00:00:01
this podcast is brought to you by knowah [Music] Warton hello my name is Stephanie Cy and
00:00:18
I'm an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of the University
00:00:21
of Pennsylvania and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's episode of the
00:00:25
knowledge at Warton leading diversity at work podcast series which is focused on
00:00:30
uncovering culture in the workplace joining me today are two very special guests first we have Kenji yino who is
00:00:39
the Chief Justice Earl Warren professor of constitutional law at NYU School of Law and the faculty director of the
00:00:47
Meltzer Center for diversity inclusion and belonging at NYU he specializes in constitutional law anti-discrimination
00:00:55
law and law in literature in 2013 professor yino and deoy published a landmark study uncovering talent to
00:01:05
surface the organizational challenges of covering This research and the topic of
00:01:10
today's podcast draw on the insights from Professor Yo's 2006 book which is
00:01:16
called covering the hidden assault on our civil rights and we'll talk a lot more about covering what that means what
00:01:22
it looks like who does it in just a few moments but I'd like to also introduce
00:01:25
our second guest today next we have Joanne Stefan who is executive director of deo's Dei Institute for more than 25
00:01:34
years Joanne has worked with seite Executives to Define design and operationalize their Workforce
00:01:40
experience Vision she helps clients transform their talent in HR organizations and their strategy through
00:01:47
implementation and Beyond to achieve sustainable results Joanne also leads deo's ushr strategy and solutions Talent
00:01:55
Group in the HR transformation service offering and is the chief Dei officer officer of deo's us human capital
00:02:02
practice welcome Kenji and Joanne so delighted to have you with me today for a conversation on uncovering culture so
00:02:10
this is the title of a of a new report that was just released that you both co-authored um and it's in collaboration
00:02:17
with the Meltzer Center for dersa inclusion and belonging at NYU School of Law and deoy and so I actually just want
00:02:24
to start us off by talking about this concept of covering and I think a good way to enter into to it is to turn to
00:02:31
Kenji to tell us a little bit about uh the Genesis of This research uh for him I I know of the work from the book uh
00:02:39
covering in 2006 but can you just give us a brief definition of what covering means who does it and just a couple of
00:02:48
insights um that you had in 2006 that perhaps evolved to 2013 yes absolutely so first of all
00:02:58
Stephanie I want to thank you than you so much uh for having us on today uh you're uh such a star in the field and I
00:03:05
have huge admiration for you so it's such a honor and privilege to be with you so to begin actually the levie
00:03:13
article and no one reads L riew articles but you know I I have to say that the larv article version of covering was
00:03:19
published in 2002 so this idea has now been kicking around for a couple of decades uh you're right that it sort of
00:03:26
made its way into the mainstream with the 200 six book in that book I define covering as a strategy through which
00:03:34
individuals with known Outsider identities you know uh modulate or edit their identities in order to blend into
00:03:42
the mainstream so what would examples of this be this is the you know black individual who straightens her hair so
00:03:50
that she'll be seen as more professional uh this is a gay man who says I'm not
00:03:54
going to bring my samesex partner to a work function because that will increase inrease the salience of my sexual
00:04:01
orientation this is a veteran who doesn't challenge the anti-military joke and the elevator Les to be seen as
00:04:08
overly militant or strident this is a woman who doesn't talk about her child
00:04:12
care responsibilities at work L should be seen as an inauthentic or less committed uh worker I think really
00:04:19
importantly just so that your viewers know that we'll catch them here uh oftentimes what people get puzzled about
00:04:26
is what the difference between covering and passing is I think we all know what passing is where you're literally hiding
00:04:31
your identity and it's a question that we get so often that we have loaded it
00:04:35
into uh the paper uh at the outset we say when you're passing people literally
00:04:41
don't know that you belong to a particular group when you're covering people know that you belong to the group
00:04:47
either because you're unable or unwilling to hide your membership in the group but they
00:04:53
nonetheless put uh pressures on you to downplay or edit or mute that identity so that they can be more comfortable
00:05:00
around you so to get to the last piece of the question you know what are the differences between 2013 and uh study uh
00:05:09
issued uh just uh this week so in 2013 I had this really kind of magical collaboration uh with deoy where uh they
00:05:19
uh came to me I said should say you Joanne and your colleagues came to me and said you know you have crunched a
00:05:25
lot of cases in your uh book uh but you're not an empiricist like we can help we have a huge kind of agap uh
00:05:32
practice we have data analytics teams like we'll put our money where our mouth
00:05:36
is like we'll push this out right to our own uh clients we'll design the survey
00:05:40
with you and so we collaborated on this and it was wonderful because really the world of many individuals who are
00:05:47
listening to this podcast the world of the Fortune 500 or the Amon 100 are not going to react to anything unless it's
00:05:53
backed by hard data right and so I think that that was the signal you know Advance right that we made made in uh
00:06:00
2013 with this paper in 2023 we delved into a lot of nuances that we can talk about we looked at intersectionality we
00:06:08
looked at uh the ways in which white men sort of dominant cohorts you know tended
00:06:13
to cover we also leaned heavily into Solutions like what the heck do we do about this right and came up with three
00:06:19
sort of programmatic uh ways in which people could fight right the covering demands within the organization so I
00:06:25
would say that this paper is again a kind of exponential Advance uh over the last one and uh the nuance and the
00:06:33
practicality right of its approach I love the mirroring together the idea of Like This brilliant Theory and I
00:06:39
actually did read I read the law review paper I do remember reading surpris that regard I read the
00:06:47
theoretical take on it I also read the book um which you know has these wonderful illustrative examples and a
00:06:53
framework that I think is is very accessible to to people who are non-academics um certainly followed the
00:07:00
two 2013 work I've actually and related pieces that you've published with deoe
00:07:07
or deoe collaborators in Harvard Business Review have had my students read those for required reading and so I
00:07:13
was so delighted um when the note came across my inbox that you all were releasing this new study in 2023 so of
00:07:21
course I've poured through that but before we get into the details of that I
00:07:24
just want to turn to you Joanne and and help me to understand for deoy I mean proba also for you personally what was
00:07:31
the goal behind this 2023 study what were you attempting to study or understand that you didn't quite get uh
00:07:38
from the pre prior collaboration with Kenji thank you um well first I want to acknowledge that it's great to you know
00:07:45
get this group back together um uh with you and uh Kenji um when we last connected at the CDI Forum in June so
00:07:54
really great to to talk again um last time I asked the questions this time you're asking the question so it's great
00:08:01
to be on the other side of that um and so as Kenji said our 2013 research introduced the concept of covering into
00:08:08
in the corporate context and was for organizational leaders to understand what covering is um when we approached
00:08:16
the 10-year anniversary uh of the a release of the uncovering talent the original paper we were curious you know
00:08:23
about you know what extent uh to which workers still cover are they covering in the same way
00:08:29
um what impact would this have on them you know what impact does it have on the organizations that they work for and you
00:08:37
know especially in context of thinking of belonging as one of the outcomes that we aim for um so we also recognize that
00:08:46
um our perspectives on identity and the ways those identities shape us are even more nuanced today and so previously we
00:08:55
looked at gender race age sexual orientation to name a few um but we really wanted to explore with greater
00:09:04
intentionality and ask our respondents specifically about the add additional identities that they have um and how
00:09:10
that shapes the way they you know navigate the world so a few of those include caregiver status education level
00:09:17
immigration status mental health status um military status religious affiliation
00:09:24
socioeconomic status and so you can see how those um those uh let's say um more invisible identities would still
00:09:34
influence how you show up you know with other people and um at work yeah so I'm
00:09:41
sorry go ahead yeah no this is really interesting and really important I think about um you know the ways in which we
00:09:46
often talk about social identity differences particularly here in the US the ones that we tend to talk about
00:09:53
first or mention are things that we assume even though our assumptions can be wrong we assume to to be the case
00:10:00
based on what we see and certainly you all can attest to this as much as I can in my own research in the last 10 years
00:10:07
or so we've seen a lot of push often from our employees our clients right our
00:10:14
students to talk more about the things that we couldn't guess um just from looking at someone and and I think about
00:10:22
a lot mental health as being one of these um areas of difference that I would say the people who I speak to
00:10:29
whether we're talking about students or workers are increasingly interested in
00:10:33
making sure that it's aligned with how we talk about diversity Equity inclusion
00:10:36
and belonging and certainly as we think about what are the implications of our culture and the way that we do here
00:10:44
things in our culture for people who are um you know wrestling with but also navigating those very types of identity
00:10:52
differences so I can imagine that that was quite a rich conversation you all had as you were trying to think about
00:10:59
about how to broaden some of the work yes absolutely it also gave us the opportunity to look at the impact of
00:11:07
intersectionality so the more uh let's say marginalized identities you um have
00:11:13
you know what might that covering look like or what would the incidence of covering be um and really focus also on
00:11:21
um you know what it would take as as Kenji said earlier to reduce the demand for covering coming to organization so
00:11:29
so we got to dive into quite a bit of that yeah okay all right so let's dive a
00:11:34
little bit more deep into the report and Joanne I'm come back to you and I want
00:11:38
you to tell us a little bit about the study how is it conducted just some of the logistics so people can understand
00:11:45
how we move from this sort of big big broad idea around covering to to as Ki put it the the empirics of it what did
00:11:52
that look like of course um so first we were incredibly grateful to get to work with Kenji again and with his colleague
00:11:58
uh David Glasgow um to collaborate on this reexploration of this topic so deo's Dei Institute you know the the
00:12:07
organization that I I lead um with my colleagues is committed to providing datadriven insights back by sound
00:12:14
research methodology and really we want to do that to you know speak to our business audience to help transform
00:12:22
beliefs and behaviors so we engage a third-party research vendor to survey um one , 269
00:12:30
full and part-time adult workers over 18 in five uh primary Industries and the sample was further waited to be
00:12:38
representative of all adult workers in the US to allow us to draw the inferences you know regarding the
00:12:44
population as a whole um so the quantitative and the qualitative insights we highlighted in the report
00:12:49
really give us a deeper understanding of what covering looks like in the workplace how it feels um you know how
00:12:56
it manifests if you will and the effects on not only individuals but really what
00:13:00
the cost is to the organization great great great um Kenji okay so I I poured this report there's
00:13:08
lots of good stuff in there I will share what I thought was particularly um interesting to me as I've followed your
00:13:15
insights on covering for more than the last 10 years but I want to hear from you as a person who's been um you know
00:13:22
thinking about this concept the longest um what insights did you gain like what were two to three key things that stood
00:13:29
out to you as being oh that's interesting and different and this made it feel like the 2023 report added
00:13:36
something beyond what we've previously done yeah so the biggest shift I think
00:13:41
would be one in kind of Gestalt between the 2013 and the 20123 report and I think that's reflected in the title so
00:13:47
the 2013 report is called uncovering talent and the 2023 report that was just released is called uncovering culture
00:13:54
and that reflected you know the team's view that you know without meaning to
00:13:59
focusing on uncovering Talent really put the onus on the individual within these
00:14:04
organizations and focused on their covering performances and what we believe is that it's less productive to
00:14:11
focus on people's covering behaviors and much more productive to uh think about
00:14:16
it in terms of the covering demands uh that are placed by the organization on those individuals so the biggest kind of
00:14:23
insight and aha for me was really Shifting the lens and saying it's not up to individuals the least empowered
00:14:30
people in these exchanges to transform right the culture that they're working
00:14:34
in it's actually up to the organizations themselves so it's a really important
00:14:38
shift I won't say that we were totally uh careless or insucient about that in
00:14:43
the 2013 report but we were insistent about keeping uh the lens steadily on the organization throughout this report
00:14:51
all right other things that come to mind are the intersectional point that uh Joan mentioned so I always think about
00:14:58
uh my fellow law professor uh Kimberly crenshaw's work here because she really
00:15:04
drove the idea of intersectionality uh into diversity and inclusion discourse and the idea there is that if you belong
00:15:11
to one uh more than one I should say subordinated identity then uh the whole of that subordination can be greater
00:15:18
than the sum of its parts she you know true to her law background first analyzed this in court decisions where
00:15:25
she looked at class actions that black women were bringing and she discovered that judges are really bad at
00:15:31
ascertaining that that discrimination was happening because they would go access by AIS they would say are is
00:15:37
there discrimination on the basis of race no because some black men have made it is there discrimination on the basis
00:15:42
of gender no because some white woman have made it end of case right uh whereas the people who are being left
00:15:48
out in the cold in that analysis were black women and so the idea of uh intersectionality was born so it's a
00:15:53
very intuitive you know today obvious idea but it's still been kind of under
00:15:59
theorized in multiple domains here what we really did was to drill down not just
00:16:04
into access by AIS analysis as a 2013 analysis did but to rigorously look at intersectional effects so to just give
00:16:11
one startling data point from the study if you look at black lgbtq plus individuals 100% of our respondents who
00:16:20
belong to that cohort uh reported covering which was greater than either the black cohort or the lgbtq plus
00:16:26
cohort you know generally right so I think that we have a really good sort of set of proof points about the power of
00:16:33
intersectional analysis uh in this domain as well and finally in terms of key insights I would say that the
00:16:39
solution set which Joanne also mentioned is really robust you know if you go back
00:16:43
to the 2013 paper there's a kind of shrug Emoji frankly at the end and I'm
00:16:48
not again G to apologize for that we didn't want to get ahead of our skis you
00:16:52
know we didn't have solutions that we felt confident about offering here you
00:16:56
know in the intervening decade like deoe as an organization I am my own research
00:17:01
I've tested solution after solution after solution and we coales around these three solutions of diagnose
00:17:07
allyship and share your story that we're very very confident provide the tools
00:17:11
for organizations to redress uh the covering demands that uh their people are placing on their uh employees the
00:17:19
final thing that I say uh because I know I'm talking at Wharton uh and you know
00:17:24
your dear uh my dear friend and uh your colleague know Stu fredman is one of the
00:17:30
drivers of this is that you know I I also noticed that uh there are these generational differences in how much
00:17:36
people perceive uh covering so you know stud's point about this is that younger
00:17:41
people are like unionized as a generation around the idea of authenticity and so we hope that this
00:17:47
concept will resonate uh with this uh cohort we do think that you know this is a moment where um who's where the idea
00:17:54
of covering uh it's time really has come right because I think uh the rising
00:17:59
generation of individuals for one click or two below even you you know Stephanie
00:18:04
are are really sort of adamant about the fact that they want to bring more of theirselves more of their passions more
00:18:09
of their auth authenticity to the workplace so um super super interesting stuff I want to come back though to a
00:18:16
point that you were making earlier and I don't want it to get lost because I
00:18:20
think it's important um and part of this I think feels personal to me uh because
00:18:27
it also reflect the evolution in my own research agenda and by that I mean when I started off being interested in
00:18:35
organizational behavior scholarship it was all about what can I as an individual do to navigate this workplace
00:18:43
with my multiple identities and convince my manager that this was meaningful to them and at some point I cannot remember
00:18:54
exactly what happened but at some point I'm like why is the onus completely on
00:18:59
me to figure out how to navigate this place as somebody who doesn't make decisions herself um but I think the
00:19:08
interesting tension that I have found especially among more Junior Scholars or or younger people is this wanting to
00:19:17
have a sense of agency and create my experience in my organization combined with the very real
00:19:25
understanding that practices and policies are created by people who are not me and I'm not the only one who
00:19:32
plays into culture so I just wanted to just talk a little bit more about this it's an opportunity but it's also a
00:19:40
tension between your own personal agency and how you navigate who you should be but then there's this organization that
00:19:47
sort of exists outside of you when we're talking about this topic of covering how
00:19:51
what do you make of that yeah I think I can thread that needle and I'll begin
00:19:55
with a a story after the book was published for a colleague of mine said you know can we go out to coffee so I
00:20:01
can tell you what I hate about your book and I was like great you know that's
00:20:04
always the coffee that I want to have so we had that coffee he said what I hate about your book is that it gives people
00:20:10
more tools to psychoanalyze me in inappropriate ways so if I act in kind of Butch kind of quote unquote masculine
00:20:17
ways you know at the law school as a woman uh then people are going to assume that I'm covering whereas I'm just being
00:20:24
my authentic self right and so you given people another l through which to look at me that I find affirmatively help
00:20:31
unhelpful and a diminishing of my personhood and my my authenticity and I gave her the same answer that I began to
00:20:38
give to you Stephanie which is to say if we take the lens off of the individual and put it on the organization I think
00:20:44
that helps a lot and that shift entails like stopping uh questioning uh individuals covering behaviors and
00:20:51
starting to look at the organization's covering demand so with regard to this
00:20:55
female colleag I'm kind of like how you choose to comport yourself as your business but if the institution is
00:21:01
saying to you if you want to be accepted here you better behave in more stereotypically masculine ways and be as
00:21:07
like feess and analytical and aggressive as a stereotypical man if you want to be
00:21:12
accepted in this workplace and I would say that's the kind of demand that I would want to challenge and I think
00:21:17
ultimately it resolves the tension that you were describing because if the culture is attentive to its covering
00:21:25
demands and withdraws them that actually expands the space in which you or I or she right can bring their authentic
00:21:31
selves to the workplace because they're no longer constrained with meeting that
00:21:35
covering demand so we're actually able to engage in behaviors that are auth authentic to us whether or not they
00:21:42
comport with you know stereotypes that people have about the groups that we belong to because the organization has
00:21:47
made a self-conscious effort to retire those demands very helpful thank you so much for creating greater Clarity around
00:21:55
that and I think you know what I walk away from this is feeling is that it's
00:22:00
not an either or right there there there's an interplay and there's a dance
00:22:06
between us and our organizations and you know we have to ensure that there is some thought given to what the
00:22:15
organization is doing to shape people's willingness or unwillingness to show up
00:22:22
in their authentic ways in as much as we're thinking about our individual choices around that that's sort of what
00:22:27
I'm taking away from from that uh Joanne so you've you've been knee in this data
00:22:34
in this report um what are your favorites your favorite key aspects insights that you that you would like to
00:22:41
share with us as we um dive in ourselves sure I'll um I'll pick up on on kenji's
00:22:47
first key Insight around intersectionality um in addition to having all of our black LGBT respondents
00:22:55
say that they cover 93% of black work workers with a disability cover and when we looked at gender a much higher
00:23:04
proportion of black women at 80% and Asian women at 86% cover than black men at 43% and Asian men at 55% so just even
00:23:16
within the you know um race and ethnicity categories the other um finding that was
00:23:23
really intriguing to me and and I found interesting was the finding around white
00:23:26
men so 4% of white men cover along traditional lines of marginalization so you know either mental or physical
00:23:36
disability age sexual orientation socioeconomic status as we would expect um but they also uh reported and we
00:23:44
found in some of the um qualitative uh feedback they they cover along historically advantaged identities so
00:23:53
they do cover for race and gender and religious affili based on the idea that these identities
00:24:00
are now disfavored right so of course um historically uh we can imagine why um and based on what's been happening you
00:24:10
know in in our working lifetimes um why they might think oh you know perhaps I should downplay these aspects of myself
00:24:17
um so this the fact is white men continue to hold many advantages um and I feel like I'm saying something obvious but
00:24:25
let's just put some data behind that so the senior leadership ranks of corporate
00:24:29
America are disproportionately white and male relative to that group's population
00:24:34
share of the population so in 2023 74% of the CEOs at Fortune 50 companies are white men despite that
00:24:44
group comprising just 30% of the US population but this is an improvement right this is progress in 1980 all of
00:24:53
the CEOs of the Fortune 50 were white men so um what we learned and what we saw was that as organizations work to
00:25:02
address root causes of inequities um as organizations work to address root causes of inequities some
00:25:10
white men might experience this decline in Advantage as a disadvantage really it's bringing things more in line with
00:25:18
you know uh the actual proportion of the pop absolutely very fascinating interesting
00:25:27
and I remember reading that section that was helping us to I think get a little bit more clarity around why um white men
00:25:35
might cover and what they're covering and the fact that they're covering the
00:25:39
the dimensions of their identities that we often see as advantage in the workplace um I thought that was super
00:25:46
interesting another thing that I thought was super interesting in this report was
00:25:50
this concept covering by proxy um and so in the report it's defined as covering
00:25:57
on on uh behalf of someone else and and so here's a quote that struck me and I
00:26:02
want to read it because I think it helps to provide some context and then Kendry
00:26:06
I'm G to turn it to you to help us unpack this but the quote that I think spoke to me was the following from from
00:26:14
one of the people who you collected data on qualitative data on um this is someone who says um this is tough to
00:26:21
admit but I do this on multiple fronts I have one child that is multi-racial and
00:26:27
outside of work I'm very vocal and supportive of the issues faced by being a minority but I tend to only listen and
00:26:34
not vocally support the same view at work this is also true for my transgender child again away from work
00:26:43
I'm very supportive but I fear that sharing my family struggles with this will isolate me and damage my potential
00:26:51
for growth at work now as a human being that really um struck me um it made me feel quite sad but um I I just wanted to
00:27:01
just say a little bit more about this covering by proxy and and certainly Kenji why this is problematic can you uh
00:27:07
share a little bit more about this topic with us yeah I think that uh both of these ideas you know uh Joann's really
00:27:16
wonderful point about uh how the dominant groups are covering their identities but also this notion of uh
00:27:23
covering by proxy kind of go together in my mind because I think that we can view
00:27:28
it as uh a kind of a place of of attack or we can view it as a place of solidarity and obviously we want to view
00:27:36
it as a ladder so what I mean by that is that you could look at you know the white man who report um covering and you
00:27:43
can say oh this is just like false equivalence you're comparing your paper cut to my flesh wound and so I'm just
00:27:50
going to Discount this and you know we want to put this in context and say yes you know of course everything that
00:27:56
Joanne said was right right you know white men are still vastly disproportionately you know over
00:28:02
represented you know say in the Fortune 50 uh CEO ranks right but at the same time the message that we want to draw
00:28:09
from the study is no cohort is immune from the covering demand so don't make
00:28:12
assumptions to go back to what you were saying earlier Stephanie of like you can't just eyeball somebody and say oh
00:28:18
you like all lights have turned green for you all the way down the highway of life right like nobody is that uh
00:28:24
privileged we all just as human beings of vulnerability and once we see that no cohort even like sis hat you know
00:28:30
straight man you know are covering uh various aspects of Our Lives this really becomes a universal project it isn't
00:28:37
Like Us Versus Them and in the wake of the Supreme Court's SFA decision like I
00:28:42
have to say as a lawyer like we're all looking for those Universal Solutions
00:28:45
the things that don't pit one racial group against another racial group or one gender against another gender or
00:28:51
what have you and I think covering really is that idea once we see that everyone is covering something uh and
00:28:58
therefore every cohort has an interest and the name of bringing more of their passion and their authenticity to their
00:29:05
work right in this uncovering culture uh project uh then the appeal of this can really be Universal because it's a
00:29:12
rising tide that lifts all both I feel really similarly about the covering by proxy notion which is you could look at
00:29:19
somebody who's saying oh I don't cover myself but like I don't talk about my
00:29:23
child who is trans or who is multi-racial and you could say well that's not a direct harm that you suffer
00:29:29
so I'm not really going to listen to that that's not a a particularly Salient
00:29:33
aspect of this you know analysis or we could approach it in a more openhearted way and to say like you know that is you
00:29:40
know a form of covering and if we acknowledge that what we're really acknowledging is that people are allies
00:29:46
right people are connected to marginalized communities that they don't belong to themselves and oftentimes have
00:29:51
to make really uh hard decisions right about how much to disclose or how how not to disclose and uh there's some
00:29:57
suffering right involved in being that kind of Ally so again if we take the more kind of openhearted generous
00:30:03
approach this project stops being like us versus them that stops being like you're a terrible person because you're
00:30:09
straight and you're forcing me to be straight acting as a gay man right it's
00:30:13
it's not really about that it's like how can we make this culture better for
00:30:16
everyone who inhabits it right including individuals and dominant groups including people who are uh covering by
00:30:22
proy even if they're not directly covering themselves I think you make a very important point and I I forget who
00:30:28
coined the term but I often use it when I'm um in in sort of like informal context and it's called the you know the
00:30:36
term the oppression Olympics so let me know if you remember who who coined this term but you know we often use this term
00:30:43
to talk about marginalized groups and sometimes it's like my marginalized group is suffering more than your
00:30:48
marginalized group but I started thinking about that term slightly differently Kenji based on what you just
00:30:54
said is if we can recognize that an unfortunate aspect of The Human Experience is that a lot of people feel
00:31:02
that they are suffering in fact I'm sure if you walk down the street and you ask
00:31:06
somebody did they do is something like challenging for them I would venture to say that most people feel like there are
00:31:12
some challenges that they are facing and and while we can you know think about perhaps on one level how someone might
00:31:20
have more Advantage than we have I'm not sure we would encounter too many people
00:31:24
who said my life is great and it's fine all of the time and I'm never are
00:31:27
suffering and and so when I think about what you're saying we're think about the
00:31:30
current context right now I know so many Chief diversity Equity inclusion officers are struggling in their jobs
00:31:36
right now as they're trying to you know drum up support for the continued work
00:31:40
on this space um one of the things that I hear you saying Kenji which is also the benefit of this covering research is
00:31:48
um sometimes it becomes really important to help us also understand the the ways
00:31:53
in which we all are challenged in our workplaces and to address those and covering and uncovering these are um
00:32:03
Universal challenges and issues and opportunities that exist in our organization that can create negative
00:32:10
impacts for all of us and for all of our organizations um and it is inherently A
00:32:16
diversity Equity inclusion and belonging issue that affects lots of different people no matter their intersectional or
00:32:23
lack there of experience so I think I'm going to take that away with me as I'm
00:32:27
listening to people talk about the value of Dei right now and all the legislation
00:32:33
and what that means is is um sometimes there are issues like covering and uncovering which um we're not addressing
00:32:41
that are to everyone's benefit that we talk about more broadly so with the last
00:32:46
few minutes that we have I just want to get into I'm so sorry can I jump in on
00:32:50
that important point that you're raising you want to take us to Solutions too
00:32:55
Kenji that would be great because that's where we're going next great absolutely
00:32:59
so I will I will try to be very succinct about this but this is one of the things
00:33:02
that I just not to embarrass you Joanne but really learned a lot from Joan on of
00:33:06
like the importance of keeping both sides of that tension steadily visible and like not forcing ourselves to choose
00:33:13
in between the two of them yes on the one hand I want to say I don't want to
00:33:17
participate in the oppression Olympics but on the other hand I also don't want
00:33:22
to treat all forms of human pain as being completely equal and to fall into the trial of false equivalence right so
00:33:28
I don't want to say the fact that you had to cover you that your fact that you
00:33:32
were Humanities major when you went into the tech company is the same thing as you know a black person having to
00:33:37
modulate their identity with regard to uh anti-black Prejudice right those are not the same thing right so how do we
00:33:43
keep both Notions steadily visible that everyone covers right but also that some
00:33:49
this tax is being exacted more heavily on some cohorts than it is on others and framed in that way I actually don't
00:33:56
think that there is attention I think that we can say both things so saying yes everyone covers this is a universal
00:34:02
phenomenon but also please just in the name of our common Humanity like please don't engage in false equivalences right
00:34:09
and from a strategic perspective like I also think that people are much more able to hear I think a lot of the ranti
00:34:15
ma on the part of dominant groups and you know as a man I can speak to this is you know the the notion of if you don't
00:34:22
recognize if you if you treat me like you know everything has been great in my life and like I have no forms of
00:34:27
vulnerability whatsoever I'm going to bristle at that right but if you can acknowledge in this Universal way of
00:34:32
like we all as human beings have vulnerabilities that's GNA open a conversation rather than close it down
00:34:38
and I'm much more likely to be able to hear that I may be engaging in false equivalences by treating the various
00:34:44
kind of slings and arrows that I've suffered in my life uh to somebody else's experience so I think we need to
00:34:50
keep both truths steadily visible everyone every cohort covers uh and this taxes assessed of everyone but it is not
00:34:58
assessed evenly across c-port we we have data backed ways and saying you know people of color women lgbtq plus
00:35:05
individuals have uh much higher rates of covering than uh the general population
00:35:10
so this is something that was so such a productive conversation uh with between our team and deo's team and and I think
00:35:17
we landed in a really good place and I just wanted to communicate that now with regard to Solutions which I also as I
00:35:23
mentioned earlier the the kind of really one of the the kind of Mark key contributions of uh this study so as I
00:35:30
said the 2013 study again I make no apologies for this that's where we were at the time was very thin on Solutions
00:35:36
so here we have three solutions that we are offering as a way of moving a a covering culture into uh a culture of
00:35:44
where individuals can uncover so the first one is diagnos and this isn't just
00:35:49
identifying the phenomenon although that's really important before we uh had
00:35:53
the term unconscious bias and hammered it into our public vocabulary we could do anything about it so to with covering
00:35:59
but I just want to say that it's not just diagnosing like the fact that you're covering along or four axes of
00:36:04
appearance affiliation advocacy or Association and the definitions are all in the paper I won't detain us here with
00:36:10
that but it's also saying like if you do cover does it hurt because some people
00:36:15
are like what we imagine Margaret Thatcher to be that's our kind of go-to example like she was forced into go
00:36:21
voice coaching to scrub her workingclass accent and to lower the timber of her voice uh so she exuded more gravitas but
00:36:28
she never complained about it so we can imagine a lot of people who would say like oh yeah I was asked to cover but no
00:36:33
harm no foul it was just what I needed to do to get to the next level of my career and I didn't experience it as a
00:36:38
privation to the ex other to the contrary I experienced it as constructive feedback so if you're
00:36:43
covering but it's not harmful then you know you're one of the lucky ones like
00:36:47
no further action required right even if you're covering and it hurts we still
00:36:52
want you to ask the question of like is the covering demand backed by an organizational value value right so
00:36:57
often times for us are all forms of covering bad like if I show up at Wharton or I show up at at deoe and I'm
00:37:03
rabidly obnoxious and you say knock it off and I say this is my authentic self deal with it right that's not gonna get
00:37:10
very far right and so we have to come to the conclusion that some forms of covering are beneficial right uh to the
00:37:16
smooth functioning of an organization so how do we winnow out the good from the bad forms our answer is organizational
00:37:22
Valu so if you can back with a neutral organizational value the fact that you don't want people to be obnoxious in the
00:37:28
workplace it's a kind of silly example but you get where I'm going then you're
00:37:32
fine but often times what we find in our research is that people are being asked
00:37:36
to cover in ways that would kind of horrify the organization at a higher level of generality so G people are
00:37:42
being told be straight acting or you know don't work on gay rights issues right if you want to be a member of this
00:37:47
organization and the organization thinks of itself as Pro lgbtq Plus and it's
00:37:51
horrified when it's confronted by uh the mismatch between the ideals that ports
00:37:56
of live under and the ideals that it's actually living up to so diagnos is that
00:38:01
first bucket the second bucket is to be an active Ally uh and this sort of draws
00:38:07
on the general research that we know this is Heckman and Johnson this is kind of your neck of the woods Stephanie sort
00:38:13
of organizational psych right but this is the Allies are much more effective at intervening uh with regard to all issues
00:38:19
of bias and affected parties themselves so you're much less likely to take a hit
00:38:24
uh in terms of your reputation you're much more likely to be listen to if you
00:38:27
come in as an ally rather than if you are uh the person directly targeted or affected so it's a broads spectrum
00:38:34
antibiotic it works for a lot of dni issues but it also works for covering so you know if you know a latinx individual
00:38:40
walks in late for a meeting and someone says oh I see on Latino time then I'm
00:38:44
gonna be much more effective as someone who doesn't belong to that Community
00:38:47
Stepping in and saying and a smart sort of hopefully effective sensitive way you
00:38:52
know saying you know I I don't you know think that that was a helpful comment I
00:38:56
don't need to drag the affective person into it but I can say I as someone who
00:39:00
um invested in inclusive culture was troubled by that comment could you please explain our refres and I'll be
00:39:04
much more effective in intervening from the side as an ally than I will be as the affected person so if we all do that
00:39:10
for each other we're going to get much further right and combating covering demands than if everyone is forced to
00:39:17
deal with the covering demands that are directed at them and the final solution which I have to admit is my favorite is
00:39:23
share your story and we open with stories of our own you know covering experiences and what we covered as
00:39:30
co-authors of the study so my executive director David Glasgow uh Joann's you
00:39:35
know colleagues Heather and sine all write their stories because we thought we have to Pony up here and model uh
00:39:41
what we're trying to ask of people and it's not a huge lift uh these are
00:39:45
stories that you know are not like too much information stories but they nonetheless color outside the bounds of
00:39:50
a traditional resume right and so we say it's really important when you're
00:39:54
introducing yourself to an internal external audience particularly if you're
00:39:57
a leader to say something that shows your Humanity beyond your uh traditional work credentials and just as importantly
00:40:06
in these kind of infinite but infinitesimal moments like you can share in ways that are not like set pieces but
00:40:12
like offhand Grace notes or comments that say I'm leaving work to go to my daughter's soccer game right rather than
00:40:18
not giving a reason or lying about it and say I'm leaving work to go to a client meeting or to go to my own
00:40:24
doctor's appointment or something that is to be more acceptable in a traditional workplace it's by pushing
00:40:30
against those kind of daily uh Norms right that we can actually create the space by sharing our stories for other
00:40:36
people to share their stories with us thank you thank you so much for those really practical tips Kenji Joanne I
00:40:43
want to close out with you uh managers and non-managers I like to refer to I know as dee does as well non-managers as
00:40:51
individual contributors but can you give us a couple of tips for managers and individual contributors as we're
00:40:57
thinking about the implications of what you all found in this study uh sure uh so um with regard to leaders and
00:41:07
managers as Kenji mentioned our um you know recommendation is that they create the environment or Foster you know
00:41:14
psychological safety um where they have influence in order to um enable uncovering and a very effective way to
00:41:21
do that is to start with your own uncovering or um at minimum to help others understand you know that it is
00:41:29
acceptable um for them to uncover and that their identity is accepted and and appreciated and everything that comes
00:41:36
with that um and so you know workers uh believe that um their leaders uh create psychological safety our respondents
00:41:45
said at about 50% and they also believe that leaders actually want their authenticity that's at about
00:41:53
61% I'll say I think we can do better than that um certainly uh and um you know when we are able to um be active
00:42:05
allies regardless of our role I think that that makes a significant difference so um when I think about um my
00:42:12
experience I I'll give an example uh so I was you know up for partner at the
00:42:18
firm and um you know sort of navigating my way through that that's a difficult
00:42:23
uh and and a very big U Milestone and I had a coach working with me and he said to me that his leader his manager was
00:42:31
holding him accountable for my success or basically holding us accountable for our joint success and that was a turning
00:42:39
point for me in our relationship and also how I showed up you know because a couple of things one it signaled to me
00:42:47
that you know who I was and the way I showed up you know was not only acceptable but valued um but also you
00:42:56
know when I sort of prodded him on and I said well yeah she wants you to help me
00:42:59
and all that she's like he's like no no she's holding me accountable so maybe
00:43:03
you think you're out in the middle of the lake in the rowboat by yourself rowing and I'm on the shore waving at
00:43:09
you and wishing you good luck no we're both in the boat and we're rowing
00:43:13
together we're in it together and my reaction was to say oh all right well then I can tell you what's really going
00:43:21
on you know because before I wasn't sure and I wasn't sure that I was safe but
00:43:26
because this colleague um was able to signal that you know it was safe to be myself and I was being accepted and
00:43:36
valued then I was able to uncover um uh for other individuals you know in active
00:43:42
allyship as um Kenji mentioned you know standing up or showing up for others particularly those that don't share that
00:43:49
particular identity um makes the most difference I I know that you know you've
00:43:53
seen in your work where you know people who who um let's say are show up for or
00:44:00
stand up for those who share an identity um are both you know Lo both lose credibility but when we show up for
00:44:06
those who are um of a different identity you know that makes a real difference and so I had someone remind me the other
00:44:14
day um we were talking about what active allyship looks like and he said you don't have to be white to be an
00:44:20
ally which is you know sounds obvious of course but what that means is that we can all be active allies to each other
00:44:28
regardless of our role regardless of our level if we show up for each other if we
00:44:32
make the space and we signal um in obvious and and subtle ways that you know this is acceptable and this is
00:44:41
valued then that gives all of us the courage to show up and demonstrate you know who we really are and you know
00:44:50
counteract the negative impacts of covering within the organization absolutely great great great stuff
00:44:57
Joanne in Kenji this report is wonderful um I hope everyone reads it uncovering culture it is available everywhere but
00:45:08
where can people access it besides everywhere if they want to get a copy of that we can certainly link to it in the
00:45:15
article that we publish but is there a a good googleable term that we should send
00:45:20
to certainly Google uncovering culture a few other things might show up I'm not
00:45:25
gonna lie but the easiest way to get to it is you know www.d.com usus uncovering excellent you'll have access
00:45:36
to everything we have there excellent all right um it's a good read it's not
00:45:40
too academic it has the right balance of empirics and I think people who are in organizations and and certainly
00:45:47
researchers like myself who are always always looking for ways to sort of frame practical issues um in academic ways
00:45:54
will find this uh beneficial as as well so I want to thank you Kenji and Joanne for joining us today thank you for
00:46:00
sharing your insights and your expertise with us truly appreciate you for being here I know the guests or the the uh the
00:46:07
listeners the audience always uh loves the chance to hear from experts like yourself on these topics that are very
00:46:13
really really real and Salient to them in their daily work lives uh so thank you to the audience for joining us uh
00:46:20
and for listening to this episode of the knowledge at wart and leading diversity
00:46:23
at work podcast series goodbye for now for more insight from knowledge at Warton please visit knowledge. won.
00:46:32
up.edu [Music]