Inclusion Unlocked

9Candor

If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.

Kahlil Gibran

Often the most important feedback you receive as a leader does not get delivered in agenda‐driven meetings or carefully orchestrated events when you are most prepared, and for Tim Ryan, US chairman and Senior Partner at PwC, that was certainly the case after a special event in 2016 when the firm shut down to internally discuss race after recent national violence.¹ He recalled, “It went great. But when the day was over, I was leaving the office and one of our Black senior managers grabbed me in the lobby and he said, ‘What's your role as a leader of a brand like PwC outside of PwC?’ We had just made it through this big day. I was hoping to go back, grab something at Subway, just relax and decompress. And that night I didn't sleep. Because he was right.”

Ryan had already received difficult feedback that had prompted the shut down for a discussion on race: a different Black employee emailed him lamenting the work silence about several high‐profile murders of Black Americans. Tim Ryan, a White, Irish‐Catholic man, took the feedback in his stride, reflecting back to the lessons from his mother to respect people and listen to them. There were more hard conversations leading up to the discussion day, including many other executives who thought his actions were absurd.

A companywide conversation on any topic is an undertaking, let alone one on race, so for the day to go well must have been a huge exploit and ...