Women at Work - Sisterhood Is Trust

Episode Date: June 17, 2019

High-quality relationships with other women at work, and the productivity and creativity those connections bring, are built on trusting one another with our emotions. Two researchers share findings from their recent survey about emotional vulnerability in the workplace. Guests: Beth Livingston and Tina Opie. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

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. The idea of shared sisterhood is we can't empower one another. We can't lift each other up if we can't show our true emotion to one another. If we can't be honest that, hey, what you said hurt me, or I'm dealing with this, or I'm frustrated, or I'm sad, or I'm jubilant, or I'm proud, or insecure. How can we truly reach empowerment and be our full selves if we can't do that? And I think that's what we're really trying to delve deeper into. You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo.

I'm Nicole Torres. And I'm Amy Gallo. I'm Nicole Torres. And I'm Amy Bernstein. One of the themes we keep returning to here is whether and how women support one another at work. You may remember that last season we asked you to take a survey on workplace relationships. The researchers behind that survey, Tina Opie and Beth Livingston, are studying relationships among colleagues whose cultural identities differ by race or nationality or social class or something else. With the survey, they were trying to learn who had high-quality relationships, what made them possible, and how might managers encourage those relationships to develop.

You see, deep and meaningful relationships at work matter. They make it easier for people to trust and exchange information and just get along. All that helps us to be productive and engaged. We said we'd share the results of the survey as soon as they started to come in, which is what we're doing today. Tina, who's a professor at Babson College, has been on the show a couple of times before. She's here in the studio with us. Beth joined the conversation by phone from the University of Iowa, where she's a professor.

Before we hear from them, a little background for listeners new to the show. This is the third episode we've done explicitly about workplace sisterhood. If you want to get the most out of this episode, pause here and go listen to season two's Sisterhood is Scarce and Sisterhood is Power. And if you just want to keep listening, I'll give you the gist from those episodes real quick.

Basically, to reduce sexism and racism in the workplace, women need to stick together and support each other. That hasn't always happened. A lot of the time, advances for white women have not been shared with women of color. So we know that developing trusting relationships with the women we work with, and particularly the women who are different from us in some way, that takes care and time. But the effort of understanding each other's experiences is worth it, both personally and professionally. We'll feel less alone in our individual struggles, and we'll be better equipped to push for equity. We have more power when we feel more connected. All right, now on to our conversation with Tina and Beth about the initial results from their

survey. Tina, Beth, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks. So Tina, what have been the big takeaways so far from the study? One of the critical takeaways is that in a workplace context, overall, there was this high level of sort of emotional vulnerability that we found amongst women. So what we call emotional carrying capacity coming from Dutton and colleagues at the University of Michigan. The interesting thing is that Black women in particular showed lower levels of emotional vulnerability in the workplace. And that was particularly true if the work context was highly interdependent. And what that means is that in order for me to get my job done, I have to depend on you. In those situations, Black women were even less likely to express emotional vulnerability in their workplace relationships. We found that same relationship with Hispanic women because we really we wanted to avoid that mistake that I think a lot of scholars make where they lump all non-white

people together. Thank you for saying that, Beth. Because these are very important relationships to tease out. And we found in an independent analysis, the exact same sort of relationship for Hispanic women, which I think provided some interesting opportunities for us to talk about what we think might be going on. And can we go back for a sec? Because what I want to understand is why can you explain the connection between emotional vulnerability and sisterhood? So if I think about in the different workplaces I've had the experience of being, I often felt like I had to put on an armor when I went into the workplace. And while I was as authentic as I could be, I felt that there were certain things I couldn't disclose, especially if I was bothered by something. If I was in a meeting and someone took credit for an idea or if someone said something that I thought was offensive and there was silence in the room or even worse, if they all laughed and I felt that it was sort of at my detriment. So you can imagine in those situations, I'm upset, I'm sad, I may be

angry. And what I would do is go to another floor in the bank and go into the bathroom and cry. And then I would go back downstairs and act like everything was fine. However, there were certain times where there were people at work, something like that would happen and they would look at me. And we would sort of give each other a knowing nod or eye blink or some kind of nonverbal signal to say, I see you. I hear you. I'm right in this with you. After the meeting, those are the kind of people we would get together, probably offsite, have a cup of coffee and just talk about what had happened. And then these emotions would come gushing forth. And that was often with other women of color, specifically Black women and Latina women.

But then I met Beth, and Beth is a white woman who I happen to feel especially close to around this particular topic. I mean, we talk about many things. And the kind of relationship that we have established, I think if more Black women, Asian women, Latina women, white women had those relationships, the kind of relationship that I think Beth and I have developed over time, the workplace would be stronger. We would be able to be more resilient in the workplace. So that's at the individual would be stronger. We would be able to be more resilient in the workplace. So that's at the individual level. I think we would have stronger interpersonal

connections. Our teams would be stronger. And I think the companies would be stronger, which is a competitive advantage. So I guess what I'm saying is, if everybody was like Beth and I, the world would be better. Exactly. Exactly. But I want to know, but go ahead, Beth. I was just going to say, you know, and I think it's truly talking about how you can, the buzzword of creativity and innovation, and we hear it time and time again, you know, how can you do that if you don't trust people, if you're uncertain, if you might fail, if you can't trust people, if you're uncertain, if you might fail? If you can't trust them, if you can't afford to be vulnerable with them, can you truly be creative and truly pursue those things that have risk? And I think that it's questionable if you can. And this is an opportunity for us not just for the right thing to do in terms of

people being more comfortable at work, people being able to be themselves at work, people being happier. I mean, it's a stressful world out there. We don't want to add poor relationships at work to that sort of stress. But also in terms of how can I reach my potential professionally? Well, by not thinking that we do this alone, but oftentimes women, and particularly black and Latino women, often have to do kind of what Tina was talking about, have to, you know, brace us for those sorts of things and help us help everyone to to navigate them for our own personal good, but also for our own professional good as well. Yes. And the last thing I'll say is shared sisterhood is not just for the touchy feely, warm and fuzzy emotions that women might have amongst themselves. The goal of shared sisterhood is also about empowerment to dismantle the very structures of oppression that we've talked about before here and other places. So it's, it's, it is a destination, but it's also a means to an end.

It's something that it's a mechanism that we're hoping can be used to improve the workplace in terms of diversity, inclusion and equity and performance. I mean, and engagement and all of those things. Exactly. Yes, definitely. All every one of them. Yes. And the trust seems to be the most important part of this because it's not all about crying together. Exactly. It's about testing ideas against people you trust and knowing that they're going to give you honest feedback and that you're there to help each other. It's what you were saying before. Both of you, I think. Yes. So in in the study, you heard directly from from women who either felt emotionally vulnerable or not.

And I'm curious what sort of stories you heard. And was there anything in particular that surprised you? One of the things that was interesting to me was women would try to bring up issues of equality or equity in the workplace. And they might say, wow, they were trying to be emotionally vulnerable. They might say something like, that was really hard or difficult for me. And then the white manager would respond back, well, it's difficult for everybody. Sort of overlooking the opportunity to more deeply connect. Because what I would advise any manager to do in that situation, but especially a white manager listening to a woman of color,

is to say, talk to me about that. What made it difficult for you? That's an opportunity for you to listen. And who knows, maybe that manager was busy, rushing through the day, hoping to end up this conversation, and just thought, OK, well, the way I'm going to relate is to quickly sort of say, you know what, it's hard for me to. I mean, some of the other quotes that came to my mind were when people talked to the women, talked about feeling isolated, feeling that they weren't included. And that just took me back to some of my own personal experiences and how in each subsequent job, when I would get there, well, I began to ask a question about what the consulting firm was doing, you know, when people have children and how are they. And he was like, well, you're a new consultant. You shouldn't be worried about that.

I didn't get that job offer, by the way. But I felt that it was incumbent upon me to begin to ask those questions because I was, was I engaged then? I don't know if I was seriously dating. I was dating the man who was going to become my husband and is now my husband. And that's what we were talking about. We were talking about those kinds of things. And I've always been someone who wanted to bring my whole self to work. And I felt that that was an appropriate question, but he clearly did not. And I'll say that about, you know, bringing your whole self to work. You know, that's part of this idea of inclusion, inclusiveness, where you see people moving from, well, we just care about diversity,

but we really want to be proactive towards inclusiveness. And some of that is often framed about bringing your whole self to work, right? And that was probably what was surprising to me in our findings is we often, I think, really promote these sort of inclusive climates as an unmitigated good. And in our findings, we did find that across the board, you know, the more inclusive people thought their workplaces were, the more they were able to trust their co-workers. But what I think was really interesting is that as the work became more interdependent, as I relied on you to get my jobs done, for black and Latina women, that inclusive climate wasn't enough for them to trust their co-workers with those sort of emotional vulnerability. And I think that's really

important because we often talk about inclusion as the answer to a lot of these sorts of questions. And what we're finding is it's way more complicated than that. And if you truly want to make people feel comfortable being themselves and bringing their whole selves, which includes not just their work family choices, but their emotions, right? If you want to be able to do that, then I think we have to think beyond just inclusion as the answer, but also how that might differentially affect people. Right. And so that suggests that inclusion or an inclusive climate may be a necessary condition, but it's not a sufficient condition to get the kind of connection that we think would lead to

shared sisterhood and the benefits that we talked about a little bit ago. 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. 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 Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. I'm just wondering if you have any ideas or hypotheses that you're going to explore as to why, you know, you can work in an inclusive

environment but still not feel emotionally vulnerable or able to trust bringing your whole self to work with your colleagues? Well, see, let's remember. So inclusive climate is operating at a macro level. Some of the things and the examples that we've talked about are at the individual and interpersonal level. And what I'm hypothesizing is that we may overall have a climate where the organization espouses particular beliefs about diversity, inclusion, and equity, and where some of those values may even be built into some of the processes. But I really think that all it takes is one or two or three interpersonal incidences that conflict with that and that can jettison the belief that it is, in fact, as inclusive as we might have thought or that it might be inclusive for some people, but not for me. Right. And that's, I think, is often the case with sort of structural change, that white women, our white female that, you know, or the more deep,

these sort of deep high quality relationships that their employees would be willing to forge. And that's great that it works at that level. And I think we're starting to be able to, with this research, start to pinpoint where that falls apart. So we don't end up with yet, I think, another structural solution that benefits white women to the detriment of non-white women. Because some of the stories that came out were people talking about being excluded from after work events, being excluded from baby showers, from drinks after work, being excluded from conversations in the bathroom or in the hallway, and what those symbolized to the women who saw that in terms

of how included they really were. So they might have felt comfortable going to their manager and talking about issues or feeling like their work was appreciated or having good policies and procedures. But when they looked around them, they still knew they were different and they still knew that they were excluded and they weren't willing to, you know, throw a wrench in that by asking too much of coworkers that they didn't fully trust. And I can imagine that dissonance between this is what my company espouses and then this is what I personally experience. It just makes the experience that much worse. Yeah, because because, I mean, it violates your expectations. Right. And as I said, when I go into the workplace, even to this day, I still somewhat put on a little bit of an armor. And and when an organization espouses that it's an inclusive climate, you may put on less armor or maybe you take the helmet off or something, you know, metaphorically speaking.

And then when you get punched in the head by the realization, that was actually not even true. It hurts that much more because you allowed yourself to hope. And this is gloom and doom. I sort of felt that last sentence that I said in my heart. I mean, because I'm a hopeful person. I'm an optimistic person. I'm a hopeful person. I'm an optimistic person. I'm also pragmatic. And I think what I would love is for organizations to be able to have these kinds of conversations where if the woman and the people in the survey data who shared that they felt excluded, they felt sort of discounted when their manager said, well, it's difficult for everyone. If we had organizations and relationships where they could follow up with that manager,

and it would be okay to say, you know, I reflected on that conversation and I really felt devalued. And I need to, I want to discuss that with you because I want to be fully committed here. And right now I'm feeling distanced from the organization and from you. I think that's probably naive on my part to think that that conversation could happen, but I would be hopeful that it could. I mean, you're making me think, because when I hear the word inclusive or inclusive policies, I am pretty sure it applies to me as a white woman. As a black woman, when you hear inclusive environment, do you question, does that include me? Yeah. When I hear the term inclusion, I mean, I want everyone to feel included,

but it feels as though me asking for a seat at the table makes other people feel like their rights are being undermined. So inclusion seems to mean we have a language of talking about the climate and the culture as long as it doesn't threaten people's sandboxes, as long as it doesn't make anyone feel nervous. So to me, that's not really inclusion. It's just slapping on a label because it's politically correct. But we're not going to fundamentally change resources, processes to make sure that it's equitable. Right. It becomes a signal of, well, yes, we are willing to put some degree of thought and resource behind this idea. But I think, you know, the experience of black women, the experience of Hispanic, Latino women have often shown them that it's that whole trust but verify. OK, right. But I'm not going to put my guard down until you show me that this is actually truly a safe place for me to do so.

And, you know, we now recognize when companies don't talk about diversity and inclusion right and that tells us something but you know as more companies I think begin to talk about inclusion which is I think a net good our recent our data shows it's an it's a good thing it's just not enough if we truly care about developing these deep quality relationships the shared sisterhood where women support one another appreciate one another build these deep quality relationships, the shared sisterhood where women support one another, appreciate one another, build these deep, long lasting relationships that can create safety for them, support for them, but also create these wonderful projects and ideas as well. I just want to go back to emotional vulnerability for a second. I'm trying to make sense of it within the context of inclusion. I know that's a more macro organizational policy type thing, but how much

of someone's sense of whether they can be emotionally vulnerable at work is due to having like one or two close friends who they can be themselves with? Right. So it doesn't hurt to have several friends with whom you can be emotionally vulnerable. I think, though, what Beth and I are trying to tease apart is that when there is conflict or when there is something that has arisen in the workplace, whether that's with those friends that you're close to or whether it's with your manager, your co-workers, someone who's a supervisor, that you are able to express your authentic emotional reaction. So while your two friends might be a coping device, might be some people whom you can turn to and sort of divulge that, that might be an opportunity for you to vent, to release that tension. But we're really trying to, that's important. We're trying to tease something else out, which is, in general, is this an organization, a place where I can express my emotions?

And granted, I'm not talking about melt into a sea of tears. I'm not talking about expressing emotions where you're yelling or cursing or hitting or I'm not talking about that. We're talking about professional behavior where you are emotionally expressing a concern that you have or when you're expressing a concern that is manifested in an emotional way. Does that answer your question, Nicole? Yeah, yeah. That helps. So it's just moving beyond, like, it's not just about a few interpersonal relationships. It's larger than that.

It is more cultural. It is what your manager says and the type of environment that's created for people at work. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a spectrum. And we can think of it as being on a continuum. I think that's helpful from a place where I feel I have to hide all of my authentic emotions. I have to, you know, eschew showing any sort of vulnerability around these people because I don't necessarily trust them if I were to show that sort of vulnerability or uncertainty or frustration or anything like that. And, you know, on the other hand, you have some very deep relationships where these are personal relationships. These are like they might

provide specific interpersonal support or coping or cooperation. But I think the idea of shared sisterhood lies a little bit in the middle of that, which is, you know, it doesn't necessarily require us to be bosom friends. But at the same time, I have to trust you enough to carry my emotions alongside me, which is why I love the term emotional carrying capacity, because it's can you help me do that? Can you bear this burden with me as we work through this together? And can I trust you to do that without ruining my professional reputation? And I think what our research suggests is that black and Latina Hispanic women aren't quite so sure if they can do that

as much as white women do. And I think that provides an opportunity for growth. 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 So I get that the environment that allows for emotional vulnerability is on the sort of the macro level dictated by the culture, by whatever values a company says that it embraces.

I also get that on the ground level, it's how a boss interacts with his or her team. It's also two people having a conversation and how one reacts to the other's display of emotional vulnerability. How at an organizational level, how do you create the culture that we've been talking about at scale? How do you do it in a way that's authentic and that is sustainable? I think it's imperative that it start from the top. And what do I mean by that? CEO, college president, university president, if they believe this and they buy into this, they can role model this kind of behavior. They can tell stories about that. They can have an

all-hands meeting, meaning the entire organization is dialed in. This is something that we think is cutting edge. It's innovative. It's going to help us improve our climate. What we're going to be doing is we're going to be learning about the boundary conditions of emotional vulnerability in the workplace, just as you would announce an initiative about, you know, learning math or being more diverse or being more strategic in the way or minimizing expenses. Those kinds of initiatives often start at the top. And when that happens, the people below listen, but they also look for signals.

So are the people being trained on how to do that, on how to respond? So the first thing would be the CEO or the head suggesting or saying clearly that this is an important initiative and here's why. The second thing would be putting resources behind that. We then have to make it okay to fail because there may be someone who still shuts down an emotional display, or there may be someone who maybe goes a little bit off the deep end with the emotional display. But rather than discouraging

that or shutting down the initiative, trying to make this salient in the workplace that this is something that we think is important and reminding people of the values as well as the outcomes that we're seeking in the workplace. But keeping those things salient, you're constantly learning and questioning what you're doing to see if it's actually driving the kinds of outcomes and behaviors that you'd like. And from an interpersonal level, you know, I really loved one of the quotes that a woman wrote to us when we asked, you know, is there, would you like to tell us a little bit more about inclusivity at your organization? And she essentially said, my group is incredibly inclusive and we all trust each other because I'm in charge of it. And this was a more senior black woman who said that. And in her subsequent response, she said that she had essentially learned from the time she had mistrusted people and she kept an eye out for people who seemed to be

excluded. And she made a proactive choice to kind of nip that in the bud. And I loved that quote because it demonstrated that her being in charge, it wasn't just this idea of, well, it's diversity because diversity matters. And although it does, of course, it is, no, I had these experiences and I know how to approach my team, my work group to make sure that this doesn't happen again. And I thought that was really, you know, a wonderful way to think about it, which is, yeah, we don't have any problems with this because I'm in charge. But what concerns me about the advice that it needs to start at the top is that so often the people who are at the top are not black women or white women. And we will reward white men in particular for being emotionally vulnerable as being emotionally intelligent. Whereas when women display emotion, it's seen as weak or angry or whatever it is. So how do we start at the top when the playing field isn't level? Well, I don't think it's, listen, it's not level.

But I think what I'm trying to do is try to create a conversation that does include white men. Tim Ryan at PwC has been doing this with diversity, inclusion and equity. And he's marching right along and he's bringing along other people. But I don't think necessarily the goal is to only start something like this, an organization that's run by black women. If that were the case, I don't think it would necessarily start as quickly as we'd like, just because of the numbers. And I also think that shared, that's one reason why we were really embracing this idea of shared sisterhood is because we recognize those double standards a little bit. And although we know it needs to come from the top, when we are talking about this

interpersonal dyad level sort of interaction, you know, our hope is, is that if we can start with women being emotionally vulnerable with other women who are racially, ethnically, nationality wise, different from one another, then we can also start to bubble that up as well, where we back each other up if we see that double standard that occurs later on. So I think maybe it can come from both directions. And men can be sisters. Bernardo Ferdman is a faculty member and a consultant who I love who was involved with the shared sisterhood construct. When it was just really in its infancy, what, 10, 15 years ago, I call him a sister because he has my back in an emotional way. I can call him for advice. He will do the same thing for me.

So let's not think, I mean, we're starting with women, but the goal is to broaden. Great. Tina and Beth, thank you for talking to us today. Thank you. It was my pleasure. So one thing I noticed that, you know, I think is important to underline here is that emotional vulnerability is not about, not just about being able to share the tears and frustration. The trust piece of it that leads to higher engagement, greater creativity, all of those benefits is an important thing to focus on. Otherwise, it sounds like what we're trying, that what we're advocating here is a lot of, it's a lot of tears and we're not. I think what they're saying, what Beth and Tina are saying is that in order to get this level of trust, shared sisterhood, that you have to have an environment where the tears can happen and where people can say, you just pissed me off. Right.

Or what you said hurt me. Right. Right. And that, yeah, and that you can trust that you can say that and it's not going to get you fired, get you, you know, lack of access to resources, promotions, etc. Yeah, that was a really good takeaway. It's not just about being able to be emotional. It's about being able to trust that you are accepted, included, not unfairly judged, all that.

Yeah, and supported. Right. And I actually have an example of a time that as we're talking about this that I'm realizing I was allowed to be emotionally vulnerable. I was on a project team where someone outside that team sent us some harsh feedback about the work we did. And we all were in our different locations receiving that email. And it was hard to read, but in the end, quite helpful. But when we got together as a team the next time, we could have easily said that was ridiculous. We could have put this person down or been defensive or ignored it. And I was allowed to say that was really hard to read. I have to tell you, I even cried a little. And, you know, I moved on. But so let's talk about like what we want to do

with this feedback. But and I think that the fact that I felt like I could admit that I cried, that it was hard to read, and then we could still, you know, it wasn't about anyone passing tissues and us all holding hands and discussing the emotions, although that might not have been bad either, but it was about I could explain my emotional experience, and I was not going to be judged for that. Yeah, no, I understand what you're saying. I also think it's an interesting way that you had of signaling where your boundaries are.

Because what I was thinking is what you say and how you say it are really important things to consider when giving any kind of feedback. Right. Right. I don't know what this project was and I don't know what was said. But if I gave feedback and I made someone cry, I would pay a lot of attention to what I said that made someone cry or what I did. Right. You know, something that, well, Nicole brought this up, and I think that there's a lot to it, which is that when you have a friend at work, Tina sort of played it back as that. I think having someone you can be emotionally vulnerable with, even if, you know, you wouldn't do it in a large group at work, does make a huge difference. And that is sort of personal chemistry. So that's why I was so curious about how you do this on a team level or on an organizational level, because a lot of that is chemistry. Yeah.

Well, in Tina's example of working at the bank and being able to share a raised eyebrow with other people in the meeting, I think was a good example of just not feeling so alone. Oh, yeah. And haven't we all been there? Yes. Yeah. I mean, just the exchange of glances that says, yeah, I saw that too. Yeah. I heard that too. Right.

Is so, it makes you feel like you're not the crazy one. Yes. Right. And then, I mean, another point that came up here and has been coming up again and again in past conversations and things we're publishing to HBR is just that women are not a, you know, monolithic, homogenous group. And we have tension and excitement about diversity and inclusion and, you know, organizational level policies that can better help and empower women and other groups. But it is important to remember that there are lots of different types of women and experiences are different. Experiences of inclusion are very different. So that is such an important point. And I'm glad about questioning that consulting firm's maternity policies and her sort of getting slapped on the wrist for doing so. To me, that was such a depiction of how women survive by just getting what they need and were hesitant, especially white women are hesitant to advocate on behalf of other women. We're so focused on our own experience that when we broaden our lens to say, well, what about other women?

What about women who aren't having the same experience as us? That's not always received well. I mean, because that's essentially what Tina was doing was, you know, whether or not she was planning to have children, she was asking, how does this firm treat women? And, you know, to get the response, don't worry about it. But that speaks to, I don't know if this is the point you're making, but like that speaks to the need for shared sisterhood, right? You know, these experiences are going to come up individually.

We're going to each individually face them in weird conversations with potential bosses, managers, whatever. But there's power in numbers when you know that you're not alone. You're not the only one having these experiences. Like, yes, you know, I was just saying that we're not, we're not a homogenous group, but there are things that we share. And when you share these experiences, you can, you know, form bonds and coalitions and you can have this critical mass where you can challenge things without being afraid that you individually will be penalized for them. Absolutely. Right. to have the same exact experience to have sisterhood. We can have very different experiences. And as long as we prioritize emotional vulnerability, as long as we listen, as long as we, you know, aren't presumptive and don't, you know, engage in that, oh, yep, I've had that experience

too kind of behavior, we can create those connections that create the kind of work environments that Tina and Beth are aiming for. That's season three. I'm Nicole Torres. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Bernstein. There is a team of people who contribute to Women at Work from behind the scenes, and we want to take a second to recognize them. Thank you, Amanda Kersey, for being our producer and our boss. Maureen Hoke for being this show's champion. Adam Buchholz for managing the business side of things. Rob Eckhart for posting episodes.

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to fall from the ceiling.