it's like a snake eating its tail kind of problem. And so I want to separate out natural feelings of insecurity,

which we all have, from something that has been misidentified and led, in my opinion, women astray. And like I said, particularly white women, because I feel like black women tend to much more identify, I'm having problems in this place for these very specific reasons. You know, to your point, when I talk about imposter syndrome to women of color, especially black women, a lot of them are like, oh, I don't want to hear about that. I don't feel like an imposter. I feel like these people are getting on my nerves. I feel like these people are not supporting me.

They tend to do that. And if we could collectively see it in our collective interest, then we can engage in collective action to fix it. Could not agree more. And I could not be any more on board with the idea of collective action and collective interest. I think one of the many ways feminism has failed

up to this point is not being collective and inclusive enough. So Sherry, I could talk to you all day long and I have 1 million more questions that we unfortunately don't have time to get to, but I know other people are gonna wanna learn more about you and your work. So Sherry's website is thesherrydone.com

and definitely order her book. It's qualified and the subtitle, because there are more than one qualified book is out there. It's qualified, How Competency Checking and Race Collide at Work. Absolutely get your hands on the book. I know I'll be reading it in the next couple days here too. Cheri, thank you for your time and for an incredible conversation. Thank you. Thanks so much.

All right, friends, here's the deal. The talent pipeline isn't broken. It's the assumptions we make about who belongs in the pipeline that need fixing. Competency checking? It's not about ensuring people are qualified, it's about creating barriers for those who already are. And imposter syndrome? Sure, there is always opportunity for self-development, but we have to start questioning the systems and environments that are making us feel like we don't and can't measure up. If you're in a leadership position, the challenge is clear. We can no longer say we value diversity while holding onto outdated ideas about qualifications.

It's time to get honest about what's really holding people back and fix it. Because it's the right thing to do and because it's been proven over and over to be the profitable choice. Together, we can build workplaces and communities that don't just reflect the world we live in, but the one we wanna create.

A world where being qualified is about recognizing the talent and potential that's been overlooked for far too long. It's not just about getting a seat at the table, it's about building an entirely new table, one designed with space for all of us, because that is woman's work.