John League: You mentioned that one of the things that you're striving for here are candid conversations, and I think the candor with which you've approached this whole thing really comes out in your book. Let's just start with the title — you called it "Beyond Leaning In."

Why is lean in — I'm not going to say the wrong advice, maybe you would say it's the wrong advice — why is it incomplete advice to give to women?

Melanie Ho: I often get questions from folks, "Did you call this Beyond Leaning In because you want to attack Sheryl Sandberg?" No, it's called Beyond Leaning In, it's not called Against Leaning In.

But I think folks are often looking for drama, right? They want to be able to find some, "Hey, here is a younger generation clapping back at the older generation", or something like that. And no, again, it's Beyond, not Against. Sheryl Sandberg says in the book, this is only one part of it. This is one slice of the pie.

And to me, lean in is important advice, but we actually have to do more. And the idea of lean in doesn't get at why it's hard for women to lean in. What are the extra barriers we face? What are the penalties we face when we sometimes do lean in? Sometimes lean in is actually bad advice, because it can backfire.

What are the ways that telling women to lean in doesn't take into account the fact that that connects to this idea that women should be more like men stereotypically are, right? Be more aggressive. Interrupt. Why aren't we talking to men about all the ways that women are socialized to listen more and to amplify others' voices? And so, to me, lean in is about saying women are the problem versus saying, "Let's look at the systems and the culture."

League: So when we think about the systems and the culture, let's talk about the role that allyship plays here, because I think you're pointing to a broader issue. It is not simply just having women do the work to overcome the challenge of being marginalized. There is a place for allies. What is the work that that can really help here?

Ho: There's a metaphor I use often throughout my book, and also I have a comic about this. I think of it, from basketball, as points versus assists. I remember when I was a kid and I would watch basketball with my dad and he would kind of pull out the newspaper as we were watching the game and say, "Look, they keep track of points and they keep track of assists for all the players, but everyone just talks about and glorifies the points. And actually, the assists are just as important, maybe even more important. You can't win the game without any assists."

It really stuck with me, especially as I grew up, as I started to see how different gender dynamics would play out in meetings, when I was in school, in meetings in the workplace. And I think of points as each individual really trying to advance their own viewpoint and their own ideas and their own position and power in the meeting. So think of that as, "I think this statement." Or my favorite is, when people say, "I have a question" and really, it's a statement and opinion worded as a question.

Now, if we compare that to an assist, an assist might be saying something like, "Hey, so-and-so had a really good idea", or even, "So-and-so disagrees, but in order to make this better, we actually need to hear all points of view." So an assist is really about taking into account the collective needs of a group.

Men are often socialized more towards the points; women are often socialized more towards the assists. And we have cultures that really depend on the assists but value the points. So, every single task that often women disproportionately end up doing, taking the notes at the meeting, remembering the birthdays and bringing the cupcakes to the parties, all of those things are really in the category of assists. Even mentoring, joining service groups and committees, planning events. Really, it's the points that are valued, and we can see points versus assists playing out in so many different ways across any workplace.

League: What is not allyship?

Ho: So often I think that it's not that people are doing things that aren't allyship, it's that they're doing sort of the first step of many and then calling it a day. Awareness in and of itself has to happen, but that itself is not allyship.

I have a scene in my book where one of the characters — and I wrote Beyond Leaning In specifically from the point of view of different characters, both men and women, different generations, all levels of the organizational chart of a fictional company — where they're together trying to figure out why there are still such persistent gender gaps even while a woman is CEO. There are many women in power. They're an organization that's won awards, as one that's good for women. And yet, still there's this big gender gap.

And we go back and forth between these perspectives to understand why. And there's a point where a character a lot of the men who read my book say they identify with this character. His name is Kyle. He's a white man who's a manager. He's a millennial. And there's a point where he realizes that there's a difference between being woke and doing something, being woke and staring at the ceiling.

And I think that a lot of allyship begins with that first step of, "Okay, I recognize that there's a problem. I can see gender and racial bias in my workplace." But then, what happens after that?

League: How is allyship different from mentorship or sponsorship? And I think that's especially an important question when so many of our organizations have structures for mentorship and have invested a lot of resources in maybe pairing people together or getting people training to do this better. And to your point, stopping there.

Ho: Mentorship and sponsorship are such an important part of it, and only one part of it. So for example, I've known a lot of individuals who really were committed to mentoring. And in many ways they were great mentors, but they would also, for example, give advice to junior women and people of color that was correct advice if they were going to give it to another white man. And I'm thinking about white men mentors in particular, but actually, it wouldn't work for the women and people of color that they were mentoring.

I'll give an example of a woman who told me once that her mentor had told her that he starts speeches by talking about his young children, in order to get empathy from the audience and connect to that. And of course, I have a comic about this, and the fatherhood bonus versus the motherhood penalty for a man who does that.

You can almost hear the collective, "Aw, what a good guy," that the audience is thinking. And for a woman who does that, the audience, across genders, because we all have the same unconscious biases, might be thinking, "Oh wait, is she not as good at her job? Is she tired? Is that why this presentation isn't good?" They just start to make all kinds of assumptions, and it primes them to listen to the speech in a different way. So the person was meaning well, wanting to mentor, wanting to give advice, but unaware of the systemic and cultural biases that his mentee faced.

And so, I think mentorship to be allyship first of all has to have an awareness. Have an awareness for that individual conversation, but then systemically say, "Okay, if this is part of a larger system, how can I as an ally use my voice, use my power in order to change the larger system?" Which then might say, "How does the motherhood penalty versus the fatherhood bonus impact, not only my young woman employee when she's giving a speech, but as we're taking into account promotion conversations and policies, what are the things we need to take to incorporate there as well?"