You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review.
I'm Amy Gallo.
And I'm Amy Bernstein.
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.
I had the pleasure of speaking with the late Catherine Phillips,
Kathy, a Columbia Business School professor whose research on diversity,
authenticity, and how people work together has been widely cited and deeply influential.
She talked about the tension so many of us feel between wanting to connect and fearing that being open might backfire.
The reality is that we're all on our own journeys of identity and how comfortable we are disclosing various things about ourselves.
We all have a need for belonging,
and we oftentimes have concerns that if we highlight things that are different about us,
that somehow that might make us feel like we don't belong where we are.
The conversation took place at a live taping of Women at Work.
I was joined by my then co-hosts, Sarah Green Carmichael and Nicole Torres,
and by our senior producer, Amanda Kersey, who moderated the conversation.
We later published the episode as Self-Disclosure at Work and Behind the Mic.
For this revisit, Amanda re-edited the conversation to focus on Kathy's voice, her research,
her reflections, and the insights that feel just as relevant now as they did then.
She opened by reflecting on why self-disclosure was part of women at work from the beginning and how Kathy's research helped her see that choice in a new light.