How Microaggressions can have significant negative impacts (with Dr. Kecia Thomas )

Radical Candor: Communication at Work

Kim Scott interviews organizational psychologist Dr. Keisha Thomas about her research on workplace dynamics, focusing heavily on the 'Pet to Threat' framework and

Key takeaways

• Dr. Keisha Thomas explains that the 'Pet to Threat' framework emerged from observing junior women minimized by senior male colleagues, while senior women faced isolation and were perceived as threats when advocating for diversity.
• Kim Scott shares personal anecdotes of being treated as a 'pet' at the Council on Foreign Relations and later labeled 'intimidating' upon reaching a leadership role at Google, illustrating the framework's real-world application.

Main topics

• Pet to Threat framework
• Diversity resistance in organizations

Notable quotes

"Discomfort in organizations is really, you know, I've come to the conclusion, is the killer."

Conclusion

The episode provides a vital vocabulary for recognizing systemic workplace

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:00) So there, I think there is like this invisible culture that as faculty, we are navigating. And I have certainly been in the seminar room where, you know, the majority of people around the table talked about how their dads, and it's almost always their dad, or faculty. Speaker 2 (0:22) Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Radical Sabbatical. I'm Kim Scott, and while the rest of the Radical Candor team is off, I am talking to the authors of books that I admire. And I'm thrilled to have with me today Dr. Keisha Thomas, an organizational psychologist who has spent the last 30 years researching how to make organizations. get the best out of all their employees, and to make sure that they're fair in the way they hire and promote people. Keisha, welcome. Speaker 3 (0:55) Thank Speaker 2 (0:55) you so much, Kim. Speaker 3 (0:57) I appreciate Speaker 2 (0:57) that. I am thrilled to be speaking with you. You have done so much great research. Speaker 2 (1:05) Sort of like me with radical candor. That's all people want to hear about from me. A lot of people really love your pet to threat research. Can you explain this theory and why it has stood the test of time? Why it has resonated with so many different people? Speaker 3 (1:23) Sure. I'm happy to, Kim. So I would say pet to threat is a framework. Speaker 3 (1:34) The title came about through just an informal conversation among, you know, my collaborators and colleagues. Speaker 2 (1:42) It Speaker 3 (1:43) was something that we noticed. We were at HERS, which is, you know, that higher ed boot camp for women. And we started to notice that, oh, a lot of the younger women who are kind of. First women in their departments or units are talking about how they're kind of minimized by their older male colleagues. One woman talked about literally being pet on the back and her colleagues saying, oh, you remind me of my daughter. Speaker 2 (2:18) Whereas Speaker 3 (2:19) many of the more senior women were addressing issues of still isolated in my unit. And even though I've jumped all the hurdles, done all the things, I don't have the same reward and recognition as my peers. My support systems are eroding both family as well as mentors. And they're really somewhat disoriented. you know i worked hard did all these things and even in my leadership position people are treating me as though i'm a threat yeah Speaker 2 (3:00) yeah and Speaker 3 (3:01) so in talking it through we're like oh it's like you go from pet to threat and that's very succinct yes and subsequently we developed a study using a snowball sample. What's a Speaker 2 (3:17) snowball sample? Oh, Speaker 3 (3:18) that's when, you know, I send you a survey and I ask you, like, are there people in your network who should also be in our kind of responses? So, you know, that study gave us confirmation that, yes, this is a thing, but it also gave us many narratives of what that looked like and how it showed up in these women's. And they were primarily faculty, but other people who work in higher ed. But we certainly saw some of the strongest responses from women of color. Speaker 2 (3:52) Yes. But Speaker 3 (3:53) now, you know, 15 years almost later, we've discovered that it's not simply the experience of women or even women of color. It's often what. Dory Turnstile talks about as kind of super tokens. Speaker 2 (4:12) You know, Speaker 3 (4:12) people who find themselves, I think, severely underrepresented and working in environments where regardless of their performance, their difference matters. Speaker 2 (4:25) And it Speaker 3 (4:26) matters across their careers. Speaker 2 (4:28) Yeah, yeah. So what are some examples of, what are some of the stories that you heard from? from this research that really stand out to you? So a Speaker 3 (4:42) few narratives really focused on for the pets. Individuals saying that it feels as though, you know, their identity was more important than the work they thought they Speaker 2 (5:01) were Speaker 3 (5:01) hired to perform. Speaker 2 (5:02) Yes. Yeah. Speaker 3 (5:04) And that, you know, they were being put on committees or given responsibilities for things that, you know, they were interested in, but really did not see as the majority of their jobs. Speaker 2 (5:19) Yeah. And Speaker 3 (5:20) so, you know, not only was there a sense of kind of being exploited. but also being underutilized for the very knowledge, skills, and abilities and experiences that they had built up throughout, you know, their, you know, undergraduate, graduate training, internships. You know, these are largely early career folks. Speaker 2 (5:41) Yeah. Speaker 3 (5:42) Whereas the more senior responses, you know, there was one for me that was really striking. This was someone who had been elected as the first female president of her professional society. And as president, you get to decide your platform. Yes. We found out quickly that she did not. Oh, my gosh. Her platform was one that centered gender. She wanted to talk about the lack of diversity in this membership. of this science organization. She wanted to talk about sexual harassment as a part of her platform and, you know, really received a lot of resistance in wanting to do that. And clearly the membership was threatened by her, you know, desire to do that. Speaker 2 (6:38) Yeah. And it wasn't just her desire. It was her job to set the agenda, actually. It wasn't just her desire. That was what she had been elected to do. I want to share a story from early in my career. And I think this is my pet story. And then I have another threat story. And you can analyze whether I got this right. But at one point early in my career, I had been the, I was living in New York City and the Council on Foreign Relations, which is this very kind of. hoity-toity organization, decided they needed more young members. Well, they needed more women, and they couldn't, they wouldn't hire women who were at the same level as the men, so they brought in a bunch of... Speaker 3 (7:22) More Speaker 2 (7:22) vulnerable Speaker 3 (7:22) women. Speaker 2 (7:23) Yes, term members, right? And so I, you know, and I was so excited. It was this incredible networking opportunity, and I had... I had started a company, started a software company, and the company hadn't marked out, so I was winding it down. So I was not employed. And when you asked a question in this organization, you had to stand up and state your name and affiliation. But I was not affiliated. That was just me at this point. But some older guy stood up and said, I'm so-and-so, and I'm unaffiliated, meaning he was. a retired billionaire. And I was like, okay, well, I'll borrow that term. And I stood up and I said, I'm Kim, I was Kim Malone then. I'm Kim Malone and I'm unaffiliated. And somebody in the back of the room yelled out unaffiliated or unattached. And I just, I was so humiliated. So is that pet, is that like a way to kind of belittle me, to pet me, to... Threaten me or like what what what was that? Yeah, I think that's just bad behavior. Yes. Yes. It was rude. I don't really see it as Speaker 3 (8:39) falling into pets a threat, although the desire right to add greater gender diversity to their organization and strategically make the decision to go after more junior women and put them in these term roles really speaks. to them you know treating those women as you know transactional temporary yes and the motivation being for the identity rather than the unique perspectives and backgrounds that they could offer Speaker 2 (9:14) yeah yeah that that makes a lot of sense so can i tell you my threat story and you can analyze that so here's my here's when i suddenly realized i was a threat like again i had spent most of my career feeling like I wasn't being taken seriously. And then one day when I was working at Google, my HR person came to me and said that everyone was intimidated by me. And I was like, I've been spending my whole career trying to be taken seriously. And this week I became intimidating. Like, how did, how did that happen? Speaker 3 (9:49) Yeah. Speaker 2 (9:50) Yeah. What happened? And, and she explained to me, well, Now you have a big job. And so now you're in, you know, it's nothing you've done, but your role. But I don't think that a man who had been hired into that would be told he was intimidating just because he had the job. Speaker 3 (10:08) No, he would be, you know, discussed as a leader. Speaker 2 (10:10) Yeah. Speaker 3 (10:11) Yes. Again, I think it's the... the novelty perhaps of having a woman in that leadership role, which I think disrupts. And, you know, we talked about Melinda Jones uses this term, the cultural default of, you know, who leaders are in that organization. And that discomfort leads people to act in very unproductive. And in the highest ways, Speaker 2 (10:43) from my Speaker 3 (10:45) perspective. Discomfort in organizations is really, you know, I've come to the conclusion, is the killer. Speaker 2 (10:55) It's the Speaker 3 (10:55) thing that really holds us back. Speaker 2 (10:58) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think if we can learn to embrace the discomfort, we can move forward as organizations. But we have, the only way out is through. If we... reject the feelings of discomfort, we're just going to make the problem worse, I think. Speaker 3 (11:15) Yes. And I do want to go back to Pet to Thread a little bit because, you know, people talk about it so much, especially in social media. I've had young Gen Zers contact me and say, oh, I talked about Pet to Thread on TikTok and I went viral. And I'm like, you Speaker 2 (11:36) did? Speaker 2 (11:40) And so I think most Speaker 3 (11:42) people have come away with, you know, pet to threat as something that occurs relatively quickly within the course of your career. And I hear people saying, oh, well, I outperformed someone's expectations and then I became a threat. And that I think is, you know, probable. Speaker 2 (12:02) Yeah. Speaker 3 (12:03) Again, when we were doing this research and published the original data, that was 2013. And we were really focused on how the larger societal environment was so focused on diversity and inclusion that those motivations often placed marginalized, especially more junior professionals in that pet. role, you know, organizations. I think many sincerely wanted to diversify their companies or their institutions, but they just really didn't Speaker 2 (12:42) know Speaker 3 (12:42) how to do it. Speaker 2 (12:43) Yeah. Speaker 3 (12:44) And didn't know how to really treat those individuals with the respect that, you know, they had earned because of their knowledge, skills, and abilities and not simply their. Yeah. Speaker 2 (12:59) Yeah. And then the assumption was, oh, you just got hired because you are X, which was. Right. Speaker 3 (13:05) If it's not Speaker 2 (13:05) one thing, it's the other. Speaker