Resources

These are just a few examples of ally actions you can take to support your women and other marginalized colleagues.

Support Faculty Colleagues

• Validate and normalize experiences of marginalized faculty colleagues
• Nominate colleagues for desirable roles, awards, or recognition
• Mentor colleagues
• Co-author with colleagues
• Make their contributions more visible
• Educate yourself about the experiences of your marginalized faculty colleagues

Educate Others

• Provide accurate information and correct misinformation
• Address sexist, racist, homophobic, ableist, and other marginalizing comments and jokes
• Highlight dissonance between espoused and enacted values
• Help other colleagues identify how they will benefit from greater equity in the workplace
• Help other colleagues identify valued others who want to support this work

Change Policies and Practices

• Identify ways that current policies and practices (e.g., merit, promotion, hiring, service assignments, space allocation, course assignments, etc.) inhibit the advancement of your marginalized faculty colleagues
• Share information about problematic policies and practices with colleagues
• Share information about problematic policies and practices with chairs and other decision makers
• Refuse to participate in programs that do not include marginalized faculty colleagues

1. Recognize the bias or microaggression.

While overtly biased words and actions can be fairly self-evident, the more common implicit biases and microaggressions can be subtle and therefore harder to recognize.

2. Determine whether and how to act

In deciding what to do, consider the needs and wishes of the victim and the costs and benefits of taking action in the moment versus later.

3. Act:

A. Name the behavior you are observing.

Make explicit what the concern is.

B. Provide your appraisal.

Use “I” expressions rather than “you” expressions, e.g., “I believe that comment was not appropriate” versus “You shouldn’t have said that.”

C. Express what you’d like to have happen.

Provide a clear idea of what is needed to resolve the issue. Remember that the goal is to change problematic behavior.

D. Acknowledge intent versus effect

People make mistakes—the person may have spoken hastily or not be aware of how their words or actions are biased. However, the effect on the victim is what ultimately needs to be addressed.

E. Call people “in” rather than “out”.

Rather than put the person on the defensive, invite them to work with you to resolve the issue.

F. Save face.

Offer choices that give room for the person to acknowledge and correct their error without shaming them. “Let’s try something different. Here are a couple of options. How might we proceed?”

G. Reflect on the outcome.

Consider how effective the intervention was and how others were impacted by it. What worked and what would you do differently next time?

Adapted from Florida International University’s Bystander Leadership Training

https://case.fiu.edu/about/directory/profiles/rose-suzanna.html

A critical conversation is a dialogue between two or more people in which they discuss topics about which people tend to have conflicting views. This conversation can occur in various contexts. The purpose of a critical conversation is to (1) understand one another’s perspective and (2) work together to form a shared vision of how to move forward.

Critical conversations have the capacity to catalyze change in our workplaces. They also tend to be difficult due to personal and professional investment in the topic(s), uncertainty about how relationships will be impacted, and concern about how to handle conflicts that may arise.

Strategies for facilitating critical conversations include:

Set Goals: Establish the goal(s) you want to achieve by having the conversation. The goals can range from simply sharing how you feel to changing a policy, practice, or cultural norm in your workplace.

Ground Rules: Establishing ground rules at the beginning will help set expectations for a respectful and productive exchange of ideas. In addition to the ground rules you already have in mind, ask for input from the person or group you’re in conversation with and revisit them as needed.

Suspend Judgement: Listening empathetically to understand someone else’s perspective is a key part in having critical conversations. Try thinking about an opinion you once had that has since changed to help you listen to opinions you find especially problematic.

Summarize and Paraphrase: To ensure your understanding of what others are saying is accurate, periodically summarize main points and ask clarifying questions as needed.

Silence: Pause and leave room for silence to allow people to process information.

Nonverbal Communication: Be aware of your nonverbal communication; what you are not saying can be as powerful as what you are saying.

Open-Ended Questions: Asking open-ended questions will encourage elaboration and lead to deeper reflection and more understanding.

Finally, remember that you want to foster dialogue, not win a debate. Focus on working together toward common understanding and shared goals.