I'm Alison Beard, co-host of Dear HBR. We're still on hiatus, but I want to tell you about something you can listen to right now that might be able to help you get to the next level of your career. There's a new podcast from our HBO Presents Podcast Network called Coaching Real Leaders. Longtime leadership coach Muriel Wilkins takes you inside real life one-on-one sessions with high performers, people who are working

to overcome professional challenges and to grow as leaders. Listen in on these conversations and

leave with new insights and practical guidance for your own career. In this episode that I want to

share with you, Wilkins speaks with a manager who's been walking a tightrope between her

white male boss and her team who are people of color. When racial tensions run high, she must

learn how to manage both and build a healthier culture at her organization.

HBR Presents.

I'm Muriel Wilkins, and this is Coaching Real Leaders, part of the HBR Presents Network.

I'm a longtime executive coach who works with highly successful leaders who've hit a bump in the road.

My job is to help them get over that bump by clarifying their goals and figuring out a way to reach them.

I typically work with clients over the course of several months, but on this show, we have a one-time

coaching meeting, focusing on a specific leadership challenge they're facing.

Today's guest, who will call Diane, to retain her confidentiality, is an experienced leader handing up a nonprofit organization as its executive director.

She's intensely mission-driven, and over the span of her career, she's worked really hard to infuse her organization with a culture of inclusion.

And she now faces a common problem, feeling caught in the middle between the person she reports to and those she leads.

Where I'm incredibly challenged right now is that because I have built an organization

where everybody's voice counts and everybody needs to sort of speak their mind

and is encouraged to share how they're feeling and, you know, what they're experiencing.

We're currently in this, like, very uncomfortable position where my team is having issues with the

founder, who is a very, very wealthy white man. So Diane identifies as a white woman and has a long-standing commitment to being an anti-racist leader.

And here she finds herself caught in the middle between her staff and her boss, with the added

complexity of racial and power dynamics that exists between the founder, a wealthy older white

...