My question is, are there any tips you can give around how to have such an open conversation with your boss or co-worker?
ES: This is so important, because what it really does is license the other person to stop pretending they don’t see that you’re Black. This imperative to act colourblind is strong but it’s an impediment. When you initiate that conversation, you license me to stop pretending that I don’t notice we’re different races, and that’s an important first step.
I think it’s good to signal that you’re comfortable talking about it, and you also want to signal that you believe it’s important to talk about. But it’s really important to pick the right time and place.
Smaller groups are better, and one-on-one is best: I’m not going to give you a 100% unmitigated natural response if there are other people around, because I’ll be wondering if I’m saying something they’ll disapprove of. Once you have a rapport with someone around that issue you can also talk about it in larger settings.
The flipside is that it’s exhausting. I don't think it is reasonable or justifiable to expect black professionals to be constantly educating their white colleagues on these issues.
CA: Yes, you do get the feeling you’re having the same conversation with thousands of people and they’re expecting you to be the expert. So I guess setting boundaries is quite important.
ES: The other important thing I want to say on this is that developing a common language to talk about these issues can be really helpful. So, the phrase ‘implicit bias’ allows you to very quickly and efficiently call out discrepancies. It’s more difficult if you don’t have that shared language you get from having these conversations initially. Having a shared vocabulary so you can point out instances and cut them off when they are happening, that’s important.
CA: The next tip is what I would typically call finding a mentor, but having taken your [MBA elective] Path to Power course I’ll re-phrase that to the importance of finding a sponsor. I’d like you to explain what the difference is between a mentor and a sponsor, and why it’s so important to find one.
ES: Absolutely. I give full credit here to my colleague Herminia Ibarra, who’s done a lot of great work on this. The distinction between mentor and sponsor is critical for the professional progression of women. I’m sure it’s also pivotal for black employees.
The basic idea is that there are these punctuating moments in your career where people are going to be sitting around a table allocating resources, allocating rewards, and part of that process is a person in that room effectively putting their reputation on the line and vouching for one of their reports — not just that but fighting for them, really trying to make sure that this person’s hard work is recognised and rewarded. And that’s essentially the sponsor’s responsibility.
The mentor makes no such promises. The mentor is happy to talk, happy to give general advice, happy to be friendly and generally supportive, but the job of the sponsor is to be your advocate and you have to earn that sponsorship. It’s not something you can just walk up and get. That’s the key difference.
So, how do you develop that sponsor relationship? Shared interests that you are passionate about can be the foundation of the relationship. You can build on that and it can lead to a sponsor-protégé relationship by demonstrating that you also share your sponsor’s values and are willing to work very hard to earn their trust and respect.
CA: Another tip for Black executives is to reach out to other Black people in the organisation. Clearly the sponsor doesn’t have to be someone of the same race, but there’s value to identifying other people with a similar lived experience to yourself because that way you can learn from their experiences as a Black individual. It can educate you in how to behave in that organisation and help identify people who could be seen as allies in your quest.
It is also really important to build not just up but also down, so identifying people generally who have a similar experience to yourself.
ES: Part of having these informal networks is the shared life experience, and part is having an early-warning system about who’s really racist and whose activities are going to be detrimental to the other black executives in the firm.
CA: The follow-on is to join networks, whether social or professional, outside your current workplace. In the UK, for example, there’s the Black British City Group (BBCG). Building a network of people who are going through the same kind of experience as you is clearly important for some of the reasons you’ve mentioned.
ES: Let me ask you a question about that. Sharing information is relatively frictionless, but what if somebody in one of these networks asks you: “Hey, I need you to help me find a job.” What is the expectation?
CA: That’s a very good point. My experience is that it has really differed depending on the individual. I’ve had times when I’ve reached out to people and you can tell straight away that they kind of feel: “Look mate, I’ve really struggled to get here, and you’ve got to find your own way.”
In my experience, some Black people feel hard done by to have got to where they are and thus feel the next person needs to do the same thing — that it’s not their job to help them. So I’d say right now the expectation is pretty low. We need to turn that on its head and think, ‘I struggled to get where I am, so I need to make it easier for the person coming after me.’
I tend to think about what’s the easiest thing I can ask from this person. My perspective is that we, as a community, need to be more helpful to each other.
ES: You can never guarantee you’re going to get somebody a job, but what you can do is even the distribution of opportunity a little, because access to that sort of conversation is systematically uneven. I wonder if it is a generational thing, whether that mentality will soften a little bit — I hope it does.
CA: The final tip I have is around building personal capabilities and skills that are going to help you understand and influence those around you — a skill that in your lectures you called ‘self-monitoring’. The fact of the matter is that if you’re a black professional in a high-powered industry, the likelihood is most of the people in the room will not look like you or have the same background and experiences that facilitate rapport-building. Are there any tips you have for developing such a capability as a Black professional?
ES: That’s a really good question. One approach is to think about how performers go about it — people like actors, people who do public speaking for a living. But the biggest challenge for being a consistently great self-monitor is first, understanding what a situation demands of you and then two, being able to enact that.
There’s a theoretical tension here between self-monitoring and workplace authenticity. There’s a lot of great research on the benefits that accrue to people when they feel they can be authentic at work. But that almost exists in tension with this, because what I am telling students to do with self-monitoring is not that at all.
But there are ways to do this that are authentic and represent a self-expression that feels like you, it’s just that it’s not your first thought. Your first thought is, who should I be in this situation?
I bring it up because I think it’s a good tip, but it reflects the problem — the fact that I am telling a segment of my students to think harder in a certain situation, and I don’t like that. I still think it’s good advice, but it frustrates me that that’s where I land.
CA: I remember reflecting on this after the class and thinking that you have to accept that you’ll need to have some flexibility in different scenarios to get to where you need to be. But also you need to think beforehand about where your boundaries are, and so long as those boundaries aren’t crossed, you can mould to the situation to influence and to get to where you want to go. And that’s how I think about it going forward.
ES: You have your true North and you know what that is. And as long as you’re not asked to or feel compelled to step outside that, then, yes, that’s a really good way of thinking about it.