Simply Feedback

56. Rising Together: A Path Forward - Sally Helgesen

• LearningBridge • Season 5 • Episode 8

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Sally Helgesen, an expert on women’s leadership, discusses her book “How Women Rise” and effective strategies for women to rise in the workplace. Sally emphasizes how feedback should be based on recognizing strengths and provides insights into overcoming common habits that hinder women’s career advancement. She shares her observations on the evolution of workplace dynamics throughout her career. The conversation also highlights the importance of inclusive behaviors and how women can actively contribute to creating more inclusive work environments.

Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace - Sally Helgesen

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Sally Helgesen:

The only thing I would say is I don't talk about the benefit of the doubt. I talk about giving others the benefit of our goodwill. Because it doesn't really matter whether our story is true or not. Our default story, "I guess he doesn't have any respect for me." Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we find a way to extend the benefit of our goodwill. And in that story where the woman goes and says to the guy, "Oh, I'm glad to know that you agree with me on that point," you are extending the benefit of your goodwill. Not so much your doubt because, first of all, it's negative, but it also means that you're suspending doubt. It's goodwill. And that is where the grace part comes in.

Troy Blaser:

Hello and welcome to Simply Feedback. It's the podcast brought to you by Learning Bridge . I'm your host, Troy Blaser, and I'm glad to have you along with us today. Now you may remember that in our last episode, our guest was Sally Helgesen and we focused primarily on a previous book of Sally's called How Women Rise. For today's episode, we are continuing that conversation. We will be discussing her latest book Rising Together. Now, if you haven't listened to the last episode yet, I would encourage you to check that one out. It's very interesting. But again, continuing with us for today's episode, we also have Julia Einfeldt, who is a recent college graduate, just starting out her career, and she had some questions for Sally. I had some questions for Sally. So this is another great episode. I hope you enjoy our continuing conversation with Sally Helgesen. Sally, before we get into some specific questions about your latest book, Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace, maybe can you give our audience a quick summary of the book, maybe where it came from and what you were trying to cover with it?

Sally Helgesen:

Yeah, very quickly, what I noticed was that a lot of the organizations that I worked with that had diversity initiatives were very focused on unconscious bias and they were not sufficiently focused, in my view, on behaviors, inclusive behaviors. So what I set out to do was to look at, to kind of identify the habits that are most likely to build inclusive cultures, but also the habits that help us as individuals to build comfortable and effective relationships with people we may perceive as being different from ourselves. Gender, ethnicity, race, religion. There's so many divides now. Sexual identity, age across the spectrum, what can help us build those relationships? Very important for teams and also as noted earlier, very important given the increasing diversity of our workplaces.

Troy Blaser:

I liked that emphasis on behaviors and I'm sure we'll talk about that as we go along here. How would you define inclusive leadership? As we think about that?

Sally Helgesen:

Inclusive leadership is really a leader who skillfully cultivates an inclusive culture. And I would define an inclusive culture as a culture in which the highest possible percentage of people feel a sense of belonging. And we can tell this because they'll talk about the organization as we not they. So it's very easy to identify also the highest percentage of people feel valued for their potential rather than just what they're actually contributing at the moment. So they feel seen and recognized. And the highest percentage of people also feel that how they matter is not just tied to the level that they're at in the organization.

Troy Blaser:

I like that. So in rising together, you talk about eight triggers that affect our ability to rise together. What do you mean by triggers? As you talk about those eight triggers in the book,

Sally Helgesen:

Triggers are important because what I recognized was it's easy to identify inclusive behaviors, but the reason that people often may be aware of them but not act on them is because they feel triggered in certain situations. So triggers are situations , uh, people, words that there's something external in the environment that stirs an emotional reaction in us. That's basically it. It's how we respond to our external environment because it stirs something in us. And what we usually do if we feel triggered by something is we feel an emotion. We feel anger, we feel rage, we feel discouraged, like why does this keep happening? Or , uh, sad, "Oh, I didn't think this person was a jerk, but now I see they are," whatever it is, we feel that. And then we tend to tell ourselves some kind of story to justify how we feel, you know, "Oh , uh, people in this organization just don't get it." Or fairness is a trigger. Men have all the advantages here, or women have all the advantages here or whatever. It's so we tell ourselves a story about it, but it doesn't give us any kind of path forward. It may be true, it may not be true. It doesn't really matter. What matters is the impact it has on us.

Troy Blaser:

That makes sense. Yeah. It's not useful if there's no path forward, if there's not a good way forward. I wanted to read a paragraph from the book that I thought was very interesting. "The emphasis in universities in recent years on encouraging people to shield themselves and others from potential triggers does a huge disservice to students who will soon find themselves in a workplace where the ability to deal with a range of people is expected and required instead of shying away from triggering situations, avoiding potentially sensitive encounters or lobbying accusations. Every one of us needs to build our awareness of their impact so we can find serviceable ways to respond." Has that stirred a reaction for good or bad among readers of the book, Sally?

Sally Helgesen:

I haven't seen much of a negative reaction, which I know surprised me because I've heard from a lot of academics and I thought they would be outraged. But I think it's gotten to a point where we do see that this whole thing trigger alert, trigger warning, the ability of students to stand up in a classroom and say, I feel triggered by this conversation. And then walking out of the classroom and maybe someone filing a complaint. That kind of situation, which we've seen really for about 15 years, it does not serve younger people when they get into the workplace because they don't have that ability to be able to say, "Oh, I don't like this conversation. I feel sensitive. This is stirring something in me." So I think that at a formative period in a young person's life, they're being encouraged often not to learn, not to develop the skills that they will need to be able to address triggers. And you get in the environment , uh, you get out in the neighborhood, a community, yeah, you get into many, many workplaces and it can be pretty tough and people will say things that you really don't like, but if you let those things trigger you every time or don't have a sense of proportion, this constitutes sexual harassment or just this person speaks in an insulting way that really gets a reaction from me. Those are very different things. So if we don't learn those skills, then we have no way to address them and it doesn't serve us. And that's my concern. It doesn't serve the younger people coming into the workplace.

Troy Blaser:

Julia, what are your thoughts?

Julia Eindeldt:

You know, trigger is a big buzzword right now. I feel like with younger generations, people more around my age, it's something that you hear a lot. And one of the big issues that I see with that is, "This triggered me, I'm going to make it everybody else's problem now and everybody else needs to change their behavior because I don't like that." Which as you were saying, it doesn't serve us. It's not helpful in academia and it's not going to be helpful for the rest of our lives. I think there's a lack of personal responsibility there. You can't decide how other people act. You can only decide how you react to that, but it's something that I see a lot. So I just kind of wonder what is a better response when we feel triggered? What are those specific skills and habits that we can be developing to not only not react in such a negative way and make it other people's problem, but to become better and improve ourselves in spite of those things?

Sally Helgesen:

Wonderful, wonderful question. Here's what I suggest. Here's what I have found effective with the people I've worked with. First of all, you want to identify when you feel triggered. So you want to know that, and that's an important thing. "Oh, I see. I feel triggered in this situation." So before you start speaking about it, you realize, what does that make me feel? Angry, sad, upset, irritated, like I never want to see this person again. Be honest about it. Whatever it makes you feel you're feeling. So you want to know that, then you want to recognize that kind of what you were saying. It's, we can't control our environments and we can't really even control our responses if we feel punched in the gut about something, that's what we feel. But we can control the narrative that we use to explain what just happened. This is a workplace example. It's very common. Again, been working in women's leadership for 35 years now. And uh, what I've seen, a woman will be in a meeting, she'll make a point, she'll raise a suggestion or an idea, nobody acknowledges it. And then five, 10 minutes later, a man, usually at a higher level, we'll make the same point and people will say, oh , what a great idea. That's terrific. And you feel really unseen. You feel disrespected. And what people will often do is tell themselves, "Okay, that guy tried to steal my idea, or these guys around here can't hear anything from a woman's mouth. Might as well just keep my mouth shut." So whatever that story is, that story is your responsibility. That's something that you are telling yourself in response. And usually it leaves you three paths , none of which are constructive, inwardly fuming, deciding you don't like that person. Grabbing a friend who you believe will agree with you and complaining about what just happened, or if you feel it was egregious, lodging a complaint about it. And it probably does not rise to that level, which is what you describe as making it everybody else's problem. A great way of describing it. Instead, you have the power to be able to rewrite that narrative and give yourself an explanation that provides you with a path forward. Here's an example with what just happened. You could go up to the guy afterwards and say, "Oh, I'm really glad you echoed my idea. I'm glad to learn that we think alike. Maybe we should meet and talk about how we could make this happen." You could do that in an email. If in the moment you feel too blindsided to be able to act like that, what you are doing is you are giving yourself a path forward . You could collaborate with this person on something. If you don't, if that never happens, you've at least reached out to this person and shown them that you noticed what they said. By the way, you're also aware that you said it, did they notice? But you're not putting it that way. "Hey, I made that point before you did." No, you're just saying "Great point. I'm glad you agree with me." And then potentially it's the start of some kind of relationship that you could build with that person. Even if nothing positive happens at all, you have practiced a more constructive response to being triggered. And that is of great value.

Julia Eindeldt:

That makes a lot of sense. I like that you said too , we can't always control our initial reaction. It's okay to feel what we feel, but then going forward, the narrative is huge. I feel like that's something that I definitely could work on a lot because it's so easy to get stuck in a trap of like, this happened because of this reason, and then how women rise , that ruminating habit of, you know, you just sit there and you get yourself in a worse and worse mood and the world's out to get you and everything is the worst. It's not helpful. And so just changing the narrative around it to be something productive, even if nothing good comes out of it. I think that's huge. I like that a lot.

Troy Blaser:

Sally, I really liked the way that you talked about it becomes almost a form of grace that you can extend to that individual because you're giving them the benefit of the doubt that they're not intentionally trying to sideswipe you or undermine you. And so by providing this productive way forward for yourself, you're extending grace to that individual. That really resonated for me as, oh, that sounds like something that I, I want to be a person who extends grace and hopefully some in return. And this is a way to be able to do that in a small measure.

Sally Helgesen:

Exactly. Troy, the only thing I would say is I don't talk about the benefit of the doubt. I talk about giving others the benefit of our goodwill because it doesn't really matter whether our story is true or not, right ? Our original story, our default story, "I guess he doesn't have any respect for me." Whatever it is, it doesn't matter. What matters is that we find a way to extend the benefit of our goodwill and and that story where the woman goes and says to the guy,"Oh, I'm glad to know that you agree with me on that point," you are extending the benefit of your goodwill, not so much your doubt because first of all it's negative, but it also means that you're suspending doubt. It's goodwill and that is where the grace part comes in I think.

Troy Blaser:

I like that. I wanted to go back a little bit to this idea of the narrative that others have of us at Learning Bridge . We do a lot of 360 degree feedback and part of the value of A 360 is understanding other people's perceptions of you understanding that narrative that they have about you as the person receiving feedback. In your chapter on managing perceptions, one of the themes is that we can't please everyone and that changing to try to do so can undermine our ability to thrive. Is there some advice you can give us about finding that balance between managing what others think about us without over managing or under managing? We're kind of back to that Goldilocks idea here.

Sally Helgesen:

We are yes, and certainly there are people who under manage what people think about them. The minute they think somebody doesn't think they're the most fabulous person who ever lived, they don't get it. They're a jerk. Whatever, they dismiss it. They're not going to adapt their behavior. They're not going to admit they did something wrong. They're not going to admit that they provoked a person. It's the other person's fault. Those people are under managers. There are other people who are over managers . And again, having worked with a lot of women, and Julia referenced rumination, a lot of women tend to try to over manage people's perceptions and they get very invested in making sure that people at every point of the way are pleased and satisfied. But it's not so much that you can't make it happen, it's that it often distracts you from the primary thing you're trying to do. We're trying to have an effective team effort to address a shortfall we've had among certain customers or clients, or we've gotten feedback that clients are dissatisfied about something. So the effective thing is trying to think of ways to address that and that's what our task is there. But if you're an over manager of people's perceptions, that's one thing you're trying to do. But the other thing you're trying to do is worry . "Did I say something wrong? Did I offend somebody? Is it neither talking about, did I fall short? Oh, maybe it was that time that I forgot." Whatever you're getting overly involved in trying to make things better in the quest to essentially please other people. And that's distracting and it takes away from your ability to bring a lot of energy to finding a solution. And it also, I would suggest, weakens your ability to represent yourself strongly as a leader because you are distracted from the task at hand.

Troy Blaser:

Hmm . I really like that point, that idea of, "Hey, the team is really meeting to accomplish this goal. If we spend all of our time making sure that everyone on the team is happy, then it could be more difficult because the energy is not going towards that objective." Another interesting concept in the book is that concept of authenticity and being authentic to oneself. Can you share with us how can striving to be authentic affect our ability to respond to feedback?

Sally Helgesen:

Yes. I think it can have a real impact upon that. Authenticity is a wonderful thing, and I completely understand why. There's much discussion of authenticity now in organizations. It's tied in some way to the diversity of the workplace. People want to be able to feel like they can be who they are when they're at work. Very important concept all to the good. But we talk about it so much. I think it gives people the idea that they're being untrue to themselves if they're not completely authentic in every situation. Then in terms of responding to feedback, it can make us defensive. It can make us very defensive. "I can't believe you would say that. I find that disrespectful," that sort of thing. Or at least we're thinking that. So we're dismissive of feedback because we feel that that's our authentic response. We're just being ourselves. And you hear this across every group, you know, "I'm just telling it like it is. I'm just telling it like I see it. This is my perspective, this is how I see things." Well, that's nice, that's wonderful and it's good that you know that. But in feedback situations or a lot of other workplace related situations, you benefit by keeping an open mind and considering asking the important question, "How can I do things better in the future?" It's one reason I love Marshall's term feed forward . It's not about let's go over and over and over what you did before. Let's look at how you could do this differently in the future.

Troy Blaser:

In some ways, that idea of authenticity reminds me of our conversation earlier about triggers. And Julia, you talked about, "I feel triggered and now it's somebody else's problem to fix for me." Right? And maybe it's that sometimes our authenticity gets expressed and if you don't like it, that's your problem to solve. And it sounds like what you're saying is, again, there's a middle ground there, right? Show up and be who you are, but figure out how that fits in with who everybody else is too , so that we're all working together towards the common goal of whatever the the team is working on or the company.

Sally Helgesen:

Very good connection there. I think between the authenticity, that commitment, I gotta be me, and making the fact that you feel triggered everybody else's problem.

Troy Blaser:

Yeah. Trying to find that middle ground, I suppose. Okay. So Julia has asked a couple of questions. This one is for me to ask and that is, do you have some advice for a male leader in an organization? How can male leaders contribute to fostering a more inclusive environment?

Sally Helgesen:

Well, I think that part of the way in which we haven't been well served by how diversity broadly defined has been done is that many people, especially male leaders I find are overly focused on their own biases. And you want to be aware of what those are. That's important, but you're not faded to act on them. So I think identify number one, identifying a few inclusive behaviors that would make people feel more appreciated, recognized, and seen. And you'll find these out by asking for feedback. Is there something you believe that I could do in these meetings with this team in my role as a leader here? Is there something I could do that would help people feel more like they're a part of? I noticed I heard the other day some people talking about what we were doing and they kept talking about our company as they, you know, well, they now want to they want to do that. So that clued me to think that we're falling a little close on the inclusion front. Is there anything you think it would be helpful to see me do now you're probably asking somebody who's at a lower status level or newer to the organization than you. So you want to be very, very clear. You are telling me would be very helpful to me. It would be a big favor to me. Because this isn't going to serve us well so that you can sort of make it more comfortable for them to share and not feel like they're criticizing the boss. So I think that's a good way to get this started. There's another step though. So you want to identify those inclusive behaviors that you think will specifically help in this situation. And then you want to hold the people around you accountable for acting on them. You really do. This is where the problem often arises. The senior leader will get very comfortable with the idea we're an inclusive organization. We've made commitment is to create an inclusive culture, and then he or she is someone who's not behaving inclusively. So it has to be coming from you and it has to be coming from those in positions of authority and influence throughout the organization.

Troy Blaser:

I really liked your emphasis on behaviors in the book and you point out, and I think rightfully so, it's going to feel awkward to do some of these things. It's going to feel at first, like it's not the genuine you doing these actions, but that will change as you continue to do them. You point out that it's because you have existing habits and as you do these things that are not the habit , they will feel quite unusual, quite awkward, perhaps maybe not genuine, but as you continue to do them, they will become the new habits and start to feel more natural to you.

Sally Helgesen:

Yeah, we all change over time. I mean, every one of us can think back on an attitude that we held earlier or a way that we acted toward people or were in the world earlier that we're no longer comfortable with that wouldn't serve us. So we don't have this fixed identity as human beings. And it's how we evolve. We look at habits, we develop new ones , we get comfortable with them. They become part of our operating style.

Troy Blaser:

Well, Sally, I have thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. If people want to know more, are you open to continuing the conversation? What's the best way to get in touch with you?

Sally Helgesen:

Thank you for asking. I'm pretty easy to get in touch with. My website is. It's got a contact button that goes straight through to my email, so I respond. The email is and I'm on all the platforms as Sally Helgesen. One thing I'm not great about is responding to LinkedIn messages, so going through my website usually is a better bet.

Troy Blaser:

Super. And Julia, it's been great to have you as a guest on our conversation today.

Julia Eindeldt:

Thanks. I'm happy to be here.

Troy Blaser:

The two books we've been talking about, How Women Wise and Rising Together. Of course you can find them in all the usual places. Again, thank you so much, Sally.

Sally Helgesen:

Thank you. It's just been a pleasure to have this conversation. Enjoyed every minute and thank you Julia.