Allyship is a verb. And when done correctly, it can be a great tool to further your I&D goals. Host Monique Akanbi sits down with Victoria Mattingly, founder and CEO of Mattingly Solutions, and Sertrice Shipley, founder & CEO of Plan to Action LLC, to dig into common misconceptions about allyship, what the ally/partner relationship looks like, and what HR professionals can do to be a good ally.
Allyship is a verb. And when done correctly, it can be a great tool to further your I&D goals. Host Monique Akanbi sits down with Victoria Mattingly, founder and CEO of Mattingly Solutions, and Sertrice Shipley, founder & CEO of Plan to Action LLC, to dig into common misconceptions about allyship, what the ally/partner relationship looks like, and what HR professionals can do to be a good ally.
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Monique Akanbi:
Welcome to Honest HR, the podcast for informed and aspiring HR professionals intent on transforming workplace challenges into golden opportunities.
Amber Clayton:
Every week we chat with industry experts to bring you insights, trends, and actionable advice through relatable stories from the real world of HR.
Wendy Fong:
Honest HR is a SHRM podcast, and by joining us, you're helping to build a more engaged workforce and drive organizational success. I'm Wendy Fong.
Amber Clayton:
I'm Amber Clayton.
Monique Akanbi:
And I'm Monique Akanbi.
Group:
Now let's get honest.
Monique Akanbi:
Welcome to Honest HR. I'm your host, Monique Akanbi, and with us today we have Sertrice and Dr. Victoria. I'm here to talk about the topic of allyship, and so I am really excited to learn more about this topic I will share with you all when the topics were introduced by our team around what we wanted to have a podcast about. Allyship definitely intrigued me, so I'm really excited to learn a little more just as well as our audience also. But my first question to you all is one, who is Sertrice and then two, who is Dr. Victoria, but then how did you all meet? So we'll go with the first one, who is Sertrice?
Sertrice Shipley:
Yeah, so Sertrice Shipley. I recently got married though so Sertrice Grice is on some things.
Victoria Mattingly:
Yes.
Monique Akanbi:
Congratulations.
Sertrice Shipley:
Thank you. And my background, well, both of us, our background is industrial organizational psychology, so science of human behavior in the workplace. We are both entrepreneurs own diversity, equity and inclusion consulting firms and passionate about taking data-driven approaches to DEI, but also passionate about inclusion being a behavior and allyship as well. So excited to talk about that today, but I'll let you chat a little bit. V.
Victoria Mattingly:
Thank you. So Dr. Victoria Mattingly. Some people know me by Dr. V. I'm CEO and founder of Mattingly Solutions, and I'll plug Sertrice's company as well, Plan to Action. Whereas Sertrice's company tends to focus more on early-stage DEI, so organizations that are just getting started on their DEI journey and need that support with strategy and function and structure. Mattingly focuses more on later stage, which includes Inclusalytics, the book that we co-wrote together, which I also have a line of services that fall under that, so taking a more data-driven approach to DEI. Then the second line of services is allyship.
Monique Akanbi:
Okay, so now how did you two meet? Because you both live in two different states, correct?
Sertrice Shipley:
Yes.
Monique Akanbi:
So how did you meet?
Sertrice Shipley:
All right, oh, I get to do it. Okay. So I am heavily involved with an organization called Blacks in I/O. It's to elevate the voices of Black I/O psychologists. And I've been involved for years, and V has been an ally member and supporter for years as well. And we were going to have a session on allyship, and it was going to be with Victoria and the co-founders, but one of the co-founders couldn't make it, so she asked me to step in and I was like, "Sure." So V and I met I think once before the session, really briefly, and then we showed up and we were just yes-anding each other the whole time. And we realized that our philosophies were so in sync. And so after that we were able to keep in touch. And this was right before, or no, right at the start of COVID.
So it was the fall of 2020. And then from there, actually I mentioned to Victoria I wanted to transition into specifically focusing on the DEI space, and she asked me if I ever thought about owning a business and I said, "No." And then she asked me if I ever thought about writing a book and I said "No." And by May of 2021, I was doing both with her at Mattingly and had a great three years partnering together. Earlier this year I spun off into my own company, Plan to Action, but as you can tell, we still are really close. We're sharing a room here at SHRM. We're presenting tomorrow, so we call each other Biz Besties and it's been a great few years.
Monique Akanbi:
I like that term, Biz Besties.
Sertrice Shipley:
Yeah, Biz Besties.
Monique Akanbi:
Love that. I affirm. Well, how do you define allyship and what it means to be a good ally?
Victoria Mattingly:
Yeah, so the way we talk about allyship is to really prevent a lot of the bad performative allyship that happens out there. And so allyship is an ongoing partnership between what we like to call the ally and the partner who work together to solve some sort of goal that has to do with inclusion, social justice or fairness.
Monique Akanbi:
And what does it mean to be a good ally? Because again, we hear the term ally, sometimes it is associated in a negative connotation. So if our audience is looking to be an ally, but a good ally, what does that look like?
Sertrice Shipley:
Yeah, I would say if you think about how Victoria defined it, one piece is we talked about partnership. So sometimes when we do allyship wrong, we're so focused on us as an ally, what are we doing? We forget the partner. So remembering that you have to bring that person along that you're wanting to support, that's a key piece. But then two, the other real big one that we will die on this hill is that inclusion is a behavior. It's a verb, it's what you do. And so allyship is an inclusive behavior, which immediately says, "To be an ally, you have to act. There has to be some kind of action involved." So that's one of the biggest takeaways because sometimes we just like to say, "Well, I'm an ally. I'm an ally to the black community." What does that mean? What are you doing to be that ally?
Monique Akanbi:
Even though I certainly try to be an ally, and I certainly try to engage in ally behaviors, I never call myself an ally. I never want to use that term for myself because it's not an identity. It should be based on my actions, and I know if someone calls me their ally that I'm actually doing it right.
Victoria Mattingly:
Right. So you know you're being a good ally based on your behaviors and your partner identifying you as an ally.
Monique Akanbi:
Exactly. Sounds good. Got it. Okay. So what's one thing both of you wish everyone understood about the work of being an ally?
Victoria Mattingly:
It's a fluid concept. So what I mean is depending on who is in the position to hold the power, the privilege, the status, that's the person who can step up and be an ally. And depending on what that situation is, that can very much flex from person to person. So for example, Sertrice and I when people look at us, they think, "Oh, Victoria is the white person, so she must be the ally to Sertrice." But Sertrice has been my mental health ally. She's been my motherhood ally, she's been my hair loss ally. She's been my ally in so many different ways that we don't relate to each other over it, but we have that difference and we have that shared support across that difference. And that's what allyship is.
I'm actually writing a two-part book right now on allyship, and it's two books in one and one half is for the ally, one half is for the partner. And when you get into the middle, it's actually the end of both books and it will say, "And they might just end up being an ally to you," you flip it over, "And you might just end up being an ally to them." And so it compels you to read the other side of the book because you thought this whole time, "Oh, I'm just going to always be a partner." Well actually no, I'm going to be an ally sometimes too.
Monique Akanbi:
Right. So it works both ways.
Victoria Mattingly:
Exactly.
Monique Akanbi:
Got it. Awesome. What does that look like in action? Any, in any space? So you shared how Sertrice has been an ally for you in many ways, whether it was motherhood or your mental health. What does that look like in terms of actions of an ally?
Sertrice Shipley:
Yeah, we'll talk about this in a couple of different ways. One is big A allyship or little A allyship. Sometimes we think of allyship and it feels very daunting, and we think of the big A, right? So putting yourself on the line, which sometimes that's what it is, allyship can come with real risk. If you really want to dive in, you see something wrong, it may hurt you to speak up on behalf of your partner to put yourself on the line. Or like I said, Victoria opened her door to her company to me and said, "I will give you equity in this company. You have a C-suite title, you're co-founder, go out there and do it." I could have failed. I could have tanked her whole business. And so she put herself on the line as an ally to give me, her partner, that platform. And so there is risk involved in those big A actions of supporting. However, there's little A allyship, and that could be someone gets my name wrong and she's like, "Oh, it's Sertrice with an S."
So those little things are making sure someone's getting someone's pronouns right. Those little, what we refer to as micro affirmations, so small behaviors that we do. So there's all kinds of levels. We could talk mentorship, sponsorship, if you're in the workplace, it could be advocating for certain policies. There's a lot of different ways allyship can look. But I would say the key piece behind what that action would look like goes back to the fact that this is a relationship with your partner. Talk to them, what do they need? Do they need those small things? Do they need something bigger? And that'll help you know what actions you actually need to take.
Victoria Mattingly:
Another good rule of thumb is using the platinum rule instead of the golden rule.
Monique Akanbi:
Oh, yeah, I like that.
Victoria Mattingly:
So golden rule, treat others how you want to be treated. Platinum rule, treat others how they want to be treated. And so as Sertrice just shared, you need to talk to your partner to be that good ally to figure out what are those actions you can take to actually support and advocate for them in a meaningful way.
Monique Akanbi:
So I want to talk about allyship in the workplace and what does good allyship look like or how can an ally support their partner even in the workplace? And there's various scenarios that can be encountered in the workplace that would require allyship in a partner. But if I am looking to be an ally in the workplace, what does that look like? Or what are some things that I can do?
Victoria Mattingly:
I did my dissertation research on allyship, and the three primary behaviors we focused on was mentorship, sponsorship, and amplification. So how can we support people from a mentoring standpoint? How can we lift people up through the organization from a sponsoring standpoint, and how can we amplify voices, so giving people platform that typically don't have it so their voice is able to be heard? So those would be three broad areas. But I don't know, Sertrice if you have specific examples.
Sertrice Shipley:
Yeah. Well, I actually want to give another framework we like to use. So I talked about the big A, little A. We also like to look at it kind of in a grid manner. So allyship, it can be ongoing or it can be in the moment. So ongoing is going to get into the mentorship, sponsorship, building that long-term. In the moment, it might be amplification. So how many of us have been in a meeting?
Monique Akanbi:
Yes.
Sertrice Shipley:
You say something, nobody really acknowledges it, and then a couple minutes later, somebody else says basically the same thing, and it's like, "Oh my God, this is amazing." So if you want to amplify that person, you say, "Oh, you know what? I think Victoria was saying something similar earlier. V, do you want to add something to that?" And just giving them a little bit of space to get that credit, to get that recognition publicly. So that's a small thing you can do in any conversation. Similar with centering. Centering, it's so easy for us to focus on ourselves sometimes or even want to relate to someone. They're telling you their story, their experience, and then you're like, "Oh, yeah, I've had this" and da, da, da. And you realize, "Oh, wait, I just made this about me. Let me bring it back to you." So there's these little things we can do in the moment, and that's on that one-on-one level.
Now the other part of this grid is it could also be group, right? So you have multiple partners, you're learning more, and you might realize, "Oh, wait..." Let's say we've talked to a lot of people in the LGBTQ community and we realize that we have policies in place for things like our parental leave that aren't helping them, or maybe it's our bereavement or whatever it might be. We can advocate for changes at a policy level in our organization that will impact a whole group. So that's where we can move that allyship into more of advocacy in an organization and get at that more high-level policy getting at systemic change.
Monique Akanbi:
Yeah. Well, that was actually one of my questions was around policy and advocacy in the workplace and how allyship plays a role in that. So I'm grateful that you shared that. How can allies be supportive without reinforcing stereotypes or tokenizing the partner?
Victoria Mattingly:
I think that really comes down to having a genuine, authentic relationship with that partner. My secret sauce behind allyship comes back to unconscious bias. And so a lot of research shows that even though unconscious bias training increases our awareness of bias, it doesn't actually reduce our biases against others. It's having meaningful, ongoing interactions with people who belong to groups for the biases that we hold. That's what actually starts chipping away at biases. So I have this secret agenda when it comes to allyship to get as many people to cross their differences, whether it's gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, caregiver status, neurodiversity, whatever it is to put themselves out there and develop these meaningful relationships with people who are different than them. And that way we won't get into the tokenization and the stereotypes because we're going to be reducing our biases as a result.
Monique Akanbi:
Got it. So sounds like very fundamental things, build relationships. As you all are talking, I'm even thinking about just even my relationship with my best friend, never thought it of it in a space of allyship and partnership. These were just day-to-day things that we did for each other. So whether it was speaking up or supporting each other. So why do you all think that there is this daunting feeling around the word allyship?
Sertrice Shipley:
It goes back to that risk that I talked about when we think of allyship and what it means to stand up and speak out for someone, it's aligning yourself with that. And you're like, "Ooh, if I stand up and speak out, are they going to think of me some type of way?" But I always encourage allies to consider, "If it's that scary and hard for you to speak up, think about how hard it is for your partner, the person in that space." I'm a black woman, I need to speak up. I might get considered like, "Oh, the angry black woman." So if you can speak up with me, that helps, right? It helps ease that. And so just reminding people that, "Yes, what you're going through can be fearful. It can involve risk, but just think of that other side and the support you're giving," because that's one thought.
Victoria Mattingly:
I also think the term ally has gotten dragged through the mud over the last two years because there's just been a lot of allyship gone wrong. People saying, "I'm an ally, I am an ally," but they don't actually do any of the work, which is why we talk about it in terms of actions, which is why we talk about it in terms of partnership. And so when people are calling themselves allies and then getting condemned for it because they're not doing it right, then why would that make someone else want to be an ally? And so I want to bring ally back. I want to bring the word back.
Sertrice Shipley:
Yes.
Victoria Mattingly:
It's not a four-letter word. Well, technically it is, but it's not one of those ones. It's not one of those ones.
Monique Akanbi:
I'm with you on that one. I'm with you. What is bad allyship look like?
Sertrice Shipley:
You know one thing, and I was just thinking about this, one piece of allyship where it goes wrong is people are so well-intended, right? Saying, "I'm an ally," it's well-intended or saying, "I read this book. I listen to the Honest HR podcast. I've got skills, I know what to do now," and just going out and doing things. And like I said, forgetting to bring the partners. So now that's where we get into saviorism. And it's, "I know all the answers. I know you're a Black woman. Girl, I got you. I going to fix all your problems." And you're like, "Excuse me, did I say I have problems?"
And so that's where sometimes again, it can get that bad rep and it can go wrong is you're so well-intended, you want to help, you want to put people in, and the next thing you know you're tokenizing them because you're like, "Well, we need someone Black, so I'm going to just shove this person in the role." And so there's all these little things sometimes we do with the best intentions, but we didn't think it all the way through. We didn't have that conversation to figure out, is this actually something that's helpful?
Victoria Mattingly:
Yeah. Being a great ally requires getting consent from the person or group that you're trying to serve.
Monique Akanbi:
That was going to be my next question. So perfect.
Victoria Mattingly:
So when you don't get that consent is whenever you have these saviorism issues, when you have these issues of good intentions gone wrong. And so think about, "Did I get consent from this group or individual before I go off and do this big A allyship action?"
Monique Akanbi:
Well, what does the consent look like? Is it just asking? And if you can give me an example.
Victoria Mattingly:
Yeah, I think it's asking, but it's also co-conspirating so going up to that person and saying, "Hey, I have an idea. I want to help. What do you think? Is there something better that we could possibly do?" And whatever that idea is, it's shared between those two individuals rather than it just being, "I'm going to come in and save the day."
Sertrice Shipley:
Or I'm just going to come in and tell you what I need. I think the collaboration has to come from both sides, and it needs to be a joint discussion because neither partner, the partner or the ally is going to have all of the answers or all of the pieces or else we wouldn't need each other. We wouldn't need the relationship. So making sure that we're collaborating in that space, I think is where you get the most benefit. And so again, thinking of the different situations we're in, when I started with her, she had the conversation of, "Have you thought about this? Go spend some time to think on it." And then I came back and I was like, "Well, what about this, this, this?"
We could work through things and then we'd check in throughout. And then again, there's also times where I support V and so she'll come to me and she's like, "Okay, well what about this?" Or "I'm trying to be an ally here. Am I doing this right or is this wrong?" And I'll be like, "Yeah, girl, don't do that."
Monique Akanbi:
Right. That's where the relationship comes in to play, right?
Sertrice Shipley:
And then sometimes I'm like, "No, that's fine. It's fine." And so being able to do that, and I'd like to think that we do the same thing with her, like she said, mental health, I'd be like, "Hey, I want to give you this space. Is that what you need? Is this not?" Or I'd be like, "Hey, you need the space," working through those spaces so the collaboration.
Monique Akanbi:
What policies and best practices HR leaders can implement to promote allyship within the workplace?
Victoria Mattingly:
I think one policy is around how to leverage allies with employee resource groups. And I feel like allies should be a part and welcome into employee resource groups, but we can't also forget about that affinity that's necessary that employee resource groups provide. So when is a closed door session? What are open door sessions? And being really clear on when and how allies should be involved.
Monique Akanbi:
Okay.
Sertrice Shipley:
Yeah, and so I worked with a client, it's a billion dollar tech company, and they wanted to build this allyship program, and it was a really intense program. It was about six months, and they had some of their top leaders get involved. And we had a kickoff session. We had discussion groups in between. They had reading assignments in between, and they were able to do these small group conversations of how hard it is to be an ally as a top director and leader in this company. And then we had surveys in between because again, it's behavior. So if we want to see if it's having an impact, we need to ask their team members, "Is your leader showing up as an ally as a result of this program?" So we were measuring for impact. It was really robust. But one of the keys with this though, before you say, "Oh, yeah, we can slap up an allyship program," they all volunteered. Allyship, when it comes to DEI, we talk about it having a foundational required DEI training to make sure everyone has the same language for your company, sure, that can be okay.
We cannot force anyone to be an ally because of what's involved, because there is risk, right? Because you do have to care, because you have to have those genuine, authentic relationships. So you have to wait for a person to be ready. But then once they're ready, let's make sure we're equipping them with the skills so you can build that program so they can learn what that looks like. And also, I think it was really important to have that cohort going through with them so they can learn from each other. Because it can be hard, especially in the workplace. We talk about these things like it's easy, but in the workplace, you got goals, you have priorities. Everybody's worried about the bottom line. You don't have a lot of time. So putting something like this on top of it, having to slow down, have conversations and learn about someone, we don't always have time for that, especially as a top leader. So being able to talk to people about how do we make space to be better humans while also getting our job done.
Monique Akanbi:
Do you call it allyship within the workplace or is it called something else?
Sertrice Shipley:
Yeah, it depends on where you go. I've used allyship. Like I said, we've also, mentorship and sponsorship are parts of allyship to us, but sometimes you may just hear them say those words instead of allyship.
Victoria Mattingly:
The key differentiator is you could be exactly like someone else and be their mentor or their sponsor. The beauty of allyship is that you are going across some sort of difference. We are different in some sort of major way. And I'm in the in group and my partner's in the quote-unquote "out group," and I'm leveraging my power, my privilege, my status to help them. And so having that across difference I feel like is really important. And that's what makes it allyship and makes it so special.
Monique Akanbi:
What are the benefits of allyship?
Victoria Mattingly:
I think one is just being involved in these efforts. There was some research that looked at what keeps people from being allies. And it wasn't that they didn't care. It wasn't that they were against it was that no one had asked them to be involved, so they never felt like it was their place. So this sheer asking someone to come in and, "Hey, can you get involved in this effort as an ally?" There's meaning and purpose to that. And I think people want to be involved with I&D efforts, but they don't know where they fit in. And allyship gives them a place to fit in.
Sertrice Shipley:
And research has shown that when organizations involve allies in their DEI efforts, they make more progress to their DEI goals. So for a business, it's going to help you as an organization. But then I'll also say for an individual, there's something to that. And I'll say for every single person, not everybody gets this pleasure, but there is some joy that you find in yourself when you are able to support someone, when you're able to give back, that it kind of comes from that altruism, the feeling that gives you the dopamine. That's another piece of it as well, on an individual level.
Monique Akanbi:
So for allyship, what I hear is making it about the partner, not about you as the ally. And you all shared examples of ways to be an ally, and I think that oftentimes when we hear the term ally, we associated it with either race or just gender. And I love that Dr. V, you shared how Sertrice has been your mental health ally, your hair loss ally. Are there other ways outside of what we traditionally associate allyship to being, whether that's race or gender, that people can be allies and partners?
Sertrice Shipley:
Yeah, honestly, there are so many identities. We're all made up of so many identities and allyship can be tied to any of that. One other piece I would add, and then V, I'll let you add too is it's also not always in the direction we think because, so not only do we like to boil it down to race or gender, we typically will say, "It's black and white." And so if you as the white person, you're my ally. There are times where we will be in a place and V is the only white person. And I have to be her ally in that situation and help her show up and be respected and not be like, "What's this white girl doing here?" And I stand up for her. So we always talk about another key piece of allyship is context. Context is so important of who can be the ally, and that's why another reason why it can change so much. But any other parts of that you want to add, V?
Victoria Mattingly:
Yeah, I just think of able-bodied allies, veteran allies, neurodivergent allies, immigrant allies. There's just so many different areas. And if you think about the privilege wheel and it shows all the different slices of identity, and the most privileged is on the outside and the least privileged is on the inside. If you're ever on the outside of that circle, ever, so white, male, able-bodied, straight, you can go on and on and on, you have an opportunity, and I would say an obligation in some ways to be a good human, to be an ally in that scenario.
Monique Akanbi:
Yes. Awesome. Well, one last question before we wrap it up. And I'm curious to know what are three things, probably more, I know there's more, but what are three things our audience can do even just from a starting point and to be a better ally?
Sertrice Shipley:
So one thing we've already said is remember that it's a verb, right? So if you take away one thing from this conversation, that there has to be action and-
Victoria Mattingly:
Also say, don't call yourself an ally. It's not a good look. It's not a good look. Just be an ally. Just do the thing.
Monique Akanbi:
Raise your hand and be like, "I'm an ally."
Victoria Mattingly:
Do the thing. Don't call yourself an ally.
Sertrice Shipley:
Don't put up black squares or rainbows.
Victoria Mattingly:
Don't put up weird stuff on social media thinking you're being an ally. Just do the work and others will call you such.
Sertrice Shipley:
And then just take the time to really build those relationships. That relationship building is key. And another piece of that that we haven't mentioned yet is the act of listening, which I always joke my clients say I'm really good at, but my husband maybe is like, "I don't know." And so again, context matters, but pulling yourself out of wanting to respond to people when they're sharing and just opening up to listen to their experience and ask them what they need versus trying to problem solve on your own.
Monique Akanbi:
Well, this has been very helpful even for myself, and thank you so much Dr. V and Sertrice for sharing your knowledge and deep insights as it relates to allyship. And I know one takeaway from me is that allyship is a verb, right? It is an action. And so rather than plastering it on my social media that I'm an ally, what matters is the work that I do and getting the consent from my partner and asking what are some ways that I can show up and support them? That is going to be it for this week's of Honest HR. We'll see you soon.
Speaker 5:
This podcast is approved to provide 0.5 professional development credits or PDCs towards SHRM-CP and SHRM-SCP recertification. Enter this PDC activity ID into your SHRM activity portal to claim your credit. 26-NKTN4. Again, the PDC activity ID is 26-NKTN4. Please note that this code expires February 1st, 2026.