Many employers are focusing hard on diversifying their talent pools at the moment. It has been encouraging to bring so many stories to the podcast about employers working to connect with historically marginalized groups and embracing more open approaches to hiring. However, diverse hiring is pointless without addressing equity and inclusion at a systemic level within organizations.
My guests this week are Dr Tina Opie and Dr Beth Livingston, authors of the soon to be published book “Shared Sisterhood”. Share Sisterhood embodies a practical methodology that gives employees a starting point with diversity, equity, and inclusion. It inspires employees to explore their personal assumptions, build connections and take collective action.
In the interview, we discuss:
• Shared Sisterhood as a radically optimistic philosophy
• Power dominant and historically marginalized groups
• Addressing equity at a systemic level
• Building authentic connections with people who are different to you
• Where to start with DE&I
• Dig, Bridge and Collective Action
• The difference between equality and equity
• Metrics and accountability
• Ally versus Accomplise versus Co-Conspirator
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SHL Solutions (3s):
Support for this podcast is provided by SHL. From talent acquisition to talent management, SHL solutions provide your organization with the power and scale to build your business with the skilled, motivated, and energized workforce you need. SHL takes the guesswork out of growing a talented team by helping you match the right people to the right moments with simplicity and speed. They equip recruiters and leaders with people insights at an organization, team, and individual level accelerating growth, decision-making, talent mobility, and inspiring an inclusive culture.
SHL Solutions (45s):
To build a future where businesses thrive because their people thrive, visit SHL.com to learn more.
Matt Alder (1m 10s):
Hi there, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to Episode 460 of The Recruiting Future Podcast. Many employers are focusing on diversifying their talent pools at the moment. It’s been really encouraging to be able to bring so many stories to the podcast about TA teams working to connect with historically marginalized groups and embracing more open approaches to hiring. However, diverse hiring is pointless without addressing equity and inclusion at a systematic level within the organization. My guests this week are Dr. Tina Opie and Dr.
Matt Alder (1m 50s):
Beth Livingston, authors of the soon-to-be-published book Shared Sisterhood. Shared Sisterhood embodies a practical methodology that gives employers a starting point with diversity, equity, and inclusion. It inspires employees to explore their personal assumptions, build connections and take collective action. Hi, Tina. Hi, Beth. Welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Beth Livingston (2m 16s):
Hi, thank you.
Dr. Tina Opie (2m 17s):
Thank you so much for having us.
Matt Alder (2m 21s):
It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourselves and tell us what you do?
Dr. Beth Livingston (2m 27s):
Yes, I am Dr. Beth Livingston. I’m a professor at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, and I study diversity and inclusion and the management of work and family. And I’m the co-author of the forthcoming book, Shared Sisterhood, out through Harvard Business Review Press. Very excited to be here.
Dr. Tina Opie (2m 46s):
Thank you so much. And I’m Dr. Tina Opie, a professor at Babson College. I study leadership and culture through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I am very excited to be here. Beth and I have planned quite a bit for the forthcoming release of the book, Shared Sisterhood. So we’re excited to be here with you, Matt.
Matt Alder (3m 8s):
Fantastic. And I wanna talk all about Shared Sisterhood and what it is and the kind of some of the things that you talk about as we get into the conversation, but perhaps a good place to start would be tell us how you started working together and why you wrote Shared Sisterhood.
Dr. Tina Opie (3m 26s):
Beth, do you wanna tell the story about when you first approached me?
Dr. Beth Livingston (3m 29s):
Yeah, so Tina and I have known each other for a very long time. We were in graduate school, not together, but at the same time. And I had gone to see her present research at a conference, and we had sort of mutual contacts in our friend network and she seemed like a person I really wanted to get to know. And we’re great friends now, but do you remember how you felt about me when we first met, Tina? I do remember that, Beth, and I’m not proud of it, but I will say in the academy it can be a little bit cutthroat. People may be surprised to hear that where you hope for sort of a collaborative approach, but there have been less than collaborative experiences that I’ve had and because of larger social experiences that I’d had specifically working with white women in the workplace, I was a banker and then a consultant before I was an academic.
Dr. Beth Livingston (4m 25s):
And I had honestly been betrayed by quite a few white women. And so I was nervous when Beth approached me because I didn’t know her.
Dr. Tina Opie (4m 33s):
And I didn’t know why I jokingly say, Beth, you virtually skipped up to me to introduce yourself to me. And I didn’t know who she was. So If you can imagine someone, you know, being a little trepidacious, that’s how I was. But as Beth mentioned, we know someone in common and she vouched for Beth. And then I said, okay, Tina, Beth is presenting herself as someone who’s trustworthy, just take your time. And over time, Beth and I got to know each other. I began to see her character. She demonstrated a true commitment to values of equity and sisterhood. And we began to do research together right away pretty much.
Dr. Beth Livingston (5m 17s):
And I think this beginning of our relationship, you know, was just one story, but it really is a microcosm of so many interactions between white and black women or women from different marginalized, ethnic groups at work. And as it began this process of us really thinking about how all of these stories feed into the experiences that people are having at work and how we could use them as the foundation for understanding these leadership challenges. And, you know, there were other interactions that we had. Tina had started thinking about this topic of Shared Sisterhood, and didn’t really know how to, she got kind of a little stuck, I think in terms of figuring out where to go next with this idea and reached out to me.
Dr. Beth Livingston (6m 5s):
And from there, we were able to do empirical research together and develop this book to really speak to leaders where they’re at and say, hey, yes, we know that coming together across differences is hard, but this is how you can do it.
Dr. Tina Opie (6m 19s):
Exactly.
Matt Alder (6m 19s):
And I suppose before we talk more about the book, where do you feel organizations are at the moment? Because obviously very much over the last two years, there’s been a huge amount of lip service being paid to diversity, equity and inclusion. Every single organization has been talking about it. My experience from having conversations on the podcast is that there’s a lot of talk, but actually not much in the way of action and not much in the way of change. What’s actually going on at the moment?
Dr. Tina Opie (6m 51s):
Matt, you raised a very important point, which is that I think you’re referencing the summer of 2020 when in the United States, Black Lives Matter really exploded because of the murders of George Floyd and Brianna Taylor and Amad Aubrey, and other people, unfortunately, a really, really long list of people who were murdered because of police brutality and organizations sort of jumped to the four. They wanted to be seen as responsive to this social movement. Unfortunately, and what I like to say when we’re doing this work is that the pendulum throughout history has swung back and forth between sort of social movements that are leading to better equity and more sort of shared resources for everyone.
Dr. Tina Opie (7m 45s):
And then the pendulum inevitably swings back in the other direction where you have sort of this backlash. And I think that we are sort of seeing a backlash and the sense of some of the legislation that we’re actually seeing globally, where there are more and more people who are banning certain ideas from being discussed. And then you are seeing some organizations that are resistant. They don’t want to cause sort of a ripple or discontent amongst their workforce by appearing to show quote “favoritism” for certain historically marginalized groups over historically power dominant groups. And I can define those terms if you’d like, Matt.
Dr. Tina Opie (8m 27s):
Historically, well, I will start with power dominant. Power dominant is a group of individuals who historically have had access to and control over resources. So think about things like money, human resources or people at times, they are the individuals who have had access to and control over those things. In contrast, historically marginalized people are groups of people who have not had access to those things. And I do wanna point out that I’m looking at this at a group level at a collective level. Many organizations sort of to further answer your question, Matt, I think organizations are sort of resistant to addressing issues of inequity at a systemic level where we are seeing people say, you need to just focus on the process, not the outcomes.
Dr. Tina Opie (9m 18s):
It’s not okay to look at the systems you need to just focus on individual-level behavior. And while individuals play a critical role, because after all they comprise the systems, you need to look at individuals and systems at the same time in order to move towards equity.
Dr. Beth Livingston (9m 39s):
Yes. And I think, you know, really good information that Tina shared I think, and I also want to bring it back just a moment to say in the wake of the summer of 2020, so many organizations reached out to Tina, reached out to myself. There really was a focus on what can we do, but we have seen that shifting in so many ways. And I think, you know, Tina and I, and Tina in particular always likes to say that there’s sometimes a lack of boldness, a timidity with organizations that we don’t always see with other strategic decisions. There’s often whenever you’re being innovative, whenever you are being entrepreneurial, which we know are very strong keywords in today’s organizations there, you know, you have to be courageous.
Dr. Tina Opie (10m 25s):
You have to be bold. You have to take risks strategically to be able to do those things. And when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion, there’s some, there seems to be more insecurity and timidity on these things. And I think what we’re saying is that we need to meet the moment. The moment requires that same level of boldness.
Matt Alder (10m 43s):
And let’s talk about Shared Sisterhood because it’s a book that you’ve written that really tries to address this issue and give some very practical advice to individuals and organizations about what they can do to move forward. Tell us about the book.
Dr. Beth Livingston (10m 58s):
Shared Sisterhood is we would call it a radically optimistic philosophy towards achieving equity and organizations. It addresses issues of divides between people at work, particularly we start with women and black and white women because Tina and I are black and white women, respectively. We start there, but it expands beyond that. And the idea here is that if we want to make change towards equity in organizations, we have to think about how individuals consider their own identities and their relationships to power and how they bridge across those differences to build authentic connections at work. And the more of those authentic connections that coworkers build, the more they’re able to work together to achieve these big changes, these big actions that we know need to happen to have this collective level systemic change.
Dr. Beth Livingston (11m 50s):
So we break down this idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion being either an individual thing. You need to read more, you need to grow individually or a systemic thing where we need to change metrics at the organizational level and we connect those things together to say yes/and instead of either/or.
Dr. Tina Opie (12m 7s):
Beth, that’s an excellent encapsulation of the book. And I do wanna say it’s a very practical guide as Beth mentioned. And one of the things that Publishers Weekly just reviewed the book and they said that it offers great takeaways. And I think that that’s a critical tool because when doing consulting work, many organizations have no clue where to start. Some of them want to become more inclusive, but where do you actually start with that? So Shared Sisterhood offers this really amazing convergence of our lived experiences of our academic training as researchers, as well as our consulting or sort of the practitioner side of this, where we have applied this toolkit in actual workplaces and they’re getting amazing results.
Dr. Tina Opie (12m 54s):
For example, initially, I went into an organization and I did some Shared Sisterhood work with the upper executive team and then with focus groups or affinity groups. Now, since the idea has sort of pollinated throughout the organization, they don’t have to rely on me. If there’s another summer of 2020, this organization is now better equipped to know how to respond, to know what to respond to, to actually review their performance evaluation systems and transparently discuss any gaps and inequities.
Dr. Tina Opie (13m 35s):
And then, together as a community collectively, work to resolve these issues. So it has helped to really enhance the sense of trust between employees and leaders and vice versa. And we’re very excited about some of the findings that we’re having right now.
Matt Alder (13m 54s):
Digging more into that sense of practicality, I know that there are various sort of facets that you walk through in terms of a process that individuals and organizations can go through, talk us through those three stages or those three elements.
Dr. Tina Opie (14m 11s):
There’s Dig, Bridge, and Collective Action. And the first phase is Dig, which is about surfacing your own assumptions about different identities. So that might be surfacing your assumptions about racial ethnicity, for example. So I mentioned earlier in the conversation that when Beth first approached me, I was trepidacious. I had to really dig into that. I had to ask myself, what is it about this woman, this white woman, that is causing you to react? I was very friendly and kind, but I wasn’t very open. I was nervous and actually there was fear there. So what I needed to do was ask myself what is causing that fear.
Dr. Tina Opie (14m 56s):
So as I did that dig work, I recounted some of my prior experiences with white women. And some people might say, well, Tina, that’s just stereotyping white people. That’s really problematic. And here’s a question that I have for people who say that. Let’s switch this to gender. So I have heard so many women, especially when the #MeToo movement came out. Talk about how before Uber happened, for example, if you got into a cab, you might take a picture of your driver and the license plate and text that to your friends so that you would know that you get to your place safely. And if you didn’t show up, they would know who last saw you. Does that mean that that woman hates men, all men? No.
Dr. Tina Opie (15m 36s):
It just means that historically men statistically have been the largest perpetrators of things like sexual assault. And in my experience, and that historically white women and white people have typically been the ones who have been more likely to engage in racist, discriminatory behavior and violence. And as a result, I was nervous. So, so I needed to do that dig work to address that, and then be willing to engage over time with developing trust with Beth. Beth, do you wanna add anything to that?
Dr. Beth Livingston (16m 11s):
Yes. And I think the– Thank you, Tina, for describing dig so well. And I think the dig component of it is very introspective. So while Tina had to address her own concerns and thoughts, and be honest with herself, and that’s really what dig, the core of dig is being honest with yourself. I had to do the same. When I was, I wouldn’t say rebuffed, it was mostly just you could recognize that there was a lack of depth in the way we were interacting. I had to be honest with myself. I had to recognize and, and treat Tina with the most grace in that and think about, well, what does this mean? Am I interacting with her in a way that respects her, that empathizes with her position? And I think, you know, digging down into those preconceptions helps me to understand people better and to see people in the fullness of their humanity.
Dr. Beth Livingston (16m 58s):
And I think that’s what dig is about understanding yourself and trying to understand others, recognizing the ways in which we’ve all been raised in our respective countries and our respective societies. And it’s not about feeling guilty or anything else. It’s really just about honesty with ourselves. And I think that’s the key component of the dig part.
Dr. Tina Opie (17m 19s):
Yes. And the final dig part, I would say one of the things that Beth shared with me, she had to think about while she, as an individual might not understand the reaction. If she looked at the collective groups of black women and black and white women, she could then understand. So it’s important that you can dig into yourself as well as your collective group or your historical context.
Dr. Beth Livingston (17m 43s):
Yes. And the second phase is Bridge. Bridge is interpersonal. So while Dig is very individual introspective and can be done on your own. And unfortunately, it’s where a lot of people, I think stop. They read a bunch of books. They think about some things. Bridge is the next phase and it’s interpersonal. It’s about connections. It’s about building what we call authentic connections across people who are different. Those authentic connections are characterized by demonstrating empathy, building trust, showing vulnerability and growth. And sometimes you have to take risks and risk your own social capital, your own actual capital to be able to demonstrate that your trustworthy and so bridge is about that interpersonal connection between people.
Dr. Tina Opie (18m 29s):
Bridge, as Beth said, is interpersonal. And I do think that if you are from a power dominant group, you may wanna focus on establishing trust with people from historically marginalized groups first. That may be something that is really critical as Beth has alluded to, as someone who’s a member of historically marginalized groups, I needed to really work on sort of strategically making myself vulnerable. And that might sound like an oxymoron. How do you make yourself vulnerable strategically? That sounds Machiavellian. But what I mean by that is I didn’t just pour everything out there right away because there are true historical and contemporary examples of harm being done in the workplace where white women are harming black women as a collective.
Dr. Tina Opie (19m 25s):
And so it is adaptive for me to be protective that that makes sense, but I needed to interact individually with Beth. And so I had to make myself vulnerable over time. And now, I mean, we trust each other with money children. We’re sisters, truly. And that’s what I’d add. So depending upon your background, historically, marginalized, or power dominant, you may very well have to figure out which of the four components of Shared Sisterhood you emphasize and, and you know, those being trust, vulnerability, risk-taking, and empathy. The final thing I’ll say is that it may sound like I’m saying Beth is from a power dominant group.
Dr. Tina Opie (20m 7s):
And I’m from a historically marginalized group. The cool thing about Shared Sisterhood is we recognize that everyone has an interplay of both. So I’m a Christian Black woman. In the United States being a Christian is a power dominant group. So if I’m in a group of Muslims or Hindus or people who are atheists or agnostic, I’m in a power dominant position. So I do a lot more listening than talking. I’m also a black woman, which around the globe has been a historically marginalized group. So someone who’s in a power dominant group, I would hope would do more listening than talking when we’re discussing issues of equity.
Dr. Beth Livingston (20m 46s):
And I think with the bridge function, it is important to recognize that we are trying to bring people together who have shared values. Not everyone is going to want to bridge with you and that’s okay. And not everyone is gonna want to bridge with other people. And that’s okay. We recognize we’re trying to change and talk to people who want to build these sorts of relationships, recognizing that even if it’s not everybody in the organization who are connecting in these ways, these strong, authentic connections serve to strengthen the entirety of the organization, particularly if you’re trying to achieve a specific goal of equity, justice, inclusion, belonging within a company.
Dr. Beth Livingston (21m 29s):
So that shared value is really important because what we’re not saying is that everyone should bridge with everyone else, right? We’re not making that sort of statement that this is a normative thing that everyone should be doing. We’re saying everyone should work on those things. But in the book, we make it very clear that sometimes people are just not gonna wanna bridge with you. And that’s okay as well,
Matt Alder (21m 48s):
Before we move on to the third element, could you just talk through the difference between equity and equality? Because I think that’s something that would be interesting for people to hear.
Dr. Tina Opie (22m 1s):
Sure. So equality just means that you’re giving everyone the same thing. Equity and contrast means that what you’re doing is contingent upon the history and the needs of the people in a particular system. And a great illustration of that is the gender pay gap. Right now, we could give every human being the same pay for the same work, quality of work, type of work. So please don’t call in and say, well, people do different. I’m talking about all things being equal. If I do eight hours of high-quality work and you do eight hours of high-quality work, we get paid the same thing.
Dr. Tina Opie (22m 41s):
So that might sound awesome, except for the fact that women have been underpaid as compared to men for what, centuries? So how do you make up for that fact? Equity means that you would look at that, consider that moving forward so that you have more equitable outcomes.
Dr. Beth Livingston (23m 2s):
I just wanted to briefly add on that. I think, you know, when I’m doing shorthand of equality and equity, I think everybody gets the same thing versus everyone gets what they need. In turn, those needs can be different. I think like Tina mentioned, depending upon these historical contexts, people’s individual contexts and, you know, there’s different types of fairness. We study this in organizations, we know this to be true. There’s outcome fairness, there’s process fairness, and people care about all kinds of fairness and we can hold all those things in our minds at the same time.
Matt Alder (23m 33s):
We’ve talked about Dig, we’ve talked about Bridge, what’s the next element?
Dr. Beth Livingston (23m 37s):
The last element of Shared Sisterhood is Act. When we collectively act together, we’re moving again from that individual level of digging into our own preconceptions about difference bridging across interpersonal differences for the purpose of acting within an organization to make it more equitable. This is that collective systemic level where we see a lot of data coming out, a lot of economics data, a lot of sociological data, a lot of labor statistics about what are the differences that are occurring in organizations in terms of, Tina mentioned the gender wage gap. We have, you know, pay inequity, there’s promotion inequity.
Dr. Beth Livingston (24m 17s):
There’s what we call occupational segregation. So certain people are kind of shunted into particular jobs based on their identities, et cetera. So what we’re trying to figure out is how do we change those things? How do we create policies and procedures and practices and organizations to create more equity. And act, collectively act is about taking those connections you’ve built during bridge and using them as the foundation to build a collective movement, a coalition that allows change to be created from within an organization. And so what we talk about in that is how you band together to make sure that you are, you know, pressuring the organization to be able to do things that lead towards more equity, but also how you hold people accountable.
Dr. Beth Livingston (25m 2s):
So we talk about the metrics you need to look at. We talk about how you can go through your organization’s metrics and find out where you stand on these issues. And we also talk about how companies and leaders within companies can create Shared Sisterhood safe cultures that allow for these connections, this Dig and Bridge to emerge in your organization. Tina?
Dr. Tina Opie (25m 23s):
Yes, I will add, thank you, Beth, for that. Dr. Tiffany Jana and Dr. Stella
Dr. Tina Opie (26m 6s):
An accomplise is someone who’s willing to sacrifice or move forward, but it’s based on their own belief system. They don’t necessarily heed the voices of historically marginalized people. A co-conspirator is someone who does both things. They believe in equity and the steps that they take to pursue collective action are driven and motivated by the voices of historically marginalized people. So that might look something like say the women at an organization really would like a gender pay review. Someone who is a co-conspirator would use that as motivation to then go in different areas where women might not have access to and really push for that.
Dr. Tina Opie (26m 56s):
So it makes a lot of sense for those people who are in positions of authority to make sure that they’re heeding the voices of those women or other historically marginalized groups.
Matt Alder (27m 9s):
And so final question, we’ve been talking about some very practical things that the individuals and, you know, the organizations that they’re part of, can be thinking about, and acting on, what’s the one practical takeaway that you feel everyone listening could do sort of straight away to start on this journey.
Dr. Tina Opie (27m 34s):
Sure. So at the individual level, I would say really work to dig, understand your own assumptions about race, ethnicity, and about gender, and make sure that you look for resources. So don’t ask people from historically marginalized groups to necessarily educate you. You can do a lot of introspection by yourself, seek out resources. At a collective level, what I would say is something very practical. Do a wage review by race, by gender, by level, by division in your organization, and decide as an organization, what you’re going to do, if, and when you find gaps in terms of wage levels, how will you communicate that?
Dr. Tina Opie (28m 23s):
What kinds of metrics will you put in place to resolve that and to measure that? How will you communicate that with the organization? What’s the timeline, and who’s going to be funding the budget to address and redress, any inequities? Beth?
Dr. Beth Livingston (28m 40s):
I think that’s a really great place to start. One of the things I think that has been a criticism of the existing diversity, equity, and inclusion space has been that it often focuses on one of the other of those things. And we’re saying that you have to kind of do both that you need to be constantly learning and growing. And Tina and I are professors and academics, and we love to continually learn and grow. And I think there’s beauty in that. And so, yes, you still need to read the books and talk to people and think, and expand your horizons in terms of understanding differences. But if you do share this value of equity, if you really do, you need to start figuring out how you can connect with people who are different from you in authentic ways.
Dr. Beth Livingston (29m 25s):
And as Tina mentioned earlier, if you’re from a power dominant group that may mean you need to listen more, you may need to demonstrate your trustworthiness. That means we see a lot of people rushing to intimacy in these connections. Like, let me tell you all about my life. You can trust me. I’m a good guy, or however you wanna say it, and thinking about how can I really demonstrate that we have some sharedness here? How can I listen? How can I empathize and perspective take? Those sort of things I think are very difficult for people to do and so I’m often giving, and if we’re talking about bridging two sets of advice for people, particularly speaking as someone who’s a white woman who, you know, if I want to build connections with people who are from historically marginalized or minoritized racial ethnic groups.
Dr. Beth Livingston (30m 16s):
I think I do a lot more listening than I do talking, which is very difficult for me actually. But I do a lot more listening than talking and I try to do a lot of perspective taking, which means I try to be very gracious in terms of how I’m interpreting people’s behaviors. This means that sometimes if I am frustrated with how I’m coming across or connecting, I keep that, I think about that. I use that as introspection. I dig more into why that might be and I interpret that with the most generous intention that I can. This allows me to not put those frustrations on my partner that I’m trying to connect with and doesn’t set me back even further. And it allows me to say, okay, I really want to build this relationship, how can I do that?
Dr. Beth Livingston (30m 58s):
And so continue to do the readings, continue to learn like Tina said. If you’re in a position of leadership in your organization, figure out your metrics, set your goals, and anyone who wants to build those connections, think about how you can empathize, where you can demonstrate vulnerability, and where you can show risks and take risks to demonstrate that you share these values you say that you share.
Matt Alder (31m 21s):
Tina, Beth, thank you very much for talking to me.
Dr. Tina Opie (31m 23s):
Thank you so much for having us, Matt.
Dr. Beth Livingston (31m 25s):
Yes, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much.
Matt Alder (31m 28s):
My thanks to Tina and Beth. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts, on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow the show on Instagram. You can find us by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search all the past episodes at RecruitingFuture.com. On that site, you could also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
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