Allies play a multitude of roles in people’s lives professionally and personally. Allyship does not have an on-off switch. You can’t be a successful ally in the workplace if you’re not willing to practice allyship in your personal spaces. Whether that’s with your family, community, or network, allyship doesn’t stop at work. The work of allies continues indefinitely.
Real allies take action.
To take action as an ally, we recommended an umbrella approach. It’s more of a choose-your-own-adventure.
There’s no one-size-fits-all recipe to allyship.
People often ask what I should do to show that I want to be an ally. Consider these questions guideposts as you think about the kind of ally you want to be:
- How much do you mentor folks that are different from you?
- How could you be a sponsor in rooms where people that are different from you are not?
- How do you advocate for folks that are different from yourself?
- How could you provide feedback and challenging stretch assignments to diverse groups of people?
- How could you coach, listen, and create space for self-discovery for others different from yourself?
When you reflect on the type of ally you want to be, think about your ally why:
- Why does being an ally matter to you?
- What type of ally do you aspire to be?
- Envision yourself five years from now living inclusively, what does that look like?
Write down everything that comes to mind and formulate a concise, we call this your ally why statement. In our work with inclusive leadership and allies, this is the first step on the journey. If you don’t have a strong conviction for DEI, you risk falling into the trap of performative allyship or just showing up when DEI is popular in the news cycle. Instead, draw on your why to keep your energy tank full especially when times get hard.
The next step is having a plan for allyship. With anything that’s important in your life personally or professionally, you would have goals and a framework for accountability. It’s just like making any other life change. Whether that’s getting healthier, growing into a new role at work, or considering a career change. If you don’t have a plan you’re not going to get there.
A solid allyship plan has three key ingredients:
- Your ally why
- Definition of what being an ally means to you
- Goals and concrete actions steps to live inclusively with timelines and resources
In our Know Your Ally Role workshops with clients, we often lead folks for this exercise. We start with the ally umbrella, then ask folks to create their own definition including their ally why. They leave with a solid plan for success that they can share with folks they aspire to be allies.
Allies play a variety of roles.
Getting feedback on your plan is critical to success. A well-intentioned client of ours once left a session early on his journey and made a bumble and stumble as many aspiring allies do early on. He took his plan cheerfully to a group of female colleagues and declared, “I’m going to be an ally for you.”
As you might imagine, that came across to the group as self-serving saviorism. Allies do not rescue people, they do not save the day. They listen, ask questions, and help others while not making it about themselves.
Want others to change? You can only change yourself. DEI work can be taxing because it feels sometimes like you are carrying the weight of other people’s problems. Creating space to listen when you desperately want your own voice to be heard, looking in the mirror instead of pointing the finger the other way is not easy. If it were easy to do these things, we wouldn’t need blog posts on the subject.
It’s about setting aside differences and looking instead for commonalities. If you want others to listen, listen first. If you want others to be more open-minded, be more open-minded first. If you want others to embrace DEI, model it positively for them to embrace it as well. Reflect on this: what is my role in creating positive change? What kind of ally do you want to be? An ally is someone that’s helpful to someone different than themselves. Maybe that’s a neighbor, children, or friends and family. Do you want to be a better friend, a more inclusive parent or caregiver, or help your family become more open-minded?
Remember, allyship is a journey, it is not a destination. There are no shortcuts, no instant wins. It can feel like one step forward, then two steps back at times. Our behaviors are manifestations of our cumulative life experiences. Unlearning, shifting, and learning new things takes time. Our brains don’t like to change. We’re fighting primitive hard wiring. Allies do hard things. They lean into positive change and model it for others.
