Professional identity, authenticity, and bias at work are more complicated than we like to admit. The challenge isn’t just about confidence or self-expression. For many people, managing what they reveal at work is a carefully strategized survival decision. Organizational behaviour researcher Dr. Sonia Kang joins Andrea to share what the research says about identity at work, resume whitening, psychological safety, and the double bind ambitious women face in leadership. You will learn why “bring your whole self to work” places an unfair burden on individuals rather than organizations; what resume whitening is and what audit studies reveal about hiring bias; why ambiguity is where bias thrives and how structure reduces it; and how leaders can design processes that give everyone a fair shot. Sonia holds the Canada Research Chair in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion and is a Professor of Organizational Behaviour and HR Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. CONNECT WITH ANDREA 🌐 Website: https://talkabouttalk.com/ 🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreawojnicki/ ✉️ Andrea’s Email Newsletter: https://www.talkabouttalk.com/newsletter/ 🟣 Talk About Talk on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-about-talk-communication-skills-training/id1447267503 🟢 Talk About Talk on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3afgjXuYZPmNAfIrbn8zXn?si=9ebfc87768524369 📺 Talk About Talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@talkabouttalkyoutube CONNECT WITH SONIA 🔗 LinkedIn: Sonia-Kang.com 🎓 University of Toronto Research Profile: Discover.Research.UToronto.ca/3195-Sonia-Kang RESOURCES New York Times – The Hour Between Babe and Hag: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/opinion/women-men-work.html?eafs_enabled=false The ‘Busted’ Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/busted/id1588965394 TRANSCRIPTION Sonia Kang: Anytime where it’s unclear what the process is for a promotion or what the process is for even hiring, that’s where you can see bias in people’s individual idea of fit, let’s say, come through. Andrea Wojnicki: That was Professor Sonia Kang, Professor of Organizational Behavior and HR Management at the University of Toronto, Rotman School of Management. I met Sonia a few months ago when we were both teaching in an executive education program there at the University of Toronto. We hit it off, and here we are. Let’s do this. Let’s talk about talk. My name is Dr. Andrea Wojnicki, and I’m your communication coach. I coach ambitious executives like you through the Talk About Talk podcast to communicate with confidence and credibility so you can achieve your career goals. Sound good? You can learn more about me and about Talk About Talk if you go to talkabouttalk.com. In this episode, you’re gonna hear my conversation with Sonia, where we talk about identity at work. Everything from the distinction between authenticity, transparency, and bringing your whole self to work, to her fascinating research on resume whitening, to psychological safety, and the leadership tightrope that ambitious women are forced to balance. At the end, as always, I’m gonna summarize with three key learnings so you don’t have to take notes. About the Guest: Dr. Sonia Kang, Expert in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion Now, let me introduce our guest. Dr. Sonia Kang holds the Canada Research Chair in Identity, Diversity, and Inclusion, and she’s a professor of organizational behavior and human resource management at the University of Toronto, where she’s also the academic director at the Institute for Gender and the Economy, or GATE. Sonia earned a PhD in social psychology from the University of Toronto, and she completed a CCHRC post-doctoral fellowship at Northwestern University. Here we go. Thank you so much, Sonia, for being here today to talk with me and the Talk About Talk listeners about our identity at work. SK: Thanks so much for having me on. AW: So your work focuses on identity and inclusion in organizations. I would love to start here with identity and authenticity and transparency and professionalism. What do you think about the idea of bringing your whole self? Why Bringing Your Whole Self to Work Isn’t Always Safe SK: So I think that in theory it’s a nice idea, right? Like, everyone wants to feel like they can be authentic. They wanna feel like they don’t have to change who they are at work. But in reality, it’s, I think, overly simplistic to think that everyone can bring their whole identity to work. Some people can, for sure, right? And that is gonna be the people who are kind of part of the dominant culture and who, like, really feel, like, safe within a space. But if you’re someone who’s from a group where you may have traditionally experienced discrimination or stigma at work, bringing yourself to work is, A, harder, and B, maybe not a good idea, right? So if you’re thinking about this in terms of, like, strategy, if you’re from a group where you have consistently experienced discrimination based on some part of your identity, like, bringing your whole self to work might not make sense for you, right? And so strategically, it might make more sense to conceal parts of your identity or kind of downplay them just to get through the day. And so I think the goal of bringing your whole self to work is a good one, but it’s not really like an individual-level goal. It’s more of an organizational level goal, where organizations need to create the conditions in which that can actually happen for everyone. AW: I love that you brought that up right out of the gate. It’s not all on the individual. Organizations need to create a culture, and we can get into psychological safety, uh, later, but create an environment where people feel comfortable to be themselves. So something that I sometimes share with my clients, Sonia, is I wouldn’t share my whole self anywhere, never mind at work, because you’d think I was crazy. We have multiple identities, multiple roles, so we’re already filtering some of who we are and what we’re thinking and what we’re saying. What advice do you have for leaders who may be leading diverse teams or people who are A visible minority where they experience discrimination? What advice do you give them, I guess, in both of those contexts for the dos and the don’ts? Why Structure Matters More Than “Fit” SK: Yeah. I think like one of the big things is making sure that you’re not making authenticity or, you know, like sharing things about your personal life or like bringing your whole self to work, making that kind of like a performance requirement, which can often happen when people start talking about fit. Fit, I find, is really just like coded language for, “Are you like me? Are you like the other people who are here?” And so this happens a lot with I think when people are first entering into organizations, right? So when you’re doing like interviews, when you’re trying to like assess whether someone’s gonna like work with your group. I think so much of that is based on personality, someone’s interests, and so that fit is really a proxy for similarity, right? And so that also carries forward often into performance evaluations, like who gets promoted, who gets really great assignments. And so I think like my advice would be to try to make sure that you’re not including something like that into your assessments of who will be best for whatever the opportunity might be. Concretely, I think that means that you have to have a really like detailed idea of what your assessments will be based on, right? Because anytime you have like ambiguity, that’s where bias really thrives. So anytime where it’s unclear, you know, like what the process is for a promotion or what the process is for even hiring, that’s where you can see bias in people’s individual like idea of fit, let’s say, come through. And so the more structure you have in terms of like what I’m actually gonna be assessing, the better, ’cause then you can stick to that in the same way for everyone. AW: So in other words, ambiguity is where bias thrives. I love that. You’re gonna be quoted on that. I had an experience when I was in my 20s where I was in the final round of interviews for a big job that I ended up getting, but in the last interview, the senior vice president who was interviewing me said, “Andrea, I have one last question. On Friday night when we’re all going out for drinks, are you gonna join us?” And in my head I was like, wow, so he’s literally asking me, “Are you one of the guys?” Oh yeah, are you one of the guys? And I was, I said, “Of course,” right? And then afterwards I was like, yeah, that’s about as close as you can come to saying, are you gonna fit? Are you gonna make sure that you fit in with this crew? SK: I also think, like generationally, that’s not of so much interest anymore. Like, I think that that idea of like you wanna spend all your time at work and like hang out with your work friends and just like that’s your life, I think is much less common now, particularly with the generations who are just like entering the workplace now and probably within the next five, 10 years. Like, I don’t think that’s gonna be such a big focus. And so it’s good to get in the habit now, I think, of eliminating that kind of fit stuff from our kind of assessment of people and their performance at work. AW: Yeah. I think about that conversation back then, and it… You know, if you, if you… Speaking of thought bubbles, if you could have read my thought bubble, I was like, “Did you just say that?” SK: Yeah. Right? Yeah. So- And also, like, I don’t wanna hang out with you, like, outside of work, you know? W: I’m like, there’s- Yeah, I was like, maybe, maybe once or t
