What is leadership in color?
By Jared R. Francis | @jaredrfrancis | 7 minute Read
In celebration of Black History month we'll be publishing a series of blog posts and podcasts exploring exploring the Leadership in Color framework. Each week we'll focus on a different aspect of the framework through writing and conversations with other leaders of color. This first article outlines the framework and makes the case for a leadership practice aimed at achieving equity.
Leadership is everything
During a tense meeting, my manager once declared, “leadership is everything.” The assertion came as we discussed why the project I was managing had gone off track and my overall struggles in my new role. What landed with me at the time was that “everything” that was going wrong was my fault, because I was the leader. From my perspective, then and now, things were much more complicated than “everything” being my fault. I didn’t need my manager to point out that things weren’t going well—believe me, I felt that every day— but we did need to come to a deeper understanding of why I was struggling to adjust to my new environment.
Coming out of that conversation and many subsequent others, I was able to first identify for myself what was at play, and later share them with my manager. In short, I didn’t feel confident or comfortable in leadership due to the racial and cultural shock I was experiencing internally. Leading in an environment where I was one of the only leaders of color was having a more significant impact on me than I anticipated.
The gap between the leader my manager and I knew I could be, and my current performance threatened my leadership and the success of the initiative I was leading. So, why did this gap exist? As I reflect on that moment, it is clear to me that at the time, my leadership practice was missing color—that is, it was missing me.
What even is leadership?
How does a leader’s racial identity inform their leadership practice? Before exploring this, it’s important to note that our understanding of leadership is limited. Despite the volumes of books, articles, and podcasts that are released each year that focus on leadership, we don’t have a universal understanding of what it means to exercise leadership. At a recent conference, Ron Heifetz described what we currently understand about leadership as an area of study, rather than a discipline. That is, we generally know the phenomena when we see it, but have much further to go in terms of defining what it means and how to describe and understand how it works in practice. Our lack of understanding is complicated further as we attempt to understand the intersection between leadership and race.
Culture drive results, leaders drive culture
In the years since hearing that “leadership” was everything, I’ve learned that this is only part of the story. These days I spend much of my time placing culture at the center of my leadership practice. Ultimately, I believe that culture is the differentiating factor between failing, good, and transformative organizations. If this is true, then to what extent does leadership matter? It turns out, quite a bit. It’s not just about the decisions that leaders make, it is about the environments which they foster. It is through the setting and upholding of a shared vision, norms, and expectations by which leaders function as central actors in organizational culture. Therefore, a leader’s capacity to shape and influence culture remains inherently connected to an organization’s ability to achieve their goals and fulfill their purpose. So in that sense, yes, leadership is everything. If this is the case, then we must consider what needs to be true for individual leaders of color to thrive within our organizations. As organizations across the country move to diversify their leadership, we must acknowledge that the success of the people of color who bravely step into these roles, correlates to the overall success.
Leadership in Color
The best compliment you can receive as a home chef is, “Boy, you put your foot in this one!” It doesn’t happen every time you prepare a meal for your family, but when it does, you know you’ve done something right. You can always pull your trusted recipe, follow the instructions, and get it all just right. What your family means when they say you put your foot in something is that through that dish, they got a sense of you.
To me, this is a lot like creating the kind of culture that drives extraordinary results. Just like making your favorite dish, you can chop the onions, you can do “team builders.” New leaders can follow the best onboarding plan. In the end, none of it matters. Anyone can follow the recipe for that dish or whatever the latest leadership book tells us is the recipe for building a great team. But the difference is when you put your foot in it. Value and impact occur as you develop the capacity for your authentic self to radiate through your practice and, by extension, the culture of your organization. That sense of you-ness in your dish is the difference between Wednesday night dinner, and grandmas world-famous Thanksgiving yams. The you-ness is the difference between simply holding a leadership position and delivering leadership which yields extraordinary results.
It is here that we arrive at what we call leadership in color. It is harder for leaders of historically marginalized groups to put their foot in their leadership. The legacies of patriarchy, racism, ableism, and heteronormativity deeply inform our conception of leadership. This influence impacts both the leaders of color themselves and their white organizational peers. Therefore, our perceptions of how leaders might look, think, and act, create substantial barriers to leaders of color. It cannot be understated the potentially deleterious impacts our collective priors may have on a leader of color. The outcomes of this are as varied as the leaders and teams they lead, but some common challenges include:
Leaders of color struggling with imposter syndrome, thus doubting themselves and projecting a lack of confidence externally
Leaders of color being subject to microaggressions from white peers who lack cultural competence, and act on unconscious bias. This may result in the leader avoiding informal, yet critical, organizational activities where relationships are built and solidified
Leaders of color becoming anxious about status within an organization, prompting them to act as “gatekeepers” and “sabotagers” to emerging leaders of color, therefore undermining diversity efforts
Leaders of color being treated as tokens by white organizational superiors, resulting in the leader feeling valued for their race rather than their skills and impact as a leader.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but consider how one, let alone a combination of these, might impact a leader’s ability to “put their foot” into their leadership and thus deliver results. Leaders of any race, gender, or background must be able to speak and act with their authentic voice and be driven by their deepest held values and beliefs. However, this manifests as a unique challenge for leaders stepping into roles that have not historically been inhabited by individuals who look and sound like them. For leaders of color, this means developing a practice which radiates who we are. It means demonstrating leadership in color.
What does leadership in color look like in practice?
As mentioned earlier, leadership is not discipline, so we know much less than we think about what it takes to lead. My current interests rest in exploring how leaders of color can realize their full potential through speaking and acting from their deepest values in service of achieving a more equitable world. Currently, I think leadership in color manifests when the following are evident in a leader’s practice:
Knowledge of Self: The leader has articulated and examined their personal narrative to achieve clarity regarding their deepest held values and beliefs. The leader has connected their personal narrative to broader societal factors such as racism, sexism, and other historical injustices.
Adaptive Leadership: Leadership in color demands that the leader be well-practiced in adaptive leadership. More so than most other leaders, leaders of color know that “to lead is to live dangerously”. Leaders of color recognize that they are always at risk of being marginalized within their organization– in particular when they’re tasked with challenging the status quo. Leadership in color requires us to embrace the challenges we expect during change: understanding one’s political context, building coalitions to drive impact, and managing threats to the change process.
Equity: Individual leaders must commit to an agenda that drives towards creating a more equitable society. Whether in the private, public, or nonprofit sector, there are numerous opportunities for organizations to stand on the side of equity and challenge the status quo. Leadership in color is realized by contextualizing one’s practice and efforts within our society’s larger journey towards justice.
It’s for equity
Why is this important? Ultimately it’s about equity. It would be folly to expect the same systems and cast of characters which have created the world as we know it, to create the world as we might imagine it being. A more equitable world will be the result of a more diverse set of leaders across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors acting in concert to drive equitable outcomes at the societal level. It begins with a more diverse set of leaders at individual firms, governmental institutions, and community-based organizations leading in color within their spaces. Equity will be possible when these leaders are not isolated but part of a community of committed to leadership in color. In the end, the promise of equity is not only to remedy historical marginalization and oppression, but to bring all us closer to a society that yields opportunity and justice for all.
