42. Befriending the Unlikely Person at Work

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Episode Transcript

Alisa Manjarrez: Hello, everyone. This is now officially our second recording of the What Rules podcast, formerly known as Color Forward. As you’ve heard, if you’ve listened to any of our previous episodes, we were called Color Forward. It was all about highlighting multicultural women who have broken through cultural barriers and mastered the art of resilience. And what we found in this time is that a lot of women who have done this have gotten ahead and advanced in their career by breaking the rules. 

[cue music]

Today having this rule-breaking conversation with me is my fabulous cohost and talent management executive Rosa Santos, and diversity marketer, Shantell Thomas. 

This episode is really one of my favorite topics, which is friendship. And we’ve talked about friendship in general in past episodes, but this is really about friendship in the workplace and befriending the unlikely people who have been othered. So I’m really excited to dive deep into, what the heck does that even mean? And how is that a rule that we’re breaking? 

[music stops]

Rosa Santos: What about in the context of us, right? We as, I think, as multicultural women and women of color, there’s so much that we need to be paying attention to, right, and especially at the workplace, if we want to advance our growth and really maybe increase our professional equity, why do you think that’s important that we befriend the prickly? I love that I’m going to use that now. I’m going to be befriending the prickly.

Alisa Manjarrez: I think you can also say, I’m having a prickly day, right?

Shantell Thomas: Yeah.

Alisa Manjarrez: I’m feeling a little bit prickly.

Shantell Thomas: A prickly person. This is prickly, yeah. Uh-oh, we got a word of the day, our hashtag. I’m prickly. 

I do think in the context of multicultural women that word ally is thrown around a lot these days, and the word friendship maybe goes by the wayside. But how about just being friendly with people who don’t look like you? I used to challenge myself all the time when I travel, to befriend or reach out to people who don’t look like me because, you know, like you learn the most from the differences. And so the differences really unite some similarities, if you give it a chance.

My thought is that the folks that are kind of prickly, folks who naturally don’t gravitate to embracing everyone, or maybe being kind is not their first nature, I generally find such good friendships in people like that because everyone else is staying away from them.

Alisa Manjarrez: So, wait a second, you became my friend and was I….

Shantell Thomas: No.

Alisa Manjarrez: Should I rethink this?

Shantell Thomas: No, you’re not prickly. You’re not prickley, don’t say that.   

I like folks who are kind and embracing as well. So not just prickly, but I do find value in just trying to really reach out and find the beauty and the humanity in everybody.

Rosa Santos: I have to say, that sounds amazing. 

Shantell Thomas: That’s good.

Rosa Santos: I am not that nice. Alisa knows this. 

Shantell Thomas: Rosa, I have this saying to all my friends, it was like, know thyself. No matter how high you get in the hierarchy and the office culture, we all have strengths and weaknesses.

Rosa Santos: But let me ask you this, and this isn’t within the context of a recent conversation that I had around this very topic, right, and especially around the topic of advancing, you know, the racial equality journey as a whole within organizations, and I mean, to what extent do you think it is our responsibility to in fact, reach out to the prickly, to that one that our outward identity may represent some kind of fear or uncomfort or comfortness, right, just not feeling okay being around you?

Shantell Thomas: Um, Rosa, I have to tell you that I am the person in the room who is always going to see the rosy side of things. And so I always have to cover that because when people sometimes hear me speak about it they only think that I experienced the good things, right? So not necessarily experiencing the negative parts of the differences, and so I do. I experienced the negative parts. I see when the person is sizing me up automatically. I see when they are actually talking down to me or dumbing things down because they naturally assume that I might not be as competent because unfortunately I’m a Black woman, and there is within office politics and the experience here in the United States, a lot of negative stereotypes associated with being a Black woman. The angry Black woman. The one that is just waiting to tell you off, or things like that. Those are not a part of my dominant experience. That’s not what I present out in the world and that’s not who I am.

And so a lot of times I actually see people view me through the lens of those stereotypes. I see it. I actually see it happening. I see it. People interacting with me in trepidation thinking that I’m going to be angry or cut them off or be unkind. And I commonly have found myself, because of that, always taking the first step towards them.

I’m generally the first one to apologize. I’m generally the first one to open the door. And so that’s the kind of mechanism that I have found so that people can begin to take the filters off and see me through those stereotypes and just start to see me for who I am. And then it just kind of breaks down those walls, but I actually take the first step.

I am always very candid. I’m the person in the room that will tell you my motives. And so if I just go into meetings all the time and tell you, Look, I’m trying to advance this cause for myself and for my team. And so it’s just something about being vulnerable, being open, that I have found that has helped me the most, and it is within the context of knowing that I walk in the door or, you know, I get on the video with those kinds of filters that people are seeing me through. And I think that that is the heaviest burden that all of us have that are from underrepresented groups. Because we have to be responsible for, a lot of times, dispelling the myth because we don’t get the benefit of the doubt.

Whatever the news said last night, if I look like what the people that were on the news, whatever they said last night, then that’s probably what I’m going to be if you’ve not had an opportunity to meet me. And so I do, like I consciously, I consciously do this taking the first step

Rosa Santos: You know, you just don’t know what it is to walk in their shoes every single day, right? Every single moment. And the fact that you don’t have to think about reaching out, opening the door, talking, you know, softly or sweetly, right, so people like go, Oh. You know, when you wake up in the morning is not… you’re not only putting your clothes on, and putting makeup on, and there’s a whole lot of other things that you actually have to do and really be planful about it.

So that’s why being yourself is something that is sometimes risky. What I would say is,  sometimes a lot of the times it’s rather risky, right?

Shantell Thomas: Can I just tell you that I bring my full self everywhere I go. I’m not checking anything at the door. So when I say that, it’s just, it’s really who I am. I don’t feel that I’m doing anything extra. Or my husband likes to say she plays the long game.

And so I’m not always thinking about just this moment. I am really thinking about the fact that I have to build with you. This is who I am. I’m doing the same thing, being the same way in my personal life. I don’t feel burdened by acting in that manner. I told you, I’m one of those people who are probably a little bit more sunnier than others. So, Rosa, you know, like this just is the way it is. 

Alisa Manjarrez: Rosa’s like, What is this? What is this happiness? 

Shantell Thomas: I look at the upside.

Rosa Santos: I was just thinking we should do an episode on happiness. Maybe that’s what I need.

Shantell Thomas: I do.

Rosa Santos: No, but this is great. And in fact, I was thinking that’s a great way of putting it, right? Like in terms of… And I have to say one of the things I’m all about being planful. 

Shantell Thomas: Is that the better word for the long game? 

Alisa Manjarrez: Oh, I like long game.

Rosa Santos: I love it. I am going to use it, because I think it’s like the long game, right? It is ever so important that we, as part of that long game, is being clear as to what you’re heading towards, like what your beacon is and what you’re working towards.

And by playing that long game, then, you know, probably you are willing to take concert in things that, or take certain things in a way that won’t make them personal, right. And probably you are, you know, freer of a lot of baggage that maybe sometimes we tend to wrap our… You know, we collect all of these things on top and, your point, it burdens us to do things or to show up in ways that it’s not necessarily aligned with that long game. So I love exactly how you’re positioning it. 

Alisa Manjarrez: I totally play the long game. When I started as an entrepreneur, that’s what I realized my business is relationship based, and as Shantell was talking, I was thinking about how happy people get the brunt of the jokes or of the misrepresentation all the time. I was in this group. I was talking to some people about how happy I was and how I have all this joy. And I wish I could relate to these people with these big struggles. And this person said, Alisa, what I hear in your story is resilience. And because of that resilience, you have joy. And so it doesn’t mean that bad things don’t happen to you, or you don’t make mistakes or anything. It’s nice to be born with a positive disposition, which is probably like me and Shantell. But because of that, you do learn how to look at the bright side when those things happen.

And sometimes because of that bright side, the issues dissipate and they lessen. And so when you have people at work who are positive and happy, other people might get annoyed, but it doesn’t mean that nothing bad happens to them. I’m like, come on. 

[cue music]

I just think it’s fascinating that we’re talking about befriending the unlikely person at work,  how that’s a rule that we’re breaking. You know, I mean, if anyone went to high school, they know there’s the mean girls and there’s the nerds and there’s the outcasts, there’s all these groups. Unfortunately It doesn’t go away in the workplace. 

Shantell Thomas: It doesn’t. It amplifies, because they have money now. 

Rosa Santos: Oh, my God. 

Alisa Manjarrez: Shantell, you were talking about, I don’t remember the story, refresh my memory, some woman who wore like the weird jeans or the same jeans every week?

Shantell Thomas: Yes. She did. She worked in a call center in one of the offices that I worked in and she totally wore the same jeans every single day. And sometimes she did switch her shirt up. But like, yeah, people, sometimes, and I thought that she was really bold to do that.

I actually learned so much from her, because I could tell that she wasn’t, I would say, burdened by the whole idea of changing an outfit every day. And she only thought about the things that were going to advance the amount of calls that she can make in a day.

And I just began to value her for that. Like, whatever it is that people are projecting, you can actually just begin to see them for what it is that they’re actually projecting as a part of the big parts of themselves. And for her, she projected that the most important thing was getting to the phone. And I was so moved by her. After a while, you start to forget that these are the same pants that she had on and hopefully she watched them over the weekend. You start to forget that kind of stuff. And you actually begin to see people through the lens with which the thing that they are projecting or amplifying about themselves. And I hope that people do the same thing for me. I’m big on the space for grace, because I want it.

I want you to give me grace if I didn’t get here on time, or if I text you and be like, oh my goodness, I forgot all about this. Like, I want some grace. And so I try…

Alisa Manjarrez: Me and Rosa, we know about that. 

Rosa Santos: We do.

Shantell Thomas: Give me some grace. And so I try to move through life with like, just the space for grace. And I think in the space for grace, you get to see the valuable things about people.

Alisa Manjarrez: Talk about showing up as your full self.

Shantell Thomas: Yeah. 

Rosa Santos: Exactly. So it’s, are we doing that? You know, what are the pants that we are wearing to show up in the way that we want to show up without caring, right, what others may think about that path that we’ve chosen, or that goal, right, that we’ve identified for ourselves. That is something to ponder truly about and reflect on. And I think the other is, I call suspend judgment.

Shantell Thomas: Oh, yes.

Rosa Santos: Are we challenging ourselves to suspend judgment?

And it goes both ways, right? It goes both ways. We’ve spent, Alisa, Merary and I have spent now over a year talking about how there are all these rules around us that sometimes they are imposed upon us that we also have to fulfill in order to really play the game and play the long game, right? And on the other hand, I feel a little bit, after a year and a half of having these conversations, I feel a little bit to what extent I am the one suspending judgment, you know, when I’m trying to out smart this game, the game that may have been imposed on me, right? 

Because there’s a lot of that judgment I am also imposing on others on how I think they’re seeing me, right? So I love this concept of, how do we create that space for grace around us? Because I want that to be applicable to me, but it needs to start with yourself.

Alisa Manjarrez: Suspending judgment for what I think others might think of me is like a bomb drop for me, because it is so easy to assume what other people are going to think.  Sometimes I assume that people can’t handle me, because I’m too much or I’m too this, too that. And so I will minimize myself as a result and not give them the full story. I mean, that’s bad on me, but that’s also me judging them and I’m not giving them the opportunity to see all of me. I’m making that decision for them instead of giving them the space for grace and allowing them… If they have a bias, that’s not on me, but I don’t need to take that responsibility of making the decision of what they’re going to think of me. 

Shantell Thomas: Let’s just all be candid. Like in the, in the work space so much is riding on it. Like your livelihood, for instance. So like your behaviors and the things that you do and how you show up, and your ability to collaborate with people and get the work done, it’s so important. It’s so big. That is paramount, I think first, and then like for, you know, like when you’re a woman or a man from an underrepresented group, it magnifies it so much, because now you know, but you still have to act judiciously because of the outcomes you’re trying to achieve. 

Rosa Santos: I’m thinking like, Oh, how, how can this be fresh? It’s actually fresh and refreshing. It really is. It really is fresh and refreshing even though we’re not spring chickens, as somebody that I used to know used to say. It is, it is refreshing, because I think it’s just being, it is not only being who you are, but I think it’s allowing others to hear this perspective, right? To hear what goes through your mind at the end of the day to even consider the possibility of creating space for grace, right? And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s unique to us, or unique to, people of color in general. I think there is a lot of those barriers I think, and a lot of them are self-imposed. I think, Alisa, what you’re saying is a really a self-imposed barrier, right, that you create up here in your head as to what you think… 

Alisa Manjarrez: And those barriers might be from previous experience. You know, it might not be just me imagining something. It might be because people have constantly told me something and that’s where that resilience comes back. Like, even though you think I’m this and everybody’s told me I’m this, I’m not, and I’m going to keep showing up and remind you, and if you’re a new person, I’m going to give you that grace to accept all of me. 

Shantell Thomas: Yeah. I think that’s exactly right.  

Rosa Santos: Yeah. 

Alisa Manjarrez: And, Shantell, you’ve been in IT and marketing for over 20 years now, I’m assuming… I’m gonna assume about you. Let me just do what I just said I don’t want to do. 

Shantell Thomas: Well we should do healthy assumption. 

Alisa Manjarrez: I’m going to healthily assume that you’ve been one of the few women in your workplace, just because of the nature of It, and is that right? Maybe I can ask. 

Shantell Thomas: Yeah, so, you know… Yeah, actually company-wide, that’s true, because in IT it’s, you know, the dominant groups are males, but I found myself in the space within IT where it’s predominantly female. And so I’ve been in marketing over 20 years and marketing is known to be probably about 67% women.

So it’s a dominant space. So mostly I looked to my left and I looked to my right and I see people who look like me. But now I’m in HR, and guess what, I jumped from one dominant culture female represented space to HR now because I work in the diversity and inclusion office and I’m, you know, still, right?

Um, my team is made up of mostly women. And it’s really kind of interesting, but marketing is 67% women, and so it was HR, the exact numbers. How strange is that? Where the difference is, is that I’m generally the only Black woman. I could always really clearly see that through this identity, right, I’m a lot different. I have a lot of different, a different culture from a lot of the women I share the space with, that has never been lost on me.

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I like being able to come into those spaces where I am an only, and like I said, I find that bridge, because a lot of times, as you get closer to people, you might come to learn, as I have in lots of settings, that I was really the Black person that they had been closest to in their lives, like me, in the workspace. Like this is my first time ever befriending or really getting to know a Black person. I can’t tell you, across my career, how often that’s been said to me. So I definitely, you know, how they call it the… have you heard like the double minority? I, yeah, am definitely a double minority in the spaces that I have been all the time. And so I’m comfortable there. I’m comfortable there because I’m comfortable with who I am. And so it’s fine for me to show up in those spaces, but I do do a lot of mental leaps in order to challenge myself to do things in those spaces.

Like I used to travel all the time and I used to challenge myself to always talk to a white male. Like just go and introduce myself. Because I know that given the fact that I am a double minority, I want to meet other people, but I want to give them the opportunity to see if they see another Black woman maybe across the table from them interviewing for the job, that they can put a little humanity on it. Yeah.

Alisa Manjarrez: I love that. It’s kind of like your ministry. 

Shantell Thomas: It is. That’s so funny. Oh, my gosh.

Alisa Manjarrez: You’re like, I’m going to help all the Black women who are interviewing. I’m going to meet white man, show them how awesome I am, and that way he’ll know. 

[music stops]

Talk about befriending the unlikely person. That’s what you’re doing. 

Shantell Thomas: That’s it. That’s what I was about to say. It is befriending the unlikely person or the person that people are generally surprised that you’re friends with. Like speaking of high school, right, my friends used to tell me, you say to me, like Shantell will be friends with the person that nobody likes.

They’ll like her and that’s there. It’s always been very true. Like I am friends with the people that no one else likes and they don’t like anybody else, but somehow I just, I don’t know, I see the heart of people. Like I know, like we all just want to be seen. Have you guys ever heard… Okay, so Oprah Winfrey is my favorite person outside of my family or my family members.

I got to say that I sat. Outside of my family members, Oprah Winfrey is my favorite person. And so she…

Rosa Santos: In case she’s listening. 

Alisa Manjarrez: She listens, obviously. 

Rosa Santos: Obviously she does. 

Shantell Thomas: She listens on Sundays when she’s sitting under a tree. But she is my favorite person, but when she ended her show, someone asked her, what does she think was the reason for all of her success over the years? And she says that she believes it’s her ability to see people. Like just to see them, like giving them the visual and the engagement that says that I see you. It’s something when you look intently at somebody or like, I do that with my kids all the time, like I look in their eyes so that they can see that, I just think the world of you. And so, like I think that that’s the same thing with people you interact with. You’ve got to let them know that they are being seen and heard. And that’s the thing that opens up the… that kind of breaks the barriers down.

Alisa Manjarrez: I love that. I’m gonna put Rosa on the hot seat. This is kind of like a coaching question.

Rosa Santos: Okay. Bring it on. 

Alisa Manjarrez: From our discussion today, what’s been the biggest personal insight you’ve had for yourself?

Rosa Santos: Well, in all transparency, I was thinking as I was listening to you, Shantell, right now I said like, I don’t think I look at my son that way. 

Alisa Manjarrez: I was thinking about how do I look at people too.

Rosa Santos: Oh, my God, when he’s already texted me about something. So maybe that’s one that I need just to, Okay, he is my son, even though he’s a teenager, and it’s hard sometimes.

Shantell Thomas: And he probably smells. 

Rosa Santos: Exactly. 

Shantell Thomas: I have all sons, I know they smell.

Rosa Santos: So, so there you go. But, for me, is again, I think sometimes, grace and suspending judgment and whatnot. Even though I think I’m good at it, I think you have to practice. I referenced my mother quite a bit, and I saw her recently, and if I can think of anyone who’s resilient it’s her. And as I was coming back home this is what is reminding me, right, to get to a point where my mother is at that she doesn’t take anything personally. She goes through life as the most optimistic person at age 80, almost 81, and even though none of her daughters are close and she’s by herself, I’ve never seen anyone, you know, happier and irradiating a sense of energy after this year and a half of being through the pandemic and all kinds of other issues that she’s had.

And, and then listening to you, this sense of, what quiet fills your soul is exactly what you’re saying, Shantell, that I think I should practice more is giving people the benefit of the doubt. And I think the world would be such a much better place if we gave each other that benefit of the doubt. And I commend you for having that ministry of reaching out to others so you can be their reference for whenever they find somebody who might potentially look like you and have a different perspective and opinion. And I think I would probably do more of that myself. So thank you.

Shantell Thomas: Oh, that’s so great, Rosa.

Alisa Manjarrez: And, Shantell, I’m going to get coachy on you too. What new insight do you have about yourself from this conversation? This is not even a coaching conversation, but I’m in that mode today.

Rosa Santos: You are.

Shantell Thomas: I think that I’ve got to somehow be able to… I think I always try to just show up fully. And whenever, wherever I am, but always, I think the new thing for me is not only just to show up and give people the space, you know, the grace for space, but then also be able to turn the temperature down a little bit.

I am really sunny, I guess, and when I say that in contrast, I think I actually, try to work at not always being so sunny that people forget also that I’m not a kind of dumb little girl. Because that’s also a thing. And so just hearing myself and listening to you all and watching myself on video, I’m actually, one of the things that I’m taking away is how do I balance, you know, like just having the positive disposition and being extra sunny and extra happy and stuff like that in a way that I can kind of still convey it, but also be able to bring in the line of seriousness and I’m about business too. 

And so just only because I’m watching myself with you all and really paying attention only because we’re talking about happiness, which I do this every day. I’m on zoom calls all the time, but it’s just, I think it was just the opportunity to talk about happiness that made the meter go up and it actually be that topic brought it to the frontal lobe and now I’m evaluating myself against that, right? So being happy, but finding somehow a little bit of the balance so that people know that I get the job done too.

[cue outro theme music]

Alisa Manjarrez: I think that’s being strategic. You have this amazing gift of joy, but you can be strategic about it and use it in the right place in the right way. And that’s when we, especially like as multicultural women, like that’s what we want to get to, right? What am I really good at? Where am I inspired? And then how do I navigate all of that? And I think that what I’m hearing from the both of you is this like idea of self evaluation. 

Do I need to give space for grace for the other person? Do I need to give it for myself? If I’m really seeing that person fully as them, how do I need to respond in this moment so that they feel seen, and that I am visible?

Want to know how breaking the rules can help you level up your career game? Search What Rules podcast on any social media platform and join our members only group on LinkedIn where we discuss rule breaking strategies for multicultural women. 

What Rules is a production of Color Forward. The show is produced by me, Alisa Manjarrez, with editing and fabulous sound design by Mathr de Leon. Visit colorforward.com for more stories, events, and of course all the episodes of What Rules.