Sisterhood Is Trust
A conversation with Tina Opie and Beth Livingston
Emotional vulnerability makes high-quality relationships at work possible. When we’ve built trust and understanding with colleagues, we’re more likely to be productive and engaged. Developing trusting relationships with the women we work with, particularly with those who are different from us in some way, takes care and time. But the effort is worth it—both personally and professionally. When we connect, we feel less alone in our individual struggles, and we’re better equipped to push for equity.
Tina Opie, an associate professor at Babson College, and Beth Livingston, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa, are studying relationships among colleagues whose cultural identities differ by race, nationality, social class, or something else. They sat down with Women at Work cohosts Amy Bernstein, Amy Gallo, and Nicole Torres to talk about who was able to cultivate these high-quality relationships and what made them possible.
BETH LIVINGSTON: The idea of shared sisterhood is that we can’t empower one another, we can’t lift each other up if we can’t be honest and show our true emotion to one another. We need to be able to say, “Hey, what you said hurt me,” or “I’m dealing with this,” or that we’re feeling frustrated, sad, jubilant, proud, or insecure. How can we truly reach empowerment and be our full selves if we can’t do that? That’s what we’re trying to delve deeper into in our research.
TINA OPIE: One critical takeaway of the study is that we found a high level of emotional vulnerability among women—what we call “emotional caring capacity,” based on the work of Jane Dutton and colleagues at the University of Michigan.
Interestingly, Black women in particular showed lower levels of emotional vulnerability in the workplace. This tendency was even more pronounced if the work context was highly interdependent.
BETH: We found that same relationship with Hispanic women, which provided some interesting opportunities for us to talk about what we think might be going on. We wanted to avoid the mistake a lot of scholars make, in which they lump all nonwhite people together. These are very important relationships to tease out.
AMY GALLO: Can you explain the connection between emotional vulnerability and sisterhood?
TINA: If I think about the different workplaces I’ve been in, I often felt like I had to put on armor when I went in. While I was being as authentic as I could be, I felt that there were certain things I couldn’t disclose, especially if I was bothered by something: if I was in a meeting and someone took credit for an idea; or if someone said something that I thought was offensive and there was silence in the room; or even worse, if they all laughed and I felt that it was to my detriment. You can imagine those situations: I’m upset, I’m sad, I may be angry, and what I would do is go to another floor and go into the bathroom and cry. Then I would go back downstairs and act like everything was fine.
However, there were certain people who understood. They would look at me, and we would give each other a knowing nod or wink or some kind of nonverbal signal to say, “I see you, I hear you, I’m right in this with you.” After the meeting, I would get together with them, probably offsite, and have a cup of coffee and just talk about what had happened. Then these emotions would come gushing forth. That was often with other women of color, specifically Black and Latina women. But then I met Beth, and Beth is a white woman who I happen to feel especially close to around this particular topic. I think if more Black women, Asian women, Latina women, and white women had the kind of relationship that Beth and I have developed over time, the workplace would be stronger. We would be more resilient and have stronger interpersonal connections in the workplace. Our teams would be stronger, and I think the companies would be stronger, which is a competitive advantage.
BETH: That brings us to the buzzwords of “creativity” and “innovation.” We hear it time and time again: How can you innovate if you don’t trust people, if you’re uncertain, if you’re afraid you might fail? If you can’t trust them, if you can’t afford to be vulnerable with them, can you truly be creative and truly pursue those things that often entail risk?
So this is an opportunity for us. It’s not just the right thing to do in terms of people being more comfortable and able to be themselves at work and being happier, but also in terms of how they can reach their potential professionally. Often, women—and particularly Black and Latina women—think they have to go it alone. They feel like they have to enter their workplace with a different mindset because they’re well aware of the sorts of structural disadvantages that they face. What we’re trying to say is that these sorts of dynamic, interpersonal relationships can help brace us for those things and help us navigate them, both for our own personal good and for our professional good.
TINA: Shared sisterhood is not just for the touchy-feely, warm and fuzzy emotions. The goal of shared sisterhood is also about empowerment, about dismantling the very structures of oppression. It’s a destination, but it’s also a means to an end. It’s a mechanism that we’re hoping can be used to improve the workplace in terms of diversity, inclusion, and equity and performance.
AMY BERNSTEIN: And engagement with all of those things. Because it’s not just about crying together. It’s about testing ideas against people you trust and knowing they’re going to give you honest feedback and that you’re there to help each other.
AMY G.: In the study, you heard directly from women who either felt emotionally vulnerable or not. I’m curious: What sort of stories did you hear, and was there anything in particular that surprised you?
TINA: One thing I found interesting was when women would try to bring up issues of equality or equity in the workplace. They were trying to be emotionally vulnerable. They might say something like, “That was really hard. That was really difficult for me.” And then the white manager would respond, “Well it’s difficult for everybody.” The manager was overlooking the opportunity to connect more deeply. What I would advise any manager to do in that situation, but especially a white manager listening to a woman of color, is to say, “Talk to me about that. What made it difficult for you?” That’s an opportunity for you to listen.
Some of the other quotes that came to my mind were when women talked about feeling isolated or that they weren’t included. That took me back to some of my own experiences. In my job searches, I began to ask questions even in the interview. I was interviewing at a consulting firm—I won’t say the name—and I dared to ask about what the firm was doing when people have children. The interviewer said, “Well, you’re a new consultant. You shouldn’t be worried about that.” I didn’t get that job offer, by the way. But I felt that it was incumbent on me to begin to ask those questions because at the time I was seriously dating my future husband, and we were talking about children in the future. I’ve always wanted to bring my whole self to work, and I felt like that was an appropriate question. Clearly, he did not.
BETH: Bringing your whole self to work is part of this idea of moving beyond just caring about the diversity to proactive inclusiveness. What was surprising to me in our findings is this sort of inclusive climate is often promoted as an unmitigated good. And we did find that across the board—the more inclusive people thought their workplaces were, the more they were able to trust their coworkers.
But what was really interesting is that as the work became more interdependent—as, “I rely on you to get my job done”—that inclusive climate wasn’t enough for Black and Latina women to trust their coworkers with that sort of emotional vulnerability. Inclusion is often touted as the answer to a lot of these sorts of questions, but we’re finding that it’s more complicated than that. If you truly want to make people feel comfortable being themselves and bringing their whole selves—which includes not just their work-family choices but their emotions—we have to think beyond just inclusion as the answer.
TINA: That suggests that inclusion, or an inclusive climate, may be a necessary condition, but it’s not a sufficient condition to get the kind of connection that we think would lead to shared sisterhood and its benefits.
NICOLE TORRES: Why is it that you can work in an inclusive environment but still not feel able to be emotionally vulnerable or bring your whole self to work with your colleagues?
TINA: An inclusive climate is operating at a macro level, while some of the examples we talked about are at the interpersonal level. There may be situations in which an organization espouses particular beliefs about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and these values may even be built into some processes. But all it takes is one or two or three interpersonal incidents that conflict with that to undermine the belief that the organization is as inclusive as we might have thought. Or we might think that “it might be inclusive for some people, but not for me.”
BETH: Meanwhile, our white female respondents were very pleased with their inclusive environments. The more inclusive the environment, the more willing they were to be vulnerable with their coworkers, which is precisely as intended, I think. You would hope the more inclusivity an organization and managers build in, the more vulnerable, deep, high-quality relationships their employees would be willing to forge.
We want to avoid yet another structural solution that benefits white women to the detriment of nonwhite women. Fortunately our research is starting to be able to pinpoint where it falls apart for women of color. Some of the stories that came out were people talking about being excluded—being excluded from baby showers, from drinks after work, from conversations in the bathroom or in the hallway—and what those situations symbolized to the women in terms of how included they really were. These women of color might have felt comfortable going to their manager and talking about issues, or felt like their work was appreciated, or there were good policies and procedures in place. But when they looked around them, they still knew they were different and they still knew that they were excluded, and they weren’t willing to throw a wrench into that by asking too much of coworkers that they didn’t fully trust.
AMY G.: I can imagine that dissonance between “This is what my company espouses” and “This is what I personally experience” just makes the experience that much worse.
TINA: Yeah. Because it violates your expectations. And as I said, when I go into the workplace, even to this day, I still put on a little bit of armor. When an organization espouses an inclusive climate, you may put on less armor or maybe you take your helmet off, metaphorically speaking. And then when you get punched in the head by the realization that it wasn’t actually true, it hurts that much more because you allowed yourself to hope.
I would love for organizations to be able to have these kinds of conversations where the woman whose manager said, “Well it’s difficult for everyone,” could follow up with that manager, and it would be OK for her to say, “You know, I reflected on that conversation and I really felt devalued, and I want to discuss that with you. I want to be fully committed here, and right now I’m feeling distanced from the organization and from you.” It’s probably naive on my part to think that that conversation could happen, but I would be hopeful that it could.
AMY G.: You’re making me think. Because when I hear the word “inclusive” or “inclusive policies,” I’m pretty sure it applies to me as a white woman. As a Black woman, when you hear “inclusive environment,” do you question whether that includes you?
TINA: When I hear the term “inclusion,” I want everyone to feel included. But it feels as though me asking for a seat at the table makes other people feel like their rights are being undermined. So “inclusion” seems to mean, “We have a language of talking about the climate and the culture, as long as it doesn’t threaten people’s sandboxes, as long as it doesn’t make anyone feel nervous.” To me, that’s not really inclusion. It’s just slapping on a label because it’s politically correct, without fundamentally changing resources and processes to make sure it’s equitable.
BETH: It becomes a signal of, “Yes, we are willing to put some degree of thought and resources behind this idea.” But I think the experiences of Black and Latina women have often shown them that it’s a situation of, “Trust, but verify.” I’m not going to put my guard down until you show me that this is actually a safe place for me to do so. We now recognize when companies don’t talk about diversity and inclusion, and that tells us something. More companies now are talking about inclusion, which is a net good. It’s just not enough if we truly care about developing these deep, quality relationships—this shared sisterhood in which women support one another, appreciate one another, and build these deep, long-lasting relationships that can create safety for them, support for them, and also create these wonderful projects and ideas as well.
At an interpersonal level, I really love what one woman wrote when we asked our respondents to tell us a little bit more about inclusivity at their organization. She essentially said, “My group is incredibly inclusive, and we all trust each other because I’m in charge of it.” This was a senior Black woman. She kept an eye out for people who seemed to be excluded and proactively nipped that in the bud. I love that quote because it demonstrates that with her being in charge, it wasn’t just this idea of, “Well, it’s diversity because diversity matters,” although it does. Instead it’s, “I had these experiences, and I know how to approach my team, my work group, to make sure that this doesn’t happen again.” I thought that was really a wonderful way to think about it—“We don’t have any problems with this because I’m in charge.”
AMY G.: What concerns me about the advice that it needs to start at the top is that so often the people who are at the top are not Black women or white women. And we reward white men in particular for being emotionally vulnerable, as well as being emotionally intelligent. Whereas when women display emotion, it’s seen as weak or angry. So how do we start at the top when the playing field isn’t level?
TINA: Listen, it’s not level. But we’re trying to create a conversation that does include white men. Tim Ryan at PwC has been doing this with diversity and inclusion and equity. He’s marching right along, and he’s bringing along other people. But I don’t think the goal is necessarily to only start something like this in an organization that’s run by a Black woman. If that were the case, I don’t think it would necessarily start as quickly as we’d like, just because of the numbers.
BETH: One reason why we’re really embracing this idea of shared sisterhood is because we recognize those double standards. Although we know it needs to come from the top, when we are talking about this interpersonal, dyad-level sort of interaction, our hope is that if we can start with women being emotionally vulnerable with women who are racially, ethnically, nationality-wise different from one another, then we can also start to bubble that up as well. So, I think maybe it can come from both directions.
TINA: And men can be sisters. Bernardo Ferdman, a faculty member and a consultant I love, was involved with the shared sisterhood construct when it was really in its infancy 10 or 15 years ago. I call him a sister because he has my back in an emotional way. I can call him for advice. He will do the same thing for me. We are starting with women, but the goal is to broaden out.
Adapted from “Sisterhood Is Trust,” Women at Work podcast season 3, episode 10, June 17, 2019.