Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace

In this follow-up to her international bestseller How Women Rise, Sally Helgesen draws on three decades of work with executives and aspiring leaders around the world to offer practical ways to build more inclusive relationships, teams, and workplaces.

Participants at leadership conferences often tell Sally, “Please don’t spend your time telling us why developing and retaining a diverse workforce is important. We get it. The problem is, we don’t know how to do it.” Rising Together provides that missing how in full detail by identifying both what holds us back and specific tactics that can help us move forward.

First, Sally identifies the eight common triggers most likely to undermine our ability to collaborate across divides—not only of gender, but also of age, ethnicity, race, sexuality, and life experience. These triggers are widespread, yet rarely acknowledged. They include differences in how people from different backgrounds view ambition, competence, perceptions, fairness, communication, networks, attraction, and humor.

Sally then offers specific practices designed to address these triggers: simple behavioral tweaks that we can use on a daily basis; a method for informally enlisting allies to hold us to account; and a means for cultivating and disseminating the dynamic power of we.

Rising Together is for readers at every stage and level in their careers who recognize that building a broad range of relationships is essential to their advancement, now and in the future. This book also serves as an indispensable guide for HR, diversity, and leadership professionals tasked with addressing the misunderstandings, resentments, and derailments caused by the eight triggers. Sally’s focus on behaviors—how we act—rather than bias—how we think—promises to redirect the inclusion conversation in a grounded, real-world way that brings us together.