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this podcast is brought to you by knowled of [Music] warten hi my name is Stephanie Cy and
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I'm an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School of the University
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of Pennsylvania and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's episode of the
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knowledge at Wharton leading diversity at work podcast series which is focused on cra in the hidden corporate code
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navigating the workplace without sacrificing authenticity and so joining me today is a very special guest who's
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also a friend um so it's always great to me when I get to have people who I've
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known for a long time here on the show but she is Dr Ella Washington she's a
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professor of practice at Georgetown University's mcdna School of Business she's also founder and CEO of elevate
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Solutions uh a recognized Authority and diversity Equity inclusion Dr Washington
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has consulted with businesses across Industries including Finance energy education and government she's written
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two books we'll talk about both today her first book was called the necessary
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Journey making real progress on equity and inclusion and it underscores her uh dedication to transformative change in
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workplaces her fourth coming book which is coming out this may is called unspoken a guide to cracking the hidden
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corporate code in this book she uh she directly assists individuals in navigating the challenges of corporate
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environments uh by decoding the implicit rules governing these spaces uh she empowers them to overcome obstacles and
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fulfill their career aspirations so welcome Ella thank you so much for joining me today it's just such a
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pleasure an honor to have you here on this as part of this podcast series um so before we get to the new one the new
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book I I think it would be really great to talk about your first book uh because
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I think it as as I've come to understand it it set the stage for why you decided
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to take on the SE the second book in the way that you did um so the first book the necessary Journey uh making real
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progress on Equity inclusion can you share a little bit about the Genesis of this book um why did you decide to write
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it and and what was the reception to it or what has the reception to it been like for you well Stephanie thank you so
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much for having me first and foremost um as you said from knowing each other for
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many years in this space it's always a pleasure when our Worlds Collide in this
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beautiful way right um and so going back to my first book the necessary Journey making real progress on equity and
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inclusion we have to go back to 20120 uh in the midst of the pandemic um at the height of the racial Reckoning after the
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murder of George Floyd and during that summer as you've already noted I'm both
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a researcher and a practitioner so during that summer a lot of CE EOS and chro were reaching out to me to have
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conversations either to help them with a town hall they were trying to have about
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racial Equity or the lack thereof in their organizations um or they wanted help with their their Dei strategies
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that all of a sudden became really important for them and I started to notice this trend that no matter what
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the presentation was the CEO or other leader in the room would say at the end of you know my Dei presentation that was
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great and I'm on board but they would pull me aside and say you know I really
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want to understand where we actually are on the journey so they're like I bought
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into everything you just shared but like really where are we on the journey and then they would say how do we compare to
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other people right and there's this pervasive sense of we want to get a a right we want to know that we're doing
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something well or we want to know how to improve if we're not at that a level if
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we're not doing our best right and once I heard those questions 10 20 30 50 plus
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times in the course of the short month um in 2020 you know I realized that though there were lotss of academic
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Papers written by yourself and so many others and there were a lot of practitioner models there was something
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missing why all of these people who are interested and you know really trying to
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be engaged were questioning you know what the journey was all about and it made me realize that you know for so
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many years we've always said it's a journey it's a journey it's a journey
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that was a popular saying but most people didn't really take the time to understand and unpack what is that
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actual Journey what what does it actually mean to be on a diversity equity and inclusion journey and so all
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that to say you know the research I have been doing for many years prior to this
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point all kind of culminated in this resource that I wanted to provide to demystify what the Dei Journey was all
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about and how organizations can make progress okay and so the reception what's the reception to this book been
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like yeah so you know for for me the reception has been wonderful to this book leaders have often commented they
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feel seen and they feel like their stories are being told so in the book is a case study of 10 different
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organizations that were so gracious for me to look under their hoods and to really see what was going on the good
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and the Bad and the Ugly and I think that level of cander was what a lot of leaders really appreciated because it's
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so easy to feel like oh you have to be perfect you have to get everything exactly right but that's not really what
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a journey is all about and I think um you know the way that I presented these um case studies in my book really helped
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make it feel accessible to people and for them to feel like okay I can do this too or our organization's not perfect
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but we can still make progress as well yeah so I would be remiss if I didn't
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acknowledge the current context uh one in which I would say people who are very anti-de eii have a
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very loud megaphone and are amplifying messages that suggest that this journey isn't one
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that we be on you know I've spent a lot of time talking to academics and practitioners about the current context
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and many of us who have been around for a while like yourselves acknowledge that
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there's always been resistance to diversity equo inclusion is a fact there's an entire volume edited volume
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kha Thomas's book on diversity resistance and organization that was published in
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2008 um and so what doesn't seem new is that people are um you know not in they're they're not pro Dei initiatives
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or Pro the journey they're actually thinking that we shouldn't be engaging
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in this what feels different is sort of the lack of the the the the the presence
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of more voice around this issue from those who don't care about this topic so
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much um in ways that felt like perhaps before they were just pretending that they were engaged or they were just
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remaining silent um and so I'm thinking of all that as I asked my follow-up question to you which is if you were to
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add another chat to this book the necessary journey and that somehow acknowledged where we are now as
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compared to where you were when you wrote this in in sort of this more favorable external environment for Dei
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what would that chapter be about yeah it's such a good question and for me when I think about you know a book is
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it's a static thing right it's like oh I wish I could have added this or that or
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I wish I would have known this would have happened you know six months later um and so if I could go back and add
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something to the book it would be on focusing on accountability and maintaining your Dei values in times of
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change you know to your point when the book was written there was a lot of of of excitement um for this journey and
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people said that we know it's going to be hard but we're committed for the long
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term and we haven't quite seen that right across the board um and so I would
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write a chapter on how to navigate those sticky moments when your stakeholders in
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your organization maybe they have had a change of opinion or your customers are complaining because they heard something
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on a particular news station and they don't really understand it right and how
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that connects with their business um I would also encourage people to be more transparent internally right um I think
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that a lot of the smoke and mirrors that happened with the rush to put out Dei statements or arrest to make these big
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pledges um and the reverse now that's happening you know uh behind the curtains of not refilling that Chief
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diversity officer role or these ERG groups um not no longer having the same resources and budgets allocated there
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should be more transparency through the whole process um and the reality is is that sometimes businesses do have to
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Pivot and shift right for different reasons though we don't encourage that we know that happens but that level of
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transparency um still should be had if you want your employees to trust you for the long term okay so one more question
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about this book before we move on to talking about the second and that is how hopeful or pessimistic are you at
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this moment in time about the future state of diversity Equity inclusion practices and organizations you know
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I'll quote uh one of our our shared mentors elel and say you know history and time is on our side and by that you
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know we are we are not new to this resistance around Dei um and we know that the pendulum will continue to swing
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even when we're seeing it unearth in ways that maybe aren't so familiar if
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you look at the big picture of of what's Happening Here we've seen it before and
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unfortunately we'll see it again and so I have to be optimistic to do this work
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Stephanie because I think if I wasn't I don't know what I how I can get up every
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day but I am truly optimistic now I think we're we're in for some tough times um in the years to come right with
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the laws being changed as we see the ramifications of that but ultimately I do believe in humanity I do believe that
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we're all um after the same thing and when it comes to workplaces we should all be in environments that we could
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Thrive and to me that is the core of the work at least that I do is is really just to elevate Humanity in the
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workplace and so I'm still still optimistic so I think you know humanity is on our side but the evidence is also
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on our side too right so if I think about um you know work that you know I've done or work work that you know
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some of our other friends have done is we found that when you don't have diversity Equity inclusion practices in
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place everyone's experience of the workplace is less positive and or more negative and so while the current
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discourse has suggested that de I practices are favoring some groups right in their workplace success relative to
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others what we actually know is that there is a difference in the employee experience as a whole across demographic
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groups in organizations that have Dei practices in place and those that don't
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and so what my perception of this current contest has been um people have taken certain diversity practices for
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example like hiring and they decided that that's the sum total of what we do
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from a Dei practices perspective they they don't recognize because they don't
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have enough facility with the conversation they don't know about youve mentioned employee resource groups they
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don't know about mentorship and sponsorship programs they don't know about all the things that diversity
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practices actually contribute to culture building and so from my perspective you
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know the the evidence um is also going to it it should those of us who know and consume evidence and don't reject
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evidence they would tell us that you know diversity practices um are important and they are here to stay I
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don't know what your thoughts on that are but you know I completely agree and
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I even push it a little further to say you know ultimately diversity practices are good management practices right and
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and while they're requires nuance and understanding of complexities when it comes to some dynamics that we talk
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about in diversity equity and inclusion ultimately the the things that we're
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trying to teach people around candid conversations around tactical Solutions around measur measuring change for
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Progress around change management those are good management practices and if we're doing them with for everyone right
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like they say a rising tie lifts all boats um we should be improving in our management practices whether we call it
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dni or not right if we're having meaningful conversations if we're trying
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to get to know people if we're trying to help them leverage their strengths it's
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going to benefit the whole organization so I I completely agree with you there absolutely and I think the other thing
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that you said that struck me as being really important to reinforce was this notion of um the pendulum
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swinging um and this is where a historical perspective becomes really important and I as you know I won't say
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that I'm the the the eldest of the people who've been involved in this conversation but like you it's been two
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decades of Engagement um in some shape or another and what I've come to understand is a lot of the organizations
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and people who got involved in this conversation in 2020 they don't have that historical perspective so this
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feels it is painful but it feels really really really painful if this is your first rodeo so to speak when it comes to
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the pendulum swinging in a way that people don't value this topic as much it's exactly why I started my book the
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necessary Journey with a chapter on the history and context of diversity equity and inclusion and not just from a um
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what has happened in history since the Civil Rights Movement and affirmative action laws but also even in
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nomenclature like many people in 2020 were focused on do we add Equity do we add Justice like what are the words that
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we should be using and so part of what I tried to do in the first chapter is break that down like how did we get to
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Dei in the first place what does it mean and what should it mean for your organization so a lot of those
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foundational elements can't be skipped over just because we're ready to accelerate the conversation I think if
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we do so too fast as we saw in 2020 we miss some of those key things that needed for us to to move forward by
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understanding where we've already been on this journey absolutely absolutely so
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I want to move into having a conversation around your latest book which I've not read yet but I'm very
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excited to read it and you know acknowledge at the top of our conversation that you and I have known
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each other for a long time we actually were PhD students in different institutions um and I think I think I've
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just like a couple years ahead of you one or two I think one year ahead of you project at the same time
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project which is a you know nonprofit organization that's focused on increasing the diversity of Business
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School faculty and so we would go to all of our our our programs as as Junior people trying and figure out how we
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going to na navigate Academia so I can't help but from the the short synopsis
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that I've read of your your uh book I I can't help but think of two things one
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is like man these are the conversations that we used to have um as part of our summer professional development
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workshops was about how do we crack the hidden codee of Academia and what it takes to be successful in this field so
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I I see a little bit of for me it's it's nostalgic and I wonder if it is for you
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and second I remember some of the early research that you were doing in your PhD
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program which was very much focused on individuals um and their experiences navigating organizational environments
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and so for me what I'm projecting here is I wonder if part of the motivation
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for this book was coming back to the roots of the psychological roots of of of where you started this process of
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understanding organizational life but then you can just tell me whatever you feel is your real motivation I just
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thought it was about you connecting back to these aspects of your past my question for you is what motivated you
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to to write this book and who do you who is this book for who needs it so Stephanie you nailed it as far as where
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this book got its Genesis from um when I think back over my career the positive and the negative
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um there were always moments where people were helping me to understand how to navigate the environment or there
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were moments that I clearly had a misstep and wish I would have known something right and so thinking back to
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my first corporate jobs um feeling like there's always you know this if you know
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you know type of environment and you had to be in an inner circle to like really
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understand how things worked um or even back to my my PhD years and how organizations like the PHD project not
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only gave us Community where it was safe to ask those questions they kind of put
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it in front of our face like you know there are things you don't know how to
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navigate let us help you um explicitly right and so because of those experiences and many others I've seen in
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understanding how women and people of color and other people of non-dominant identities experience the workplace I
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wanted to provide a resource to encourage um and give people some tactical things they could do to
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navigate these workspaces that may not have been built for them and so um what I mean by that is like this is not about
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diminishing your identity or authenticity it's actually about understanding that better and how it
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fits within the work environment and helping you to navigate those work environments or recognize if they're not
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healthy work environments for you and and thinking about ways to to make a career shift so I love that point that
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you're making right here is that there's choice right is some of these and
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there's some of these organizations are better for you perhaps than others so
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the choice could be navigating this organization or the choice could be going to a different organization where
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that has the resources and support and the climate culture that allows you to be
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successful um and so I would love to get some examples from you or like like without giving a whole book away right
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and again the book is called unspoken a guide to cracking the the hidden corporate code without giving away all
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the juice yeah to know like what are some examples of tips or pointers that you share or stories yeah so each
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chapter is uh a different tactic that you should be putting in your toolkit if you will um so some of my favorites are
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owning your story um because that's all about being clear on your own identity
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and how you show up in the workplace and thinking about how you want to show up in the workplace um I interviewed over
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100 different people uh of all different walks of life for this book and so there's so many stories that I could
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think about um but one that comes to mind around owning your story was from an Asian-American young woman um and she
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was in the Consulting space and she vividly remembers kind of downplaying her Asian Heritage early in her life she
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talked about how she didn't want to bring her traditional food to lunch when
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she was in a child because she didn't wanted to smell different than the other kids lunch she talked
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about how when she was an early career consultant um she thought just you know putting her head down and working really
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hard was the way to go and started to get confused when she got pushed back when Partners were saying they didn't
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really know her even though she was coming to work and working super hard and it wasn't until she kind of
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interrogated you know how she was showing up in the workplace that she realized oh my goodness I am literally
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just like my mom in our culture you know we have these expectations that you do put your head down and you work really
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hard and I didn't realize I was bringing that into the workplace and so how can I
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own who I am and also let that be part of my identity at work as well in order for people to get to know me a little
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bit better but also for me to to navigate this space more authentically yeah absolutely um so you already
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started to answer my next question but you know I'm a person who as you know
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does a lot of qualitative research so it's really the stories yeah I appreciate numbers but the num to me
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only make sense as far as there is a human being attached to to that so I'm interested in like other stories of
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people that have stuck with you um as you do this work and so just as an example you know a lot of the stories
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that I tend to share these days uh when I'm out in corporate spaces talking about you know diversity equi inclusion
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like you is I actually share my students stories um because what's fascinating is
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I've come to understand that sometimes leaders need the motivation that there
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is a younger generation who cares passionately about inclusive workplaces in order to continue to sustain the
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efforts right and the whole thing around the war for talent and having uh making
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sure that you're able to be competitive with other companies that are trying to
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recruit from the same Talent pools as you so there's this idea that when we talk about younger people sometimes that
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at least anecdotal has felt like it has gauged more interest and so a story that
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I often share is about my student experiences of um their internships or their first jobs so sometimes it's
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they've taken my class or they've just been in particularly undergraduate
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students they've taken my class or they've just been on a college campus
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for a while and then they go and take a summer internship with some firm and they're sending me
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emails long saying I feel like this is reinforcing you know the challenges that we talked about in
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class and I just need to you know can we hop on a phone for 30 minutes so you can
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help me figure out how to navigate this place so that's just like a starting
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ground for why I think sharing stories is important better are there other stories that you could think of and
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particularly things of younger people or older people because I feel like people
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of all ages can have challenges navigating workplace so what's funny is that I knew I was on to something with
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this book topic when one of my uh seniors that I had last year he's graduated and now is is working in the
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sports and entertainment industry he reached out and said Dr Washington do you have just like 20 minutes I I just
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I'm in my first few months of work and a lot of things that we talked about in
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our class diversity equity and inclusion in the workplace they're coming up and I
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was like okay great let's let's get on the call so we get on the call and he's
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like you know I turn down this job and finance because I was really passionate about working in the sports and
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entertainment field field and while I'm happy to be here I have no idea what's
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going on it's not like when I was at the banks and they had an internship fully
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prepared they had mentors already picked out it kind of just left me to go like with the wolves in this organization and
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so I don't know how to navigate it I don't know if my manager likes me I
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don't know if I'm doing a good job Etc right and so in hearing his questions
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and frustrations it made me realize there's so many work environments that don't have that buttoned up structure of
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how to own board new employees especially those who may not have had experience navigating the workplace
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right and what we're seeing from a data perspective is that particularly with
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jiny um a lot of organizations are feeling those Co years those lack of in-person internships Etc as they're
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seeing how this new generation is showing up and so I'm I'm team jenzy because I teach them all the time and I
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know that every generation again it's the pendulum we we all complain about the Next Generation Um Etc but you know
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what been really curious for me is seeing how my students have uh noticed their work environments have shifted so
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dramatically than what they thought they were going into like before the pandemic
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and before you know such a hybrid work environment Etc so that's one thing that
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comes to mind another story that comes to mind is one of my NBA students Omar and um he was really fascinating in in
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his experience because he actually said no to being a the head of the employee Resource Group for AFC African-Americans
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at his company and he was a black man right and so this was really fascinating to me because not only in my book do I
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talk about the power of strategic NOS making room for better yeses in your career but it's also knowing how to say
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no when something isn't aligned with your goals and and what you can bring to
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the workplace so you know um Omar he talked about how diversity inclusion was already part of his day job for one of
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the the functional roles that he had and so he felt like wasn't adding much value
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to also put him in this you know ERG head role and it didn't align with his his goals his his he had already decided
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his goals were to get more exposure to the senior leadership team um of the organization so while he said no to that
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and made some suggestions for other people who may be good for that role he shared with me that instead he pitched
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this podcast or a video blogcast idea um to the C team because they were talking
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about the high attrition rates of some of the younger folks in the organization low engagement and reporting that they
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didn't really feel like they knew the senior executive team they didn't know
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what they stood for ETC so fast forward he creates this this Blog video blog idea where he's interviewing everybody
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at the SE Suite level and it goes viral in their company and so in that way he not only aligned with his own goals to
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get to know more of the sea Suite he also helped the organization in their goals to kind of close some of those
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generational um communication gaps and ultimately I felt like it was a win-win right and so that is one really strong
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example from my book around how you create your own Niche thinking about your your strengths what your goals are
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and what the organization needs what problem can you solve by bringing your unique great self so the word that I
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used at the top of our conversation today was the a word the authenticity word so this is a very
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interesting concept and everybody has a different opinion on what it means if you should be it or not
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but I will tell you it is and it's also when I'm teaching my Dei classes at
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Warton I struggle with what is the message that I'm trying to send when we're talking about
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authenticity and because on the one hand you know this the people who who care a
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lot these days around showing up authentically whatever version of that they feel is aligned with what they are
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at asking for um are people who are younger and have less hierarchical power in less in less
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tenure in an organization and so I hear them saying you know I want to be able to be the
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version of me that I value wherever I go when I show up in the workplace but then
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I will go and speak at a company and what I hear is there are rules and there are policies and they
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are here because we feel like these rules and policies allow us to not become distracted by people's personal lives
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I'm I'm saying this paraphrasing real things heard on the street which is I'm
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sure you've heard and so I feel very much in the middle as a professor trying
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to think about these two very different perspectives on on authenticity and so as you think about this and this term
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this concept and how you use that in your book and and certainly in your teaching where where have you landed
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with respect to like where's the sweet spot if there is one so I've landed on
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the the old Facebook term is complicated right um I think that organizations started to say bring your whole self to
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work be authentic probably early 2000s 201s right that became All the Rage but I think what hasn't shifted is what we
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actually mean by that because if you go back to the early 2000s 2010s social media did not exist or it was just
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becoming a thing right and so even how much of ourselves that was even out in The Ether was different than what we
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have today right and so workplaces may say bring your authentic self but then they're monitoring what you're doing on
00:28:23
social media or they're looking at you know what these different um elements of
00:28:28
your life are as they're evaluating you for a job so it's definitely complicated
00:28:33
I think we all have work sales and personal sales right and um I personally think that it's important to understand
00:28:40
the expectations for all employees at whatever organization that you're working in so what does professionalism
00:28:46
mean For Better or For Worse what are the expectations and where do I fit in with that I think it comes back to
00:28:52
Choice um I I don't think organizations really mean be your full cranky you know
00:28:58
mean self Etc um they need be your professional selves and and they should be you know clear about what that means
00:29:05
in that organization and we as employees have to evaluate the organization based
00:29:11
on their actions and and what they are actually allowing uh in their culture right and so if an organization says
00:29:18
that EV values differences of opinion and you share a Divergent perspective and you're always getting push back on
00:29:24
that maybe there's misalignment in what they're saying and what's happening and
00:29:29
there are many different ways to deal with that but one is to evaluate longterm is this organization the right
00:29:35
place for you absolutely I think you know it's interesting so I'm a gen xer
00:29:40
um which surprises a lot of people I said well it's a younger AG end of Gen X
00:29:45
I'm definitely not a millennial every time I see what's characteristic of
00:29:48
millennial I said no I'm actually more firmly in the Gen X camp and so when I
00:29:52
think about myself as a gen xer I came into the workplace at a time where there were rules and there were policies and
00:29:58
you don't show up as anything other than what the ideal worker in that organization is and so that's how I was
00:30:07
socialized until the conversation shifted toward this bring your whole self to work and that made me very
00:30:15
anxious because I didn't trust it and when I go into companies and I see the
00:30:20
other Generation X managers and leaders they're in the same place they don't
00:30:25
quite trust the narrative as align with who you can really be and so I think one
00:30:30
of the things that we've all had to contend with and what I tell my students
00:30:32
I also have students who are not sharers as as many students I have that really want to it all to be seen all the time I
00:30:39
do have students who are concerned because there you know a lot of people who I I teach have marginalized
00:30:44
identities and some of them are less visible um than others and so one of the things that I've come to terms with is
00:30:51
is I'm comfortable sharing when I in for the sake of authenticity because I also
00:30:56
know that people some people's sense of belonging some people's sense of
00:31:00
community is contingent on my willingness to share more of myself with them there are a couple of topics that
00:31:06
I'm happy talking about one of them is I'm happy to talk about the fact that I
00:31:11
grew up in Las Vegas it's a great conversation piece right and it seems and I get to allow I get the opportunity
00:31:17
to break down people's stereotypes around the city and the town and people who live there by talking about that's
00:31:22
where I grew up you know I'm happy to talk about that fact that uh I was a professional dancer modern dancer for a
00:31:28
long time students and young people really connect to that because they're like whoa I I never met somebody who was
00:31:34
a professor who had this whole other life and it allows us to feel connected and you know allows them to understand
00:31:42
that you know these things are still my passion I don't dance anymore but I appreciate arts and culture and then
00:31:47
there's certain aspects of my family that I'm happy to talk about I recently
00:31:51
got married in last October so and I'm in my 40s now and so I like to tell people that because I know especially
00:31:58
lots of career oriented women struggle with how do I navigate all the things but then there's other things that I
00:32:05
don't want to talk about and I have found that if I just share those three things for someone like me who is a
00:32:11
little bit concerned around what this authenticity thing means in the workplace that has taken the threat down
00:32:17
a lot for me and so I usually tell people pick the things pick the three things that you want to talk about that
00:32:25
you would feel that that feel less threatening that just would allow somebody to get to know you better uh so
00:32:31
that's sort of how I the tip that I have around this I'm curious what are your
00:32:35
tips if you if you find someone who is like I don't know if I want to share anything with everybody knowing what you
00:32:42
know about the evidence around how important that is for Community what do you often recommend well it's funny
00:32:48
because I I feel comfortable sharing in this space because I am that person who you know grew up thinking there's a
00:32:56
separation of work and life and you don't cross-pollinate your work self is your work self you don't have friends
00:33:02
that you bring over to your personal life and all those things and it's as a
00:33:05
black woman especially you know I've always been very cautious to share too much to uh illuminate any stereotypes to
00:33:13
let people know you know just how black I am and those feelings that a lot of people have right in the workplace and
00:33:19
so I think to your point right the more senior you get in in your career the more that you may have the ability um
00:33:26
and an increased level of comfort in Sharing certain things right but that's
00:33:29
not the case for everyone but I have found that you know compared to 10 15 years ago there's a lot more I feel
00:33:35
comfortable with sharing but that has been a journey so I one just like to highlight it doesn't happen overnight
00:33:40
for everybody and there okay I can fully agree with your approach that find those
00:33:45
things that you uh are comfortable sharing um in my book I talk about having a professional elevator pitch
00:33:51
that just focuses on your role and your goals but also having a personal elevator pitch who are you you know
00:33:56
where did you grow up or what whatever those two or three things that you're
00:33:59
happy to share maybe you're the daughter of veterans and so you moved around a
00:34:03
lot uh maybe you're super proud that you went to a historically black Institution
00:34:07
for college maybe you're super proud of your hobbies and you feel like they're
00:34:11
connected to some way that you're showing up in the workplace right I think that we have the opportunity to
00:34:17
craft our narrative if we first start by owning said narrative so that's the
00:34:21
first step going back to that owning your story but then once you have that comfort with your own story you can
00:34:27
choose how much of yourself you want to share in the workplace or not right based on the psychological safety in the
00:34:33
organization your relationships with your team members so again that doesn't
00:34:37
happen overnight but the longer that you have intentional relationships the more
00:34:41
you may feel comfortable sharing and I think that there's a dual responsibility
00:34:45
here I think the organization must make the environment safe enough for people to bring as much of themselves as they
00:34:53
want to right and so that's a caveat like the organizational environment should be safe for you to bring your
00:34:58
whole self but there should not be expectation that you have to just you know Let It All Hang Out For Better or
00:35:05
For Worse share things that may not be appropriate or may not be helpful to the brand that you're creating right and so
00:35:11
it's on the individual to to then lean in whatever way they're comfortable find
00:35:16
those things they're comfortable sharing understand that there is a positive
00:35:20
element of getting uh for people getting to know you and getting to know some of
00:35:24
those more complicated elements um of your identity and of how you're showing
00:35:29
up at work but it should never feel forced or that you'll be judged if you know you want to hold some personal
00:35:34
things more close to the best absolutely absolutely so you know sadly our time is
00:35:40
winding down I knew it would go so fast once we got on um again reminder the book is unspoken a guide to cracking the
00:35:48
hidden corporate code final thoughts you want to leave us about on on this book or you know perhaps the other yeah so
00:35:56
unspoken is all about having these conversations um you know I am a huge proponent that the workplace should not
00:36:04
be a if you know you know culture um and to help with that we all have a responsibility to share those unspoken
00:36:10
rules yes we have written policies and practices but there's so many of those
00:36:15
unspoken elements that I think would really benefit from more conversations with our peers with our mentors and with
00:36:21
people that are coming behind us in our organizations absolutely all right well thank you so much Dr Washington for
00:36:28
joining me today please her new book unspoken a guide to cracking the hidden corporate code um I look forward to
00:36:36
reading it it comes out in May um so I think definitely when this episode drops people should pre-order really important
00:36:44
to pre-order these books uh so that they get the visibility that they need on all
00:36:50
sorts of platforms I know it's going to be a success I am so excited but to see
00:36:55
Al all the great work that you've been doing I'm very proud as a friend uh and
00:37:00
as a I would say as a a fellow so so Joiner on on this journey so I want to thank the audience
00:37:08
for joining us and listening to this episode of the knowledge at Wharton leading University at work podcast
00:37:13
series goodbye and we'll talk to you next time thanks for having me for more
00:37:19
insight from knowledge at Wharton please visit knowledge. Warton do.edu [Music]