Inclusion hinges on systems that can effectively and consistently prop up marginalized voices, and one area agency leaders and executives can make a tangible difference is in meeting culture.
Agencies are notoriously meeting-heavy, so it’s often within meeting rooms (whether virtual or physical) that people get credited for their ideas and contributions, where clients come face-to-face with the people working on their accounts, and — unfortunately — where lack of inclusivity often is most apparent.
“Learn to make room for women of color to shine, give credit, and get out of the way,” writes Ruchika Tulshyan in her new book, “Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work.” An excerpt follows:
Meetings are a fact of office life that we can’t seem to shake. During the coronavirus pandemic, the physical office went away, but research shows that most office workers had to attend more meetings than in pre-pandemic days.
We know that meetings are here to stay, and done right, they’re an important way to connect with each other and make decisions. When meetings aren’t designed to be inclusive, however, they often end up excluding women of color.
If you’re a manager who leads many meetings, there’s ample opportunity for you to be inclusive on purpose. The first step is to take stock of who usually leads meetings, who gets to present at them, and who is celebrated as innovative and productive during them. In most cases, this is a white person.
Being inclusive on purpose requires leaders to seek opportunities to create room for women of color.
Designate a facilitator for every meeting, ideally the leader, who ensures that everyone has equal
speaking time. Research shows that men speak more frequently and for longer durations in meetings than women. Women—of all races and ethnicities—are also more likely to be interrupted than men, even in online meetings. This is even true in the highest offices, such as when female US Supreme Court justices are likely to be interrupted at more than twice the rate of their male counterparts. So interrupt the interrupters. Anyone, especially you, can interrupt people who interrupt women of color when they speak at a meeting. Some ways to do this politely are to say:
- “I think she hasn’t finished”
- “I’d really like to hear her point of view first”
- “Please wait your turn”
- “Please don’t interrupt the current speaker”
What’s fascinating is that the first few times that people do this— awkward as it may be—the dynamics of meetings start to shift and soon it becomes the norm to wait your turn to speak. The opposite, interruptions normalize interruptions, is also true.
If you see that a woman of color’s idea is not being heard, try another tactic. Repeat and then get out of the way. Many women can attest that often when they state an idea, it’s ignored, but when a man repeats it, it’s revered and applauded. When it happens in corporate spaces, astronomer and professor Nicole Gugliucci calls it “hepeating.”
Meritocracy convinces us that like cream, brilliance rises to the top. But in reality, it depends on who delivers the message. The phenomenon of hepeating shows us that men are frequently viewed as brilliant and leader-like—the ones with the good ideas, while women supposedly don’t have good ideas.
Meritocracy convinces us that like cream, brilliance rises to the top. But in reality, it depends on who delivers the message.
Women of color experience an even more acute form of invisibility. They often find that their ideas aren’t heard until they’re repeated by a man or white person. If you find that you don’t have trouble getting attention in meetings, but the woman of color next to you does, you can repeat the idea (even if you don’t identify as a man) and then get out of the way.
One woman of color whom I interviewed, Kiara, experienced this firsthand. In a former job, her white male manager took her aside before a meeting and said, “I have something to say at this meeting. Don’t interrupt me, just trust me.” Her manager went on to present a great idea that Kiara had. Every time that Kiara presented the idea before, her boss noticed that the team would shoot it down. Yet when her manager was done presenting the idea, the whole team applauded at the brilliant pitch that he had made.
He then turned to Kiara and said, “It’s her idea, but all of you don’t listen to her. Please applaud her and direct all questions to her. I’m just the messenger, but she’s the visionary.”
In this case, he turned the idea of hepeating on its head to make room for her idea and then got out ofthe way.
“Make room, then get out of the way” Checklist:
Excerpted from Inclusion on Purpose: by Ruchika Tulshyan. Reprinted with permission from the MIT Press. Copyright 2022.
Ruchika Tulshyan is the author of Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work (MIT Press). She’s also the founder of Candour, an inclusion strategy practice. A former international business journalist, Ruchika is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Harvard Business Review.