John League (00:00):
Hi, I'm John League. I am clearly not Rae. Listeners to Radio Advisory know me as a digital health expert, but I'm here on this week's episode of Radio Advisory because I want to talk about allyship.

(00:17):
It's important to hear the voices of allies. Speaking up is part of doing the work of allyship. But I'm not going to have this conversation alone. I'm joined today by Melanie Ho, author, creator and podcast host who helps leaders understand bias, see how it shows up in the workplace, and how to confront it through allyship. Hi, Melanie.

Melanie Ho (00:56):
Hi, John.

John League (00:57):
Thank you so much for being with me today. I want to start off just giving you an opportunity, tell us about yourself and how you bring the concept of strategic imagination into conversations you have about racism, sexism and bias.

Melanie Ho (01:15):
I have one of those backgrounds where I used to think of myself as having these two parts to myself that were totally different. I spent 12 years at a spinoff of the advisor board called EAB, where I was a Senior Vice President, advised colleges and university leaders. So there was this business side of myself.

(01:33):
And at the same time, I have also been a visual artist; I taught literature, I got my PhD in English, have always been writing some kind of fiction. I used to think of these things as two distinct parts of myself, and in recent years, began really bringing them together and trying to figure out, okay, how can I use the art fiction storytelling as a way to help leaders really make progress on difficult, thorny issues like diversity, equity and inclusion?

John League (02:01):
One of the interesting things to me about this was when you came to Advisory Board and shared this sort of different perspective on these issues with us and led some time with our team, the response that I got back was this felt like such a gift of time. And I have never thought about these issues in this way, and people gave a lot of credit to the drawing exercises that they did, to sort of get them thinking about it in a different way. What has surprised you most about how people respond to engaging with these topics in a more imaginative kind of way?

Melanie Ho (02:45):
So if you had told me five years ago that I would be using drawing as a way to get leaders and teams thinking about diversity, equity and inclusion, I would have just not believed it. In fact I would've thought, well, drawing comics, things like that, they seem so silly, and how would we use them to help people tackle difficult topics?

(03:04):
And over the years, I became exposed to a lot of research actually on the power of art and comics in particular, as helping people kind of engage with difficult topics. I've always been someone that liked to draw but never really thought of myself as a serious, as a good artist. And I started to realize that drawing is actually a way to activate our imaginations to help us just think and sort of free ourselves in a different way.

(03:30):
One of the challenges with diversity, equity and inclusion trainings and discussions is that we come into them with our armor on and our defenses up, and that makes it really hard to have candid conversation. That makes it really hard for folks to come up with creative solutions.

(03:45):
So I started using drawing, at first just a little bit, and with every workshop, I started to get braver and do it more and more. And have folks pick up a marker, unlock that inner child that is free of those defenses, of those guards up. Folks look at some of my drawings at first and then we have people just draw, as a way to reflect on situations of bias, as a way to come up with creative solutions.

(04:11):
And it's really interesting because people will say in these ... Some of the drawing exercises are really, as you've experienced, only three minutes. And in three minutes, people will reflect on really challenging situations they've been in in the past, whether they've experienced bias or they've unwittingly committed bias. And just in three minutes, they'll also come up with solutions for problems that they had felt really stuck on before.

John League (04:35):
You mentioned that one of the things that you're striving for here are candid conversations, and I think the candor with which you've approached this whole thing really comes out in your book. Let's just start with the title. You called it Beyond Leaning In. I've read the book by the way, everyone should go buy Melanie's book, it was great. I've actually given it as a gift to a couple of the white men on my team. I think it's that important.

(05:04):
But you titled the book Beyond Leaning In. Why is lean in ... I'm not going to say the wrong advice, maybe you would say it's the wrong advice. Why is it incomplete advice to give to women?

Melanie Ho (05:16):
I often get questions from folks, "Did you call this Beyond Leaning In because you want to attack Sheryl Sandberg?" No, it's called Beyond Leaning In. It's not called Against Leaning In.

(05:25):
But I think folks are often looking for drama, right? They want to be able to find some, "Hey, here is a younger generation clapping back at the older generation", or something like that. And no, again, it's Beyond, not Against. Sheryl Sandberg says in the book, this is only one part of it. This is one slice of the pie.

(05:43):
And to me, Lean In is important advice, but we actually have to do more. And the idea of Lean In doesn't get at why it's hard for women to lean in. What are the extra barriers we face? What are the penalties we face when we sometimes do lean in? Sometimes lean in is actually bad advice, because it can backfire.

(06:01):
What are the ways that telling women to lean in doesn't take into account the fact that that connects to this idea that women should be more like men stereotypically are, right? Be more aggressive. Interrupt. Why aren't we talking to men about all the ways that women are socialized to listen more and to amplify others' voices? And so, to me, Lean In is about saying women are the problem versus saying, "Let's look at the systems and the culture."

John League (06:31):
So when we think about the systems and the culture, let's talk about the role that allyship plays here, because I think you're pointing to a broader issue. It is not simply just having women do the work to overcome the challenge of being marginalized. There is a place for allies. What is the work that that can really help here?

Melanie Ho (06:55):
There's a metaphor I use often throughout my book, and also I have a comic about this. I think of it, from basketball, as points versus assists. I remember when I was a kid and I would watch basketball with my dad and he would say to me ... He would kind of pull out the newspaper as we were watching the game and he would say, "Look, they keep track of points and they keep track of assists for all the players, but everyone just talks about and glorifies the points. And actually, the assists are just as important, maybe even more important. You can't win the game without any assists."

(07:26):
It really stuck with me, especially as I grew up, as I started to see how different gender dynamics would play out in meetings, when I was in school, in meetings in the workplace. And I think of points as each individual really trying to advance their own viewpoint and their own ideas and their own position and power in the meeting. So think of that as, "I think this statement." Or my favorite is, when people say, "I have a question" and really, it's a statement and opinion worded as a question.

(08:00):
Now, if we compare that to an assist, an assist might be saying something like, "Hey, so-and-so had a really good idea", or even, "So-and-so disagrees, but in order to make this better, we actually need to hear all points of view." So an assist is really about taking into account the collective needs of a group.

(08:22):
Men are often socialized more towards the points; women are often socialized more towards the assists. And we have cultures that really depend on the assists but value the points. So, every single task that often women disproportionately end up doing, taking the notes at the meeting, remembering the birthdays and bringing the cupcakes to the parties, all of those things are really in the category of assists. Even mentoring, joining service groups and committees, planning events. Really, it's the points that are valued, and we can see points versus assists playing out in so many different ways across any workplace.

John League (09:00):
What is not allyship?

Melanie Ho (09:05):
Ooh. So often I think that, it's not that people are doing things that aren't allyship, it's that they're doing sort of the first step of many and then calling it a day. Awareness in and of itself has to happen, but that itself is not allyship.

(09:24):
I have a scene in my book where one of the characters, and I wrote Beyond Leaning In specifically from the point of view of different characters, both men and women, different generations, all levels of the organizational chart of a fictional company, where they're together trying to figure out why there are still such persistent gender gaps even while a woman is CEO. There are many women in power. They're an organization that's won awards, as one that's good for women. And yet, still there's this big gender gap.

(09:54):
And we go back and forth between these perspectives to understand why. And there's a point where a character a lot of the men who read my book say they identify with this character. His name is Kyle. He's a white man who's a manager. He's a millennial. And there's a point where he realizes that there's a difference between being woke and doing something, being woke and staring at the ceiling.

(10:19):
And I think that a lot of allyship begins with that first step of, "Okay, I recognize that there's a problem. I can see gender and racial bias in my workplace." But then, what happens after that?

John League (10:31):
How is allyship different from mentorship or sponsorship? And I think that's especially an important question when so many of our organizations have structures for mentorship and have invested a lot of resources in maybe pairing people together or getting people training to do this better. And to your point, stopping there.

Melanie Ho (10:56):
Hmm. Mentorship are sponsorship are such an important part of it, and only one part of it. So for example, I've known a lot of individuals who really were committed to mentoring. And in many ways they were great mentors, but they would also, for example, give advice to junior women and people of color that was correct advice if they were going to give it to another white man. And I'm thinking about white men mentors in particular. But actually, it wouldn't work for the women and people of color that they were mentoring.

(11:27):
I'll give an example of a woman who told me once that her mentor had told her that he starts speeches by talking about his young children, in order to get empathy from the audience and connect to that. And of course, I have a comic about this, and the fatherhood bonus versus the motherhood penalty for a man who does that.

(11:47):
You can almost hear the collective, "Aw, what a good guy," that the audience is thinking. And for a woman who does that, the audience, across genders, because we all have the same unconscious biases, might be thinking, "Oh wait, is she not as good at her job? Is she tired? Is that why this presentation isn't good?" They just start to make all kinds of assumptions, and it primes them to listen to the speech in a different way. So the person was meaning well, wanting to mentor, wanting to give advice, but unaware of the systemic and cultural biases that his mentee faced.

(12:24):
And so, I think mentorship to be allyship first of all has to have an awareness. Have an awareness for that individual conversation, but then systemically say, "Okay, if this is part of a larger system, how can I as an ally use my voice, use my power in order to change the larger system?" Which then might say, "How does the motherhood penalty versus the fatherhood bonus impact, not only my young woman employee when she's giving a speech, but as we're taking into account promotion conversations and policies, what are the things we need to take to incorporate there as well?"

John League (13:03):
That's a great point, Melanie. And it reminds me of something that you talked about to our Advisory Board colleagues when you presented with us that was about mental auto-completes and how they unconsciously guide the way we respond to the things we see in our work environment. Can you unpack what a mental auto-complete is as we think about diversity, equity, inclusion and allyship?

Melanie Ho (13:29):
One thing I realized after attending and participating a lot of DEI trainings was that we all have this kind of bias against the word bias. And so, when the phrase unconscious bias comes up, even as we intellectually realize that it's unconscious, we can't control it. We kind of freeze up at just this idea, because we don't want to admit that we have biases.

(13:53):
I started thinking about bias as like a mental auto-complete, and it came to me one day when the iPhone first rolled out those auto-complete emojis, right? You're sending a text message to a friend and you type in "sad" and the sad emoji just appears. I was typing in words like "CEO" and "doctor" and male emojis kept appearing as the only option. Now, it was interesting because, shortly after that, the iPhone corrected this mistake, and now when you type in "CEO" or "doctor", usually a series of different emojis will appear.

(14:25):
But I began to think a lot about, okay, it's much easier to reprogram an iPhone than reprogram a person, that auto-completes do serve a purpose. They often are good. Just like our brain is making shortcuts all the time, sometimes to help us keep us alive, allow us to multitask and do so many different things across the day. But just like the auto-completes on our phone can be silly or can be actually pernicious, right? You can get yourself into trouble with the wrong auto-complete. The auto-completes in our brain are exactly the same way.

(14:56):
So, every time I'm at a restaurant with, say, a colleague that's a man or a client, and the server sends the bill to that person instead of to me, over and over again, I can give them my credit card. It has my name, Melanie Ho, I'm a Asian-American woman. They'll still give the card back, with my name on it, to the white man. And why is that? It's because the auto-complete in the server's brain says that it's a man who has to pay the bill. And that's just one small example, all across the day, we have, we experience and we're committing these auto-completes.

John League (16:40):
Anyone who has listened this far in our conversation is on board. They believe in allyship, or they have been persuaded, let's hope we have that sort of influence. But there's another step, as you've been talking about. How do we see when we need to act? And what are the ways that we can act appropriately?

Melanie Ho (17:00):
I work with teams a lot on both the thoughts and the emotions related to recognize when we need to act. So for example, I'll often talk with teams about what the most common conversational red flags are on their team. Now, there are some common ones, like, "Hey, so-and-so didn't mean that. They're a good person. Nobody's perfect. They didn't mean to be biased. They didn't mean to be ..." People won't say they didn't mean to be racist, they didn't mean to be sexist, but that's often implicit in it.

(17:29):
Or phrases like gravitas for example, that convey a certain area of improvement that someone is saying is needed, but often is tied to ... The word "gravitas" is often used for somebody who may be more white or tall or male.

(17:46):
And if an organization actually is able to identify their particular red flags, building on a list that I give them, then we can say, "Okay, this is where our thinking brain can work for us, because we can recognize when these are happening." But then there's actually also the emotional response. Because often when we say one of these things ourselves or we are confronted on them or we have to confront someone, what keeps us from acting is actually emotion. It's fear, or shame, or guilt or anxiety, or just worry about what our colleagues will think of us. And so, we're often kind of noticing these, and the noticing isn't enough and we actually also have to get to the emotional part.

(18:28):
A lot of that is just being able to recognize our own emotions, know that that's okay. Kind of, "Okay, I feel ashamed, I feel afraid, that's natural. But now, how are we going to move on?"

(18:42):
And I also work with teams on what I call conversational resets. So, whether some phrases ... "Mental auto-complete" is a great one that we can use to point out that there is potentially bias going on, but in a way that's not blaming anyone. That's saying, "This is what's going on, and now let's move past it."

John League (19:02):
That for me has been enormously helpful, just building the sort of vocabulary like you were talking about, as a way to describe what's going on. And in my own efforts to be a better ally, it is those sort of technical labels that we can put on things that has helped me overcome a lot of the fear. And I think that's what a lot of white men feel, both, there's guilt, but also there's fear of doing something wrong.

(19:34):
And I don't ever want to come across as trying to hero the situation and fix it, in many of the ways that we've described white men being acculturated to. But I think, seeing and taking that next step to call it out, to be supportive in the moment in the way that you've described are things that have helped reduce the stigma, for me at least, in feeling put off by my own guilt and fear. Which honestly, as a white man, are probably never going to back up on me in a way, that would be the same if a person of color or a woman pushed in that same way.

(20:22):
I have a lot of influence, both within my organization and among my peer group, that I feel can and should be mobilized for those people. Being able to describe what is happening is the first step, and certainly one that has been enormously valuable as I have gotten to know you and worked with you in that.

Melanie Ho (20:45):
John, I loved the point that you had made after the drawing workshop, which is that there was an interesting metaphor of the act of getting comfortable just doodling as a way to process these issues, and the act of getting comfortable with talking about racial and gender bias.

John League (21:03):
Yes, the act of drawing itself being a way to get comfortable with doing something you're not used to doing. We don't take the time to reflect. We don't take the time to sit with feelings that are uncomfortable for us. We certainly don't take the time to draw at work in a meaningful way. Some of us doodle in the margins, but most of us don't have paper anymore, we have everything on our laptop. So, that may not be a thing for most people anymore.

(21:29):
But I think when we experience those kinds of activities, it's an opportunity for us to experiment with those feelings that we wouldn't have otherwise. And I think getting comfortable with doing things we're not used to doing is part of what this is about, because as you said, most of the time we are thinking the system's thoughts. We're acting in the way the culture has taught us to act. If we're going to act differently, it is going to be uncomfortable. The discomfort doesn't mean it's wrong, it just means we don't do it very often.

Melanie Ho (22:01):
Exactly. You get uncomfortable with the fact that not everything's going to be perfect right away, that we may say the wrong thing sometimes, that we may do the wrong thing sometimes. And as long as we are acknowledging that and always striving to do better, that's okay.

John League (22:16):
So I've mentioned several times that you worked with us here at Advisory Board. Can you please tell the listeners how they can find you so that they might be able to bring you in front of their teams?

Melanie Ho (22:28):
We'll have it in the show notes, but my website is www.melanieho.com, just my name. There, you can find my comics. I've drawn I think over 50 comics about diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace. More information about my workshops and talks, how I work with teams to use the power of comics to reflect and plan new actions on these topics as well.

(22:53):
My Instagram's also a great place just to look at a whole bunch of comics at once. And that's melanieho13, and we'll put that in the show notes as well.

John League (23:01):
Thank you so much for talking with me today, Melanie.

Melanie Ho (23:04):
Thanks so much for having me today.

Rae Woods (23:11):
Hey, John.

John League (23:12):
Hey, Rae.

Rae Woods (23:14):
How did that feel?

John League (23:16):
I always feel better about this after I talk to Melanie. I think it's the specific ways that she has thought about this that are very helpful in seeing the problem and thinking about what there actually is for people to do that is so valuable.

Rae Woods (23:35):
And you've done such a good job at amplifying Melanie's fairly unique way of talking about this problem. You admitted you read her book, she's come and sat down with us at Advisory Board to talk about this. What sticks out to you as the way that she's able to point out the subtle ways that bias shows up in the workplace, whether it's a healthcare workplace or not?

John League (23:59):
One of the really cool things about the way she does this is through that storytelling. Like you mentioned, her book, Beyond Leaning In. There's a great story in there called The Cupcake Trap that I think points to exactly the kind of subtlety that often gets overlooked, but is very real in a lot of settings, and honestly has been real in most of the work settings, including Advisory Board, that I've ever had.

Rae Woods (24:32):
Do you have the book? Do you want to read that excerpt?

John League (24:35):
Yes. So, this is From Beyond Leaning In by Melanie Ho.

(24:40):
As soon as she got home, she pulled the memo up in the email sent box on her phone and found the sentences she'd remembered. "Congratulations to Mara for her promotion to Senior Manager of Analytics. We're appreciative of Mara's incredible work ethic, and also grateful for her exceptional baking skills. We've probably all gained a few pounds from her brownies."

(25:03):
She looked at the description below. "Congratulations to Michael for his promotion to Senior Manager of Analytics. He recently led analytical work that was exactly what was needed to bring a critical project across the finish line, leading to $5 million in revenue." The implications hit her. They had hundreds of employees at the company; most people reading the memo wouldn't know every promoted employee.

(25:29):
She could imagine Mara's manager defending the paragraph saying that Mara liked bringing baked goods in, that it was important when it came to building a positive team environment. All that might be true, but people reading the memo would perhaps remember only one thing about each person. With Michael, they would remember the results. With Mara, they would remember the brownies.

Rae Woods (25:53):
What did it make you feel the first time that you read that excerpt?

John League (25:58):
Convicted, in so many ways, about the very subtle, well-intended things that have a negative impact because of the assumptions we make about the roles that people fill at work, based on gender or how they appear. Things that we don't take a second to think about but have a large impact on how those people are perceived, and therefore what opportunities are going to be available to them.

Rae Woods (26:35):
And for me, it comes down to noticing it first, and noticing these subtle ways. I think that it's easy for us to default to bias or sexism or racism coming up in really big, obvious, splashy ways. But in order for us to show up for each other, we have to notice these subtle moments. And then frankly, it takes people like you, John. It takes allies to say, "Wait a minute, we got that memo wrong."

John League (27:08):
I would actually go one step further there, Rae, and I would say that the ally's job is to say, "I got that memo wrong."

Rae Woods (27:16):
Hmm.

John League (27:17):
That is the real step of allyship, to be able to own the mistakes that you are going to make. Part of the reason that I have been so vocal in calling in white men to this conversation is because I think white men are afraid that they will make a mistake. And rightly so, based on what we often see is the default way of folks behaving in office cultures.

(27:41):
I think a lot of well-intentioned men don't want to participate in the conversation because they fear that they will make a mistake and that they will cause harm to someone or they will be perceived negatively. I think the real work is owning the mistake and working to fix it. We're not always going to get it right. But remember, we are here to help.

Rae Woods (28:09):
If you like Radio Advisory, please share it with your networks. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating and a review. Radio Advisory is a production of Advisory Board.

(28:20):
This episode was produced by me, Rae Woods, as well as John League, Katy Anderson and Kristin Myers. The episode was edited by Dan Tayag, with technical support by Chris Phelps and Joe Shrum. Additional support was provided by Carson Sisk and Leanne Elston. Thanks for listening.