Women at Work - Has Anything Changed for Black Women at Work?

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

As we wait for company leaders to make good on the anti-racism commitments they made earlier this year, we check in with four Black women about how their work lives have and haven’t changed. Then we talk with an expert who helps us understand how to keep pushing forward and supporting our Black colleagues while we wait for long-overdue change.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Emily Caulfield. I'm Amy Gallo. 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 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. 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. 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. 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 for me. But the best part, by far, is that my job pays for it completely. So it's not a reimbursement program. Like, I pay $0 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. Like my stretch goal is to be the COO. It was probably two weeks after George Floyd, the CEO sent like a memo out taking a very, you know, 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 like, I texted my best friend. It was like, one of our videos, there's a Black, 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 hit home a lot more than I thought it would just because it was, you know, 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 of 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 and 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 like 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, you know, just trying to keep it light. But I just talked to one of my managers about how absurd it feels to be the token. And like, 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. Like people will feel very comfortable asking me a blatant question like that, whereas they like that. Like 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 it's 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 have 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, you know, Val Scott or a squad of girls who 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, you know, 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. Like if we could have a meeting outside of work or something, but in a retail environment, you know, 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 one time 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, you know, 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, you know, 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. Like 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 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 was like, you know, we didn't have to have the conversation. I 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, 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 you know 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 know, 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, you know, 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 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 organisation for around about 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 are a

number of women in the organisation, particularly there's no women of colour 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've having diversity and inclusion included on our newsletters. Our organisation has signed up to a charter to say that they are going to do more to be more of an inclusive organisation. But I'm finding it's very, very difficult. And I find it difficult because I feel the majority of the organisation 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 sites. But the majority

of people don't see that as a problem. And I guess it's only people, the minority, people like me, people of colour, 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 organisation to be doing tick box exercises like putting everyone on unbiased training and that kind of stuff. Everybody wants to see a more inclusive organisation. 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 go into the same recruitment agencies to recruit, we're going to get the same outcome. If we're going to the same recruitment agencies 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. You know, 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 organisation, 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 organisation is a place where they embrace all kinds of people. When they look at the organisational structure, when they look at the adverts on TV, when they look at their website, they can see that that is a place that is a diverse organisation. 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

organisation, I want to look at my organisational 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'm not being 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 see follow up from my 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, 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 organisation it's only this year where I've seen things that 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 questioning and it's gone full steam ahead in five seconds. And we're thinking, well, hold on a minute. You know, 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 organisation 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 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 D&I group, whatever we want to call them, ERGs, employee resource 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, you know, we're on board. This is a great thing for us to be doing. And I want team 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 D&I agenda. This is the things we're going to be working on. And I'd like that out there visible. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball?

Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Hey listeners, if you want to hear from more leaders to help you answer questions like, should I talk about my anxiety at work? Or how do I claim my leadership power? Then you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor

Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Mudupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. The next two women both work in the tech industry, Rukaiya in the UK and Melanie in the US. The field is notorious for its underrepresentation of women and people of color. But at the company Melanie recently joined, she's seeing progress. And Rukaiya, as you're about to hear, plans to build the chain she wants to see.

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've 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 bandying the word around like casual racism, microaggressions, 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 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 well-being, 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 a structure. I think I want to build my own structure. And when we have all these things happen, I would like to believe that I 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. 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 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 have this experience or I've never treated anyone of color poorly. That's not the way to come to these conversations. There are 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 are systems in place that affect all of us. And making sure that that was the lead of the conversation was really important for me. As I've gotten older, I want to have more of a location agnostic career. And this new opportunity allowed me to do that. And I also wanted to make sure that I was in a growth opportunity. So given what this company was able to offer, especially when you're talking about things like anti-racism 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 have really built out ERGs to 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 So I think that's really telling. And then within my first month, I had anti-racism training. Someone from our diversity 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 it's constantly top of mind, they do employee surveys every quarter, they include that in there. And then also in terms of Black Lives Matter, 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 then these are the things that we want to do in the future. So actually seeing the 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 that they're committed to doing, even if it is hard. And even if it is a journey that's not quick, it'll 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 now and him and I have been talking because he started a little bit before me. And one thing that we've noticed is that pretty much everyone that's been hired on our particular team has been black or brown in the last like six months or three to six months. I think just that signals to me too, 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, it 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 my organization. But I think if you think about the US and what we're going through the protests that we had in the 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?

Thank you to Valerie, Patricia, Rukaya, 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 leaders' 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.

It's so great to be here. Thank you for having me. 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. Yeah, absolutely. So I've been at this applied and 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, we're talking about LGBTQ, it's slow. You know, at times feels

painfully slow, but I think people who are in the positions who have seen evolution over 10 years will say, you know, but it was worth it. So when I listen to the women of color talk about how slow it is, to me, that's, you know, 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's 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. Yeah. I appreciate you reminding us 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? Yeah, I was thinking about the exhaustion as well. I also, you know, 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 is 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 your impatience overtakes your ability to be patient is when you burn out 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 listening to me? 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 women 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's 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. Yeah. Well, and there is a difference, right, 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 changed is I have a Black Lives Matter pin now, right? So like 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, right? Yeah, these are two different phenomena, right? 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 extremely optimistic and happy. At the end, she's like, I just need a nap. I need a break. I need to be with my family 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 R 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, 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 is doing around racial

justice, but also giving them space to rest and process and recover. Yeah, 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, right? 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 and 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 and 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 experience is alongside the other jobs that they've been tasked with. I think that's where the exhaustion comes. It's not the one timetime 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. Yeah. Well, and also that sense, which I think two of the women talked about, of like, we've told you already, right? 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. 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, Rekhaya 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, you know, with specific names, but their stories are pretty universal. So how do more organizations create, you know, a repository of resources where people, you could just listen to those four stories over and over again, if you actually want to know the extent of the issues. bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities.

Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Stephanie, you wrote an article for us back in July about how to be a good ally. And 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 can non-Black people of color do differently? 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, you know, 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's 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 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, okay, Black Employee

Resource Group, could you organize our town hall for us and then tell us all these things we want to hear? So listen is the first step. What's the second one in your framework? 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. Yeah. And then the third step.

Yeah. So this is about asking, right? 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, their sentiments on the murder of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and 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 work-wise. 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, you know, 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 warm up when you've established connection and some rapport type of question. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And what's the next step? 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 gamut of just providing encouragement, saying nice things, wishing someone well, to things like advocating. If a woman of

color or a Black colleague expresses, you know, 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, right? So it's not how do you save someone? Because part of this is about asking permission, right? That's part of the ask, but? Because part of this is about asking permission, right? 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's 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 can put in a good word for you. I could, you know, 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 combat and

circumvent that idea of a white savior, which is often the criticism when we start to talk about allyship. Yeah. Stephanie, I want to go back to this idea of progress. You know, part of the inspiration for this show was to check in to see, you know, has the experience of Black women in workplaces changed in the last six months. And you talked about progress being slow. You know, 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? 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 in 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, right? 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 acknowledged 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 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 this, 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 in the same. As we think about the COVID crisis, it's disproportionately

affecting 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 justice, 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. 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? 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. Right. So what's my hope? So what am I latching on to? 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 of 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 and a 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. Yeah. Well, and to have a woman of color as vice president is a pretty huge step. Absolutely huge. I did not think we were ever going to see that in our lifetime. So it's just, it's deeply meaningful. You know, we were talking about that with the women of color who were interviewed is 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 on to the next hurdle that we need to jump over. Right. Lots of work for us still to do. Yes. Stephanie, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a really great conversation.

Well, thank you so much for having me. Enjoyed being here. 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, you know, being a woman of color is very much part of your identity because you are different in the workplace. And have you had that in your workplaces? You know, someone who looks like you in positions of power? Not always. I haven't had like a woman of color in a position on my team who's been in a higher position since like college but I know that at like at HBR there are other women of color who are managers but definitely not in like the highest of the high ranks right 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. Yeah. 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. Yeah. I'm sure it's like multi-layered, and I'm sure that the other women probably have different experiences to me, but I know for myself that I know that I definitely don't feel like my truest self in the workplace. I don't feel like I can like talk the way, like not that I talk completely differently outside of work, but I definitely have a different personality.

In a non-professional 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 anything. 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 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

but that's I think a big part of it yeah does seeing a woman who looks like you in power make you feel like you can be more of yourself definitely yeah I definitely think it does that if I see a woman in a position of power maybe it 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. I was also struck by Stephanie's commitment, I felt, to being hopeful and, you know, 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? 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. Right. 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'm hopeful, but I'm wary. about that, that we're now sort of publicly accountable in a way we haven't been before. I'm hopeful, but I'm wary. And I don't want to be seduced by the hope because 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. Can I tell you one small thing that made me really 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 there's the smiles on their faces when they were telling us about the T-shirts. It's just, to me, you know, I'm with you, Amy B., in that I don't want to be seduced by hope. But I do hope we can celebrate those moments that are real, genuine progress. I agree. And then get back to work. Yes.

Always. Always. That's our show. I'm Amy Gallo. I'm Emily Caulfield. I'm Amy Bernstein. Our editorial and production team is Amanda Kersey, Maureen Hoke, Adam Buchholz, Rob Eckhart, and Tina Tobey-Mack. The woman 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.

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