Dr. Brad Johnson, a White male clinical psychologist who has spent most of his professional life learning and teaching how to encourage female talent.
TIMESTAMPS FOR THIS WEEK’S INTERVIEW
Jean Latting (author of Conscious Change: How to Navigate Differences and Foster Inclusion in Everyday Relationships) interviews W. Brad Johnson, PhD (clinical psychologist, former Naval Academy instructor, and founder of Workplace Allies).
Jean 02:05
Where do you come from? How did you even get to this topic as an area of interest?
Brad 02:38
I had 30 years of conversations with my sister to hear about gendered headwinds that she encounters every single day as a woman in senior leadership positions that I never did. Women experience the workplace really differently, especially than majority men, people who look like me,
Academically, for 30 years, I've been researching and writing about how women get less access. And it's exacerbated for women of color; Black women in particular, have far less access to really healthy, positive, useful, developmental relationships.
Brad 08:49
Minda Harts is a Black woman who has written two very powerful books. The first one was The Memo; it was such an education for me about the multiple headwinds, that double jeopardy women of color have the headwinds of both their gender and their race that White women simply do not. Reach out to women of color you work with and say, hey, I was reading blank, and it got me so curious about whether women here are experiencing some of this too. Would it be okay if I asked you about that? I call it the "ask to ask."
Jean 10:55
What is it that women of color experience? And then let's add women of color that's different from White women.
Brad 11:15
Here are some of the headwinds that you just see over and over and over again. And we men don't notice these things because we don't experience them. Number one, the leadership tightrope. Women are constantly on a tightrope about how they show up as leaders, if they are too agentic and traditionally masculine, they get labeled your favorite "b" word. If they're more traditionally feminine and inclusive and democratic, they get labeled incompetent. I don't have that experience as a male.
Women, by and large, are constantly having to prove themselves. I don't. I get promoted on my potential. Potential for men. It's got to be experience for women.
Jean 13:15
It's easy for me to recognize potential in someone who is like me.
Brad 13:39
We surround ourselves with people who look like us and remind us of ourselves, and that's partly the problem with lack of mentoring across difference.
Jean 14:23
Talk about women of color.
Brad 14:38
Part of the issue is access. They simply don't get pulled into key meetings, to key conversations. They're often not at the table where decisions are made. They're simply not included, and I would say that gap for women of color is even wider than for White women. Then there’s the issue of invisibility: it's not that they’re being abused or spoken over; they’re not even being seen.
When women of color are particularly assertive, then they get all kinds of pushback.
Jean 17:35
Are men aware of this?
Brad 17:56
The frozen middle is the biggest group. This is the group that's not overtly antagonistic, but they're also not doing much.
Brad 22:50
Women know who are the safe men, who are the men who get it, who are the men who want to be better. Who are the men who, when you give them feedback, they receive it well, and then you can see a change in their behavior. Women know who those men are and word gets out. I don't recommend going up to a male in leadership and saying, will you be my mentor? Don't do that. It's a big ask. It's kind of awkward. A lot of men are going to be uncomfortable with that.
So I might make what I call the contextualized ask. Meaning I saw you had this experience, or you had done blank before in your career. I'm very curious about that, and I'm interested myself, could I get on your calendar for a half hour, take you to coffee, and just pick your brain about that?
Jean 24:57
It has to be a reciprocal relationship, so you want to give as much time as you're taking away.
Brad 26:29
I mentioned the mentor of the moment. How much does it cost me to notice a talented woman of color who's just come into the company? Notice her good work. Go up to her for two minutes and just say, "I saw what you were working on, or I saw you give that talk last week. I was thinking to myself, we were so lucky to hire you. I'm so glad you're here. If you ever want to talk about next steps in the company, or think about how I can leverage that and push you forward, I've got an open door. Feel free to drop by." That cost me one minute, right? And I was able to affirm a junior person. I wish more men would do that.
Brad 27:57
JP Morgan started asking senior men to take a 36-minute pledge every week. Will you promise to spend 30 minutes taking a junior woman to coffee and just ask about her career, where she wants to go, have a curious conversation. Spend five minutes giving a woman a shout out on some win or achievement and spend one minute telling more senior people in the company about her win or her achievement. 36 minutes, not a heavy lift for men. And within five years, huge turnaround in retention of women, advancement of women, just getting men to make a pledge like that.
Jean 31:41
What systems do you even look for?
Brad 32:19
We have relied for too long on formal mentoring programs, but you have to look at your culture. Who are you hiring? Who are you promoting? Look at the people that they're mentoring.
Jean 35:54
How do you mentor people who are not like you?
Brad 35:54
21st century leadership requires that you be able to lead people who are not like you. We can't expect men to be better colleagues with women if we don't show them the way.
Brad 38:25
What is the onboarding training we're going to do? How about cultural and gender humility? Active listening, generous listening, it would be another biggie for me, and I don't mean listening to help her, to fix her or fix her problems. That's not your job. Be a generous listener, a sounding board.
Brad 40:21
There are times when a mentor's job is to be a little bit more teaching, focused, coaching focused and honesty if you see some problems with performance. I think you'd need to be honest with your mentee about that. But, by and large, I think mentees come to us to try things out, to have these safe space conversations.
Brad 44:26
Men are afraid. Gosh, I don't want her to cry. I don't want to say something that comes across as sexist. So they stay on the sidelines. But the research shows women don't get that hard feedback that helps us all get better, and it's a disadvantaging thing for them.
Jean 45:30
Define the difference between mentorship and sponsorship.
Brad 45:33
In academe, when I'm mentoring a graduate student, I'm often also writing letters of recommendation, pushing them forward, I'm sponsoring them as well as mentoring. But in the corporate world, maybe sometimes they're very different things. Mentoring is this broader commitment to both to your career and your personal health and development. I'm in your corner more globally. Sponsoring is more narrowly focused on career advocacy, pushing you forward for opportunities.
Brad 50:10
One last thing I would say about anxiety about mentoring women, sponsoring women. As a clinical psychologist, I spend a lot of time helping men with their anxiety about women. There's only one cure for this: it’s called exposure therapy, meaning you have to have more interaction with women, and don't make that her problem that you're anxious, just start looking for more opportunities to have coffee, have conversations, have mentoring exchanges.
Brad 51:59
If you're a majority male who looks like me, you better lean in and have a reverse mentor. You should be out there and ask maybe a junior woman of color if she would consider being your mentor.
 Brad Johnson, PhD, is a clinical psychologist and the co-founder of Workplaceallies.com. For 30 years, he served sailors and marines in the U. S. Navy, first as a commissioned officer in the Navy’s Medical Service Corps and later as a tenured full professor at Annapolis in the U. S. Naval Academy's Department of Leadership, Ethics, and Law. As an officer, Dr. Johnson served as a psychologist at Bethesda Naval Hospital and the Medical Clinic at Pearl Harbor, where he was the division head for psychology. For 20 years, he was also a clinical faculty associate at Johns Hopkins University, where he was awarded the annual Faculty Teaching Excellence Award. He is an award-winning mentor with distinguished mentor awards from the National Institutes of Health and the American Psychological Association. He is also a fellow of the American Psychological Association. He has served as chair of the American Psychological Association’s Ethics Committee and as president of the Society for Military Psychology. Dr. Johnson is the author of more than 140 journal articles and book chapters—many on the topic of mentoring—and 14 books, in the areas of mentoring, gender in the workplace, and professional ethics. Recent books include: Good Guys: How Men Can Become Better Allies for Women in the Workplace (2020, October, with David Smith); On Being a Mentor: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty (3rd Ed.) (2025, with Kimberly Griffin); The Elements of Mentoring (3rd Ed.) (2018, with Charles Ridley); and Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women (2016, with David Smith). He speaks around the globe on the topics of mentorship and cross-gender workplace relationships. |
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