How to normalize allyship

New academic research finds that 76% of men not only want to be allies, but believe they’re pretty good ones already. But the same study also found women underwhelmed by men’s self-congratulatory confidence in their advocacy.

Women’s skepticism is grounded in life experience. Nobody’s against allies. Who doesn’t want someone on their side?

Allies put their authority and influence on the line for someone else, especially in front of others. Truly being an ally means putting some of your reputation and street cred on the line when a colleague is unrecognized and unheard, to make sure that their voice isn’t drowned out and their contributions and potential overlooked.

Allyship is so important that InvestmentNews has a specific award category for employees of all genders who put their own reputations on the line for colleagues, clients and community.

It all sounds great in theory, but allyship is meaningless if it’s never applied.

Meetings are the perfect settings for asserting allyship because they are such an efficient platform for modeling how your firm wants allies to act. But men often miss those moments when they could speak up and make a difference, said Andrea Kramer and Alton Harris, life and academic partners and co-authors of the newly published “Beyond Bias” (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2023).

“You can’t fix it if it isn’t broken, and they don’t think it’s broken,” Kramer told me recently. Opportunities to step up as allies often slip right past men. During free-flowing meetings, with ideas popping like corn and clarity snapping into focus in the midst of debate, it’s easy to ride the energy and not pick up on dynamics that run over women.

I’ve yet to meet a woman who hasn’t had the experience of her ideas being ignored in a meeting, only to be echoed moments later by a male colleague who then collects the credit. For women, it’s frustrating in the moment, and we know that the moment is about to get worse: we’re set up to fight for ownership of our ideas, souring a moment that should yield a career opportunity or at least appreciation.

If we hold up our hands and say, “Wait a minute, I’m the one who first brought up that idea,” the discussion derails, everyone looks around for the idea hijacker, and we look petty. But if we keep quiet, we must scramble behind the scenes to right the record, knowing that most people in the meeting recall only the louder, later voice, not ours.

All that changes when a colleague inserts a quick correction — “Hey, just so we’re all aware, it was Jane, not Joe, who brought up that great idea first.” With that, the course correction is taken in stride.

And if nobody says anything? Then senior leaders are on deck to assert and model allyship. “Meeting leaders should be attuned to what’s going on and, for instance, cite a woman’s contribution when it’s later reiterated and claimed by another person,” Kramer said.

Name, claim and don’t blame or shame — that’s how to normalize allyship.

“Most men don’t think they’re biased,” Harris said. “They don’t consciously understand that they have different standards on which they evaluate women and men. If you talk with them, they say, ‘I know I’m fair. I feel I’m fair.’ We all resist any notion that we’re not upstanding honest, admirable human beings.”

Aren’t we all, though? Therein lies the solution: articulating the definition of “fair” to call to the fore the latent ally that most of us believe is who we have been all along.

Allyship is just a state of mind until there’s a chance to put it into action. Senior leaders need only demonstrate allyship to make it real for all those in the conversation. When an ally corrects the record, thank them for doing so. Correct yourself when you fall into the habit of misattributing good contributions to those who were later and louder. Hit pause and ask those who are being outshouted to add their perceptions and recommendations. It’s allyship in action that engages the power of diversity to benefit all.