The Racism of False Assumptions in the Office

BY Emily Nonko | July 27, 2020

“You don’t look like a lawyer” was a comment often heard by the Black female attorneys interviewed by Tsedale M. Melaku, a sociologist and author. Melaku had originally wanted to go to law school and work for a law firm herself, but was turned off by the unforgiving lifestyle. She also noticed another fact of legal life: There were few Black female attorneys and close to zero Black female partners. “I wondered–what is it about this space that creates this dynamic? How does race and gender impact their career trajectories?”

Those questions led her to pursue a doctorate in sociology in which she examined the race and gender dynamic of law firms. In interviews with Black female attorneys, she tracked similar threads. “These women were often mistaken for non-attorney staff,” she said. “They constantly had to negotiate their presence and explain what put them in these positions–it’s like you have to read your resume every single time.”

Melaku spoke about her work last week in a conversation with Kristen Bellstrom, features editor for Fortune, on how these women’s experiences outline broader challenges of race, gender and class equity in the corporate world, offering steps that law firms and other organizations could take to make their workplaces more inclusive. They spoke at From Day One’s July virtual conference, The New Push for Workplace Equity.

Melaku, who is now a post-doctoral research fellow with the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas & the Caribbean at The Graduate Center (CUNY), turned her research into the 2019 book You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer: Black Women and Systemic Gendered Racism. When Bellstrom pointed out that You Don’t Look Like a Lawyer might be considered an untraditional title for academic writing, Melaku said she felt the experiences of Black woman attorneys would resonate outside academia and law, speaking to larger challenges around race, gender and inequality in the workplace.

Kristen Bellstrom, left, features editor at Fortune, interviewed Melaku at the From Day One virtual conference

Her book also tackles big challenges standing in the way of workplace equity: structures of both systemic racism and systemic gendered racism, the “invisible labor clause” in which marginalized people spend time and energy navigating predominantly white spaces, and an “inclusion tax” that entails the resources spent–like time, money and labor–to adhere to or resist white norms.

Because there are few people of color in corporate spaces like law firms, Melaku explained, they can be easily tokenized as “diversity hires” or “benefits of affirmative action” by white colleagues. One step for law firms to improve is for white people in leadership to simply get to know more people of color than the few within the company, she added.

Corporate America also needs to move away from “diversity” as a catchphrase and move into real action that fosters more intersectional workplaces. “Name what the problem is in the organization–racial equity, gender equity–and make it a core value of your organization, and properly fund these values so people of color aren’t doing that work within,” said Melaku. Within U.S. law firms, the problem couldn’t be more stark: between 2008 and 2019 there has only been a .01% increase in the number of Black attorneys, she said.

Melaku suggested making changes to recruitment strategies, examining workplace culture that pressures employees to “fit in,” and re-evaluating training, mentorship and sponsorship opportunities offered to attorneys early in their career. “Why can’t Black women bridge those gaps with white males to gain access to sponsors?” she asked. “What are we not saying?”

Sponsors who advocate for attorneys of color, and pass along insight like soft skills to build client relationships or practices around billing and time, can serve as powerful allies to increase workplace equity. “It’s someone who will publicly do that racial and gender work, so everyone sees they are holding themselves accountable for what goes on in the organization,” Melaku said.

She believes now is the time for law firm employees to “step up in the moment” and become allies who take a critical look at how practices, policies and culture hinder workplace equity. Those actions could be bolstered simply by learning and listening.

She suggested a reading list beyond her own book: Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression by Joe R. Feagin, Racism without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, and Reproducing Racism: White Space, Elite Law Schools, and Racial Inequality by Wendy Leo Moore.

“Build your own knowledge base and then listen,” she said. “It doesn’t hurt to listen.”

Editor's note: Participants in the session asked if Tsedale Melaku would recommend additional titles for further reading, which she has provided:

Emily Nonko is a Brooklyn, NY-based reporter who writes about real estate, architecture, urbanism and design. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, Curbed and other publications.

 

 

 

 

RELATED STORIES

Creating a Purposeful Workplace Experience

With the major threat of the pandemic behind us, the big question is unavoidable: should we all return to the office? If you feel like opinions are sharply divided, well, you’re right!“A recent survey from McKinsey found that 52% of employees prefer a mix of both: they love that hybrid workplace, valuing flexibility, but also recognize the benefits of working in person,” said moderator Lydia Dishman, senior editor for growth and engagement at Fast Company. “And research from Gallup shows that employees who feel engaged in their workplace are more likely to want to return to the office, particularly for team collaboration and relationship building.”Deloitte reports that organizations with a strong focus on employee experience see a productivity increase of up to 20% and it also helps with turnover rates. “Ultimately, it's up to the leaders to set the policy and model what the ideal workplace situation looks like,” Dishman said during an executive panel discussion at From Day One’s October virtual conference.Corporate leaders have been saying it a lot lately: We want to make the office a magnet, not a mandate. They can make that a reality by creating the kind of experience that re-engages workers with their leaders, their colleagues, and their roles. How can employers be intentional about the workplace as a welcoming community and place where workers can fulfill their need for connection and purpose, inclusion and belonging?Encouraging In-person InteractionIt can be hard to encourage in-person interaction, even when back in the office, when employees are plugged into a post-pandemic productivity mindset of sitting at a desk, powering through tasks, and then going home. Providing team leaders with additional support can help them facilitate the organic in-office interactions that so many of us have been missing.“We’re trying to guide leaders with tools. At CSL, we’ve just launched a series of tools called Moments That Matter,” said Kim Robbins, senior director, HR change and culture at CSL Behring. “It’s encouraging leaders to coach their teams about being intentional about the work that needs to happen.” The training helps them understand the difference between moments that require ‘heads down’ focus time alone in the office or at home vs. times when they should be providing face-to-face support, such as when onboarding new hires. “Could we be encouraging people to randomly meet for lunch or come together for events? We’ve positioned all this in a framework about planning the way you work, so that people could be intentional and do some assessments for who might be missing in their network that could really help them feel that greater sense of connectivity and belonging,” Robbins said.Executive panelists from JLL, HR Media & Co., CSL Behring, and Lam Research spoke about "Creating a Purposeful Workplace Experience" (photo by From Day One) Antoinette Hamilton, global head of inclusion & diversity at Lam Research, says that employee resource groups, which first came into prominence as a way to stay virtually connected during Covid, are now another structured way to encourage organic in-person interaction. ERG’s can “be a place to connect, meet some new people, and do something for a great cause,” Hamilton said.Taking an Empathetic Approach“Empathy is a foundational principle of making a workplace someplace you want to go to,” Dishman said. Much of empathy, says Judith Ojo, CEO of HR Media & Co., comes down to open communication. “Some employees are not fond of being in the office. Maybe they can’t get enough work done or they’re constantly interrupted,” Ojo said. Make sure you understand where your employees are coming from and what they are looking for, then respond in kind. For the issues Ojo noted, creating a quiet zone, collaboration space, or wellness area for meditation can go a long way to making an employee feel comfortable, seen, and supported. Such an adaptive workspace can be helpful for fostering inclusion.Empathy can mean different things for different people, and leaders need to be prepared to take the cue from the employees. “I think listening sessions are really important. The key is you’re not trying to solve the problem. You’re listening,” said Tina Leblanc, Ph.D., head of DEI, Americas at JLL. “You listen. You pause. You come up with a solution. And then go back and say, ‘What I heard was…And these are some ideas.’  And then also ask them, ‘What do you feel we can do as a team to be more inclusive?’ That way you’re not putting your own biases [onto it].” Regular employee surveys can encourage employees to come forward.Building the Ideal WorkplaceFor many employees, Dishman says, it seems like a hybrid environment is the ideal. But making organizations cohesive and productive in a hybrid setup can seem far easier on paper than it is in practice. “Building trust within hybrid teams is really crucial to ensure collaboration and productivity,” Hamilton said. Her team does this by leaning into their core values: clear communication, mutual trust and respect, and transparency. Her organization wants its teams to feel cared about, and have created a manager track with training that incorporates inclusive leadership.Senior leaders need to communicate goals and parameters, Dishman says, so that the office continues to be a hub of connection – and so that everyone doesn’t come into the office two days per week only to spend those days on Zoom. “One thing that we have is collaborative conversations, where we bring people throughout the whole office, and even in different buildings, together,” Leblanc said. The company also encourages group lunches on Mondays, coffee on Wednesdays, and desserts on Fridays. The key is to keep thinking, ‘How do I make this more enjoyable?’ to encourage people to get up, get dressed, and commute into work. Employees should leave feeling happy and productive, says Leblanc.Hamilton says managers should be given the tools to be able to articulate the benefits of on-site work. “You’ve failed if you walk into an office and everyone is on a Zoom call,” she said. “We have to be intentional about how we work differently when we come back into in-person environments,” she said. “Managers are the catalyst for getting that done in a consistent way across organizations.”Robbins’ office encourages employees to be intentional about their meetings and not jam their schedules unnecessarily through a collaboration audit. “Do you really need to still be a part of all these meetings? Could you just only attend when there’s an agenda topic relevant to you, where you're a subject matter expert or [the] person to move this goal forward? Or could you delegate it to a junior team member to give them exposure and have greater connectivity in the office?” she said.Her organization has also invited “puppy trucks” from local animal shelters to visit so employees can play with puppies during breaks. Such activities should feel organic, and companies must be careful to avoid scheduling what feels like “mandatory fun.” Again, employees will look to their leaders to set the tone, so managers should be the first ones to dive into activities and bring the team along, Leblanc says. Let them know attendance is optional, but if they do go, ask them to bring a friend. Such participation also makes senior leaders feel more accessible. “Humanize yourself,” Leblanc said.Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, On New Jersey, and CBS New York.

Katie Chambers | November 20, 2024

Constant Change Is Bad for Business Because It’s Bad for Human Performance

In the corporate world, change is inevitable and organizations that can’t change don’t last long. Oftentimes, change is considered a good thing until you talk to people on the frontlines of it.“At some point you have to recognize that there is a contradiction between the simplistic idea that change is necessarily a good thing and the lived experience of change on the front lines, which seems to be anything but a good thing,” said Ashley Goodall, a leadership expert and author of The Problem With Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance.Goodall spoke with Vox's editorial director of tech, climate, and world teams, Bryan Walsh, at From Day One’s October virtual conference. They spoke about how to navigate constant change in the business world.Uncertainty, Control, and Work Without MeaningGoodall has had a long career in the corporate world as an HR executive, most recently at Cisco. He's seen major change from the outside and inside and identifies three key themes prevalent in any chaotic change. The first is uncertainty. “We don’t do very well when the future is uncertain and when somebody says there’s a big change coming, that’s almost the definition of uncertainty.”The next is control. “When you take away our sense of agency, we feel helpless. There’s a phenomenon called learned helplessness, where people just phone it in, because they’ve been trained by their environment that whatever they do won’t make that much of a difference.”Learned helplessness is the psychological name for a loss of control, Goodall says, but it also goes by another name. “Quiet quitting is probably pretty close in a business context for people saying, ‘Hey, I don't know what I do here. Why am I trying?’”Bryan Walsh of Vox interviewed author Ashley Goodall, left, during the fireside chat (photo by From Day One)The last theme is having a sense of meaning. “We have a desperate need for the world to make sense to us,” Goodall said. Organizational change often disrupts the essential social connections that define how people work and identify themselves. Shifting teams or altering org charts can dismantle these "social graphs," leaving employees struggling to adapt. On top of that, humans have an innate need to make sense of their environment. When conflicting messages about the organization’s direction emerge, employees often feel lost and disconnected, unable to contribute effectively.Goodall noted that while leaders often recognize these challenges, their focus tends to remain narrow—fixing one change initiative at a time. The issue arises when multiple initiatives, driven by different leaders or consultants, pile up, creating chaos. To address this, organizations must rethink change holistically and prioritize creating a work environment that supports human connection and meaningful contribution.“And it’s the aggregation of all of this that is really pernicious, which means that organizations need to think differently about change, and more broadly about the experience of work here every day, and does it support human contribution,” Goodall said."What can leadership do when it comes to actually executing change?” Walsh asked. Goodall says there needs to be a sliding scale to determine when change is necessary. “The first thing to say to organizational leadership is, do less. Change. But do less. If we get through our collective heads that this isn’t an unalloyed good, this is something that can create harm more than it creates good, then I think you pause and set the bar higher on organizational change.”This doesn’t always happen but leadership can be proactive about “turning the volume down,” he said.“You can involve employees in telling you where the volume currently is,” Goodall said. "What would happen if a leader came in and said, I’m going to spend the next few weeks learning everything that works really well here, or everything that we should preserve, or everything that’s valuable, or everything that’s special, or everything that you really care about, so that we know what to protect. And once we’ve understood that, then we can think about how to improve things.”Leaders can help employees navigate change by anchoring on stability and framing it as a clear, process-driven outcome, while taking steps to promote consistency amid the chaos of multiple initiatives.Stability is a Necessary Precondition for Improvement“You could say stability is kind of the opposite of change. What does that look like?” Walsh asked.Goodall distinguished between change and improvement, which he says aren’t the same things and given a choice between the two, people would choose improvement. “The thing that we’re chasing in all of this is improvement. Well, stability is a necessary precondition for improvement.”People struggling in an organization amidst a sea of instability don’t lend to improvement. Goodall believes that improvement and positive change come from team environments, where employees know what’s going on and are valued. “If we are able to stipulate that organizational value, organizational productivity, organizational innovation, organizational goodness comes from humans working together.”If you have the above, then you’ll have something like stability, Goodall says.“What does stability look like? Stability looks like I have space to figure out the best use of my time. I’m given some autonomy.” For Goodall, true stability at work comes from personal confidence, strong team dynamics, and leaders who foster meaningful connections and mutual support.Digging more into that predictability and stability, Goodall talked about his use of weekly all-hands meetings, something Walsh pointed out that, in his experience, executives tend to despise.Goodall did not spend a whole lot of time prepping for these meetings. Instead, he used them as a personnel barometer. “It was a conversation for the leadership team that everyone got to tune into and ask questions of us.”“What we were trying to solve was, if you know what’s going on, you have space, you have agency, [then] you have predictability. You get to see the people leading your organizations when they’re not on script–when they’re not following the talking points that the communications team has put together for the all hands," Goodall added.The meetings would start with slides of birthdays, service anniversaries, or something random with a photo to spark conversation or a laugh. Then they would move onto business, and different teams would simply talk about what they were working on, what was working for them, areas of difficulty and challenge, what was coming up in the future, and more.And making things weekly, instead of a few times a year, gives organizations the opportunity to handle change as it’s happening, according to Goodall. All of this is "profoundly stabilizing." “We did this every week for years and years, and it became an organizational ritual, and people still talk about it. All we were doing was ritualizing stability and explaining to people what was going on.”Matthew Koehler is a freelance journalist and licensed real estate agent based in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Greater Greater Washington, The Washington Post, The Southwester, and Walking Cinema, among others.

Matthew Koehler | November 20, 2024

The Flexible Workplace: Making It Fair for Employees and Effective for Companies

As remote workplaces become hybrid and hybrid ones adopt on-site requirements, how do companies ensure that opportunities are available to all? It’s a challenge for many. Workers made to return to the office may feel like they’re not trusted, and those who cannot report to HQ may feel like they miss out on opportunities afforded to their in-office peers.Distributed workplaces have their benefits and drawbacks, of course, but they can still be inclusive, equitable environments for all. This was the topic of conversation during a panel at From Day One’s October virtual conference on modernizing workplaces for a more flexible and inclusive era.Remote and hybrid work has expanded talent pools for employers and opened job opportunities for workers. But with dispersion comes isolation, said TJ Mercer, the director of diversity, equity, and inclusion at biotech company AbbVie. He misses the interpersonal connections that form naturally in a shared office environment. “I’ve worked in the organization for two and a half years and never got to see anybody out of the blue Zoom box.” There is value in the passive time before meetings start, when people sitting in a conference room swap stories about their weekends or their families. “Some of that small talk just doesn’t happen as organically or naturally [on Zoom]. And I think that people do miss that from time to time.”Seema Bhansali, VP of employee experience and inclusion at Henry Schein, a company that distributes medical and dental supplies to healthcare providers, sees the benefits of remote and hybrid work for DEI. A lot of folks need to be able to work from home to care for a family member, for example. But she too knows that staying connected is a challenge and, sometimes, a problem. “You don’t really get to see people that often. And what does that do for your wellness in terms of relationships and relationship building? That is one of the balance issues we still have to work out.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza moderated the session about "The Flexible Workplace: Making It Fair for Employees and Effective for Companies" (photo by From Day One)To encourage workplace camaraderie, “we bring people together, either virtually or in-person, for ‘connection days,’” Bhansali said. Their most recent connection day was spent building care kits for colleagues who were affected by Hurricane Helene. “We try to do these across the globe in different, culturally relevant ways, with some frequency.” They also gather people virtually for games and good-spirited competitions. “We try to be really intentional about how we are setting the culture,” she explained. “What do we want people to experience? And how are we making sure it’s good for folks who are in person, folks who are hybrid, and folks who are fully remote.”At insurance company Aflac, where employees living within 50 miles of an office are on-site at least three days per week, VP of total rewards Kelli Henderson encourages managers to make the most of those in-person work days. “That’s the day that you have your team meetings,” she said. “There are things that you have to be really purposeful about. It does take a little bit more time, a little bit more coordination and organization, but we have seen the benefits.”Of course, Henderson has felt resistance from employees who don’t want to return to the office at all. “We announced last March that we were going to have a 60% return-to-the-office. Our executive team really saw the importance of bringing people together, having people work together, and we got a ton of pushback from our employees.” Many equated the mandate with mistrust since they have been working fully remote for years. “We had to have a lot of conversations about the importance of coming together to be able to collaborate,” Henderson explained. The company expected some workers to leave as a result of the change, but they ultimately lost fewer than a dozen. “I think as much as you hear griping and complaining, we do work really hard to show the importance of being in the office, so people understand.”Calling the workforce back to the office must be done tactfully, said Michael Watson, senior director at AI-powered talent intelligence platform Eightfold. “It can’t just be about ‘Well, this is the way it used to be, and I’d love to see you now, and I’m the boss,” he said. Such a mandate won’t land well. “That’s not the type of organization that I’d want to work in. But if the organization said, ‘Mike, love the work you’re doing. We would love to see if it’s possible for you to come back in. Let’s have individual conversations. Let’s understand everyone’s circumstances.’” With that request, he says, he may be inclined to change his tune. Allowances should be made discerningly for those who need them: Someone might be a caregiver and needs some flexibility, and employers need to be willing to help them out. “You just can’t have a blanket policy,” he said.If you do have a distributed workforce, managers must be careful to not favor on-site workers over remote ones if their results and productivity is the same. “Those intangibles are really starting to show up,” AbbVie’s Mercer noted. But overall, he’s been pleased with managers’ cognizance, and they’ve lately seen a number of women promoted within the company.Aflac examined the experience for remote workers and found it lacking in some ways, so Henderson and her team made adjustments. “We went as far as testing all of our conference rooms because we realized that it wasn’t [a great experience] for those that were remote–maybe they could see one person or they had trouble hearing–so we really had to beef up the equipment and technology. That’s important to do if you’re going to have a mixture of on-site and off-site employees, so that everybody feels that they have the same seat at the table.”Sponsorship and mentorship can also help level the playing field within a distributed workforce. “Sponsorship is taking somebody’s career under your wing, having the conversations about them in rooms where they aren’t and don’t have access to,” Bhansali explained, proud of their practices at Henry Schein.Mentorship can be especially helpful for the youngest members of the workforce, many of whom started their careers during Covid lockdowns and have little exposure to office environments. The Washington Post reported in October that office etiquette classes are increasingly popular.“How do early career team members really get some of the unwritten rules of the workplace?” Henderson asked. The company set expectations for both technical and soft skills all workers need, then encouraged both sponsorship and mentorship to reinforce those skills and behaviors. Early career development is not the task it used to be, she says. “I think the mistake people make is they just try to use what worked and keep going, and that is not functional today.”At Eightgold, Watson helps workers create a path between where they are and where they want to be, and the appetite is there. “That’s where our business is really booming with these large organizations–just getting a grip on what skills they have, and not just skills, but what skills adjacencies they have.”“Expectations are different than they’ve been in the past,” Bhansali said. “And that’s not just about the hybrid workforce. That’s about a generational change in the workforce.” New workers expect skill development and a chance to exercise those skills, and leaders expect support. “Those layer onto the hybrid conversation in ways that folks don’t realize, but we have to put all these things together.”Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the Economist, the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz, Business Insider, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza | November 14, 2024