Dialogue with the Dean | Allyship, power, and feeling seen at work

KANINA BLANCHARD (KB):
Exclusive insights, actionable strategies and ideas that ignite change. You're listening to the Ivey Impact Podcast from Ivey Business School.

JULIAN BIRKINSHAW (JB):
Hello and welcome to Dialogue with the Dean, the flagship series on the Ivey Impact podcast. I'm Julian Birkinshaw, Dean of the Ivey Business School. Conversations about inclusion and equity are now commonplace in workplaces, leadership circles and beyond. But one often misunderstood idea is the concept of allyship. What does it truly mean to be an ally? How do power and privilege shape that relationship? What makes allyship effective rather than performative? 

In this episode, we'll be tackling the complexities of allyship in the workplace, not just as an ideal or an aspiration, but as a relationship shaped by dynamics of power, identity and accountability. My guest today is Barnini Bhattacharyya, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behaviour here at Ivey, and a leading thinker in the field of workplace equity. Her research moves beyond buzzwords to show what allyship really looks like and what it takes to make it meaningful. Barnini, welcome to Dialogue with the Dean. It's a pleasure to have you with us. 

BARNINI BHATTACHARYYA (BB):
Thank you so much for having me, Julian. I'm thrilled to be here. 

JB:
Great. So I want to know what brought you to Ivey in the first place. Just give us a short version of your background. 

BB:
So I joined Ivey in 2022, fresh out of grad school. I did my PhD in Organizational Behaviour at Sauder Business School at University of British Columbia. And really, I was, you know, getting into the weeds of studying how organizations manage inequality- but really at the individual level. I was interested in how human beings navigate systems of both inequality and egalitarianism, and how may barriers to inclusion be reduced. And that's what sort of brought me here to Ivey. I teach leading people in organizations, which is essentially an intro to O.B. course, and I continue to research the same topics. 

JB:
Wonderful. And we'll come back to some of that later. But let's dive into your actual research. I read a couple of your papers. So one we called it, "Not all allies are created equal." And this was published in one of the best journals in our academic field. Tell us, I mean, perhaps you should just start with what do we mean by allyship? Because that's the term everyone's heard, but perhaps you don't know quite what it means. 

BB:
Absolutely. So the term ally, I want to go back to where it originated. So historically, it's been rooted in the LGBTQ movement, which was going on in the 1970s, and it was used to refer to somebody who was straight, supporting, marching for, advocating for people who were gay, who were part of the LGBTQ movement. And so, essentially, historically, it's been defined as an individual who belongs to a relatively powerful social group advocating on behalf of a relatively more, marginalized group.

But what we found in our research in the last couple of years, as well as other research that has been published in this area, is that it is not necessarily just a label. You do not undergo a training and become an ally. It is very much a verb. So it is action oriented, it is longitudinal, and it has to happen in solidarity with the groups that you're claiming to support.

JB:
Got it. So just tell us a bit more about the actual research. I mean, perhaps it's good to start with what did you do? So, you studied, I think it was, 30 pairs of allies? So you what you went into the workplace, found people who you had these relationships and, what? You talk to them? You followed them around?

BB:
Exactly. So this was what in academic circles, we call qualitative research. They're based on in-depth interviews with participants. And what we were really interested in is, in the perspectives of beneficiaries or recipients of allyship. So first, we recruited 30 groups of women of colour to participate in the study. And the reason we looked at women of colour was that, this is a group that doesn't receive a lot of attention in research and historically hasn't, but they're acutely and disproportionately, vulnerable to mistreatment in the organization.

So research actually finds that, ethnic minority women experience the highest rates of both sex based harassment and gender based harassment and race based harassment in organizations. Yet we don't know too much about how these groups need to be supported and so we started with that group and then we asked them to nominate individuals that they considered allies in their workplaces. 

JB: 
And these weren't formally labeled as such or were they people these individuals felt had become allies sort of informally?

BB:
That's a great question. So we actually wanted them, the original participants, to identify individuals they thought of as allies because we didn't want self-identified allies: people who who think of themselves as allies but not might not be doing the right things. Yeah. 

JB:
So the women of colour identified an individual each that that they thought of as an ally and then you spent time with, with both sides exactly, understanding their relationship, I guess? Is that correct? 

BB:
Exactly. So we interviewed the original focal participants of women of colour individually. We interviewed the allies individually, and then we tried to see what was the overlap between their experience of allyship, as well as what was the divergence to really map out what we would think of as effective allyship from the perspective of the one who was receiving allyship.

JB:
Right. And so do do tell us a little bit about what you found because I'm guessing, of course, that some of these were more effective relationships than others. 

BB: 
Yeah. So we found that allyship really exists on a spectrum, which we were not expecting because we went in trying to study effective allyship. We're like okay, these are individuals who have been selected by the beneficiaries, we assume they're going to practice good allyship. But despite that, we saw a spectrum. And what we found is the extent to which, in a particular allied relationships, the individuals were cognizant and aware of power differences that exist between two individuals. So, you know, Julian, you're talking to me. We have our differences based on these obvious social characteristics, right? Race, gender, but also based on our life experiences. And what we found was that a certain group of people would ignore these differences and sort of assume that allyship is a flattened relationship. We can just operate and do things based on, let's say, my assumptions of what success looks like or what support looks like. And we found that that did not necessarily lead to effective outcomes. Very often what you would do in terms of allyship would be tangential to what the beneficiary wanted. So maybe you're putting them up for promotion opportunities, but if you haven't spoken to the beneficiary and understood what they want, maybe they're looking for lateral moves because they want to pick up a different skill set, but you don't have insight into.

JB:
So with the best of intentions, I can still, as an ally to you, let's say, I can still get it wrong if you see what I mean.

BB:
Exactly, exactly. I mean, and the thing is that all of these are well-intentioned actions. It's just that we don't often realize that they're ineffective or not landing the way we're looking for them to land. Because most allies are really they have the goals to help. They're not looking to, be ineffective. Right? 

JB:
Yeah. So ultimately, you, you, you come up with three key dimensions of allyship as a finding. And, and you obviously talk about what each of those looks like in a bit more detail. Do you just want to help us with, with where we're study ends up? 

BB:
Yes. So based on the spectrum that we found of allyship, we started identifying these really specific dimensions that, you know, led to whether your allyship was going to be effective or not. The first is what we term centering. So whose perspectives and needs are you centering in your allyship? Is it the perspectives of needs of the beneficiary, or are you imposing your own perspectives onto your allyship? The second was respecting. And here are you seeing your beneficiary as an equal who brings with them knowledge, skills, insight? Versus are you seeing them as, you know, sort of a passive receiver of help and you're the powerful giver of help, right? So it reinforces those power differences. And finally, the third was really, you know, even in lay person terms we talk about this a lot- is your ally rooted in just good intentions, or are you focused on tangible action which will lead to tangible outcomes? 

JB: 
So I just want to tease out an important point which you touched on, which is, if I want to just be a good boss, a good manager of others, right? I mean, I should understand my direct reports and try to see things from that point of view. I should be respectful of, of their point of view. I should be trying to help them to do their job. I mean in some ways, what you're identifying here could be almost, like, generically good practice anyway. What is the difference between an ally who obviously has a much more informal relationship than, you know, the legitimate sort of formal power I have over my subordinates? 

BB: 
This is a great question, and I'm kind of going to go back to this concept we identified called power schemas in our research. 

JB: 
Power? You need to expand, power schemas? 

BB: 
Yes. So I know it sounds like a very academic technical term. We identified that the way you considered power in your allied relationship was really key in whether it just it just remained one of those relationships at work which are more transactional, and whether it transformed into something more meaningful where you're actually creating tangible change for this beneficiary. And I'll define power schema as the extent to which you are cognizant of power differences in the allied relationship, and are you trying to change those systems of power? And so let me also define power, maybe really quickly? Because that's also a term that's fairly, you know, it's thrown around, but we don't know what it means.

Research has, psychologists have defined power as the, as the extent to which I, if I have high power, I have control over resources that are desirable to others. Typically what we found is allies tend to be in positions of relatively high power in organizations, right? You might be a boss, you might be somebody senior. How are you able to use those resources that are desirable to others to create some kind of change for the person? Which we found often ripples out into systemic level change in organizations. If you're trying to change recruitment systems to become more equitable for one person, that does tend to have an effect on the organization.

JB:
Yeah. So, and I want to come back to that point, as we get towards some of the very practical things we can do. But one interesting finding I saw, "women of colour were often the most effective allies to one another." Now that to some degree goes against something you said at the start, which was the original concept, was often the marginalized person chooses somebody who's part of the dominant.

BB:
Exactly, exactly. So we were really intrigued by this finding. We found that over one third of our focal women of colour participants nominated other women of colour as their identified allies. And what we found was that the reason for this is because women of colour, because of their experiences of race-based and gender-based marginalization, they were really clued into how systems of power operate in organizations. They were very aware of differences that might crop up in your allyship relationships. And so that make them really aware of how to tailor their allyship to the individual and make it really helpful for them. And so interestingly, this is one of the assumptions we make in allyship research, that it has to be somebody on a job, you know, who's part of a dominant group. I think it's really hopeful for us to see that we do have agency, even if you might be so-called "marginalized" in a certain axis of identity, there's a lot of agency you can enact based on different ways that you have access to power. 

JB: 
Got it. And this was a study, as you say, of women, women of colour, other marginalized groups, I'm guessing we would find similar things? I mean, do you try to generalize beyond your specific context? 

BB:
So I, I haven't, I should clarify. But other researchers in 2024, there was a special issue that came out on allyship. So a lot of really cool researchers have been looking into this. And what they found is that, yes. So when it's a domino, so let's say a man is an ally to a woman or a white person is an ally to a non-white person, there is more credibility, at the offset, which the dominant group member might experience. But if you sort of start looking into the weeds of things, the level of ineffectiveness or effectiveness is fairly, there's really no significant difference in more quantitative studies, across these identities.

JB: 
Okay, thanks.

*MUSICAL BREAK*

JB:
So we'll talk about the other paper you gave me to take a look at. Again, top journal in the field, "Do you see me," and you're looking at invisibility of certain people in the workplace. So, tell us a little bit about what that is about. 

BB:
I'm really excited to talk about that paper because that was honestly also the genesis of the allyship paper. So this was a paper that looked at, again, the experience of women of colour in workplaces, but specifically this unique phenomenon of not being seen or not being heard, which we termed invisibility in organizations. To share a sort of personal story, the idea behind this, or the sort of spark behind this, was I had started my PhD program, and I was in my first year, and I had a friend who was in another PhD program, and she said that all of her, you know, colleagues went out for Thanksgiving dinner and they did not invite her. And when she went back the next day, you know, and they were all in their offices and they're like, "oh we had great Thanksgiving," there was not even a realization that they'd missed out on inviting her. And I became really curious as to what's going on. Like, what is the cognitive mechanism behind sort of, this erasure of somebody who is physically present near you, but you may not be offering them attention?

JB:
Got it. Yeah. You start the paper with the anecdote of Michelle Obama and her kids standing in line and basically somebody just cutting in front of them, literally not seeing them. 

BB: 
Exactly. And that's the first lady. 

JB:  
Yeah, incredible. So, this is a phenomenon. I mean it is real. How did you study it? What were you trying to get out of the research?

BB:
So this was also a qualitative project. For this project, I interviewed 65 women of colour in a large northwestern, Pacific Northwest city. And we began looking into, well, what are the subtle forms of mistreatment that you might be experiencing at work? You know, things that may not be identifiable, but that also makes it more challenging to say, "well, that was problematic because it's so subtle," but it does cause you to not feel a sense of belongingness and it makes you feel like something you, you don't necessarily feel like yourself. You know it dehumanizes you in a sense- a language that a lot of participant use was dehumanization. Because not being seen is really a really visceral sense of,

JB:
A presumably not being heard as well. I mean, you speak up in a meeting and, and somebody moves the conversation of any different direction. 

BB: 
Exactly. So we actually found a few different types of invisibility. One is of course, the literal not being seen. But yes, as you mentioned, a lot of participants spoke about, them raising a point in meetings and then people not paying attention to it and then somebody else makes the same point and then it gets applauded. Interestingly, they also, they varied in complexity. There were some women who talked about, you know, being mixed up with other women of the same ethnic identity. So black women being mixed up for other black women. Indian women being mixed up for other Indian women. And that again creates a sense of, you know, like, are you not paying attention to me?

JB:
A lot of this is, this is a question of a statement, but unconscious bias on the part of others, is that correct? Because, you know, there's a big difference between overt racism and just unconsciously, kind of, not seeing, is that is that right? 

BB:
I would say so. So there is you know, Susan Fiske talks about, social power, as, you know, who we pay, who we consider as worthy of being paid attention to. And it operates at a very subliminal level. It is part of our conditioning. It's part of, you know, the societies we live in. So it becomes really hard to even identify that you're doing it unless you become aware of it, right? And so a part of this is also making sure that we know that these things are going on, and we can check if this is happening in our classrooms, in our workplaces. Am I, you know, getting my younger students of colour, you know, mixing them up with each other or not paying attention to them?

JB: 
And so, a lot is on people like me to be much more conscious of, of our unconscious biases. But the research is all about what do these, invisible women do? So talk a bit about the, how they responded to being ignored or, you know, overruled or whatever. 

BB:
It was really interesting. We found, variance in how these participants were responding to becoming invisible. So there was one group, which was essentially what we would call low power. So they were either junior women or women of colour who were stereotyped as quiet and submissive. So Asian women who would respond to them, this this experience with self-blame, I did something wrong. Maybe it was me. Maybe I didn't speak up strongly enough. And that reinforced the cycle of invisibility because when you experience shame, you withdraw and then you further go unseen. There was another group who had relatively higher social power or who was stereotyped as, more agentic. So often black women or more senior women, they tended to respond in anger. They're like, "this is ridiculous. How, you know, how did you mix us up with somebody else?" But what happened was that that would lead to backlash. So they would experience some kind of more overt mistreatment in response. And that would just create a lot of risk for them. The third group, and this was the most interesting one, I think this is what gives us hope, were much more strategic in their responses. So they really were able to read the room. Did they have social support, if they responded strongly. Was it worth their trouble to respond? Was it a battle they could let let go off? And say they could strategically respond to different types of invisibility in different contexts. And what we found was that this was actually a really strategic way to create visibility for themselves. 

JB: 
So, what would a tactic be in that case in terms of sharing pragmatism around the circumstance?

BB: 
So the strategic response would actually be you, let's say you are in a meeting and you experience some sort of microaggression, right? Somebody ignores the point you've made. Let's say you have a boss who supportive, you would go back to your boss and say, "this is what happened, I would really like to have a conversation with this person. What do you think?" Your boss says, "I think that's a good idea. What if I'm in the room?" And so being really strategic in having these conversations at work. Or saying, you know what, I do not have the social support I need right now, so I'm just going to let that go for now and resolve it. You know, commiserate with somebody else. You know, get that pain, point out. 

JB: 
Got it. Yeah. And obviously then that links to your allyship research because clearly if you do have an ally who is, you know, is sort of, reading the room, he or she might say, you know, Barnini made a great point there. Let's, sort of, let's go into that in a bit more detail, or whatever. 

BB: 
Absolutely. And that's sort of like doing it in real time as an ally is so powerful like that calling in real time. 

JB: 
Yeah.

*MUSICAL BREAK*

JB:
So let's, let's go to the workplace of today and some of the things that we can do, and of course, different people have different responsibilities here. I mean my, my sense is that, that the, and we'll set aside right now the kind of the, the zeitgeist around words like equality and diversity. Let's assume that organizations want to do the right thing. They want to take equality, diversity, inclusion series. What does your research say about the best mechanisms that we should be doing? Should it come down to everybody understanding themselves, what they might do or are there more, sort of, structural approaches we can use? 

BB:
I'll actually talk about two things, both structural and individual. So first, for organizations that do take DEI seriously, how can we, sort of direct resources into this area and collect the information that we need to make informed decisions? This might mean through interviews with employees who might feel marginalized. This might mean focus group discussions. This might mean bad relationships where people come into a room and they share, here's what's going on in really safe space, and let that information guide you in developing your strategies. Second, move away from things like, you know, changing your logo to the pride flag during Pride Month. That doesn't necessarily lead to any kind of positive outcomes. And it's research, just a paper that I'm recently reviewing finds that it might actually lead people to suspect your intentions behind that. 

JB: 
So, that could even be negative. I mean, I take the point that it looks performative. It looks like it's just sort of, you know, nodding to it, but you're saying it could even have a negative?

BB:
It can have harmful outcomes, yeah. It can alienate people who you're trying to actually support. And so really pay attention to what they're looking for. And at an individual level, and I think organizations play you role in this, you know, organizations spending money on allyship training and mentorship training. It needs to be focused on the three dimensions we talked about. Are you aware of what the beneficiary needs from you, and are you letting that guide your actions? Are you seeing them as an individual and letting that be a reciprocal relationship because you're creating that, relationship which is going to be much more long term? And finally, are you engaging in actual action instead of mere good intention? So this might mean, as you mentioned, seeing something in a meeting when something occurs right at the moment. It might mean changing some kind of policy that might be less fair. And really letting that guide you. And this might be uncomfortable. Like I acknowledge, it's uncomfortable. It's also having, getting comfortable with leaning into the discomfort, letting mistakes, so to say, be learning opportunities as opposed to them leading you to shut down and feel embarrassed. We're all learning. The space is complicated and we're learning. 

JB:
So let me follow up on that, because, you know, I've certainly felt, that it's quite challenging to, to address the, the need, the opportunity to take EDI seriously. I feel like I'm sometimes walking on eggshells in terms of, am I using the right words? You know, you talk about women of colour, right? And I can use that expression. But if I use a slightly different expression, am I somehow getting it wrong? 

BB:
That's such a great question. And we actually saw it come up a lot in the data, both from allies and beneficiaries, where allies said, "I am really nervous of making a mistake saying the wrong thing." What we heard from beneficiaries was that, "we don't, it doesn't bother us if you make a mistake, as long as it's not repetitive and there's an intention to harm. We're all learning, we're going to make mistakes. But can you sort of treat that as a learning opportunity?" Also ask for clarify, ask for clarification. Say, "am I saying the right thing?" And I do this a lot because there's a lot of things that I am still unfamiliar with and I really have to learn. But letting it be an ongoing learning commitment as opposed to, that's yeah, that's uncomfortable.

JB:
So a senior executive who's listening says, "yeah, I buy this, I want to do the right thing because I believe in it and I'm sure my colleagues do as well." Should he or she be trying to almost build it into the culture, leading by example, simply trying to behave in the right ways, get people informally to do everything you've been talking about. Or should he or she be actually trying to institutionalize changes in, you know, rules, processes and incentives? What's your advice on that? 

BB:
So Julian, it's actually a bit of both. Leadership research says that yes, role modelling the behaviours you want to see in your employees is one of the most effective ways of making cultural change. It has to be top down. You have to be role modelling these conversations, the vulnerability around making mistakes, saying, you know, "I don't know the right terminology, but we're going to figure this out together." But also, importantly, making institutional changes. Streamlining your hiring processes and making sure there are no biases that are creeping in over there. Are you making sure that your promotion systems are set up in a way that, again, don't let biases creep in? Can you monitor, whether teams are meeting the sort of, you know, the goals that you have for a diverse workforce. That also looks like your clients that services clients who are diverse, like we are in an increasingly diverse population in Canada and North America in general. And I think it's also a disservice to not be able to represent and service those people in a way that's fulsome if you don't look like that as an organization. So absolutely, making institutional changes. 

JB:
Good, thanks. 

*MUSICAL BREAK*

JB:
Couple of final questions and then we'll wrap up. First of all, how do you how do you teach this stuff to your students? I mean, you're teaching one of our, kind of, core courses. So to some extent you're teaching sort of the generic organizational behaviour that every student needs. But I imagine you do try to bring some of your research in as well. 

BB:
I do. So like you mentioned, this is one of the core courses that undergrads, must take and it is an intro to organizational behaviour course. But I interweave these ideas of belongingness and opportunities, that's the language I use and that's my way forward with this. How can we create organizations and teams where every individual feels a sense of belongingness so that they can perform at their optimal selves? And students seem to take really well to that. Once they've bought into that idea that belongingness leads to higher performance, etc., and we have so much research showing that, it is so much easier then to start talking about, well, what does that mean for so-and-so group and what does it mean for so and so identity? And they are really responsive. We do a lot of experiential learning, where they read many cases on different groups experiences. They role play, you know, being in different shoes and I think they get a really good sense of what it means to, or get a good sense of what the perspective of somebody who's different from them looks like. 

JB: 
Because many of these people have not had any formal work experience, but I guess they've had, you know, summer jobs, they've had high school experience. I mean, they've all experienced some of these dynamics. Right. 

BB: 
Exactly. And they're all they, you know, they're in their third, fourth years. They've been doing team activities and team assignments for the last couple of years. And like you said, practically all of them have some summer internship background especially. And they're in like pretty serious firms. And I think they can relate to a lot of this. One of my students, this is actually really interesting. One of my students, we were talking about belongingness and he brought up how he had joined a financial desk and there was only one other female intern, and it was all men. And how he noticed that she was kind of sitting by herself and not really talking to everybody else. But he sort of became aware of that and then they tried to pull her into conversations based on, you know, do you like sports? Like finding, you know, different ways of connecting with her and I was like, that is so powerful. 

JB:
Yeah. Wonderful. What are you working on now? What do you what's your next big project? Is it in the same vein?

BB:
So, I do have projects related to these topics, but I do want to talk about a really cool project I'm working on that I'm most excited about. It's with Aparna Joshi from Michigan, and we're looking at how the Indian caste system manifests in North America. You know, right now, all our CEOs, some of the biggest companies are Indian men. And so there's a lot of upward mobility that this group experiences. We're trying to unpack that and see if, dynamics in India affect that in any way. 

JB:
Fascinating. Yeah, no I look forward to reading about that. So if there's one thing that our listeners should take away from today, and of course, our listeners are senior executives, they're current students and everything in between. What's the one piece of advice you give everybody?

BB: 
Could I say two?

JB: 
You can give two. 

BB: 
Okay. Do not be afraid of making mistakes. Mistakes are normal. And they are learning opportunities. And allyship coaching, mentorship, they are verbs. They are not nouns. So they have to be rooted in ongoing action and learning. 

JB: 
Perfect. Thank you very much. We will close there.

You have been listening to Dialogue with the Dean from Ivey Business School. A big thank you to my guest, Barnini Bhattacharyya, for sharing her time and insights. And of course, thank you for tuning in. Until next time, goodbye.

KB:
This was Dialogue with the Dean and Ivey Impact Podcast series. For more insights from Ivey, including thought leadership on critical issues and additional podcast episodes, visit iveyimpact.ca or subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. Thanks for tuning in.