 Welcome to the McLean Ethics lecture series, we're excited to continue in our winter series, and I look forward to introducing everyone to our three panelists today. I'm going to start with the formal introductions and then we're going to jump right into the panel. I'm going to start with Dr. Shikit Jane. She brings us all together today and is a board certified hematology and oncology physician and associate professor of medicine and the division of hematology and oncology at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She's also the director of communication strategies and medicine and the associate director of communication and digital innovation for you by Dr. Jane is the CEO and co founder of the action advocacy and application nonprofit impact, which Dr. I think is also a part of and the founder and chair of the women in medicine summit, as well as the founder and president of the nonprofit also named women in medicine, which is how I was introduced to Dr. Jane. She is named one of medscapes 25 rising stars in medicine and 2020 one of modern health care is top 25 emerging leaders in 2019 and a rising star award by the lead oncology conference in 2019. She is the consulting medical editor for women in oncology and the host of the podcast oncology overdrive. She's also a nationally renowned speaker and writes for several national publications including USA Today's scientific American the hill US news weekly physician with proximity Kevin MD and have been interviewed in the New York Times. She's also regular contributor to Fox 32 and a guest on ABC seven and WTN so can catch her on TV often. I'm going to introduce our other panelists and Jeremy Yardley is a pediatric hospitalist currently at Eastern Maine Medical Center and previously at Brown University in Providence Rhode Island. He completed his undergraduate work at Brown University with the BS and biophysics and then attended medical school at Tufts University. He is active in gender equity and male allyship efforts as a member of the advanced pediatric hospital medicine steering committee and the annual symposium planning committee. He also recently participated in the women in medicine inclusive leadership lab aimed at both growing male allyship community as well as fostering skills of allyship. He's passionate about medical education and mentorship as well as advocacy. So welcome back to yard. And finally, good guys, how men can be better allies for women in the workplace and associate professor at the john Hopkins carry business school as a sociologist trained in military sociology and social psychology. He focuses his research on gender work and family issues, including gender bias and performance evaluation dual career families, military families, women in the military and the retention of women. He's also the co author of Athena rising what how and why men should mentor women and numerous journal articles and book chapters that focus on gender and the workplace so welcome to Dr. Jane, David Smith and Dr. With that I will turn it over to Dr. Jane to facilitate our panel today. Thank you, Dr. Euler for that lovely introduction and thank you all for coming to this what I think is an incredibly important topic today. I'm going to start first by I do this with every talk I give, especially when I'm on a panel. I want to ask both of my co panelists, are you okay if we refer to ourselves and each other by first name because I know all of you but I want to make sure that the audience knows that we are on level playing field and that we all respect each other we all are friends. So are you both okay with us going by first names for the purposes of this panel today. Absolutely. Yes, thank you. So let's set the stage for what we're talking about allyship, you know, I feel like allyship has become kind of a buzzword over the last several years we talk a lot about what is an ally how to be an ally. But the biggest challenge that that we see and David and Jeremy, I'm guessing you're probably going to be nodding your heads when I say this is, we get a lot of men who say to us, well, great, understand what an ally is. I think I'd be a better ally what does it mean to be an ally. I think I'm an ally, but when things happen I don't always know what to do. So the way David and Jeremy and I met through women in medicine the nonprofit I run, we started an inclusive Okay, so it looks, you know, we I want to make sure that we are very cognizant of discussing the fact that we know that there are other ways to discuss gender but because a lot of the studies that have been done have talked about a male female or woman man that is how we might discuss things today, knowing that there are many other nuances and other challenges and issues that need to be discussed when it comes to discussing gender outside of the binary so with that, I want to start by asking oh and the other thing I should mention we do not have slides today. So we want this to be a very discussion and we want you all to feel like you can ask us questions throughout. So please feel free to use the Q&A box and if you have questions throughout I'll be checking that, and we'll definitely be engaging with you as well in that manner. So to kick this off, David, let's start with you. I want to spend at least a few minutes talking a little bit about allyship being an accomplice. I think most people who are attending probably have an idea of the concept of allyship. But can you talk a little bit about why it's so important and what exactly it means to be an ally. I'm happy to. And again, thanks for including me in this conversation today. It's great to be here with all the fellows and everyone else who signed in with us. It's interesting, you know, we were looking at the idea of allyship and how people use the term as well as how they embody it in terms of their actions every day. We thought it was really important when we were doing the research for good guys to really to operationalize this to make it something that we can all kind of grasp and kind of ground us as we think about what we're doing the action part of this as well. And so we really find it kind of three key areas that we tend to focus the action part of this and the first is really around interpersonal skills and how do I show up in the workplace and how do I show up. So for for men, if we want to talk about for for men for just a second here, how men may show up in terms of the their relationships in the workplace with women, their female colleagues, being collegial being supportive being collaborative. And really working on their own self education and awareness. We think of it as kind of GQ gender intelligence or you might talk about it in terms of cultural intelligence if we broaden the conversation. But really how do we begin to do that and then when there are equity and fairness kinds of initiatives in the workplace how do we participate in those and be active components of that. And this is the easy part of allyship because the interpersonal is really about you it's it's how do you show up and holding yourself accountable for doing that work and the word accountability I think it's really important here. The second part of allyship is really about more public allyship and this is the hard part, because this is where in so many cases a lot of the men that we interviewed talked about how. So having to think about how do I hold other people accountable, not just me but others on my team, my leaders accountable, this can be very challenging. And then eventually as we get to the organizational level we can think about systemic allyship and this is what we're really shooting for is how do we create lasting sustainable change in the organization to create equity for everyone. And so as I begin to understand have developed my awareness and understanding of how bias can operate in everyday practices we have inside our workplace that creates a systemic inequity. So for example, a lack of representation maybe in our senior leadership teams or maybe different kinds of pay equity gaps, other aspects like that. So I have an obligation and to hold myself accountable for doing the work of changing those practices, even if I don't have control over them I can work with my leaders I can work with my organization to create those kinds of change so allyship is we're really asking a lot of people to do this and it's not about being passive this is really about it's not sitting on the sidelines waiting to be invited into this this is being proactive in terms of doing this work. I want to, I want to pass it over to Jeremy because I have I have a question for you that I think is, it's very applicable to a lot of men who are who feel they're already allies so the way that Jeremy and I met was he actually was a part of our first I believe our in the leadership inclusive leadership lab, focusing on becoming a more inclusive leader. And I will say, you know when I met Jeremy, I had heard that he was a very good ally already he was already somebody who was an upstander he you know he walked the walk he talked the talk, but he still did this leadership lab and I think that actually speaks a lot to something that we don't talk about very much which is, there are men who are out there were allies, but there are still things to learn about how to be a more inclusive leader, how to be a better ally how to really work towards making systemic changes and utilizing what you know what you know you should be doing and then putting that into action so Jeremy I'd love to hear from you, what made you want to do something to better your ally ship or to improve your ally ship or was it just you were curious, what led you to wanting to do this and then what did you learn from it what kind of, what helped you realize what you needed to do to be a more effective ally. First, and thank you for inviting us. Thank you for the kind words I think I might have looked at myself a little bit differently and felt that I was incredibly pretty early on and and naive and ignorant. I'm still in the field of pretty which is why I wanted to join in. I think one of the things one of the most important things that I know I talked with David about during the lab and one of the things I still feel like is a really important aspect is not only just the learning part and and gaining the skill set. But really is the part where we recognize and as to David's point you know we recognize that men need to be the solution to the problem here and need to themselves. Enter the enter the sphere. We also we need to recognize that part of this is is really embracing and I think David speaks this well embracing the discomfort and and being comfortable being uncomfortable. Even, even doing something like this I'm not a, I'm not a public speaker in any possible way, but but I know that doing these sorts of things is really really critical even though I after you know a few years of doing this I'm still really uncomfortable having these conversations is I think you know the more men that do this, the more men see other men doing this, and there's this natural snowball effect that happens so even your presence is an active effort. And having these conversations and active effort and it's, I think stimulates and encourages other men to join the conversation if they see somebody they know and the only way they see somebody they know is if you join the conversation and the more people that join the conversation, the higher just, you know, mathematically, probabilistically the higher likelihood that other people know you and so I. So I think there is a skill set to be to be learned and I, I think all of us in medicine is that it's a lifelong process of learning and you can't ever just stop learning because then there's a new study that comes out there's a new drug that comes out and you're behind and so if you're complacent in where you're at, you've already sort of, you're already behind. And so I think, being okay, knowing that you don't know, and asking questions is a really is a great place to start. I think I want to encourage people to do that and to just because you don't know I'll tell you a really quick story. Somebody that I know that Shikha knows well. There's a pediatric hospitalist out in California Jesse Allen, who I had a conversation with about equity over the course of several months, and a few presentations. I really felt like I was pretty naive and ignorant and really wanted to learn more but I was, I spent a long time crafting an email to her to ask about how I could engage more. Because I think sometimes people hesitate to come up with the right words and why isn't somebody else's burden to have to explain to me how I can do better that's my job to figure that out. But dropping some of that ego and some of that that concern is really important and recognize that you're coming at it from the right angle, even if, even if you think that it might not be received as well I think that's again embracing the discomfort. You know, our job especially is from a privileged perspective to, to, to jump into where discomfort lives because, you know, to be honest that's that's where a lot of our colleagues live all the time. And so I think that's really important for us to really embrace that. I think makes it the most challenging for men to come out and do something because so I'll give you an example that just happened recently if you're on if any of you are on social media. There was a large national conference I'm not going to call out which conference it was, but recently that happened this past weekend. The presidential address was the I believe outgoing president basically saying that all this is nonsense that diversity exists and you know just basically saying things that in 2023 should should not be the way that a president of a society is thinking because they're not right, and they're just not true. So, I think there was a lot of frustration because there wasn't as much speaking out this specialty that this organization or the specialty that that the is majority men, and there should have been a lot of outrage and there should have been commentaries there should be, you know, allyship happening in the moment. And I feel a lot of people have been stating there wasn't as much of that as we would like to have seen. Why do you think it's hard because there are men out there who I'm sure we're watching this and saying this is this is not good. Why do you think it's so hard for men to step up and to take that ownership and to make that statement or to come out as a bystander an ally or as an accomplice. Why is it so hard and how do we help make that happen because I know there's a lot of men and women who are attending were attending people of all genders who are attending today. So the question really is how do we how do we get people to the table to do this type of work how do we hold people's feet to the flame I guess you could say. I'll toss one thing in there and then I'll pass it over to David I think you know I think too often in talking to two different people about this I think too often some men look at this as a zero sum game of power. And think that in in see and I think this is a small or a component of it and seeding some power and not speaking up that that they retain that power. And I think some of our job in the educational side of things is to you know there's there's been multiple studies that look at the importance of equity in the workplace not just in medicine but in in all forms of business that those companies that that really prioritize equity through action are more financially successful. And I think, you know, we can all sit here and say that the morally right thing to do is to have equity exist in every aspect of our lives, but we also have to be realistic that we all speak to different incentives and incentive structures and trying to get more people to the table is really the goal and if the incentive structure for someone is finance, then you can say fine, then the reason why we do this is because this is going to make your company more profitable. And, you know, and nicely along the way the equity the right thing to do happens, whether that's why they wanted it or not. But I think that's one of the reasons. And I'll, you know, see this to David to another's other reasons why men might not do it but I think that's one where they see it as is if you give up, you know, if they get power then you're losing power. And so it, you know, it's a comfortable place to be sitting when you have a lot more of the cards in front of you. And so I think trying to educate and having these kinds of conversations and trying to really promote the idea of equity and how that makes life better for everyone is a really, you know, good place to start. Thanks for that scenario I feel like we could spend the next two hours just talking dissecting everything in there. But there's a lot, I think there's a lot of great points and Jeremy brings up some of those there. I would like to go back to just the, so the outgoing president making those comments. You know, it's not unusual with senior leadership in a lot of organizations companies firms today, who, especially when they're senior men they look around, and they know, for the most part they know that gender diversity and other forms of diversity are important for the organization they know these are things that they're they're being held accountable to, and a lot of different ways and some of them might be financial as Jeremy was alluding to there. And they do they'll look around and they'll go yeah but I've got you know I've got two women on my senior leadership team here in the C suite I look around I've got X number of executive vice presidents SVPs that are women. You know and and they'll do the same thing with race and go on right another forms of diversity and and say we're good. You know, why are we even talking about this we're way past this already. What they, what they don't understand is, is often that it's, it's not just about representation or having even minority representation within your team. It's also about how it, the inclusion and the equity lead to belongingness in our organization and if that's, you know if we're really trying to get to some of the, the, I think the great outcomes that come around this when we think about business outcomes, for example, but also around engagement outcomes within the workplace, and how we think about retention of talent in our organization. And people feel valued and they, you know they're more likely to recommend their company their hospital as a place, a great place to work. These things come from belongingness, and that is not just diversity in the organization that takes more to get to that point and and understanding and that's where the allyship component of this is so important the inclusive leader part of this is so important. So, you know how do we get more people engaged and involved in doing this. I think this goes back to, and it's one of the Jeremy might remember this but one of the first things we typically do and a lot of the inclusive leader labs are the, you know just having people talk about why are they here, why are you participating in something like it why is this important you understanding your why, and everybody comes at this a little bit differently and certainly why the why or purpose behind it may change over time for different people. And they become more aware and they become more educated on these issues, but certainly we hear a lot of the personal connection to doing this work when people have close to you have shared different forms of harassment or discrimination or bias that they've experienced from a gender perspective some of these we might call gendered headwinds that we felt we face. It's in touch with that sense of fairness and justice that we have it again it could be a family member it could be a colleague it could be a mentor or mentee somebody again somebody you value and they share these things and so that personal connection could be really, really vital and really getting people to move forward and develop a better understanding level of awareness, and hopefully maybe actively and get start getting engaged in doing the work. In the business case, and I think this is really important right, we know that organizations that have all the diversity equity inclusion and belonging in there, they are better places to work, they're more fun to work there they're more successful organizations you're more creative you're more innovative. If you measure your bottom line in terms of profits and losses you're more profitable to but it could be just much more about just some of the outcomes that are more important for your organization you're more likely to achieve those outcomes in your mission and purpose there. So there's, again, if we are all held to account by our stakeholders and whoever those may be for your, for your business then you have an obligation to do this and they ought to be holding you accountable for doing the work as well. And then, I think, along with this, a lot of people also think about this from a leadership perspective in terms of, it's just part of who I am as a leader, and I want to be seen that way and I want to be that way and I want to learn and become become a better leader at being a more inclusive leader a better ally accomplice co conspirator in that way so, you know, reaching out and getting in touch with people's sense of, you know that that purpose that they have I think is really important and really beginning to motivate them to get engaged and do more of it because you can leverage it you can hold them to account when you know what that is. So, we have a comment slash question in the q&a and I'm actually I'm going to bring it up now because it's it's a statement that I hear often and I have an answer for it but I want to hear what you both have to say about it so the comment is, maybe there aren't more allies because there's competition and medicine selects for competitive people. And so I'm curious how you would respond to that because that's that's a something I hear from people especially in the competitive or competitive so why would I be an ally when I'm in a competitive specialty, and you know like Jeremy was talking about the zero zero sum game, and some people think of it as a zero sum game so I'm curious as to what you think about that that medicine in itself is competitive. So maybe that's why we don't have as many allies. Well, I think I can at least speak to this from the maybe the broader perspective because I mean medicine like a lot of other industries and professions. Yeah, I mean, yeah, we do pride ourselves on being somewhat there's a sense of competition or competitiveness in there. But it's, there's a level of that that becomes toxic at some point. And, and certainly we find that in more hyper competitive hyper masculine, even be called masculine contests. The competitions, you know within the organization they can get to the point where it's all about stepping on somebody's throat to get to the next level. And of course that's not what's going to, you know, again promote and make for a better organization and reach those kinds of outcomes out there. So I think we have to be careful with that the other thing is that in those types of organizations. This is also why people don't speak up. They're not going to say something for fear that they're going to get. Again, through that competitive nature, it's somebody's going to push them down, or they're going to hold them back or they're going to get penalized in some way and we do see a lot of that out there, and those types of cultures, and it holds everyone back from for being better allies for each other and within the workplace but maybe I'll let Jeremy talk about the medicine. That's a really good question and it's a hard one to grapple with. I mean, I thankfully am in pediatrics which is not immune to competition but I know there's certainly specialties that are a lot more competitive and cutthroat in the way that they operate but I mean I think, you know, if for me it sort of boils down to what kind of an organization I think to what David said what kind of an organization do I want to be a part of and, and, and do I think if I need to operate in a certain way to get ahead at that organization and it involves stepping on people's throats. Maybe this is, this is our opportunity to, you know, this is how we change things is is we, we elevate ourselves in the view of the leaders that we we want leading us by sponsoring someone and speaking up and calling things out because if you're going to be prioritized in your organization, then maybe you start asking your questions of what why am I here. Why am I doing this. And that's hard because we've all been doing this for, you know, for decades to get where we're at, but we've been within a system that sometimes encourages that behavior and so I think this is the discomfort part for me, and realizing that if that's going to be something that that holds me back that I need to do those things. Then, then, that's, that's just, I'm not going to operate that way and I know that really is a bit is a bit optimistic altruistic that that's the way we should, you know, we should act, even if the system is not going to reward us. So today, you know you answer to yourself and your people around you and that's that's sort of the way I would I would think about it is it, you know, sticking your foot in the ground and just saying this is the way that I need to hold myself to account so that I work in in a place that I think is worth working in. I'm going to be a bit more blunt and less diplomatic. So there's a difference between healthy competition and playing dirty. Right. So if a woman in your organization is getting paid less than you, but is working just as hard or not as hard as you. There's, there's not any negative to you for stepping up and saying why is Dr so and so getting paid 80 cents to the dollar. If a woman physician is being untitled in every email where all the women are being referred to by first name and all the men are being referred to by doctor, there's no harm to you to respond and say hey maybe we should all be called by first name or we should all be called by professional title. If you see somebody harassing another colleague. It's not a competitive thing some of the inequities that we talk about are so blatant, and they won't negatively impact you by stepping up. Now, that leads to this, this common conundrum that I hear is men sometimes talk about a wimp mentality, and I'm putting air quotes for anybody who's listening on audio not seeing me because it's a direct quote it's what I've heard people say and I, I believe David and Jeremy have probably heard that type of concept before, where men have been penalized or received some backlash for being an ally or an advocate so how do you help people navigate those types of situations. And the wimp penalty is you can find it in the in the literature and the research is a real thing. It's interesting though, because it tends to be more informal penalties the way we think about it how we interact with each other and somebody somebody might say I can give you some negative feedback about it but the reality is though when it comes to things that matter so back to your pocketbook and in your wallet here is that, hey, you know when it comes to performance evaluations. Men don't get penalized for speaking up and for calling out others disrupting confronting calling things out and stopping them when they see something that's not right. At worst, it's a, you know they don't get, there's no, there's no reward or they're, you know it's just a neutral, there's nothing that happens to them. At best, they're, they're actually being rewarded for the work and their performance evaluation so there's nothing to be lost here it's again this is the the myth, right the feeling because they hear people talk about it that way. Whereas, and it's not fair whereas when if a woman speaks up in this case about some sort of a gender inequity against women. She's going to be penalized, and she will get that backlash and she will read about it on a performance evaluation she will feel it again, in her check her paycheck there so again it's not and it's not. It's not fair and this is where we have to begin again stepping up and calling out and doing our part when it comes to doing this work. And I want to I want to amplify and accentuate something that you said David. So I personally anyone who's heard me speak knows I have a lot of amazing male allies and sponsors and mentors who without whom I would not have gotten to where I am today. Not to say that there aren't incredible allies and accomplices out there. I really I would not be where I am in my career today without some of them my current boss is probably the best sponsor mentor ally I've ever met in my entire life, other than my dad. But I think that you know it's it's really important because there are a lot of people out there, women and especially women with intersectional identities, people in the LGBTQ plus community, who can't necessarily find those types of allies let's say you're in a really toxic environment. I want to talk a little bit about both sides of the coin. If you are in that situation how do you find allies to help you. And if you are an ally in one of those toxic situations or challenging situations, how do you make yourself known without putting a target on your back. So it's kind of a two part question, because it's both the need for the ally to step up and, and potentially step out of their comfort zone. But then how do people also find these people because like I said, I have been fortunate I have been in situations where I've had no allies where I've been in extremely toxic work environments and I felt completely alone and I went outside of my institution to get help. But a lot of people don't have those networks or have those resources so I'm curious what you think for for both ends of the spectrum people who want to be allies in those situations and and also people who need help finding those allies. I mean I think, again I think some of this reflects back on us as allies and and it behooves us to be to, to, you know, to speak up, you know, with whether it's so from a local perspective within your department or division to speak up and to call things and to to make yourself visible as someone who's safe to come to so if you if you are a division director, you know, setting up individual meetings where you create a workplace where people feel safe, having those conversations or feel safe coming to you having those conversations so you know I think that that's where some of the active effort comes in I think, you know, I consider myself to be a really good ally why are these people not coming to me. I mean, maybe, you know, doing some self reflection about you know what am I what do I need to do to make my workplace safe for those people to come to me to have those conversations. I think some of the, you know, I think speaking to what you had said about having, you know, having to go outside the institution to have some of these allies, isn't necessarily a bad thing and sometimes can really be a really good thing and not saying that you were saying that it was a bad thing but I think sometimes they have someone who is a bit removed from the conversation locally to bounce things off of is really important to. And I think again that falls back on allies and people doing a lot of this work to try to make this a really accessible option and to have a network of people that are really easy to connect with which is some of the work that some of the things that I'm working with are doing is trying to make an almost local setup for for people across the country to be able to connect into have those conversations from from the perspective of the per seeking out allies. I think that's really really, I think it's, it gets challenging, you know, you'd say you know you really want people to embrace the discomfort, but I think they're already there so I really do think this falls back on the the on the to create a place and both within themselves but within their institution where people can feel comfortable coming to them to have those conversations and not necessarily put that onus on the person seeking out that help. It's going to be challenging if you're looking for allies out there and but I do think that we tend to fall back on. All right, who are those people who already they just through their language and their behavior they already they already exhibit signs that they get it, to some extent and it may not be necessarily with with the, you know, your, your group, maybe from a group of diversity, but with other people but they clearly through their behaviors and their language in the way that they, they carry themselves and relate to others and show up in the workplace that they're, they probably exhibit some of those, those key ally behaviors that you can have conversations with and, and again, they can help you something in some cases like help to identify ways, find people, but finding others that you can collaborate with and get to know better and begin to open and open up and share experiences and seek advice and, and counsel and, and different ways that I think that are that are helpful in doing that. Back to the other side, though, of the coin, which I think is really important and this is why I think it's, it's really important for organizations to think about, you know, you know, how do you, how do you already have conversations about what we would call allyship or inclusive leadership, how do you make that a co-operative? I think it's really important for organizations to think about how do they systemically within their organization, either through leader development programs or mentoring sponsoring programs, whatever the case might be, how do you, how do you already have conversations about what we would call allyship or inclusive leadership, how do you make that a core component to who your leaders are and working on those skills so that it's part of the, the everyday conversations that we have and the things that we're doing out there already because we need to be visible and proactive and showing up and making sure that people see us talking and doing and exhibiting these things and be, and be seen that way. Because if you're not, if you're sitting, this is why it's so damaging just to think of yourself as an ally. Oh, I'm an ally. But you're sitting on the sidelines like, well, what are you doing to demonstrate that you're an ally and doing that every day and not, again, not be the hero in waiting. We want you to be the ally who's out there doing these things every day and being visible and doing them. And that's why public allyship is so important. We're calling out and when you see something and not necessarily calling it out but pointing out when we see inequities and having conversations with leadership about these things. And so we can begin to think about all right what are ways that we could do this better, assuming there's there's no ill intent involved with those. So one question I get asked a lot. And this is from people of all genders, but especially men, my husband and I talk about it all the time. What if you're worried about saying the wrong thing. So that, you know, he's said this to me for years where he says I was in this situation. I knew it was wrong and I wanted to say something, but I didn't know what to say and I didn't want to say the wrong thing. And I think that's a very common challenge that, you know, allies who want to do something they're worried they're going to make a misstep or say the wrong thing. He's lucky now he has me on speed dial so when things like that happen he just calls or texts me, but most people don't have me on speed dial so, and I don't always know the right thing to say I mean I do the best I can. But I think that that's a real concern that a lot of people have is what if I am trying to be an ally and I say the wrong thing and it results in sometimes people shying away from it all together. So how do we help people navigate that concern and again it's not just men I've seen, you know, I've been in situations where something happened and later on I'm like, I can't believe I didn't say something in the moment. So, what do you do, how do you help people navigate that challenge. I would say I mean what I would do personally and then also how I would, how I would teach this is, is say it, speak up and say it, and then, and then solicit feedback from from the people who are in the room while that happens and and see how that lands and just and be okay that it may not be received well, and even if the intention is right but that's how we learn right it's like we're not going to we're not going to get things right every single time. There is, there is generally an understanding that the effort was there. Maybe there's not but you also have to be okay that it may not land right. But then it's your job to look at the PDSA cycles is just go and see how that landed with people and pull them, you know pull them aside and have a discussion and see how you can do that better. I think, I think one of the, the most important things to take from this as an ally is is this none of this is easy. If it's easy everyone would would just do it. So recognize that, while though your intentions may be right. It may not, you may not get that that satisfaction that feeling that you were expecting to get by speaking up, but it's also an opportunity for you to learn. So the way you do that is through, again, kind of stepping and waiting into some of the discomfort and pulling individual people aside saying you know I, this was what I was hoping to accomplish you know how, how do you feel like I could have done that better as this did this land in the way that I expected. Know that I'm, I'm trying to do the right thing here. So it's again it goes back to that that mantra of, is this something that's that's going to, you know, is going to be a role and eventually this is something that, you know, you get better at through practice. Yeah, and this is one of the things Jeremy's heard me say this before is that you're going to make mistakes. We were human we as allies we are going to make mistakes. The only way you're not going to make a mistake is if you don't do anything ever. And that's not going to change anything so one and we can just accept that all right we we're not going to get it 100% correct every single time. Back to again hallmark traits of great inclusive leaders, people that you admire and we would consider allies as well. And that's humility that hey I and share and share sometimes maybe with others where you've got it wrong. And how you did and what you learn from it and this is where great ally communities start to build is because we're sharing with each other and it means a lot to come. You know, when Jeremy comes to me and tells me as as another, you know, white identifying male comes to me and says hey you know when I did this you know and this is what I learned from it. And I'd be like wow you know that that means a lot because we share we share some things in common now. And so it matters that we all step up and do that so having some humility I think that one we're not perfect we're going to make mistakes along the way. The second is that okay there's there's not one right solution to every situation. It varies again we're dealing with people and we can start with some basics of one come from a place of authenticity for yourself of be you when you get into this so that'll one hopefully keep you out of trouble with being a more performative ally and not really believing in what you're doing, maybe stepping in trying to look good or virtue signal in some way. So be authentic. Don't, don't be somebody different in these kinds of situations, and assume, as I said before assume good intent, don't start from a place of ill intent and I think you will find that that works. And I think leveraging our own curiosity as leaders as managers, sometimes and beginning to understand it's like, I'm sorry but I'm not really sure why you're doing that or what did you mean by that. Maybe you could explain that to me and come from a place of curiosity and learning, right that we're not here to necessarily to penalize or to shame or blame anybody into something but come from that place and I think you'll find that. In many cases that's going to that's going to lead to a much better outcome. Overall, a place of learning for all of us that we can, we can look at. But, but you're right this is not easy work as Jeremy said, otherwise everybody be doing we'd all be getting it right all the time and, and we don't. I will say talking about making mistakes I mean I speak on this topic I run courses on this topic I have an entire women in medicine summit, and I have failed multiple times I've had situations where I thought I was being an amazing ally to this medical student and then the person says, can we talk about the way you handle that situation so you know it happens to all of us and I think that's really important we're human like you said David and we know one's perfect but we're all trying to be the best people we can be and so I think if we want to actually make these systemic changes we talk about how it can't just be the people who are marginalized at the table it really needs to be the people who are in the positions of power the people who aren't facing discrimination the people who aren't necessarily the ones who are facing these inequities who need to be stepping up and speaking up and speaking out. So that being said you know we have about 15 minutes left I think in our time here and I'm still I'm going to encourage everybody please make sure you put things in the q&a we'd love to get to more questions if you have them. Before we're nearing the end of our hour. I would love to hear from both of you, you know, what are ways we can actually implement changes like I, those of you who know me and who've heard me speak before. It drives me nuts when we talk all the time about all the problems that exist and we don't talk about real life solutions, like what are the things we need to do today. January 2023 in our organizations in our personal lives, are there courses to take are the resource groups are there, are there, you know, is there a guidebook somewhere of what we need to be doing in order to make these changes because I mean I know a lot of people don't have time to do all the extra work and they just want a one page handout that says this is how you become a more inclusive leader. This is how you become a powerful ally. What do we need to do today to change our own organizations and to change our own way of thinking in our way of engaging. Big question and we have 13 minutes to cover it. Like you said it's a big question and but let's get let's start with some tangible things we can do that maybe we haven't talked about already and you know one of the ones that we tend to talk about in terms of public leadership because it requires being very visible loud and public and how you do this is around the idea of sponsorship. And, and again, we find way too often, you know, when we think about across gender and again this is kind of back into the binary again but men, men mentoring women well, you know it's not enough just to be nice to women. You've got to put some skin in the game here and you've got to push them forward in the same way that you do for other men you've got to give them the same stretch assignments, stretch opportunities, the same challenge, the same kind of valuable feedback. Each of these out there you know we could spend an entire course talking about how we can do these better. And it's not just better for women but it's better again across for everybody how we can be better at doing this and we don't necessarily spend enough time thinking about how we can do that. And the other thing is it's not enough just to be nice or just, you know, say that you're sponsoring somebody to their face but more importantly, often we find for people of power and privilege that, again, if you're sponsoring a woman, she's probably not in the room a lot of the time. And women are probably not there and again this goes for other groups as well that, you know, what are we saying when they're not in the room. Are we pushing them forward in the same way we're doing really, really using our social capital and our power to create opportunity to break down barriers to remove challenges out there in front of them to give them those same opportunities to push them forward because often we look at, but why can't we advance more, you know, more women in our organization. And it's like, Well, what are you doing to actually accomplish that in your organization and so I think the sponsorship part of this is really important. And as we think about retention and advancement of all diverse groups of people out there we don't often do it in the same way that we do for ourselves and so I think that the sponsoring would be one that I would throw out and make sure that it doesn't have to be a normal sponsor program and know by the way if you're mentoring somebody you may have the opportunity to do some sponsoring as part of that mentor mentorship as well. So it doesn't have to always be that there are small moments of advocacy that we can we have. Chica, you mentioned the, you know, not using, you know, the un-credentialing or untitling that we often find that happens and you know there's opportunities all the time where women's competence is often overlooked or devalued or dismissed and you know the untitling is just one aspect of that. But if you can begin to recognize when these things are happening, there are ways to instead of just calling it out, which would be one way to handle it. There are other ways you could you can actually be an advocate in those situations and say, I'm sorry, you know, I'd love to share my ideas about that but you know Dr. Jane here she's the expert in there I'd like to hear what she has to say. And there I have, I've kind of called the person out but at the same time I've also, you know, I've kind of shifted that spotlight back over to you as the expert or the leader in the room and that again, just one one small way to think about advocacy as another way to do the larger idea of sponsorship. And to piggyback on that, also to empower people at all levels, that sponsorship doesn't necessarily have to be something that comes from above, that you know to sponsor your peers is a really, really critical way of lifting people up. I think some of the reasons why people might hold back is this notion of psychological standing and sort of what they have to offer and you know what you know what am I worth to be able to give this this really valuable effort this sponsorship. But recognizing that it's not necessarily something that has to come from a director or you know CEO or something like that that we can all do it for each other. Hitting a little bit higher and this is something that I think is a really, really important part of how change is going to happen is recognizing, you know, earlier on our conversation that some of the higher level conversations are having in the C suite and you know who's who's present for these conversations is we really, you know, I think throughout the, you know, the world of business but especially in medicine need to really start talking about things like succession planning and term limits, and because people who get power have to hold power. And if we try to normalize the conversation about both term limits and then really normalizing succession planning so you know who are we, who are we working to, to have the skill set needed to get there really encourages people to go over, and then can encourage sponsorship at the highest level. I think that is a really big part of making change happen because realistically, the way change happens in the organization is is a bit easier to accomplish from the top. I think if we create an environment where that is what we do, which is that we, we talk to people don't necessarily hold on to their position of power for, you know, 20, 30 years. Then then that that can be a way where this gets better I think to again speaking to incentive structures we then have to also as a whole different conversation but talk about sort of, it's not really a good word for this but like the offboarding process of those leaders and what does a, you know you don't necessarily want to end your career at 50 or 55 when you're done with your term you know how do we make that something valuable for those leaders so that's an enticing an attractive option for them as well, so that we encourage this turnover but then we don't just sort of pop out, you know, really, really great talent to. I think that that is a really important part to add to be the sponsor side of things is that we really have to have that conversation, and it's not easy because giving up power is not an easy thing, but that's, I think it's going to be critical to things, improving at the highest level. At some point I want to make, I think it's really important that we all remember we all have our own implicit biases. I always talk about you know when I started doing the women in medicine summit how I created this really diverse amazing steering committee and I thought I was doing a great job, and then somebody called me and said your steering committee is made of all Indian women. And I said that's impossible because I don't know that many Indian women and I've got all specialties represented and all institutions represented. And I looked in the majority of my steering committee was Indian women, despite the fact that I talk on this topic of having diverse groups of people in leadership. And I think we fall often fall into the trap of what's easy, which is who you know, who, who's in your mind. Oh I saw this person yesterday they would be great for this position. Oh I talked to this person last week they would be great for this position. It takes real intentionality to not just think about the circle you run with, because oftentimes even if you don't realize it the circle you run with may look very similar to you. So they may be great and very qualified but you're missing this entire pool of very qualified people who don't necessarily run with you so instead of thinking about the person you had a beer with last week, maybe ask somebody who you wouldn't want to, who would you suggest for this position and start really breaking down where your own implicit biases are because, whether we like it or not it's how we navigate our lives and it's how we really orchestrate our leadership teams it's how we orchestrate our committees it's it's how we orchestrate who we're working with. And until we intentionally realize that we're doing that. I mentioned my husband earlier we're both physicians and we went to med school together so we've known each other for a really long time. His way of understanding the world and interpersonal relationships I think has transformed. Since he and I both became attendings and were trainees, because I used to tell them things that happened to me and he thought they were just happening to me. I did not realize that the experiences I was having were not because I was too loud, or I was too ambitious or I was too bold or I talked too much. It was because these were implicit biases that were ingrained in our medical system. And when he started intentionally talking to other people he realized my scenarios my situations were replicated really across the country. And so this isn't something that I think we can change in a day a week a month a year, but I think the more we identify these problems and the more we talk about them, the more other people will identify them. My husband now calls me and he's like you will not believe what happened today at work, and he will say something that five years ago he wouldn't have even noticed. So I think that it's really about having those conversations and then that intentionality and realizing that we all have our own biases but we need to take those biases and we need to identify them and then we need to utilize them to make ourselves better leaders, better colleagues, better physicians. And at the end of the day it's going to be better as you said Jeremy for the institution for the bottom line for the stakeholders for workforce engagement for retention. There's lots of data that shows that so we're nearing the end of our time I think we have three minutes left. David and Jeremy do you have any final thoughts that you want to leave our attendees with today. I have one that I would love to just leave everybody with and, and that is to remind, especially for the men on the call today here that you can't just, you know, playing on your ally Cape and show up at work and say hey I'm an ally. You actually have to start at home. So for those of you who are partnered in different sex couples out there that you know the research has been clear that for for a long time, many, many decades, women have been doing most of the domestic work, the unpaid work, the caregiving responsibilities at home. And that is, again, that is not fair and it's been holding back, we're never going to get gender equity in the workplace until we change things at home in our society. And so we've got to show up as allies at home and have those hard conversations make sure that you know we're doing our fair equitable share I say equitable not equal because it's never equal, or maybe momentarily it might be but it's never equal very long. It changes over time and it's not just the the physical labor, the, you know, the tasks of getting kids to where they need to be or making dinner, or doing laundry. It's also the emotional labor it's also the cognitive labor the keeping track of lists. And so we're doing events organizing things of tracking all of these things that are going on within the family and coordinating those things that again tends to fall on women in. I would say for a lot of us we might think hey I'm yeah I feel like I'm all an equal ally at home. Well, if you really think you are then go home and do a domestic audit, and have that conversation with your partner and see what you get as feedback. If you get some feedback that you could be doing more. Think about all right where can I start where can I start putting that into action right away that's what a great ally would do right there. And if you're not doing it for your partner to be a great supportive partner. Again, most of us are in dual career families these days. So do your kids for those of your parents out there because again the research is really clear that when we show up as equal allies as fathers as men at home. It makes a difference in the outcomes for our children and our sons more inclusive perspectives of gender roles and so when they go into the workplace how they're going to balance or combine work and family. And for our daughters more like to persist in their careers reach those career goals and introduce a non traditional professions and industry so we're going to get into a more gender pair, you know more gender parity at work. We've got to start at home. Yeah, I still, I still try to do that as much as possible that was one of the first things that David taught us the in the leadership lab and I still remember thinking about, you know one of the things that I very, very oftentimes. Lena my wife for was just evenly things like the sizes of our children's clothing and shoes and things like that and having all those, you know, all the, the right, the right things for their for something as simple as clothing and how much burden. She carries at home and she is also positioned and thinking that that's that's an extra thing and on her plate that I wasn't dealing with so really I can't amplify that enough but the one thing that I you know we've been we've been hitting this over and over over again that I think is one of the most important places to start is is really the active part that David hit on is is really actively putting yourself out there, being a visible person that not just for for the people who need who need and want you as an ally but for the other people to feel that there this is a, this is a safe space to come into, because that's really it's this is there's power in numbers here and it only gets better when when there's more men being involved in this and so I think that's that's one of the most important and easy to get started is to push yourself into that pool of discomfort to make that space where other men want to come in. You don't know what kind of impact you have on the other men both in your local and, you know, the national community. You just you don't know you have more power and influence than you think you do. And so really really critical that you put yourself out there and continue to do this over and over again, never being complacent with where you're at and always looking to learn and and not not recognizing and being okay with the fact that you might not get it right. It's, I think it's where I'll where I will move in. Wonderful. Well thank you so much David and Jeremy for your incredible insights I think that you really exemplified ally ship today and you always do from every experience I've had with you and I really appreciate all the work that you both are doing in this space and thank you, Julie Dr Euler and the University of Chicago team for inviting us to speak today we really had a great time and next time we'll bring you both to snowy Chicago so you can enjoy this lovely weather we're having. Thanks everyone. Wonderful. Thank you so much for that panel. So I'm just going to remind everybody on the call that we are again meeting next week's delisapo will be joining us talking about thriving in medicine navigating adversity and health care and then the week after that and Dr Holly Humphrey from the just I am AC Foundation. And we'll be joining us talking about gender equity and medical education are we flourishing or floundering so I think with that we will wrap up the recording so I think for not a beta if you want to stop the recording. We can do that and then asked our fellows to stay and get elevated. I could also stop the recording but then it'll put on my computer so we'll see. Over and on it is not as if I may need to stop it. Are you not able to run on it if you're not. I think because you're the only one that record when my inside to fail, you might be the one responsible.