Women at Work - What to Share, What to Hold Back

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

Self-disclosure at work can build trust and connection, but it also comes with risks. In one of our earliest episodes, the late Columbia professor Katherine Phillips explained how sharing personal experiences helps diverse teams connect. We revisit that 2018 conversation and talk with her longtime collaborators, Tracy Dumas and Nancy Rothbard, who explain how expectations around self-disclosure have shifted, especially with the rise of remote work, social media, and political polarization. Plus, the Amys reflect on what they’ve learned about when, why, and how to open up at work.

AMT – You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo. AMT – And I'm Amy Bernstein. We're starting something new on the show. We're revisiting some of our favorite episodes from earlier years and bringing in some fresh perspective. In 2018, I had the pleasure of speaking with the late Catherine Phillips.

Kathy, a Columbia Business School professor whose research on diversity, authenticity, and how people work together has been widely cited and deeply influential. She talked about the tension so many of us feel between wanting to connect and fearing that being open might backfire. The reality is that we're all on our own journeys of identity and how comfortable we are disclosing

various things about ourselves. We all have a need for belonging and we oftentimes have concerns that if we highlight things that are different about us that somehow that might make us feel like we don't belong where we are. The conversation took place at a live taping of Women at Work. I was joined by my then co-host Sarah Green-Cormichael and Nicole Torres and by our senior producer, Amanda Kersey, who moderated the conversation. We later published the episode as Self-Disclosure at Work and Behind the Mic. For this revisit, Amanda re-edited the conversation

to focus on Kathy's voice, her research, her reflections, and the insights that feel just as relevant now as they did then. She opened by reflecting on why self-disclosure was part of Women at Work from the beginning and how Kathy's research helped her see that choice in a new light. Again, thank you everybody for coming.

When we were figuring out what women at work was going to sound like when we were developing the show, one of the things that was important to me was to have stories from the hosts, personal stories, not just from their careers, but from the rest of their life, be essential to this show. From my perspective, I knew that these women were full of insights, all of their experiences. They are funny. They are great storytellers. But it wasn't really until reading about your research

that I understood that there were more benefits to opening up about ourselves at work. So could you talk about what some of the research says about self-disclosure in the workplace? Yeah, so absolutely. So I've been doing research on diversity and inclusion in teams for the last 20-plus years. And one of the major findings in that literature

is that diverse groups tend to be less cohesive than homogeneous ones. And so I actually started thinking about that major findings in that literature is that diverse groups tend to be less cohesive than homogeneous ones. And so I actually started thinking about that and took like two or three steps back to think about how do teams actually become cohesive? I mean, what is that? What is actual cohesion? And how do you build it?

And so as I started having conversations about that with some colleagues of mine, we started looking at the literature and we actually realized that a lot of what cohesion is is actually relationship. It's connection. It's trust. It's building a real relationship with the people that you work with. And that requires some self-disclosure. It means you have to share things about yourself.

And I had some personal experiences of my own that actually drove me to think about that, to think about how uncomfortable sometimes I was with sharing personal things about myself with my colleagues that I worked with every day that I thought I trusted, that I thought I had great relationship with. Yet I found myself censoring some of the information that I was willing to share with them.

And it gave me kind of the insight that I needed to understand a little bit more about how to build relationships across boundaries in the workplace, because I think it's going to be super critical for helping those diverse teams reach their potential. And so it's kind of a balancing act. We know that diversity can bring different perspectives

and ideas to the table, but you have to be willing to hear those different perspectives, and you have to be willing to respect and use those. And that requires that cohesion, that relationship. Yes. You have this story that I was hoping you can tell briefly about when one of your colleagues asked you what you did over the weekend.

Yeah, okay. So this is the story that actually started this research stream. So this colleague is a colleague of mine still to this day. We've been colleagues for many, many years now. And I was having a birthday and I was all excited about it. You know when your birthday falls on the weekend, how it's like really, really exciting.

Like it's Friday and I got the whole weekend to celebrate my birthday. So everybody knew that it was my birthday. So when I showed back up at work on Monday, all happy and happy go lucky, my colleagues said, well, how was your birthday? You know, what did you do this weekend? How did it go? And I was like, oh, you know, we went out to dinner. I got together with some really good friends of mine that I hadn't seen in years. We went out to dinner and we went to a concert.

And he was like, oh, a concert. Who did you go see? I was like, ah, you know, you wouldn't know him. And you know, we just, we had dinner at this great restaurant and da da da. And so I just kind of like swept under the rug who it was that I had gone to see. And it bothered me for a while. I kept thinking to myself, why didn't I wanna share with him that I had gone to see Kirk Franklin, who is an African American gospel artist, very popular.

But somehow I just felt like he wouldn't know who this person was and maybe it would highlight that I'm black. Maybe it would highlight that I'm Christian and so I just kind of felt like those were things that perhaps I shouldn't share with him but as I thought about it I thought to myself he would have never hesitated to share with me. He's told me about all these groups that he's seen that I've never heard of a day in my life and I say, yeah, okay, cool, good for you.

And I never judge him because of the music that he likes and listens to. So it was a moment of an aha moment for myself to think about like, if I don't embrace who I am, if I don't love who I am, if I don't share who I am, how can I expect other people to do the same? Yes.

Kathy, do you want to add anything about how being in the minority comes into play with authenticity and self-disclosure? Yeah. So, when we started this research, one of the papers that we wrote is called Getting Closer at the Company Party. And part of the idea behind the paper was that companies have these events and activities and happy hours and socializing and Christmas parties,

et cetera, that they ask all employees to come to with the expectation that it will somehow bring people closer together, that it will create some better relationships. And so we did this research, and we asked people, do you go to these events? Who's there with you? How similar are they to you?

And then how close do you feel to them after the party's over? And you do see some positive uptick, especially when people share the same identity. So when people are in the minority or they're very different from the other people around them, they don't get that same uptick of positive feelings of closeness with people after they've engaged in these things.

And they often, they were basically telling us, well, you know, I go to these events because I kind of have to. And they're not really feeling like it's gonna lead to something different for them. And so it turned out that when we did that research, that that was true for anybody who felt like they were surrounded by people who

weren't like them, even if they were part of what we might consider a majority group in the United States. But then we also did some research with African-Americans in particular to ask them how comfortable would you feel sharing with or talking to people who look different from you in the workplace.

And we got evidence time and time again that people were more comfortable with people who looked like themselves you in the workplace. And we got evidence time and time again that people were more comfortable with people who look like themselves, that they were concerned that perhaps sharing something about themselves that was different would actually create more distance between them and the other, as opposed to creating more closeness.

And they were concerned that it might have a negative implications for their credibility and their status in the workplace. So it is a real concern. And when I've written about this, I've actually used stories from executives on Wall Street who say, you know, look, my numbers were perfect. My numbers were better than anybody else's,

but I still wasn't getting the promotion. And when I talked to my boss about what's going on, they said, we don't know you. Clearly your numbers are great, but people say they don't know who you are. And it was important for that particular person to make a decision about how much he wanted to actually connect with the other people there in the workplace. You have another story. When you had to take a risk on what you were going to tell your colleagues, many of whom were on the surface not like you.

There was a family emergency, you had to leave a meeting. Yeah, this story is one that I think was another aha moment for me and definitely a risk that I had to decide if I wanted to take or not. So this was a situation. I'm from Chicago, born and raised, and I happened to be on the faculty at the time at Northwestern, which is up in Evanston. And my I happened to be on the faculty at the time at Northwestern,

which is up in Evanston. And my parents were still living on the south side of Chicago with my very large extended family. I'm the sixth child of six. And I was at work and I got a call from one of my nieces saying, you need to get down here to the south side right away because mom and dad have been arrested. And I was like, what? I'm like frazzled. I had to

leave very quickly. And so of course, when I came back to work, they were like, what happened? Is everything okay? Is everybody okay? And I had to decide if I was going to share with my colleagues at work that my parents had been arrested because one of my nephews had, you know, who knows if he had done anything wrong, but the police chased him into the bathroom of my parents house and things unfolded from there. And I decided to share it, mostly because I thought the consequence of me either saying this is too difficult to share with you or saying this is too difficult to share with you, or lying about it, or saying, oh, it was nothing. Like, there was no good alternative, in my opinion,

that would actually be better than just telling the truth. And so I said, this was a very difficult situation, and I wanna share with you guys what happened. And they were super supportive. They asked again and again how things were going. It was a year and a half before it was all over with when it came down to going to court and all this stuff. And the reality is that I think it was really a bonding moment because it gave them an opportunity to see that although I had quote unquote made it,

you know, here I am a professor, PhD at Northwestern University, that as an African American woman, I was dealing with a life that they didn't see, you know, on the other side, and that I think that actually gave them more respect for me. After the break, more from our 2018 conversation with the late Kathy Phillips, starting with her take on what's OK and what's not OK to talk about at work.

Before we begin, what do you like most about women at work? How often do you listen? What would make the show even better? What do you want to hear less of, more of? These are the sorts of questions in HBR's latest podcast listener survey. And collectively, your responses will influence at least a year's worth of editorial and production decisions. So help shape the future of Women at Work by going to hbr.org slash podcast survey. I get this question often about like, you know, what's okay to talk about in the workplace,

what's not okay to talk about in the workplace. And I've been on my own personal journey with this as well. And so I try to tell people like, first of all, you kind of have to meet people where they are. Like, just because you're really comfortable sharing some things about yourself doesn't necessarily mean that everybody is. And there have been times in my career where I've said, I want to share this with you, but I don't really want it to be common knowledge for everybody.

I feel like I trust the two of you to tell this, but don't tell everybody that my parents got arrested. And so the reality though that I've learned over time is that you really do have to be comfortable yourself with whatever it is that you're disclosing. Because the fact of the matter is that once you share something with someone, it really belongs to them at that point. You know, like you can certainly ask them, you know, not to share it. But the reality is you don't control anybody. And so it's kind of a tricky thing. You kind of have to really know yourself and be comfortable with whatever it is you're sharing and understand that not everybody

will be at the same place you are. Where is the line? Has research found that there is a line where something is just too much at work or there's backlash, whatever it is? Do you have any insight to that? Yeah, I mean, I think this is very idiosyncratic and it could be different in different places.

But of course, people say, don't talk about politics, don't talk about religion, that those two things are kind of like off the table. Is that true? I personally have not experienced that to necessarily be true. I mean, it turns out that the person who is the dean of the Columbia Business School, my boss,

very clearly he's a Republican and that's not something that he hides. He worked in the Bush administration and so therefore he can't hide that fact. And so politics do come up and I did talk to him about, he actually feels very comfortable talking about politics. I feel less comfortable talking about politics. So I would allow him to talk about politics as much as he wanted. And I would just kind of like nod my head and say,

okay, what else are we talking about? And so I think some of it is really trying to know that in the environment that you're in, there could be different norms around what's acceptable and what's not. And you kind of know when you've crossed the line, when you perhaps have shared too much. And oftentimes I will say, like in the moment,

if I shared something that maybe I shouldn't have, I'll say, oh, I might've made you feel uncomfortable by sharing that. I apologize if I made you feel uncomfortable sharing that, but that's really all you can do is kind of apologize for it. And the reality is, again, now that the information is out there,

you can't really take it back. Here's where Amanda's conversation with Cathy shifts to questions from the audience. Okay, so there are two microphones on either side. First of all, thank you for the panel. It's been really, it's just eye opening. But as a woman who's about to enter the workforce, how do you manage not coming off as cold,

but then not oversharing? Because I'm someone who tends to overshare. So how do you strike that balance and still be able to form relationships without going too far? I think you tread lightly. I mean, I tell people all the time this one thing, like first of all, my research does not suggest

you share everything with everybody. Okay, let me be really clear about that. That is not what it's suggesting. It is suggesting that sometimes we have this thoughts in our head that somehow sharing this information with somebody is gonna be so detrimental and hurtful, when in fact, it actually is not.

It actually is an opportunity to make a connection with somebody who might then invest in you more deeply, who might be more willing to mentor you and to sponsor you, who feels like they know you and they want to see you succeed. And so it actually can be some positive things that come out of sharing some things with people. So I would I would just say to you that like pay attention to the environment that you're in. Try to understand the context. What are people sharing with you? What's normative in this environment? So you want to try to understand that a

little bit and then you want to identify not everybody, you know, a few people, one person even, in that workplace that you feel like you might be able to build a deeper relationship with. That's what mentorship and sponsorship, etc. is all about. People can't help you if they don't know who you are. And so again, I think it's really important to be somewhat strategic about these things, but I tell people all the time, for instance, if there's not one person in this workplace who's different from you, who may in fact have some power,

who may in fact be part of the majority group, if there's not one person in the entire organization that you don't feel like you can share a little bit more about yourself with, then that's probably not the right organization for you. Because the reality is that your ability to thrive and to grow and to develop and to learn is partially dependent on somebody investing in you. And you've got to find those people.

So you have to kind of try it out a little bit and take a little bit of risk and put yourself out there with somebody, not everybody, but to try to make connections with somebody. those people. So you have to kind of try it out a little bit and take a little bit of risk and put yourself out there with somebody, not everybody, but to try to make connections with some people. But pay attention to the environment that you're in and what's normative in that environment. Thank you for your question. Yes. Hi, so you all have touched on this in some ways, but I just wanted to ask it in a really specific way because I think some of the hesitation around disclosing mental health issues at work or even health issues or even I was talking with a colleague today, pregnancy,

is because we're worried as women about the ramifications that that will have on our ability to get assignments or our ability to get promoted. I was just talking the other day at work about some mental health issues and my immediate inclination as an oversharer was like, oh yeah, this doesn't matter. And then I stepped back and thought, okay, but in some workplaces, this will really matter. And I wonder what you all hear from women about that and what you hear from managers

about that, about how they receive that information and then what they do with it after? It's definitely true that people have biases that we're always trying to manage and that we have to be careful about managing them, how we manage them. I have my own personal experiences around this that I'm still kind of managing through. And for me, I thought about not sharing this really important piece of information about myself for a while, and then I realized I just could not thrive in my workplace and go to work every day and engage with people

without feeling like I was somehow lying or holding a secret that was, you know, a pretty big secret. And it turns out one of my colleagues does research on keeping secrets. And it's physically burdensome, it's mentally burdensome, it's cognitively burdensome. And so for me, I kind of had to share this information. I also find that you'll be surprised again many times when you have a relationship

with somebody in the workplace that you can kind of take that risk with. You'll be surprised at how people have similarities with you on some of these dimensions that they might not have been willing to admit or share with someone else. And it can actually, again, bring you much closer with that person. So some of it is knowing yourself and knowing that like, holding secrets is really hard, and it's quite burdensome and can take away from your success. It's really hard and it's quite burdensome and can take away from your success. Go ahead. I wanted to talk a little bit more about, I guess, emotion. Someone who usually tends to not share if I am upset at something in the moment or if

I'm angry or if I'm sad. I tend to just kind of show the same emotion across the board. And I'm noticing now more that people feel more comfortable expressing those emotions. I don't think that's wrong, but I'm just struggling with kind of being, I guess, part of that workforce, right, that now tends to express themselves a little bit more and say what they feel, when they feel,

and how they feel it. So just if you guys had any thoughts on that. Yeah, part of my goal with any interaction that I'm having with someone and how much I'm self-disclosing, et cetera, is to control my own story. Because I don't want people making up things about how I feel or what I think,

or where I've been been or what I've done or whatever, right? I don't want people making up and filling in the blanks. And so some of it is self-awareness, kind of knowing yourself. If you know that you're a person that if you start expressing your emotions, you're gonna fly off the handle, then yeah, you probably should be careful about doing that

because you also are trying to maintain professionalism as well. But I think for me, it really is about, I want people to see me the way I see myself. And the only way that people can see me the way I see myself is if I actually express to them how I see myself and the experiences that I'm having in the way that I feel.

And so for me, actually, it's kind of selfish. It's about control and power, quite frankly. I would actually prefer to have power and control over my own story and over my own ways of walking through the world. I would like to have some control over that because I think it actually helps me. It has really been a helpful thing for me

to be willing to share my own story. really been a helpful thing for me to be willing to share my own story. KATHY'S CLARITY ON WHY SHE SHARED WHAT SHE SHARED, THAT IT WAS ABOUT BEING SEEN ON HER OWN TERMS, STILL FEELS SO RELEVANT, ESPECIALLY NOW WHEN DISCLOSURE ISN'T ALWAYS A CHOICE OR WHEN THE RISKS FEEL HARDER TO GAGE. To explore how the context around self-disclosures evolved, I spoke with two of Kathy's longtime research collaborators, Nancy Rothbard, a professor at Wharton, and Tracy Dumas, a professor at Ohio State's

Fisher College of Business. We'll hear about Tracy's research first, and then I'll bring in Nancy a little later. Yeah, so coming back from the pandemic, I do think, to me, at least, it seems as if people have a new appreciation for human connection and human connection in the workplace, because for many of us, we didn't realize how much we missed it and how much it was a part of the workplace. So I think that's

part of it. But frankly, I think what's also very different is that we're on a whole nother level of polarization. And so I think there are these dual tensions of, on the one hand, we're more accustomed to sharing a little bit more during the pandemic, the boundary between personal and professional was blurred more, but simultaneously, people are very fearful of saying the wrong thing. I think people are also on edge about sharing how they feel because of polarization and how volatile things are. Like, we thought we were polarized in 2018.

It's a whole other level. Yeah. So, Tracy, what if you sense that your views, your beliefs, put you in a minority among your colleagues? How should you think about that? Right. If I think about the findings from our latest study, first of all, what we know is that when people recognize

or perceive that they are in the minority and whatever their values are in the workplace, they tend to withdraw, right? Because we are uncomfortable being in the minority. We feel like we are low status if we are in the minority, and we feel as if we're not going to be respected if we're in the minority. So one, we know that when people are in the minority,

they are less likely to engage. But what we found is that when people disclosed something about themselves, like in our experimental manipulation, we literally just had the participants to share with your group members what your favorite and least favorite movies are and why. And that mitigated these feelings of I'm lower status in this group,

that mitigated these feelings of being less respected in this group, and those people were more likely to engage. Our takeaway from our findings is that just a basic level of sharing something about who you are, what it can do is it can personalize you. It can help people to see you as something other than just what makes us different. So that is what we find and suggest from the research. Maybe learn a little bit about that person

who you know you feel differently about vaccines. Maybe share a little bit about who you are and where you grew up to help potentially bridge those differences. And it can start with something really small. So let's take that guidance out of the world of experiments and apply it to the office or the workplace. Let's just say you are in a group and you join the Zoom call and the four people already on the Zoom call

are talking about vaccines and that's a point of great polarization. And what they're saying runs absolutely counter to what you believe. What do you do? What do you say? Yes. So back up, I would first say, what is your relationship with these people? That would shape how I would respond. They are colleagues you might have lunch with. Let's put it that way. Okay. So, they're colleagues that I might have lunch with.

Then if I felt it would be weird for me to sit there and say nothing, right? Because part of it is, you know, what is appropriate for the situation. And sometimes disclosures go over poorly because it's just really not appropriate for the situation or it's a level of detail or a level of intimacy that's not appropriate. So let's say you discern that it's not going to be appropriate for me to sit here silently. I would lead with, I do see things a little bit differently. I think I would be honest about that. But I would try not to delve too deeply into all of the specifics. And one thing that we know just in general about the way people receive information, information. People tend to receive personal experiences a little bit better than they

receive. Let me tell you about all the medical research and let me tell you about all the studies, right? No one wants to be lectured at. Exactly. And so what I might share, maybe I have a grandmother who had polio before vaccines. And so I know the impact of that., you know, and that's my personal experience and that shapes how I feel. I think I would lead with that. I think it's, it tends to be less threatening and it's less likely to

get into a big fight where the other side feels disrespected or they feel that they want to argue with you, you know, this is my personal experience and I can understand that, you know, your experiences might be different and maybe your experiences shape why you feel the way you do. Right. So, just giving some grace, but still holding your ground in terms of your perspective. That's what I think research would suggest. And one thing, I mean, just from my experience where I have entered into the conversation where it was all assumed that we all agree on this very controversial thing, and I actually don't.

Yeah. I have learned that my job isn't always to win over people who disagree with me, because there are some things that I'm just not going to do. I'm not going to be able to succeed at that. And also, that's not what this meeting's about, right? Right, right. Exactly.

Exactly. So, Nancy, I want to ask you about, you know, there are some people who aren't comfortable with blurring the professional and personal boundaries. And that's where social media really is where the rubber hits the road. So I'm not exactly one of those people, but I don't want to be that boss who, you know, sort of coerces people into being my friends.

Yeah, so I have a paper that you're referring to, which is called, OMG, My Boss Just Friended Me. And what we really look at in that paper is that there are some really strong feelings people have about crossing hierarchical boundaries. And people are the most uncomfortable with bosses, no question, a boss kind of crossing that boundary. But they're equally uncomfortable with subordinates crossing that boundary and reaching out to them in an online space that is considered more personal.

And we make a distinction between LinkedIn, which is more professional and is less mixing of the personal and the professional. And so being aware so that you don't put your foot in it and make the mistake of friending the subordinate is really important. What we find is that being somebody who discloses information about yourself makes people more comfortable. So if you are a warm and disclosive boss, people feel less uncomfortable connecting with you.

People actually are more willing to connect with female bosses who are disclosive, who are letting a little bit of their humanity show through versus those who are really trying to keep a very, very professional demeanor and kind of walling off that personal experience. And people respond much better to the women who show a little bit of humanity, a little bit of that personal disclosure. Talk us through that. What does that mean? I mean, the reason for this is there's also very strong expectations of women to be warm and disclosive. And when we are not warm and disclosive, we're seen as cold, which is a very counter normative expectation for women.

And so, you know, we had quotes in our study about this. We had one female boss who didn't disclose and somebody wrote about her saying, she's very cold and businesslike. She doesn't disclose personal information nor engage in any behavior less than entirely professional. She is somewhat aloof and cold and is not thus not well trusted. She is nice but stern. She can be a lot of fun, but she is also bitchy.

Yeah. Yeah. Best not to get on her bad side. right? Like that's how they talk about women who don't disclose, women bosses who don't disclose, right? Like, and the men who, you know, the male bosses who don't disclose, the contrast is really, it's really profound, right? So a male boss who doesn't disclose, he's very professional, but he tends to keep to himself. When he talks, it's usually only about work unless someone else asks a direct question. He's generally willing to talk about his kids with someone else, but I have no idea what

he does. And then they go on to describe him, he's very professional and though he expresses an interest in employees, he generally doesn't get nosy. He leaves me be to do my job and I do the same." Like that's the way they describe the male boss who is also not disclosed, right? So it's a really different tone. Well, who would ever have imagined that business-like would be a slur, right? Right. Right. But you know, the conclusion that that person comes to is that she's not

well-trusted, whereas this guy, he's not nosy, and you know, we get along just fine. So it's a really different expectation of women and men in these leadership roles. So Nancy, I need your advice. What should I as a senior person in my organization be thinking about when I get a request to connect or to follow from someone who is junior to me? What should be going through my mind? So I think that if somebody junior to you is reaching out to connect with you, you should accept because they are taking a risk in reaching out and they are wanting some form of connection with you

and this is a meaningful channel for them. So you should accept. And you need to manage what you're disclosing so that you're comfortable with them seeing that, but definitely accept. Well, that's a huge relief because I always have accepted and what my colleagues get in return for that is a chance to look at me with my dogs.

Which is the best. I don't have dogs. I love dog postings. Well Tracy, what strategies do you use? How do you set the boundaries you need to set online? Okay, so I must confess and Nancy's laughing, right, because in the trio, the trio of me, Kathy and Nancy, right, I am hands down the segmenter, right? So I am the one with the rigid boundaries. Early on, I had two accounts. And so I would aggressively friend colleagues on my professional account so that they were

all my friends on my professional account. But I will say that I've loosened up over the years and I have seen benefits to loosening up over the years, benefits that you probably would not have been able to convince me of several years ago. But that said, my Instagram account right now, it's also very innocuous, and perhaps that's just by design. That's who I am. So...

Okay, I want to stop you. What were the benefits? You're being mysterious. Okay. You know, I just found that interactions with people were much more pleasant and much more relaxed. And even this past year, I was on a recruiting committee, which meant that I interacted more with my department chair than ever before.

And my department chair is a big name person who, you know, I remember reading his papers in graduate school, right? And so the old Tracy, he's someone that I would have never disclosed anything about myself with. But being a member of the recruiting committee meant that I went to many dinners with job candidates with him, right, as the department chair. And just over time, really just disclosing little things about how I grew up and what my hobbies are and all those

kinds of things. And I think it made for just a better connection with him. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's what Kathy was talking about. It's what your studies have shown over and over that there's just a little shot of humanity that makes it easier to exactly right exactly That's a great way to put it. Yeah Tracy. I'm so proud of you Thank you So we've referred a lot to Kathy and one of Kathy's main goals was to help us build real relationships across differences.

That was the focus of a lot of her work. So as you two have continued with your work, and you've both had the privilege of working with Cathy, what would you each identify as the finding you'd most love to share with Kathy right now? I'll start with you, Tracy. Which one would just make her eyes light up? Okay. So the finding that I would most want her to see is actually not from my own research,

actually. Okay. It's from another one of Nancy's amazing colleagues. It's Rachel Arnett has a paper that came out about expressing information or sharing information related to your racial identity. And there is this tension, right, that Cathy identified in her research that if you are from a stigmatized category a low-status category or simply in the minority There is a great deal of concern about sharing any information

That highlights your racial category and what Rachel's work shows is a difference between Just a surface level sharing of information that highlights your racial category versus what she calls rich cultural expression. So for example, actually one of the examples that Cathy tossed around a lot was being concerned about sharing with her colleagues what she was doing on the weekend, one weekend of her birthday,

she was going to see this Black gospel artist that she expected her colleague who asked her what she did for her birthday, didn't know about, right? And so a surface cultural expression would have just been sharing, I went to see this guy. But what Rachel's work would say is,

if you share that same information, but then actually offer an explanation to that person about why it's culturally significant to you or why this is someone you value. So maybe listening to this gospel artist, you know, it really reminds me of traditions that are strong in my family of having dinner with extended family members after church and listening to this type of gospel music. And so this is one of the reasons I love him so much. And so what Rachel's work shows is that actually by sharing more information about why he's significant, why it's part of my cultural identity can minimize than some of the negative effects.

So I would really want Cathy to see that study, especially if I think about our company party paper, right? The findings that, you know, socializing more actually isn't helpful for those who are in the minority, in the racial minority. And maybe that's because, and one of our findings from that paper, of course, was that probably when people were socializing, they were probably keeping it very superficial because if you were a racial minority, you were more likely to say that you attend these events just because you feel that you have to, not because you're actually really trying to get close to people. And to me, that would suggest that probably their interactions were very superficial.

And what Rachel's research would suggest is that actually, if you go to those parties or disclose information that does highlight your racial category, but then you also offer additional context and just rich information, then that actually can lead to the closer relationships and to some of the benefits that you would hope to have. And I think Cathy would be very excited about that finding. I agree with Tracy that Rachel's paper really does beautifully build on the work that we did.

Yeah, that sounds really insightful and very useful guidance. Nancy, what about you? What would you share with Kathy today, if you could? If I have to think about one of my own papers that I've just been excited about and I know she would be really excited about for me is a recent paper I did with a doctoral student, Tim Kundrow, on does power protect women who morally object

to something in the workplace? And I have to say that a lot of my career, a lot of Kathy's career, a lot of Tracy's career, we've been documenting all of these really difficult things that people face. And so we had an intervention where, which actually works for everybody. It works for women, it works for low power men and women, it works for high power women, and it equalizes them to male bosses, which is that if you say that you are raising the moral objection because it's for the good of the organization, actually people listen to you and they give you the respect and they they think oh okay yes maybe

that is an important reason but we we forget to do that a lot we just say this is wrong we don't say this is wrong because and so finding something really simple that really worked i was so proud of that and i was just i know she would have been over the moon that we finally have something that worked well i'm writing that down for the good of the organization. Yeah. Thank you both so much for this. I've learned a lot and I really appreciate your time today. Thanks, Amy.

Thank you. Thank you. Amy, what did you take away from that conversation you had with Tracy and Nancy? You know, the thing that really stuck in my head was how being businesslike was a curse for women and somehow with guys being businesslike was a virtue. Right. Right. Right. Or just completely permissible.

And so, yeah, really what that highlighted for me was that, you know, the rules really are different, as if we didn't know. Yeah. But the way she read those comments from the research, if you for a moment thought you could just show up at work, not share anything about your life, not share anything about your emotions, as a woman, it really highlights the risk, the unspoken risk, because no one's going to say to you, you know, we're not promoting you because you didn't talk about your children, or we're not promoting you because you didn't

tell us what your religion is. But that gave us a sense of the internal dialogue of the way we're being judged when we try to keep completely buttoned up. Yeah. And the thing I always, that I remember thinking about people who are businesslike or women in particular is that must be so exhausting. Keeping it all inside. Yeah, and it is. I think about 2021, we actually both had deaths

in the family around the same time. Your mom passed away, my friend Dante passed away. I remember being slightly jealous of you because it was very clear what your relationship was to the person who had passed away. Dante is a friend who is family, was family, but very hard to explain to someone who doesn't understand that sort of family by choice. He was a major part of my life, major part of my daughter's

life, but there's no blood relation between us. And when he passed away, there was a big decision I had to make about, do I just call it a death in the family and leave it at that? Do I explain who he was? Do I explain the connection? And I remember when I took a full week off of work and just said I had a death in the family, I have to, I'm not gonna be at work. And when I came back, I really made the conscious decision to take the time to explain to the team I worked most closely

with who he was and what my connection was with him. And I got so many messages from people who were like, I have someone like that in my family too. I fully understand. I'm so sorry. And it was, I mean, I'm getting chills talking about it now because it was one of those moments where it felt like the right thing to do for myself. But then I clearly had impacted people on the team as well with that disclosure. And I also think that one of the lessons of that is that, I guess I want to ask, why would you think people would judge you harshly? I don't know if it was that they thought they would judge. And I think about Kathy's words, it's not that she thought necessarily that her colleague would judge her for who she had seen perform. It was just that he wouldn't get it. Yeah.

And I think that's what it was. I was worried I would say how important Dante was to me, and people just wouldn't get it. And I worried that they would be like, you took a whole week off because some guy or, you know, like you seem really upset. Why? It wasn't so much of a judgment. It was just a sort of lack of understanding. I think it's also, your question is a good one because it also highlights how short-sighted it was, or not even short-sighted, but erroneous to think that people wouldn't get it. Of course they do. But the rules have been changing. Yeah.

As Kathy helped us understand. And also Tracy and Nancy. Yeah. It's part of establishing and building trust, is sharing. Exactly. About yourself. Exactly. And again, I think COVID showed us that there was so much going on in that period, and it was so exhausting, and it was scary. And those human connections got us through. Who wants to go back to the time before?

Can we even do that? Yeah. Well, you said that phrase in your conversation with Tracy and Nancy that I loved, like, it's just a shot of humanity. And it's not just about managing our reputations. Like, we could take all of this research from Kathy, Nancy, and Tracy and say, this is about managing our appearance and brand and make it very- Reputation.

Yeah, exactly. And make it very transactional. But at the end of the day, it's about how do we connect as humans and how do we make work more, I don't know, sustaining, fulfilling, emotional, because everything is. Exactly. The other thing I really took from your conversation was when Tracy was talking about mitigating the risks of self-disclosure by using rich cultural expression. It immediately brought to mind, you know, a colleague based in India once sent some

treats to our office and sent along with it this page long explanation of what those treats meant around the specific holiday but also her emotional connection to and how her family celebrates. And it was just a wonderful way for us to understand a little bit more about her. And she's someone I don't talk to regularly but I just had such a warm connection with her. And I thought about that a lot of like, okay, if I'm going to answer a personal question, how do I give more context to it so that my colleague, it's not just a detail, but it's a detail with meaning.

Mm-hmm. I love that. We've just come off of the Passover and Easter holidays. And Passover is, I think it's my favorite holiday. And one of the reasons it's my favorite holiday is because I have really wonderful memories of my grandparents' saders. And when we were at our sader with some friends a couple of weekends ago. I was sitting next to someone I'd never met before, and she was telling me about the Seder she attended as a child. So, of course, I was regaling her with stories about the Seder. I went to as a child, and, you know, as the grandchild, I was the star. My brother and I were the stars of the Seder, if such a thing can be said. And she stopped and reflected a moment and said, this is what makes Seder

so wonderful, so that it gives us a chance to reconnect with ourselves, with our families, with our heritage. And you just made me think of that. Yeah. I wish people could see I have the biggest smile on my face, because I'm like, oh, I love picturing you at the Seder and you as a kid and totally can picture you as the star of the past. My one takeaway from the few satires I've attended is that the children get to go search for the Afikomen. Yes. Right? Which makes you the star.

Well, also the four questions. The four questions, yeah. Which my brother and I would sing together, but I would always try to sing just a little bit louder. He was the pimp to my Gladys Knight, though he didn't know that. It's just a memory that I absolutely cherish. And being able to talk about it, it really warms me. And I think that's the two-sided benefit of self-disclosure, especially with this rich cultural expression, is that you feel seen because you're sharing a part of you and the other person sees a new side of you and you may

be reminding them of something that then they get to share as well. Just creates a nice connection. That's our show. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Bernstein. Women at Work's editorial and production team is Amanda Kersy, Maureen Hoak, Tina Toby Mack, Rob Eckhart, Ian Fox, and Hannah Bates. Robin Moore composed the theme music. Get in touch with us by emailing womenatworkathbr.org.