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Many people want to do right by their colleagues. They mentor them, advocate for them, and confront bias, believing that these behaviors — commonly referred to as allyship — contribute to a fairer workplace. Allyship is often framed as a tool to support colleagues and to create fairer workplaces that celebrate true talent, especially among people from underrepresented backgrounds.
Experts have offered abundant advice on how to enact the “ideal allyship”: Be humble, be authentic, be informed, and don’t be performative. In practice, this often means listening carefully, validating colleagues’ experiences, and speaking up when change is needed. But while these actions are intended as support, they often seem to miss their mark.
Consider the example of Nathan, who privately tells a coworker named Marcus, the only Black member of their team, how unfair it is that Marcus’s ideas are routinely ignored in meetings. Nathan means well, but Marcus doesn’t seem reassured. Nathan struggles to understand why Marcus still seems frustrated.
When Allyship Backfires: Unintended Consequences
Workplace inequality is ultimately rooted in structural and historical processes that embed bias into organizational systems and maintain unequal access to opportunity, resulting in consequences, or what we call symptoms, for employees, such as feelings of exclusion, exhaustion, and devaluation.
Our recently published review of all existing academic papers on allyship led us to conclude that good allyship supports those who experience the symptoms of inequality, while great allyship addresses the root causes. When leaders focus on making people feel better rather than making systems fairer, morale gains are fleeting. Over time, employees disengage, innovation suffers, and the organization’s reputation for equity deteriorates.
This finding highlights a core challenge: Whereas statements of support are often equated with meaningful change during discussions of allyship, such signals seldom result in true workplace change. The mismatch between intention and effect can leave recipients of allyship feeling frustrated or disappointed, not because allies are inauthentic but because their support ultimately fails to make a difference.
We identified two related but distinct effects of allyship: signaling, which is offering signs of support or affirmations of the recipient’s worth, competence, or safety; and mitigation, which is reducing observable structural barriers and interpersonal acts of discrimination in the workplace and equalizing access to resources. The mitigation path offers ways to address the root causes of inequality, such as changing promotion systems that undervalue women’s contributions, or addressing leadership pipelines that systematically underrepresent Black employees. For example, uplifting a colleague unfairly passed over for a promotion due to their gender or race may make the colleague feel competent (signaling) but does not address the biased promotion system (mitigation).
Although signaling can result in short-term positive experiences for recipients, in the long term, mitigation benefits them more. Signals of competence, value, and safety are important; they can make people feel like they belong and improve their well-being. But such psychological effects are fleeting if the person continues to experience unequal systems. Over time, if employees from underrepresented backgrounds repeatedly observe allyship attempts that drive no meaningful change, they will start to distrust such efforts altogether, which can undermine even the short-term signaling benefits.
Effecting Authentic Change
Advancing meaningful organizational changes in how people are treated requires a much more complex effort than simply offering public recognition or a privately delivered sentiment. Anyone — an executive, a peer, or a direct report — can engage in effective allyship. We offer the following recommendations for those interested in catalyzing observable organizational change.
Prioritize actions that target structures. If your support is continually needed to correct an issue that keeps occurring, the root problem hasn’t been addressed. Ask, “What would make my advocacy unnecessary?” For example, instead of voicing support for a change to a policy related to promotion criteria, propose that the next team meeting be devoted to reevaluating the criteria.
Make allyship context-specific, not generic. What worked in one situation may not work in another. Instead of defaulting to your best guess, ask colleagues what they need. (“Do you want me to speak up, or to create a platform where you can speak for yourself?”)
Consider public versus private praise. Public praise can be helpful for highlighting someone’s contributions, but if it singles someone out unfairly, it may hurt more than help. Ask yourself, “Does this amplify their work, or set them or other team members apart in a way that could undermine their achievements?”
Avoid public acts when something can be handled privately. Some of the most effective allyship happens behind closed doors, “in the room where it happens.” Public praise is best paired with support in higher-level decision-making spaces, where most employees lack representation.
Offer access, not just affirmation. Focus on fostering career opportunities and providing concrete resources and access beyond encouraging words. Instead of encouraging promising employees to seek out training, rally for a fund that enables employees to pursue relevant industry certifications (such as project management or Lean Six Sigma) that would otherwise be financially out of reach.
Follow up on past actions. This will help you learn what worked and what didn’t. Allyship is iterative; you won’t always get it right the first time. Instead of assuming that your action had the intended impact, follow up with the recipient: Did it actually make a difference for the organization or for them?
Allyship always sends a message, but does it result in real change? In the earlier example, Nathan’s support fell flat because it acknowledged the unfairness Marcus faced but had no effect on the forces that created it.
To be most effective, aspiring allies should rethink how they show up for others who need support. Truly meaningful allyship brings about lasting workplace changes that benefit everyone.