What to Share, What to Hold Back

Women at Work

Harvard Business Review

Entrepreneurship, Workplace, Business/management, Business/entrepreneurship, Progress, Resources, Gender, Equality, Business/careers, Women, Hbr, Careers, Management, Business, Harvard, Human

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 5 May 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Self-disclosure at work can build trust and connection, but it also comes with risks. In one of our earliest episodes, the late Columbia professor Katherine Phillips explained how sharing personal experiences helps diverse teams connect. We revisit that 2018 conversation and talk with her longtime collaborators, Tracy Dumas and Nancy Rothbard, who explain how expectations around self-disclosure have shifted, especially with the rise of remote work, social media, and political polarization. Plus, the Amys reflect on what they’ve learned about when, why, and how to open up at work.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review. I'm Amy Gallo. And I'm Amy Bernstein.
0:11.5	We're starting something new on the show. We're revisiting some of our favorite episodes from earlier years and bringing in some fresh perspective.
0:22.9	In 2018, I had the pleasure of speaking with the late Catherine Phillips, Kathy, a Columbia
0:28.8	Business School professor who's research on diversity, authenticity, and how people work
0:33.9	together has been widely cited and deeply influential. She talked about the
0:39.0	tension so many of us feel between wanting to connect and fearing that being open might
0:44.7	backfire. The reality is that we're all on our own journeys of identity and how comfortable
0:51.2	we are disclosing various things about ourselves. We all have a need for belonging, and we oftentimes have concerns that if we highlight things
0:59.0	that are different about us, that somehow that might make us feel like we don't belong where we are.
1:03.9	The conversation took place at a live taping of women at work.
1:07.8	I was joined by my then co-host, Green Carmichael and Nicole Torres and by our senior
1:12.7	producer, Amanda Kersey, who moderated the conversation. We later published the episode as
1:19.2	Self-Disclosure at Work and Behind the Mic. For this revisit, Amanda re-edited the conversation to focus
1:25.7	on Kathy's voice, her research, her reflections,
1:29.1	and the insights that feel just as relevant now as they did then.
1:33.3	She opened by reflecting on why self-disclosure
1:36.1	was part of women at work from the beginning
1:38.1	and how Kathy's research helped her see that choice in a new light.
1:46.3	Again, thank you everybody for coming.
1:48.4	When we were figuring out what women at work was going to sound like when we were developing the show,
1:54.7	one of the things that was important to me was to have stories from the hosts, personal stories, not just from their careers, but from the
2:03.1	rest of their life, be essential to this show. From my perspective, I knew that these women were
	...

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