Managing Your WORK IDENTITY: Authenticity, Bias, & Resume Whitening with Professor Sonia Kang (ep. 216)

Speaker A: Anytime where it's unclear what the process is for a promotion or what the process is for even hiring, that's where you can see bias in people's individual idea of fit, let's say, come through.

Speaker B: That was Professor Sonja Kang, professor of Organizational Behavior and HR Management at the University of Toronto Rotman School of Management. I met Sonja a few months ago when we were both teaching in an executive education program there at the University of Toronto. We hit it off, and here we are. Let's do this. Let's talk about talk. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and I'm your communication coach. I coach ambitious executives like you through the Talk About Talk podcast to communicate with confidence and credibility so you can achieve your career goals. Sound good? You can learn more about me and about Talkabout Talk if you go to talkabouttalk.com. In this episode, you're going to hear my conversation with Sonya, where we talk about identity at work. Everything from the distinction between authenticity, transparency, and bringing your whole self to work to her fascinating research on resume whitening to psychological safety and the leadership tightrope that ambitious women are forced to balance at the end. As always, I'm going to summarize with three key learnings so you don't have to take notes. Now, let me introduce our guest. Dr. Sonia Kang holds the Canada Research Chair in Identity Diversity and Inclusion, and she's a professor of organizational behavior and Human Resource management at the University of Toronto, where she's also the Academic Director at the Institute for Gender and the economy, or GATE. Sonja earned a PhD in social psychology from the University of Toronto, and she completed a CCHRC postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University. Here we go. Thank you so much, Sonja, for being here today to talk with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about our identity at work.

Speaker A: Thanks so much for having me on.

Speaker B: So your work focuses on identity and inclusion in organizations. I would love to start here with identity and authenticity and transparency and professionalism. What do you think about the idea of bringing your whole self to work?

Speaker A: So I think that, in theory, it's a nice idea. Uh, right. Like, everyone wants to feel like they can be authentic. They want to feel like they don't have to change who they are at work. But in reality, it's, I think, overly simplistic to think that everyone can bring their whole, uh, identity to work. Some people can for sure. Right. And that is going to be the people who are kind of part of the dominant culture and who, like, really feel like, safe within a Space. But if you're someone who's from a group where you may have traditionally experienced discrimination or stigma at work, bringing yourself to work is A, harder and B, maybe not a good idea. Right. So if you're thinking about this in terms of, like, strategy, if you're from a group where you have consistently experienced discrimination based on some part of your identity, like, bringing your whole self to work might not make sense for you. Right. And so strategically, it might make more sense to conceal parts of your identity or kind of downplay them just to get through the day. And so I think the goal of bringing your whole self to work is a good one, but it's not really like an individual level goal. It's more of an organizational level goal where organizations need to create the conditions in which that can actually happen for everyone.

Speaker B: I love that you brought that up right out of the gate. It's not all on the individual. Organizations need to create a culture. And we can get into psychological safety, uh, later, but create an environment where people feel comfortable to be themselves. So something that I sometimes share with my clients, Sonia, is I wouldn't share my whole self anywhere, never mind at work, because you'd think I was crazy. We have multiple identities, multiple roles. So we're already filtering some of who we are and what we're thinking and what we're saying.

Speaker A: We.

Speaker B: What advice do you have for leaders who may be leading diverse teams, or people who are a visible minority where they experience discrimination? What advice do you give them? I guess, in. In both of those contexts, for the dos and the don'ts.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think, like, one of the big things is making sure that you're not making authenticity or, you know, like, sharing things about your personal life or like bringing your whole self to work, making that kind of like a performance requirement, which can often happen when people start talking about fit. Fit, I find, is really just like coded language for, are you like me? Are you like the other people who are here? And so this happens a lot with, I think, when people are first entering into organizations. Right. So when you're doing, like, interviews, when you're trying to, like, assess whether someone's going to, like, work with your group, I think so much of that is based on personality, someone's interests. And so that fit is really a proxy for similarity. Right. And so that also carries forward often into performance evaluations, like who gets promoted, who gets really great assignments. And so I think, like, my advice would be to try to make sure that you're not including something like that into your Assessments of who will be best for whatever the opportunity might be. Uh, concretely, I think that means that. That you have to have a really, like, detailed idea of what your assessments will be based on. Right. Because anytime you have, like, ambiguity, that's where bias really thrives. So anytime where it's unclear, you know, like, what the process is for a, uh, promotion or what the process is for even hiring, that's where you can see bias in people's individual, like, idea of fit, let's say, come through. And so the more structure you have in terms of, like, what I'm actually going to be assessing, the better, because then you can stick to that in the same way for everyone.

Speaker B: So, in other words, ambiguity is where bias thrives. I love that you're going to be quoted on that. I had an experience when I was in my 20s where I was in the final round of interviews for a big job that I ended up getting. But in the last interview, the senior vice president who was interviewing me said, andrea, I have one last question. On Friday night when we're all going out for drinks, are you going to join us? And in my head, I was like, wow. So he's literally asking me, are you one of the guys? Uh, yeah. Are you one of the guys? And I was. I said, of course. Right. And then afterwards, I was like, yeah, that's about as close as you can come to saying, are you going to feel fit? Are you going to make sure that you fit in with this crew?

Speaker A: I also think, like, generationally, that's not of, um, so much interest anymore. Like, I think that that idea of, like, you want to spend all your time at work and, like, hang out with your work friends and just, like, that's your life, I think, is much less common now, particularly with the generations who are just, like, entering the workplace now and probably within the next five, 10 years. Like, I don't think that's going to be such a big, big focus. And so it's good to get in the habit now, I think, of eliminating that kind of fit stuff from our kind of assessment of people and their performance at work.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I think about that conversation back then. And, you know, if you, if you. Speaking of thought bubbles, if you could have read my thought bubble, I was like, did you just say that?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And also, like, I don't want to hang out with you, like, outside of work. You know, I was like, maybe.

Speaker B: Maybe once or twice, but really? Come on.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And, like, not everyone can say that people are going to feel like they have to go every single time and they have to be there. And that could be true, right? Like, it could be like, again, like, a lot of the responses that we see are strategic. It's like, I know what's going to happen if I don't do this. I feel forced to do this, but I'm going to do it. And so that's where that individual, like the kind of like, onus on individuals becomes so hard to bear. And that's where you see people, like, burn out and leave and try to, you know, like, a lot of, like, mental health issues come up with that.

Speaker B: So I think, I feel like this is a nice segue to the conversation about psychological safety because one of the components or elements of psychological safety is actually diversity and celebrating diversity and creating an inclusive environment where people believe it's safe to say risky things or do risky things, bring up issues, admit to challenges that they're having, all of that. So in this context of building on this idea of fit and diversity and then all of this research about how psychologically safe cultures are the highest performing cultures or teams, how can leaders encourage themselves to create and then sustain a, uh, truly psychologically safe and inclusive culture?

Speaker A: I think people in those positions kind of like, need to pay attention to the cost of disclosure, right? So, like, if you want people to disclose anything, right? So, like, whether that's based on their identity, whether it's based on, in the true, like, psych safety research, you know, like, things that are going on that need to be fixed or mistakes that they're making, you really need to diagnose, like, what's going on when someone actually discloses, like, what is that process like, right? So is it, like, awkward? Do they really feel like they're putting themselves on the line? Do you respond right away? Like, the worst thing I think is like, having a culture where people are bringing things forward, but then, like, nothing happens with it, right? And so I think for psychological safety, like, what happens before? So, like, is it super stressful? Are people having to, like, work themselves up to say something and then what happens after? Like, are you actually following up on it? And does something actually change tangibly? I think those two parts around the disclosure are so important for leaders to pay attention to. Even, like in parenting, right? Like, you want your kids to tell you stuff for sure. But, like, my son tells me this, like, I'm a big, like, reactor, right? Like, happy, like, all kinds of emotions. I'm just like, all in on it. And so sometimes he'll say to me, like, can you. I'm gonna tell you this thing, but, like, you can't react to it.

Speaker B: Good for him.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know, it's great. Like, he's 11, he gets it. So, uh, I have to, like, train myself to, like, downregulate that, like, emotional display, I guess. Right. And so it's not gonna be the same, obviously, with someone who works like a direct report or something like that. But again, it's like paying attention to the things that might prevent them from telling you what you want them to tell them. And then also afterwards, like, how do you react to that information and what do you actually do? Right. Like, how do you actually implement something that's going to help them or change something for them? Or is it the case that they just wanted you to listen? Right. And, like, they want you to acknowledge that, like, that's a hard situation. Let's try and think of some ways that you can deal with it yourself. Right. So, like, sometimes it's up to you to solve a problem, but sometimes it's really like scaffolding and they're just coming to you for support.

Speaker B: I remember hearing Amy Edmondson say that when someone comes to you, and I like how you said this. With a disclosure, the best way to respond is, thank you for telling me, please tell me more. And I'm imagining, even as a parent, right, when your, your child tells you something, mom, I messed up, Guess what happened? And you're thinking, oh, my gosh, like, what are we gonna write? Instead of, thank you for telling me, keep going, tell me more. Right in the moment. It's really hard, but really effective.

Speaker A: Yeah. And even, like, I think that sometimes is much more effective even than asking questions because it leaves it more like sometimes, of course, questions are important because you need to, you know, like, figure something out, figure some specific thing out that's going to help you to, like, understand it better. But a lot of just, like, listening and letting people talk about the parts of the problem that are most important to them or that are most important for them to solve is really important in terms of, like, tailoring your response to what's actually going to help them.

Speaker B: So continuing with this theme of disclosure and bringing it back a little bit more to the theme of identity. Some of your most fascinating research that I uncovered focuses on resume whitening and self editing. Can you share with the listeners a summary of what you did in your research and what the findings were?

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So I really, like you said earlier where you were talking about filtering, right. And like, you're always filtering parts of your identity, and you're not just, like, putting it out all out there all the time. So resume whitening is like that, except it is another type of individual response that is, like, forced on people when there's a broken system. So specifically, in the work that I've done on resume whitening, we look at situations where people will conceal or downplay cues that might reveal that they're not white. And so this could be like, they might use an initial instead of a first name. That's, like, culturally linked. They might take off experiences that are for particular racial groups. So, like, an example of this is someone who was in one of our studies, won a, um, extremely prestigious scholarship that was just for black students and took that off of the resume because that would show that they were not white. Even though it's, like, very competitive, like, extremely prestigious, well known. They were like, this signal is going to hurt me more than it's going to help me. So it's those types of things that people are kind of either downplaying, which is, you know, like, if you were part of, let's say, Muslim Students association, you might take out the Muslim and just put, like, students association or concealing entirely, which is just removing it. So that's resume whitening. And what we find in our work is that when people are applying for jobs, there tends to be some element of the filtering that you're talking about that is specific to these types of racial cues. In our sample, about a third of participants said that they had whitened their resumes previously. And I think it's probably more common than that. Right. Like, this is the number of people who told us about it. But you can imagine that there's like, some degree of this for all kinds of different identities. Right. It could be like a gender thing. It could be about disability. Right. If you've taken time off of work for something. And so we found that people knew about resume whitening and were engaging in this activity. Then we wanted to know, does it actually make a difference in terms of whether or not they get a call back for an interview? So we did something called an audit study, which is weirdly named. Basically, it means that we sent out resumes in a bunch of different areas across the US Some of them were whitened, Some of them had the racial cues that existed previously. And we did this with black, white and Asian applicants. What we found was that when the resume just included all of the racial information, the highest rate of callbacks came for the white applicants, and there was a decrease for Asian Applicants, and then an even bigger decrease for black applicants. Specifically, black applicants were two to two and a half times less likely to get callback than a white applicant. When you whiten, those differences disappear. Because, again, these are equivalent resumes. But I think the most, like, striking thing about this work is that we also sent out resumes. There was another variable where we sent out resumes to companies that either had diversity statements or did not. This work is now, like, 10 years old. Right. So this is before a time like, now. Well, actually, now we're in a different time entirely. But there was a period of time

Speaker B: the pendulum has swung, Sonia.

Speaker A: We're like, maybe we're back to this time. So there was a time where all companies had diversity statements, if you remember. Like, it was just, like, part of the performance, right? Like, they all said that, like, we value diversity and we want everyone to apply. So when we did this work, it was during a period where not all companies had this. Right. So we sent out the resumes to companies that do have those kinds of statements and companies that didn't. So what was really striking there is that applicants really paid attention to those diversity statements at the time. Like, these were seen as genuine. Right. And so it was a signal to them, like, hey, you can bring your whole self to work. You can be yourself. You don't need to whiten. And applicants didn't. They were more transparent, but it backfired because those companies were no less likely to discriminate than companies that didn't even mention diversity at all. So they were actually opening applicants up to more discrimination because they were sending the signal, like, you know, it's cool, cool.

Speaker B: You can be yourself, be your whole true self.

Speaker A: Yeah. But there was no actual change in terms of what their process was. Um, and so then they ended up experiencing more discrimination because they were transparent. Now, I think, you know, like, we're in back to, like, the pendulum is swung back, right? And we're now in a period where organizations are kind of scaling back on diversity, inclusion, language, less so in Canada, obviously. But it would be interesting, I think, to, like, see how that works now after a period of time where it was ubiquitous. And I think, like, companies did a lot in order to change their processes. And, like, it would be interesting to redo it now and see how things, uh, stand in terms of the comparison to the original.

Speaker B: What do you say then, to people who are in one of these visible minority groups given this information? This is valid scholarly research showing that there is a negative impact for them to not whiten. Their resume. Do you say, if you have to whiten it, whiten it.

Speaker A: So people do ask this question and I think, like with everything else, I think that there is a pressure to navigate a system where there is discrimination. Right. And so if you experiment with your resume and you find that you're getting more callbacks by whitening and this is like strategically advantageous to you because you need a job, then yeah, like, unfortunately, it's your choice. Obviously I'm not going to say, like, everyone should do this, but if it's something that you want to do and it makes sense for you, then I think people are going to experiment in all kinds of different ways on their resumes. Right. With how they're presenting themselves or like even in interviews. Right. Like the kinds of things that you talk about, like experimenting, I think is good to kind of figure out like, where you're getting the best feedback or like where your value, I guess, is like landing in the best way possible. But I also just like hate that people have to ask that question because it's really like an organizational issue that there is room for bias anyway, right at that age, uh, especially now, like, I think that there is a lot that can be done to kind of like, you know, like skills based testing or other types of ways of making assessments. So that's what I would say. But again, like, I just hate that people have to ask that question in the first place.

Speaker B: Yeah. You're reminding me of a workshop that I coached a couple years ago where a, uh, young Asian woman of childbearing age brought this question up explicitly. She said, I have so many things going against me right now and I feel like I need to misrepresent myself. And I love the way you answered that. Unfortunately, it is a bit of a numbers game. If you're going to get a job, you kind of have to play the game. And one thing that I said to her was, it's not that you're not a great mom and it's not that you're not a wonderful member of the Asian community. You show up as your best self and eventually you're going to get promoted. And I know that you're going to end up changing the culture wherever you are to make it more inclusive. And she's like, yes, that's the plan.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um, again, like, also generationally, right? Like, I think looking better because younger generations are less likely to whiten their names, like use an Anglicized name, especially in like, bigger cities. Right? So like Toronto, like Vancouver, it's going to Be a different story than let's say, like, Edmonton or Calgary for a number of different reasons. But I think this is much more. Something that earlier generations of immigrants were doing less. So as we move down to like, second generation, third generation, they'll keep their names. And I think because of that, there's more familiarity around how to pronounce names. And like, oh, I've seen this kind of name before. And so hopefully, like, that will also play a role because I think some of the, like, issue with resume whitening is even just like a fluency thing. It's like, I don't know how to say this name. Like, I. We talked to a hiring manager who like, told us straight up, like, when I see a name that I can't pronounce, like, there's so many other people. So I don't want to basically like, hurt this person's feelings by saying their name wrong. And so I'll just like, go to someone else and it's like, hey, you know how you're hurting their feelings is like, by not hiring them. So. So I think as people become more familiar with names from the groups that are like, there's higher levels in the population. I think that also helps as well. That familiarity piece is important.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. I've noticed people avoid saying my last name. They sometimes will call me Andrea or Dr. Andrea. Before we get into, uh, one of my favorite topics that, that I can't wait to hear your perspective on in terms of ambitious women and the leadership tightrope that they're forced to balance on, I just want to ask you about ageism. Um, have you done any research similarly in terms of identity related to ageism?

Speaker A: Um, yeah, so actually some of my. Like, during my PhD, I did a lot of work on ageism. Um, ageism is a really interesting case because it is much more acceptable than other types of discrimination. So whereas in like, a movie, let's say, right, like, it's much less likely now that you would see like, overtly racist or sexist content. Like you do still, but not as much, but like, there's still this kind of like, social like, acceptability of ageism. And so that's a unique case because you're coming up against like in. With racism or sexism or, uh, ableism. I think there's like, m more of an understanding, like, these things are bad and we should try and like, minimize them. Whereas with ageism, it's like, I don't know, it's. People still think it's acceptable. They think it's funny. Like, it's a whole different type of discrimination.

Speaker B: I hadn't thought of that, Sonia. But, you know, what you're making me think is, ironically, it may be the last ism, um, to go in terms of being socially acceptable or unacceptable. And ironically, it's going to affect everyone because you're gonna get older, right?

Speaker A: Absolutely. And there's work on, you know, like, gendered ageism, um, for example. So, like, women will experience ageism much, um, more negatively like men as they get older. People are like, oh, they're so wise and they have all this experience, you know, Whereas women, it's much more likely that the stereotype will lead people to think that an older woman's incompetent or won't be able to, like, put in the time that's necessary because she'll be tired. And, you know, there's a lot of gendered and intersectional effects of all of these different types of stigma. But I think ageism m is particularly like, you know, for gender, there's a much greater penalty for older women.

Speaker B: There was a great article, you probably read it a couple years ago in the New York Times called the Moment I Went From Babe to Hag.

Speaker A: Oh, wow. No, I didn't read that.

Speaker B: Yeah, um, I'll find a link to it and I'll send it to you. And I'm also going to put it in the show notes. It basically illustrates exactly that point. And that is a beautiful segue to this other tightrope that women are forced to navigate. So my female clients, the ambitious women that I coach, often bring up this impossible balancing act that they have to navigate where if they show that they are caring, then people think they maybe that they're a lovable fool. Right. Versus if they are more. More focused or direct in their leadership style, people think they're a jerk. So what do you think about that?

Speaker A: Okay, so this, uh, is a classic double bind. There's so much research showing that women experience exactly what you're talking about. There is this, like, push and pull between competence and warmth. So if you're too competent, people think that you aren't warm enough. If you're too warm, people think you're not competent. And it's a very fine line. It's not only the case that there are these stereotypes and expectations for women, but also the kind of leeway that women are given to deviate from those is so much smaller than what is afforded to men. So men can display, like, huge array of different behaviors and still be judged as competent. Whereas for women it's like so narrow. You make one mistake, you have to prove yourself all over again. So in some of the work that I've done with my former PhD student Dr. Joyce Hu, who's now at UCLA, we look at coming up with more structural solutions to that. So it's not up to women to like kind of walk that tightrope. So as an example of that, one of the studies that we did looked at promotion processes. And so historically, women are much less likely to apply for promotions than men. And we looked at how that works and everything in life. Basically you have to do something to be considered for promotion. So we call this an opt in in behavioral science and life in general. We're just basically like, you know, if you're sitting at your desk and you know about this promotion opportunity, but you don't tell someone you're interested in it, you don't apply, you're not going to get it. So we looked at that and we thought like, this is a place where stereotypes might be impacting women and preventing them from applying because they know, like you, if you put yourself forward, people might think like, oh, like you're so into yourself you think you're good enough to apply for this position. Yeah, uh, who do you think you are? You're going to get like dinged on warmth. There's so much that's going into that for women, whereas for men, and there's research on this where men will look at an opportunity like that and just be like, yeah, for sure. So let's say this isn't what the research is exactly, but I'll make it simpler. So let's say there's like 10 criteria that are needed for a promotion. Women need to see 7, 8, 9 before they even consider like signing up. Sometimes it's like you need 10 of those to say yes. Whereas for men at like 3 or 4, you're like, yeah, they're like, put me in. Like this is for me, I can figure out the rest. Like, it's fine. So we wanted to kind of undo some of that so that it wasn't um, kind of on women to decide whether they're going to put themselves forward in that very fraught kind of social context. So we switched up the way that the promotion system worked to be an opt out. So basically everyone who was passed a particular threshold that we decided on beforehand of performance would be considered for this competitive process, but they always maintain the ability to opt out. And so what we find is that when it's the Traditional kind of opt in system. 75% of men choose to compete under those situations, um, circumstances, whereas only 25% of women will put themselves forward. But under an opt out, that completely eliminates that gap. We're now, you know, 75% of women, 75% of men are staying in the competition when they are kind of put there because they've been told, like, you're at the threshold, you're good. That takes away that idea of I'm worried that people are going to think that I think I'm better than I am or whatever it might be that's preventing women to put themselves forward. So that's an example of like a structural type of solution. We've also done this with hiring, with, um, job language, job ad language. So we worked with a company who they were having a hard time hiring women for this entry level position, which on its surface it wasn't obvious, like, why women weren't applying for this job. And so basically what we did is we looked at the job advertisement and we were like, whoa, the way that this is written is like, you want to hire a man, right? There's like, the language in this job advertisement is signaling that this is a job for, you know, men to apply for, basically. And there's lots of work on this looking at gendered language. So, you know, like, gendered language might be things like competence or brilliance or like rockstar or like competitive, like assertive. Right? Like where it seems like these are neutral, but those types of things are much more likely to be associated with men. And men are allowed to be those things much more than women. So we took that job ad and we changed it to make it gender neutral. And we were able to increase the number of both women and men who applied to the position. So it became more inclusive overall. And I think that's really important because it also speaks to like, we've been talking about generational stuff a bunch here, but I think it also like, speaks to the changes in how people approaching work. Right. Like, no one really wants to be that like, hyper masculine ideal of the ideal worker anymore. Like, people want a more balanced kind of like a job where you're not like sleeping under your desk and like showering in the bathroom sink is like, not appealing to people as much anymore. Um, and so taking gender out of that job ad helped them to diversify not only in the applicant pool, but then also who got hired into the position as well.

Speaker B: I love how we've gone full circle now and we started talking about the individuals who are experiencing this and you shifted it to at an institutional level. Here are the things that you can do. You change it to opt out. And you watch the language. Words matter. This reminds me also of an incredible woman. If you haven't met her, I hope you listen to this podcast episode. I interviewed Michelle Boudria, who's the past CEO, recently retired, of McDonald's Canada. And she said that when she got promoted to a certain level, one of her very insightful male managers said to her, michelle, you've now reached senior management. You can start being your true self. And she's like, what are you talking about? He said, I know that you aren't the way you present yourself. And so she let herself be the more kind and nurturing human that she is. And she came up with this kind of mantra or saying that she would say to people, which is, do not mistake my kindness for weakness. And I was like, wow. I did some research, I checked it out online. Apparently the person that said that first was Al Capone, the mobster. Yeah, he meant it very differently from how she meant it. He meant, you better be kind to me or, uh, respect me or I might kill you. She just meant, I'm gonna get business results. You watch and see. Right? Love it. Okay, I want to ask you the three rapid fire questions. Are you ready?

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: Okay. I know you're big on psychology. I can't wait to hear about this, what you say about this. Are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Speaker A: Okay, so definitely an extrovert. However, as a caveat, I do have introverted tendencies, so I need a lot of recharge time, I think. Right. Like in any social situation, like, I'm not a true extrovert in the sense that, like, I come out of that and I'm like, so energized and I'm just like, let's go to the next one. Like, I need like a cool down period. And I do, you know, enjoy kind of a lot of activities that are more. I mean, I think it's part of the job. Right. You know, like being an academic, I think it's a lot of introspection, a lot of, like paying attention to your thoughts, like communicating them. And so definitely, I would say an extrovert, but maybe like a little bit of introversion there.

Speaker B: From time to time you're on the scale closer to extrovert, but you may be an ambivert. Right? Like a extrovert leaning ambivert.

Speaker A: Yeah. So my husband is actually a, uh, he's also on Faculty at Rotman. And he's a personality psychologist. And so when I say stuff like this, he's like, no, like, you're an extrovert. So that's the professional opinion.

Speaker B: That's gotta be fascinating, living with a personality expert.

Speaker A: Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker B: Next question is, what are your communication pet peeves?

Speaker A: Okay, so this is a big one for me. It's fluency. So I work on my work on this a lot with my students is like, if you are communicating something in too complicated of a way, people aren't going to look at that and be like, wow, this is really complicated. Like, I better work really hard to understand it. They're going to be like, this is dumb. Like, I don't even know what this means. Like, they're going to dismiss it. And so I think so much of communication is clarity and saying less. So, like, one of my favorite things to do with my students papers is just to like, cut. And so they learn over time. I think that, like, you can communicate something once you don't need to say, like, in other words, blah, blah, blah, or have like a lot of different types of, like, phrasing that set something up. Like, it's just like, say what you want to say and just be clear. And I think that's even more so as people's attention spans for information goes down. You have to be able to say something meaningful in a concise way. It's not about like saying nothing. Right. Just put these ideas out there. It's like very strategic communication to communicate a complex idea in the least number of words possible.

Speaker B: So are you a fan of the tldr?

Speaker A: I love tldr.

Speaker B: I thought you might.

Speaker A: I think, like, everything should be a tldr. Yeah, absolutely. This is especially the case if you're asking people for things. Like, I get a lot of emails of people asking for something or it's like this much information and I'm literally like, what do you want? You know? So, like, definitely tldr.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, uh, so last rapid fire question. Is there a podcast or a book that you find yourself recommending a lot lately?

Speaker A: My favorite podcast is always the Daily, which is the New York Times podcast. I really love it because they go in depth on one particular topic every day. So they kind of pick out and curate, like, what's important. And I just really like the reporting on it. And then I'll also plug Gates podcast. So I'm the director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy at Rotman. We have a podcast called Busted where each episode we bust A myth about gender and the economy. So we have episodes on things like entrepreneurship where the myth is like, you know, there's a particular way that an entrepreneurship or an entrepreneur is supposed to look and act. And we showed that that's not the case, that so much of entrepreneurship is actually about, like, community building and, uh, connecting with people and lifting people up. And, you know, it's not just this idea of, like, you're a tech bro who's, like, trying to make a billion dollars. So in each of the episodes, we try to bust a myth like that. So I'll plug that. I think, you know, that's a podcast that people who like your show would probably be interested in as well.

Speaker B: And I will put a, uh, link to that in the show notes. Sonia, is there anything else you want to add to share with the listeners about managing our identities at work?

Speaker A: I think I would say that there is a lot of pressure, I think, to be yourself, but it's hard because your whole life is about discovering who you are, right? And so it's not like you have this crystallized idea at any given time. And I think that that's okay. And so being flexible and understanding like yourself, slowly over time, that's all I would say about that, is like, don't kind of feel like you need to be a particular thing consistently all the time. Experiment and kind of find out what feels best to you.

Speaker B: I love that in the work that I do, we talk about your personal brand not only can, but should evolve over time.

Speaker A: Yes, exactly.

Speaker B: Thank you so much, Sonia, for sharing your insights and your time with me and the Talk About Talk listeners. It was a really fun conversation. Thank you.

Speaker A: Yeah, it was fun. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker B: Thanks again so much to Dr. Sonia Kang for sharing her time and her expertise with us. In particular, I loved how she answered each of the questions from the perspective of the individual and also the institution. It's not all on the individuals, is it? Now, I'm going to share with you, as I promised, three of my favorite points from this interview that I really want to reinforce with you. The first is that bringing your whole self to work may be an aspirational goal, but it is not equally safe or realistic for everyone. Organizations need to create the conditions for authenticity rather than putting that burden on the individuals. Secondly, resume whitening shows how people from marginalized group often adapt strategically to biased systems, which highlights that the real problem, again, is organizational processes, not individual choices. And last, I told Sonya that she'd be quoted on this point. Ambiguity is where bias thrives. So leaders should reduce subjectivity in hiring, promotions, and performance reviews. All of it, by using clearer and more structured criteria. And be careful of the words that they use. That's it for this episode of the Talk About Talk Podcast. Before you go, please leave us. Ah, a rating or a review on whatever podcast platform you're on. And make sure while you're there that you follow and subscribe. Talk Soon.