Ever called yourself an ally for an identity group?
Well, then, ask yourself: What have I done this week to show my allyship? If you haven’t done anything, you’re probably not an ally to that group, said Stephanie Chung, author of Ally Leadership: How to Lead People Who Are Not Like You.
HR Brew spoke with Chung about her book and how HR pros and managers can be allies to identity-based employee groups.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What will HR pros learn from your book?
First of all, ALLY is an acronym, and so it stands for ask, listen, learn, you take action…From an HR perspective, at the end of the day, if leaders can just grab a hold of that one concept and use the word ALLY as an acronym that will help them go far.
We have six generations working, which is unheard of. We’ve never had that many generations working all at once in history, and so that can be a challenge, because leaders are managing people that have different expectations and different perspectives. So, a Boomer is going to think very differently than a Gen Z or a Zoomer and all the different generations in between…The second part that’s going on, in today’s modern workforce, is that all the ethnic groups are growing, so the Black race, Hispanic race, Asian race, all growing, [and] the non-ethnic race continues to shrink, and so that changes the dynamics in the workplace as well.
Most books or most articles were written towards white men saying, “Hey, here’s how you lead women and people of color,” and though that’s an important discussion, it’s not the only discussion…All of us have to figure out how to lead people who are not like us…and then there’s the other flip side that we don’t talk really talk about: If you’re a woman, or a person of color, or someone from the disability groups…now, you’re in a leadership position, that was most likely held by a person who was not like you previously, how do you now lead this team who may be also trying to adapt and get used to having a leader that is not like them?
No matter what organization [HR professionals] are in a leadership role in...they’re dealing with this now. [...] This book is really designed not to point fingers, not to make people feel bad, not to do anything negative. It’s simply my story of how I, as an African American woman, was able to get to the highest level in corporate America, being in an industry that was white male-dominated, so people didn’t look like me…This is just a love letter, if you will, to help other leaders to know how to do it as well, and here’s some tools that will hopefully make it easier for them.
Quick-to-read HR news & insights
From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.
How can leaders be allies?
We have to start having these conversations…I also didn’t want people to keep self-anointing themselves as an ally. Like, “This is a participation trophy [and] you can decide everybody wins.” That’s not how this works.
When I’m done [giving a keynote], it’s inevitable that people will come up to me from the audience, and a lot of times, it’s men, and they’ll say, “I loved everything about this. This is fantastic. Also, I am an ally to women”…My follow-up is always the same. I’m always like, “Oh, my God, that’s so good. I’m so glad to hear that. Listen, tell me, what have you done this week to show your allyship to women?” And, it’s crickets.
What happens is they don’t have any proof to back up their receipts…You can’t go walking around and anointing yourself as an ally without any proof, so what I really want to make sure that, for all leaders, is that you understand that in order for you to be considered an ally, you have to earn that right.
What I want leaders to be thinking about, and especially HR leaders, who have to lead the leaders, and coach them through the process is, I want the leaders to realize that it’s not enough to just say you’re an ally. It’s not enough to just ask, listen, and learn from your people. What’s enough is if you start to take action, and that’s when you earn the title of being considered an ally, not one minute beforehand, and it’s certainly not something you can anoint yourself with.
How can leaders navigate growing anti-DEI sentiments in the workplace?
[DEI] is being weaponized against everyone, just to make it a racial issue. But it’s really not that. If you really understand…what DEI is and isn’t, well, you’ll realize that pretty much everybody falls under DEI in some shape, form, or fashion. Men fall into it, especially if you’re a veteran, women fall into it, people with disabilities, so literally, everybody has some kind of role within DEI.
The Census Bureau is also stating that by [2045] that the world will shift, and the majority of the folks will be minorities, and so if you’re not already considered to be…part of the DEI equation, you will be…A lot of the [current DEI] conversation is ill-intended, and it’s usually specifically driven to divide people, but people who know, people who read, people who are professionals, people know that there’s so much more to it. And the focus isn’t that one person would win and everybody else loses. The thing that I try to convey in the book is that everybody wins.