The Allyship Advantage: Creating Equitable Workplaces Together

Episode Transcript

Kelly Callahan-Poe: If you've ever wondered how to be a better mentor, sponsor, or leader to the women on your team without overthinking it, today's conversation is going to give you a clear, actionable roadmap. Welcome to the Two Marketing Moms podcast. I'm Kelly Callahan-Poe, and today's episode is called The Allyship Advantage, Creating Equitable Workplaces Together with Dr. David G. Smith. David is a sociologist and professor of practice at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School who researches gender, work, and family dynamics.

He's the co-author of Good Guys, How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace, Athena Rising, and his forthcoming book, Fair Share. Welcome, David.

David Smith: Thanks Kelly, great to be here with you.

Kelly: Do you remember the very first question that I asked you when we met, the first time we met?

David: I think it was something along the lines of how did you get into this line of work?

Kelly: Yes, because your background is in the military and it's not that you have an unexpected background. So, can you tell us a little bit about how allyship and gender studies became your area of expertise? Because I think it's an interesting story.

David: Yeah, and it's not an uncommon question, not just for me, but I think for a lot of people, especially, you know, more men who look like me, that if you're involved in doing work around gender equity in the workplace, that people have a little curiosity and maybe even skepticism around what's your intent and your motivation to do this. And so, for me, it did start in my first career in the military and thinking back to the early days of, you know, with my partner, my wife, who was also active-duty military. We were both Naval Academy grads in the 1980s, early integration period of women in the military. And I think a lot of it started with the conversations we used to have around the dinner table about our own career experiences and the workplace interactions with our bosses, our mentors, our coworkers, and just really beginning to understand how her experiences were very different from mine in ways that it was almost I was almost incredulous to that. How could it be so different fundamentally for you than it is for me? And it really opened my eyes. I got that front row seat to show how, again, women are experiencing the workplace very differently. And it piqued my curiosity, not just, you know, to understand more about my wife's experiences, but also how it was affecting some of the women that I was working with. And it was this more systemic and how, you had more data points there in terms of aligning on how people were experiencing the workplace. And it got to that, also that sense of fairness that I think a lot of us who come to this work feel because of somebody important to them. And it could be a family member, like in my case, and certainly, you know, with my co-author, Brad Johnson, for him, it was very similar with his sister in finding a very similar experience in that way. But it doesn't have to be a family member. It could also be a colleague at work. It could be somebody that you really care about. You value that relationship, a mentor, a boss, a mentee, but somebody who gets to that sense of fairness and justice that I think motivates behavior and an action to create change or to at least learn more to think about where might this be an opportunity to create change? And so that was kind of the beginning for me. And later throughout my career in the Navy, I happened to be in places where gender integration was happening on the forefront there and specifically around the first squadron to integrate women, the first aircraft carrier to integrate women. Later on, when I was teaching at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, we had the final integration of women in 2016 into ground combat roles and the Marine Corps and in seeing all of that again, it was really interesting to see how the military approached gender integration and often a lot of this was very kind of rule-based, no surprise. The military is really good about setting boundaries and rules about how things are going to happen and be structured. But we never spent a lot of time talking about culture or leadership and thinking about the relationships and how it fundamentally might shift some of the culture and how we interact and how we do business together. And I think that was one of the things that was missing from my perspective as we went through this. Later on in my career, I had the opportunity to go back and earn a PhD in sociology. And one of the places that I was really interested in was looking at some of these intersections around gender and work and family issues, specifically looking at dual career couples and how they were influenced by both members of the family having a career in the military, having expectations about what that career looks like. But at the same time, how that intersects with family and the life cycle of having children and caring for them as they grow up and move on. And so that to me was part of the impetus of where I focused my research around that intersection of gender work and family and began doing that work as an academic as I transitioned out of the military.

Kelly: In your book, Good Guys, you have a definition of allyship. Can you define that and also talk to us about what the four levers of allyship are?

David: Yeah, it's interesting. We were doing the research for the book and we started in 2018 and really got into the midst of it in 2019. And allyship was still a word that some people knew, but in many ways, it might've been new to a lot of people, even though it had been around for many decades. And so, people had a lot of different ideas about what it was or what it wasn't and different connotations about it. And so, we found that it was very helpful to really think about it in a way that pushed on for action and make it very practical in nature in terms of how people can use this as a concept. And in many of the same ways that we think of leadership, of how we can make leadership actionable and not just a concept. And so, as we looked at it, we looked at some of the key areas and the key behaviors and actions that we saw were critical to allyship. And the first was around interpersonal allyship. And this is thinking about how you hold yourself accountable for how you show up in the workplace and the kinds of relationships that you have and being collegial, being supportive and collaborative, developing awareness of how others may experience the workplace differently than you. And that's really on you individually to hold yourself accountable for doing that work. This is what many people think of as kind of the easy part of allyship because it's just about you. The harder parts of allyship really come into the area of what we think of as public allyship. And this is where we get into some of the disruption and confrontation as well as the public advocacy components that can feel a little more uncomfortable for people because a lot of leaders told us they felt like they were really beginning to put some skin in the game now and felt this discomfort around maybe accepting a little bit of risk associated with this personally or professionally in different ways. Now it's not just holding myself accountable, but now it's holding other people accountable to do this work. And so that might be your peers and your colleagues, your boss.

And so that can be very uncomfortable in many ways in doing that work. Ultimately, it leads up to what we think of as you begin to develop this awareness of how others experience the workplace and putting it into action is systemic allyship or structural allyship in terms of now that I understand how a bias can operate in an everyday practice that I have and maybe your employment practices that create a systemic inequity like a wage gap or a lack of representation in senior leadership positions. Well, now I have an obligation to think about how I hold my organization, my leadership accountable for changing those practices to make them more equitable so that they work for everybody, not just for one particular group of people. So those are the four key areas. I think a lot of people come into it in different places and different levels of comfort and understanding and awareness in doing the work. But eventually, I think we're all trying to get to that level of doing that systemic allyship because that's where we really create change within different organizations or institutions in our society that make it work for everyone and not just for one person in the moment but for everybody and it makes it sustainable across the board.

Kelly: So, you've outlined the basic levers in terms of areas that men can focus on, but what are the specific things that leaders can do to make sure that they're modeling allyship in the workplace?

David: Yeah, and role modeling is really important. And we heard lots of examples and there's been some great research done over the years about the importance of role modeling. This is a leader in your organization and doing it in a way that people can really begin to connect with it in a way that is meaningful to me at whatever level of the organization that you're in. And so, for senior leaders, it can't just be about things that happen at their level. It has to be in the context of how I can talk to that frontline manager at the lowest level of management within my organization and make sure it resonates with them. And so, finding good examples of that along the way I think are really important. And one of the places they often start is they talk about much as we started our conversation around our motivation to do the work and great leaders, I think, role model this in a way that helps people to come in and go, oh, I see why this is personally important to you. They have this personal narrative that they share about why it's important to them in the same way that I did. And it really pulls people into the conversation and go, wow, okay, he's really engaged in this. I see the motivation for it. And then I think one of the things that leaders do is they then pivot and they make a conversation that shifts into more of a value proposition or a business case about why this is important to the organization, not just me, and then what the role of people at whatever level they are in the organization, where that connects in for them so that they can see the actions that they need to be taking and why they need to be taking it. So, a lot of this starts with this kind of motivational aspect of it, but I think it goes beyond that. And I mentioned developing awareness as being a key component which takes a lot of listening and self-education and conversations with colleagues and a lot of those are very uncomfortable in many cases because again, this is a conversation that sometimes people don't feel like, wow, you know, I feel like I need to know but I'm really embarrassed or I'm just not sure how to get into these conversations. And so, thinking about how I show up in the workplace and have these conversations with my colleagues, this can be a key component of it.

And great listening skills, I think, are part of that. And showing up with an idea that women told us that great allies showed up with this generous listening. And so, it was listening from a different perspective. It was listening for a different point of view, how people may experience things differently than I do, not making assumptions about people. And not, certainly not problem solving necessarily for someone. If someone wants to share something with you that's great. You don't necessarily need to be the problem solver. You don't need to fix it for her or fix her. And too often, I think women have experienced that where people are just trying to fix them in some way and sometimes, we just need to show up and be a good colleague and a good sounding board to do that. The not making assumptions part is really key and important. And I think we heard a lot of great examples of that, even of allies or people who were considered to be allies. There was a great story that we had with we spoke with Janet Petro who's the director of the Kennedy Space Center and her mentor at the time was Robert Lightfoot who was the NASA administrator and he said hey before I tell you about the ways that I think I've been effective as an ally and as a mentor let me tell you an example of where I didn't get it quite right and he shared an example of how he was in an executive hiring committee at very high level they were down to the last four candidates and it was clear who the front runner was and it was a woman. And he said that he wanted to make sure that he put some ideas out there to make sure that in some ways he was showing kind of that, I'm considerate. I'm being kind of gender savvy and focusing on this. That he said, hey, before we make this decision, I just want to point out that, you know, this job requires a lot of travel and she just had a baby and you know, maybe this isn't the right time for her. And he said, fortunately for him, that there was a woman sitting across from the table and she just had kind of flames coming out of her eyes. And she said, Robert, I'm pretty sure she's a very smart woman in this case. And I know she knows that this job requires a lot of travel. And I'm really sure she knows she had a baby a few weeks ago. So, if that's the case, why don't we let her make that decision? And he said, it was just, it was this epiphany aha moment for him and thinking that I was doing, was helping, was being supportive and trying to do the right thing, but I was making assumptions for somebody, and I needed to step away from that. So he said, part of that, I think the takeaway is also that we as allies, we need to be one open to feedback, just like Robert right there in the moment and receiving feedback from somebody and then listening to that and sharing it and if you have this epiphany moment, just like he did with us, is make sure that we're creating an environment where we're sharing that information so we can all learn from it and become better. Because again, a lot of the challenges with becoming a great ally and creating a culture of allyship within your organization is transparency of information, of awareness of information in your organization about how people may experience things differently.

Often, we might think we're doing what we need to be doing as allies and doing the right things. And the question is, is it really having the effect and the impact? And often we find there's this gap and the research shows us we get a gap in terms of how women are experiencing and how men think they are doing things appropriately in the workplace to be good allies. And the lack of feedback is what's keeping that gap alive today.

Kelly: So, David, gender studies, belonging, diversity, allyship, inclusion have all become really contentious terms these days. And many men are hesitant to mentor women post-MeToo. How can you address this fear?

David: Great question. You know, and it's post MeToo, but it's also, it's kind of, as you mentioned, it's kind of built a little bit of momentum behind it, even today, where we're seeing in the workplace, some of these narratives about how gender equity or gender equality has been solved. And why are we even focusing on this still today? And they will throw information and data out there that kind of supports their idea about that.

So, another one of the challenges we're finding today is that often there's this premise that if women are advancing, that somehow men are losing in the workplace, that women's advancement, women's equity and equality in the workplace, men are losing in that way, which is absolutely not true. We see again from a capacity perspective that organizations today, as we become more gender diverse and they become more successful in those organizations, that there's an expansion of the organization, an expansion of the mission. And the opportunity grows for everybody when we do that. And so, I think one of the challenges is really beginning to understand some of the narratives that are coming out of this and really using some of the evidence and looking at the data that supports again, why gender equity is good, not just for women but it's also good for the organization. And I think that an important part of the conversation is how it grows the team, how it grows the organization, how it grows, again, what you're trying to accomplish within your organization. I think that messaging gets lost. The final piece of this that I think is really important, and I really hope that all the men out there hear this that are listening to your podcast and the women will share this with men that they care about, is that men have a lot to gain when they become more equitable allies in the workplace. So allyship is like, you think of it as a form of leadership, maybe inclusive leadership might be a way to frame that. And as we begin to become better from a skill-based perspective of recognizing unique strengths of people who are different from us, it takes some work on our part to really begin to understand the unique contributions that those people can make if we leverage those unique strengths in the organization. So, getting past more than just inclusion in the organization, but really helping people to thrive within the organization. And I think that that is something that gets lost as we become better allies, better inclusive leaders in the organization, we become more successful too. And again, we see that in the research of these men, we've seen it from a mentoring perspective, from an allyship perspective, from a leadership perspective, that they gain in places like increased access to information, which makes them, again, makes us more powerful and more capable of doing better work. We see higher empathy, better emotional intelligence, better communication skills. All of these things make us better as leaders in our organization, better colleagues and coworkers in our organization.

And I think the really incredible part of that is that you get to take those home with you. So, you don't check them at the door when you go home at night. And you take them home and it makes you a better partner and a better parent. So again, these are things that cross domains and make us better. But that part of the story, that part of the narrative often gets left out. What's in it for me, for men?

Kelly: You've stated that men and women will not achieve workplace equity until men do their fair share in caregiving, which of course every woman wants to hear. Can you talk about that a bit?

David: Yeah, I mean, you've seen all the estimates from, whether it's from the World Economic Forum or wherever about how it's going to take, you know, all these different 150 years, 130 years to get to gender equity and gender equality in the world. And one of the things that we firmly believe in is that we're really a generation away from creating real gender equity in society.

Because we, those of us who have the opportunity to socialize the next generation, and again, it doesn't matter whether you're a parent, grandparent, caregiver, in whatever capacity, we have the ability to socialize the next generation to make it better. And we see that in the research. So from an allyship perspective, when we were doing the research for Good Guys, we found that when men who were identified by their partners as being great allies at home and they're doing their fair share of the domestic labor, the childcare and caregiving, the emotional labor, the cognitive labor, doing all the planning and tracking of activities and everything that goes along with that. And they're doing it very visibly often in the space of where their children are. Their children are affected by it. Especially in a lot of those really formative years when children are beginning to imprint what it looks like to be a fill in the blank, right? To be a man or a woman, to be a parent, to be a partner, to be all of these things. They begin to think about what that looks like and it becomes just a part of who they are. And we see that in the outcomes too. And so, for our boys, when they reach adulthood and they're leaving to go into the workplace, again, they have dads who are doing this in this way. Visibly as allies, they have a more inclusive perspective of gender roles. And again, how we think of each other as breadwinners and caregivers in the workplace and a more balanced perspective of that. That they take into the workplace. For our daughters, they're more likely to persist in careers, to reach their career goals and dreams, and to enter into more non-traditional professions and industries that have largely been majority male. So again, if we're trying to reach more equity in our professions and our occupations, here's a great opportunity we all have as caregivers, as role models, coaches, mentors, teachers, right? All of these things that we do for the children, they're paying attention and it makes a difference down the road. The other part of it is that we see that when men show up as allies at home and doing this work, it changes their behavior in the workplace. Now they have a new set of priorities, a new set of focus points on how they combine work and family will change as opposed to those men who again, maybe they have stay at home partners and again, they don't have any motivation to change behavior there necessarily. But these men do so and most of us are in dual career partnerships. And so, the opportunity to do this is there. The question is, will we do it and will we stop relying on our - if you're married to a woman, are you relying on her to be the sole primary parent, the sole primary caregiver, the sole fill in the blank when it comes to domestic labor. And again, we have to begin to think about, all right, where's our opportunity to step in and do our fair share of that work? And the fact that so many - you look at the millennial generation, the research shows us that most of those men who are parents, they want to be involved caregivers. They want to do their fair share. They want to have that relationship with their children and be an active part, an active parent in that case. The challenge when they get back into the workplace is that it doesn't necessarily allow for that. Between informal norms and stigma about who they are as caregivers and as breadwinners and even structure around policy can be really challenging today.

Kelly: David, keep doing what you're doing, please. You have a new book coming out. You want to tell us about it?

David: Yeah, we're excited. So our new book called Fair Share, and this is how men and women as leaders can create a more equitable workplace together and really developing a roadmap to show us how we can create sustainable change in our organizations and institutions and society about how to make those and how to create those in a way that, again, women can really lean in and achieve their full potential as leaders in our organizations and men can lean into who they are as caregivers and we can do that equitably across the board for everyone. And so that book comes out in June of 26 through Harvard Business Review Press and we're very excited to see that.

Kelly: Thanks for joining David. I will be sure to put links to both Good Guys and Fair Share coming soon onto twomarketingmoms.com. Thanks for joining me.

David: Thanks, Kelly.