Voices of Executive Women of Color, Part 2: Recommendations

Last week, in Voices of Executive Women of Color, Part 1: Lived Truths, you were called in to read about the raw and real leadership experiences of 22 executive women of color. We don’t often get to hear the personal views of executives who fit this profile, and certainly not as a collective. 

As a woman leader of color myself, the process of writing the piece was far more self-reflective than I anticipated.

Part 1 looked beyond familiar management topics to illuminate nuanced personal experiences. It presented six primary themes derived from 22 individual conversations. These themes reference challenges a number of interviewees expressed with being seen, heard, and supported. They also shine a light on self-confidence, authenticity, and inspiration.

Today we’re going to answer the question of what to do with these insights. 

How can women of color in leadership navigate the challenges they face to continue to grow their impact? How can they do this in a way that’s sustainable? 

Different from market research reports that focus on actions for organizations, the recommendations here are for you: women of color in leadership who resonate with the lived experiences shared in Part 1.

We’re going to talk about what you can do for your growth, to give you power in systems that might be too slow or too myopic to support you. I offer these recommendations as an executive coach who works with many women leaders of color, and as a former Fortune 500 director myself. These recommendations are about empowering you from within.

Empowering you from within as women of color leaders is about designing how you will be in relationship with your environment and with yourself. 

This approach takes into account what you can control, centers your needs, and acknowledges the importance of psychological safety. I recommend focusing on three main areas:

• Building and leveraging a network of allies

• Engaging in self discovery to ground yourself in authenticity

• Setting expectations for how you will engage with your environment

Build and leverage a network of allies.

Allies are people who not only offer acknowledgement and validation of your experiences, but who will actively and publicly show support for you. They share values with you, they create belonging for you, and you feel safe with them. Build your tribe of allies in three ways:

Identify potential allies within the spaces where you experience the greatest challenge being seen, heard, or understood. 

Get to know them one-on-one, if you don’t already have a relationship with them. For each person you build trust in, share your challenges to the extent that is comfortable for you, and invite them to support you in relevant forums. Supportive action could look like teeing up a conversation to give you the floor, or elevating an idea you’ve shared before that was not considered at the time. In the spirit of mutuality, establish with your allies how you can support them as well.

Connect with other women of color leaders who are in the same ecosystem as you. 

Explore both group and one-on-one forums to engage with these women to determine what type of support works best for you. Set up a regular cadence to meet with these allies to exchange experiences, and tactics, to navigate scenarios in your specific environment. Where to start? Employee resource groups or professional networking groups are one great path to making new connections, as people have self-identified with the given group.

Focus your networking activities on connecting with senior leaders who share your values. 

Observe their behaviors and words. Ask trusted colleagues for their opinions about those leaders. Connect with the ones with whom you may share values. Seek guidance on growing in your leadership and career. These leaders might turn into mentors or sponsors, or help you find both. I recognize the temptation to focus first on the most influential decision makers, even when they don’t appear to share your values. The reason I don’t recommend starting with leaders without values-alignment is because it’s important for you to build your safe space first.

Engage in self-discovery to ground yourself, as a woman of color leader, in authenticity.

Your authenticity is a unique contribution you can make to your environment. It is a quality of executive presence (see footnote 1). Many leaders I coach to build their authentic leadership style describe how leaning into it is a source of relief. Becoming unapologetically clear about who you are, and what you value, can help you lead more consistently in alignment with yourself. 

Identify contexts in which you operate in alignment with your sense of self, and where you don’t. 

This exercise will help you be more intentional about how you engage in different contexts. For contexts where you are in alignment, reflect and write down what is in alignment. For contexts where you are not in alignment, reflect and write down what is misaligned. What are you learning from each list? Commit yourself to understanding how your job or workplace can also serve you and your goals. This lens will help you prioritize which of your behaviors you want to continue, and which you want to shift, to be more aligned with yourself while serving your goals.

Invest in resources to guide your self-discovery. 

These resources will help you to process your experiences, get clear on what is important to you, and translate your values into actions that resonate with you. An executive coach is one resource example that can capture the nuance of your experience to support your journey. You could also search for self-directed exercises, such as journal prompts or meditation, to deepen self-reflection. AI coaching, such as engaging with a digital coach through a chatbot, is another option to consider.

Assess the degree to which you feel belonging in your environment. 

This assessment will help you understand what, how, and if you want to continue to invest in the environment. Do you feel a high, medium, or low sense of belonging? What contributes to that feeling? Where are there opportunities to lean into greater belonging while supporting your goals? If the environment does not sufficiently meet criteria that is important to you, you face dead ends in trying to make it work for you, or your health or safety is at stake, leaving is an honorable option. Leaving is taking a stand for yourself.

Set expectations for how you will engage with your environment.

Every organization is a system made up of relationships that inform its dynamics. While it can feel like you have no control over the dynamics, a shift made by a single entity in the system has potential to impact the rest. Where you have safety to do so, test the dynamics by adjusting your relationships, being strategic about where you are physically present, and seeking specificity when you receive vague input.

Evaluate your professional relationships and how you want them to look. 

Categorize the relationships into those that: (a) are working for you, (b) have room to grow, or (c) are barriers for you. These relationships might be with your management, direct reports, peers, customers, investors, and the media, for example. Assess how close or far each of the relationships is from an ideal state. Which structures or behaviors will support the ideal? What do you need to establish, and what do you need to request from others? Category (a) may be a model for Category (b). Category (c) may require support from your network of allies, particularly if any efforts you’ve already tried have not worked. (Yes, it’s possible Category (c) also includes lost causes).

Be thoughtful about where to be present physically and where to be absent.

Where you choose to be present physically, and where you choose to be absent, can send a powerful message about what you prioritize and how you will engage. These choices will also help you preserve your energy for forums where you want to grow in your leadership. For example, have members of your team take your place in meetings that don’t require your experience or voice. Your absence will support their growth, while giving you room to be present where you can influence bigger impact. Another example is to decline attendance in a toxic forum that you or others have attempted to improve. Absence sends a message of what you will not tolerate.

Question vague feedback and vague commitments.

When people in your work environment are vague with you in their feedback and commitments, it leaves the door open to confusion and stagnancy. Two specific contexts where vague input is challenging is when you are trying to garner support from others, and wondering how to grow your career. If someone says they will back you in an initiative you run, inquire what action they may take. If someone says they are committed to your career growth, ask what that would look like. I recognize this recommendation can be a tough one if someone repeatedly circumvents invitations to be more specific. If they do that, acknowledge that their avoidance is a message in and of itself, and seek other paths for support.

From action to liberation as women of color leaders

I recognize fully, as an executive coach and as a woman of color leader myself, that these actions to self-empowerment may feel like a lot of work. They are work. Self-empowerment takes work.

Remember that you do not have to implement recommendations that you don’t want to. And you certainly don’t have to implement any or all of them right away. Perhaps you are in a season where processing your experiences is more important than acting on them. Perhaps you are ready for action in one or two specific areas of your leadership context. Perhaps you have other ideas for what is going to be best for you.

Coaching was the door that opened my path to self-empowerment. I had considered myself a self aware person before coaching. But as I went through my coach training, and a 9-month one-on-one coaching experience, I found significantly more clarity in what mattered to me, where I had hesitations to work through, and for what I was willing to take a stand. 

Years later, I still continuously invest in my self development. It is a journey. This investment has also made me a stronger coach. I see many people through their evolutions. The act of leaving my corporate context was part of my evolution. I wasn’t leaving a bad environment. I was leaning deeper into my authenticity and goals.

Do organizations need recommendations on how to invest in their women of color leaders? They absolutely do. Many research reports direct their recommendations accordingly. 

At the same time, systemic change can be slow, especially when it sits in the hands of a select few. That’s why this piece centers you. I fundamentally believe that as women of color leaders lean deeper into their authenticity and use it to fuel the choices they make, inherently they (you!) will role-model and influence more inclusive forms of leadership.

I look forward to continuing this journey alongside you.

If you would like to explore 1:1 executive coaching as your path to self empowerment, please DM me at Farah Hussain or email [email protected].

Thank you to the 22 executive women of color who shared their time, experiences, and feedback for this two-part series.

1 Hewlett, Sylvia Ann. "The New Rules of Executive Presence." Harvard Business Review, January-February 2024.