ALISON BEARD: I’m Alison Beard.
ADI IGNATIUS: I’m Adi Ignatius, and this is the HBR IdeaCast.
ALISON BEARD: Adi, at every workplace, there are things that people think about, worry about, and talk about behind closed doors, but rarely discuss with the people who could actually do something about them. I’m thinking of money, age, family responsibilities, even fear of failure.
ADI IGNATIUS: Yeah, and you left out a biggie on this election day in the US, politics.
ALISON BEARD: Yes, that too. So today’s guest, Christina Wing, who’s a longtime executive and now senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, says that we need to get better at addressing all of these topics, even at work, because it’s the only way for people to feel truly connected and engaged, and for leaders to get all the information and perspectives they need. And when, by contrast, you avoid taboo subjects, it undermines trust and can leave your business vulnerable.
ADI IGNATIUS: So that makes sense. And yet, and I’m going to say the obvious here, we can all get ourselves into trouble, and I’m talking career-ending trouble by saying the wrong things at work.
ALISON BEARD: Definitely true, especially when the topics are controversial, but Christina offers advice on how managers can address these tricky issues and create an environment where people feel safe raising them. She’s also going to explain how to navigate these really uncomfortable conversations with empathy, honesty, and a shared goal of making things better.
Wing is the author of the book, Unspeakable: The Taboo Topics We Avoid and How to Talk About Them. Here’s our conversation.
So what are some broad categories of these taboo topics that we really avoid, particularly at the workplace?
CHRISTINA WING: Well, we avoid money, we avoid age. One that’s kind of surprising is we avoid fear, and it’s a complicated thing because this list is just growing.
ALISON BEARD: So I’m going to dig into each of the categories at one point, but let’s just talk a little bit more broadly for a while. Why is it important, particularly in the workplace, to address these things that we don’t actually feel comfortable talking about?
CHRISTINA WING: So what’s interesting is we talk about these things, but just not with the right person. And so a lot of these conversations happen in a side room or somewhere else, but not with the person that could actually affect change. And when you don’t talk about it, the decisions get made without input and without a safe space for people to be.
ALISON BEARD: How do national and corporate cultures play into this? Because there are some countries and some organizations where speaking up about uncomfortable topics is encouraged and others where it’s not at all.
CHRISTINA WING: Well, cultural differences come into how to have the conversations, but most companies present themselves as a values-based place to work. How do you really know it’s values-based if you’re not talking about the things that are important to you? And what happens is that rift just gets bigger and bigger, and the leaders at the top are more isolated from their workforce when things aren’t communicated.
ALISON BEARD: What about generational differences? Do you find that-
CHRISTINA WING: Yes.
ALISON BEARD: Okay. As someone who teaches at Harvard, I’m sure you have a lot to say on this.
CHRISTINA WING: There are huge generational differences. When I was growing up, we didn’t talk about politics and religion. Those were the two things that you were kind of like, “Okay, put those over there.” Now the list has grown so much, but interestingly, the rising gen is very comfortable talking about certain things like their salary. They share what’s going on, but the existing generation doesn’t. So the gap is even widening there.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And I do think even when it comes to topics you would think people would shy away from in the workplace like politics, younger people want to have those conversations more about Black Lives Matter or Me Too, and organizational leaders aren’t really sure how to deal with it.
CHRISTINA WING: To really have a strong organization, you should have policies on these things before Black Lives Matter. What’s happened is leaders then come out or don’t come out and make a statement after a big event, and that makes people think nothing is safe. If you have general guidelines about what to do, then we can all get better. What’s happened with these rising gens feeling like they can’t talk about these important things, then the list just expands to other areas where they then think, “Well, I can’t talk about fertility. I can’t talk about a vacation. I can’t bring any part of me to work.” That’s dangerous.
ALISON BEARD: When these topics aren’t addressed in the workplace, when people don’t feel as if they can talk about them, what are the effects?
CHRISTINA WING: The effects are people don’t feel safe at work. I mean, my colleague Amy Edmondson talks a lot about psychological safety and how important it is. How do you feel safe someplace where you can’t communicate your opinion on matters that really do matter? If you take religion, for example, if you can’t explain why you’re going home for a certain religious holiday, how safe do you feel to actually go home or to bring that full part of yourself to work?
ALISON BEARD: What about the argument that work is work and home is home, and as much as we talk about work family, you shouldn’t bring your personal life into the office as much as some people might want to.
CHRISTINA WING: So there’s a difference between secrecy and privacy. I really believe in privacy and there are certain things, but if you’re keeping secrets that will affect an organization, that’s different. If somebody doesn’t feel safe because they can’t wear their headscarf, they’re probably going to quit instead of talking about it. Why not talk about it?
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Okay, so let’s dig into some of the specific topics. I want to start with politics. It has been particularly fraught in recent years. A lot of people would say that given all of the polarization that we see, that it’s just something we should not address in the workplace. Do you disagree with that?
CHRISTINA WING: I do disagree. If you’re doing business in Egypt and the tariffs are going to go up, you need to understand that and be able to talk about the consequences of different political actions. If you pretend they don’t exist, then that just means all decisions are made of the C-level suite and the rest of the team is just executing.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. But what about expressing how you feel on particular issues?
CHRISTINA WING: I believe strongly that if you express how you feel in a constructive way and are willing to listen to the other side, it could be win-win. If people express two different opinions, the best thing that might happen is somebody might change their opinion. Without education of how people look at things, how do we get better?
ALISON BEARD: I do find that listening is very important and trying to find common ground, right? That should be the point of any political discussion that you want to have in the office.
CHRISTINA WING: Absolutely. And a common goal of how it affects your business. If you are producing something that needs to take all sides into account, which I would argue everybody should be thinking about, you don’t have to agree, but you have to respect each other.
ALISON BEARD: What recommendations do you have for managers who want to lead effective non-combative political discussions at work? And that is if it’s about a political issue like tariffs that’s material to the business, but then also if it’s a momentous thing like an election, how do you provide that safe space to talk about it?
CHRISTINA WING: First of all, I mean, you can’t just ignore it. An election has happened. It’s a fact. And so the best way, in my opinion, for leaders is to lead with your own kind of narrative. It doesn’t mean the leader even has to necessarily express their opinion on every issue, but should open the conversation with a safe statement.
“Listen, we were all up til 2:00 in the morning last night watching the elections, and I know that there are going to be consequences either way. This is how we are thinking about it. This is how it’ll affect our company.” And just bring it up. If you come into work and pretend it didn’t happen, that’s just putting your head in the sand.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. How do leaders bring up these issues that might be really sensitive in a way that is productive?
CHRISTINA WING: If you’re going to create a culture where you discuss current events, then you need to be conscious to discuss many of them, and you need to have a safe space for doing that. “This thing is in the news. This is terrible. If anyone wants to talk about it, I’m in my office,” but you can’t cherry-pick what you want to address.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I have seen companies run into that where it’s like, well, we had an all-hands call about this for people to process their feelings, but then we didn’t have an all-hands call about this. For any conversation that you want to have about a taboo topic, whether you’re the one bringing it up because it matters to you or whether you’re the boss wanting to open the conversation, what kind of preparation should people do?
CHRISTINA WING: Well, you should role play because you really, really need to make sure it’s worth bringing up and you should choose your words very carefully and always, always come at it from a place of empathy. If there’s not a common goal and you don’t feel empathy, then it’s not your place to be engaging in this conversation.
ALISON BEARD: There are a lot of things I don’t think AI is good for, but I do think it can be really helpful in role-playing conversations because you say, “Now act really angry with me.” You can give it directions about how to react and then how would I react if it doesn’t go as I planned. You also recommend scripts, I think, but how do you plan out what you’re going to say without seeming like it’s rehearsed?
CHRISTINA WING: So I mean, you have to know your audience. This is where the cultural differences come into place. This is where geographies come into place. First of all, I think all these conversations should be in person, not on text, not on the phone. And so you play it out, but you leave room for surprises because if we always are right about what the other person’s going to say, then what are we actually doing? I mean, the whole point is to learn from the other person. This is about connection.
ALISON BEARD: And if the conversation isn’t going the way that you intended it to, how do you recover?
CHRISTINA WING: First of all, you never get up and walk away because then you really went backwards. It is very fair to say, “You know what? This is not going great right now. Why don’t we take a beat?” Or, “This isn’t going right now. Why don’t we both think, and can we talk about this again in two days?” That is totally fair. And by the way, many of these conversations are going to take multiple attempts because the person you’re having it with hasn’t done the role playing, hasn’t done the script, and you have to be aware of that. Think of all the prep you did to even get there, give the other person some peace.
ALISON BEARD: And then how do you keep the conversation going?
CHRISTINA WING: You set up the next time right then and there. This is not going great. I know you’re traveling the next three days. Can we try again on Friday at 9:00? You don’t let it just go.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, don’t let it fester. What about people who work in organizations where they feel as if they’re in the majority and so it’s okay to make a negative comment about a particular candidate or a particular election result or a positive comment because they feel that most of their colleagues will agree with them? Is that okay or should people temper themselves knowing that there might be people in the minority who really do disagree?
CHRISTINA WING: Self-awareness is very important, and I think when you feel you’re in the majority, you’re probably wrong. You probably have just self-selected who you speak with and you’re making assumptions. That is exactly why I want people to talk about it so that both sides are heard. I would never endorse making a statement that’s in any way negative to the other side.
ALISON BEARD: Okay, so let’s move on to race and religion. Again, another really, really tricky topic at the workplace. Why is it important to talk about it at work?
CHRISTINA WING: I grew up in high school in Texas and the Jewish holidays were on the calendar, and I went to a big public school where there were not a lot of Jewish people. I really didn’t even understand those holidays until now when I have many colleagues from different religious backgrounds. And so instead of saying, oh, you get that day off, it’s like, why is this day important to you? And then you understand that and it translates into a deeper understanding of what people value and what they’re going through at any given moment. We don’t all celebrate the same religious holidays. We don’t all eat the same food. We should be respectful of that.
ALISON BEARD: If you want to bring up your own race or religion, “I am a Black person who is feeling really upset about any of the more recent incidents since George Floyd’s murder,” or “I am a Muslim woman who wants to be able to take holidays,” how do you recommend those types of executives, leaders bring it up at the office without othering themselves?
CHRISTINA WING: It has to be brought up initially. It is just that these are some facts about what’s going on in the world right now, and is it on the person that’s feeling it to bring it up or is it on the leader to bring it up not just to that person, but to the entire group?
ALISON BEARD: So it sounds like you’re saying it’s really on the leader to invite conversation.
CHRISTINA WING: It’s definitely on the leader to create that safe space. So I’m a female, which I’ve been the minority in most of my life in finance, and with my team, I lead with that. I will say, listen, I’ve been the only woman in a room and I have a very diverse team. That opens the door for other people to talk about their differences as well.
ALISON BEARD: Back then, did you feel comfortable talking about the fact that you were the only woman in many rooms?
CHRISTINA WING: You know what? No. I talked about it behind the back of my colleagues with the few other women. And now I wish I could go back and be that 20-year-old woman who would say, “It’s unacceptable that we go somewhere and there’s only a men’s bathroom. What is that?” But with time and age, I’ve gotten more comfortable. And so as I am older, I hope I can pull other people up to talk about these things.
I recently spoke at a women’s event and I went into the bathroom and there was a woman breastfeeding, pumping in the bathroom because there was nowhere to do it, and it was 250 women. How did we not have a space for women to do that? We need to change what we offer people, and it needs to be talked about. And I went and gave my speech afterwards and I spoke about it in there. I said, “We are at a women’s event and there’s a woman standing at the sink pumping. That’s wrong.”
ALISON BEARD: Right. That’s a perfect transition to the next topic I wanted to talk about, which is work-family conflicts. So what are some of the areas here that make people really uncomfortable talking about at work?
CHRISTINA WING: When you have a baby, it’s celebrated. 75% of our generation are taking care of elder people as well. That’s not celebrated at the workplace. It needs to be discussed. We have responsibilities to young people and to older people, and we don’t bring it up as much because we don’t have a finite time, and so it makes employees feel vulnerable going to you because I don’t have a concrete answer of what I need. We need to open that up because otherwise we’re going to lose a lot of qualified people in the workforce.
ALISON BEARD: And I think that’s true for anything that happens in life. If you have a teenager who’s having mental health issues, you’re going to need to take time off for that. Fertility is another issue you address in the book that when someone’s pregnant, that’s very visible. When they’re struggling to get pregnant, it’s not at all.
CHRISTINA WING: And it’s a lot less fun.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, exactly.
CHRISTINA WING: And some of the best leaders start each year with their team and say, “Is there anything on your horizon that I should know about or you want to talk to me about?” Just opening that up is so lovely.
ALISON BEARD: If you are someone who wants to raise one of these issues, elder care, fertility, a mental health struggle with yourself or a family member, what recommendations do you have for how to do that with your boss and your colleagues?
CHRISTINA WING: This is the most important part. You can’t go into any of these conversations being what I call pre-pissed. If that’s the case, walk away. It needs to be done very calmly with the understanding that you might not be successful the first time. So I recommend reaching out to the other party and saying, “I want to have a conversation. Can we meet at X, Y, Z place?” Not summoned to my office, not summoned to your office. And then when we get there, we have to have a common goal because there’s a difference between a difficult conversation and a difficult moment.
A difficult moment is firing somebody. There’s no common goal. A difficult conversation is we both want the organization to be better. We both want sales to go up. This is what I’m seeing. Let’s set some ground rules. I’m going to tell you my opinion and then I’m going to listen and hopefully we can come forward with something better, but it has to be done calmly with empathy and in a neutral spot.
ALISON BEARD: What if it’s something though that you don’t really want to share or discuss the details with your boss or colleagues, but you want to let them know that you need time off or how do you navigate that?
CHRISTINA WING: Privacy, like I said, is fine. Secrecy is not. And so privacy, an example would be, I need some time off because I have a medical issue. That’s very acceptable. Secrecy would be, I need time off. Without any kind of qualification, they don’t typically build trust and build a path forward. You don’t have to go in and explain every detail, but letting somebody know what you’re going through really matters.
ALISON BEARD: What if you see someone on your team, whether they’re your direct report or you just work with them, if you notice that they might be struggling or slipping or something, how do you ask about it in a kind, helpful way without feeling like you’re overstepping or invading their privacy?
CHRISTINA WING: Unfortunately, we typically, when we see somebody struggling, we blurt out something like, “What’s going on with you?” When it’s a colleague and you want to be there for somebody, I think the best thing to do is say, “Is everything okay? Can I be helpful to you at all?” Start there.
And if they say, which they most likely will, “I’m totally fine,” you let it go a little bit, and then you go back and you say it again because you care. And as the receiver of it, you come at me a couple times, I start to believe you really care and I probably will open up to you.
ALISON BEARD: Okay. So the next topic I wanted to talk about, it’s also related to this idea of life stage and capacity. So let’s talk about age and retirement. If you’re a manager who sees an older employee slowing down, that seems like a very tricky thing to address. What’s your advice on how to do it well?
CHRISTINA WING: We need a total reset on age and work. In terms of noticing somebody slowing down and correlating that to their age is already us projecting something onto them. They might be slowing down because they’re bored. They might be slowing down because they don’t feel well. So I want age and succession to separate, and I want to see a lot more really young leaders, and I want to see a lot of little bit older leaders doing something else that’s productive. We can do many productive things.
ALISON BEARD: So if you are an older or a younger employee who wants to start talking about a transition, maybe it’s retirement, how do you bring that up?
CHRISTINA WING: It’s a gift. So think of it this way. If I were to come in and say, “My five-year plan is to this, this, and this, and at that time period I’m transitioning out,” it suddenly puts the rising gen in this position of great, because I might want that. And that’s when, as a good manager, you say, “So Alison, are you interested in this?” And you start to give people a career path. If you think you have to wait til people die to get a job, people don’t feel motivated and they leave. Clarity is kindness.
ALISON BEARD: So I think a lot of these taboos do have to do with fear. You mentioned six of them, fear of punishment, authority, judgment, conflict, ambition, and failure. And you say that when we don’t talk about them and don’t overcome them, then it holds our careers, our teams, our organizations back. So which fear do you see most often rear its head in organizations?
CHRISTINA WING: Fear of ambition, and especially with women. Women have a harder time saying they want something greater than what they currently have, and they are misconstrued when they say it. Many women struggle to say, “I want to make more money” or, “I want the lead role.” And because of that, they get looked over more often than a lot of their male colleagues. And so put it out there. “I love what I’m doing now, but what do I need to do to get to this next level?” And if that leader looks at you differently because of that, then that’s not an organization that you should keep working in.
ALISON BEARD: Well, that brings me to other fears, fear of punishment, judgment, conflict, failure, going for the promotion and not getting it. So how do you advise leaders to overcome these fears? It’s easy to say, stop being afraid about it, but how do you actually do that?
CHRISTINA WING: I think storytelling is a great thing. I tell all of my students that I’ve been fired before and they want to crawl under their desk. They’re like, “Professor Wing, you were fired?” Absolutely. And it was awful in the moment and it was great later. And so we all make mistakes, but getting that fear and that stigma away, the best way to do it is to talk about it.
ALISON BEARD: Since childhood, honesty is the best policy. If you’ve done something wrong, you should admit it right away, but it’s still, especially at work, when you do want to impress your colleagues and your bosses, it can feel really hard to step up and say, “I got this thing wrong. I made a mistake.” Particularly your students who are younger in their careers, how do you encourage them to do that?
CHRISTINA WING: The way I lead is I always tell them of my mistakes. And so I do this with my team also. On Mondays, I say, “Okay, I emailed somebody, put the wrong name in, and I’m horrified,” hoping that they see that I’m not going to punish them when they do it. With the students, I give them as much safe space to not ever have to tell a white lie. So I say to them, “If you’re not prepared for class, turn your card upside down.” And that is my way of saying, “Don’t put yourself in a position where you have to have a white lie. Let’s all agree that we’re all here to learn and let’s do our best.” When you think about different parts of your life and what you trust, it’s about real information.
ALISON BEARD: Yes. Where do you see discussions about salary, salary transparency, people telling each other what they’re making? How do you see that’s changing, and how do you advise people to talk about it more forthrightly?
CHRISTINA WING: So money is so complicated because we tie money to our self-esteem, our entire worth, and that’s so silly because some of the careers that are the most important in the world don’t make a lot of money. That being said, we as people tend to assume we’re going to be taken care of. And so inside the workforce, we rarely complain about money until the end of the year when we find out if we’re getting a raise or a bonus. And what needs to happen is people need to start talking about money well before that.
So if your company awards bonuses and salary increases in December, in February, you should go to your manager and say, “I want to add a lot more value to the company this year and I want to make a lot more money. These are the things that I want to do,” and set it up from the beginning.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. On the organizational level, there’s been a whole movement towards pay transparency, but I do feel like there are positives and negatives to that, right? I can understand why managers don’t want everyone to know what everyone else is making, in part because they don’t know what their previous history was. They don’t know everything that they do in their jobs. So how do you advise organizational leaders to handle that?
CHRISTINA WING: I think organizations should have pay bands and those should be very transparent. At the VP level, the band is this to this. Nobody needs to know where you are in that band, but you should know what the possibility is. And then within the band, it should be between you and the manager.
ALISON BEARD: This reminds me because Dan McGinn, who worked with you on this book, he was my manager for a time. He’s also a dear friend, and he had once have a conversation with me about pay bands, and he was so uncomfortable coming in, and I was like, “It’s no problem. It’s fine.” He was just like, “Whoa, okay. That went so much easier than I thought it was going to be.” But it’s an argument for have the conversation.
CHRISTINA WING: Transparency. And many people have never had to talk to their team about money until they become the head person, and it’s very uncomfortable. And so in this case of Dan, if the pay bands had always been discussed to him as he was moving up the ranks, then he would have no problem talking about it. So changing that culture, hopefully going forward, people will understand those are the bands. Transparency is kindness.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. And finally, downturns, job losses, and layoffs. So particularly in these really uncertain times, lots of industries have had lots of layoffs, there’s the specter of AI. How should managers talk about the potential for these things happening without terrifying everyone?
CHRISTINA WING: If managers just avoid that AI is there, they’re scaring their team. I think being as honest as possible, which is, “Listen, we are going to start using AI. Our customers are going to start using it. We don’t know how it’s going to affect things, but what we do know is we’re going to need different roles and responsibilities for people. Do any of you have any ideas? Are there any parts of your job that AI can now do well that you could do other things really well?”
Including the people in the process as you think through it is fundamental. That doesn’t mean you’re including everybody in the strategy. It means you’re actually asking your teammates what has changed for them and their job and how can we help upskill them and maybe do a better job because of it.
ALISON BEARD: Yeah. And so if you’re a boss who sees that in the future, given the results, restructuring might be looming, layoffs might be looming, how do you prepare people for that and have honest conversations about it?
CHRISTINA WING: For seasoned leaders, it’s about reminding people that with technological changes, yes, our current roles are going to change, but they’re going to be new opportunities. And so frankly, I think the best companies are preparing their workforce daily, upskilling them, helping them. And by the way, some people want to change careers. I don’t think we go in and say, “50% of the workforce is going to be fired, sorry.” And then you put this combative ground. 50% of what we do is going to change, and we are going to work with you on how it’s going to change and we’re going to help you.
We have to be compassionate to our teams because if we don’t talk to them about it, they’re going to speculate and they’re probably going to come to a worse place than what’s really going to happen. And so sharing what we can without scaring people is fundamental.
ALISON BEARD: As someone who has been fired previously, how do you recommend that people who have experienced a layoff, been fired for cause, talk about it afterwards with future employers and even friends and family?
CHRISTINA WING: People should not hide. We need to communicate it fast to our network, own the narrative, don’t go after your former employer. That just makes you look negative and petty, but I’ve lost my job. This is what I’m looking for. How can you help me? You have so much great value other than the job of where you worked. And I think people need to use this time when this happens to really look at what they were good at and what they weren’t and what they want. And most people that get fired end up in a better spot. We have to get rid of the stigma.
ALISON BEARD: Terrific. Well, thanks so much for being on The IdeaCast.
CHRISTINA WING: Thank you for having me, Alison.
ALISON BEARD: That’s Christina Wing, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School and author of the book Unspeakable: The Taboo Topics We Avoid and How to Talk About Them.
Next week, Adi looks into whether you really know what your customers value most. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a colleague and be sure to subscribe and rate IdeaCast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. If you want to help leaders move the world forward, consider subscribing to Harvard Business Review. You’ll get access to the HBR mobile app, the weekly exclusive insider newsletter, and unlimited access to HBR online. Just head to hbr.org/subscribe.
Thanks to our team, senior producer Mary Dooe and senior production editor, Kristin Murphy Romano. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I’m Alison Beard.
