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“Don’t talk about it, be about it!”

This is a saying I was raised on while growing up in Los Angeles, and it was always used to call people’s bluff. Talk is cheap because those who are linguistically adept can easily spin tales of unparalleled beauty. But only those who are truly committed to the cause at hand are willing to pay the high price of sacrifice.

You see, when there are limited resources to go around, people reveal their true priorities by what they do. Not what they say, but what they do. I’m here to state definitively, if someone is unwilling to make reasonable sacrifices to achieve any goal, then said goal is not a priority for that person.

And with that framing, I want to look at the careers of Black people in corporate America, and our tragic lack of representation amongst senior leadership. Organizations like The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management have been recruiting elite Black talent to elite MBA programs for more than 50 years, churning out truly brilliant business leaders from the likes of the University of Michigan, NYU and Emory. Yet, the ranks of senior leaders in corporate America are as white as the day is long. Before I break down exactly why promising Black careers mysteriously fizzle out, I want to make it clear that the answer isn’t that we lack talent, and it’s definitely not because we lack ambition.

To illustrate my point, I’m light-years from the rough environment I was raised in. Even though I’m not dumb enough to think that I’m “different” than my people, it’s not lost on me how far I’ve come, given where I started. And as I walk through this world, the hard-knock lessons I learned during my adolescence helped me understand the new spaces I move through. On average, Black people have to work harder than their peers to prove they’re objectively better than most of their peers just so they can get their foot in the proverbial door.

In many ways, this is a frustrating reality that breeds resentment. But the upside of having to work twice as hard to get half as much is, when we finally land our dream job, the drive and excellence we had to exhibit will likely make us one of the most capable people in the room.

According to The Center for Talent Innovation’s report, “Being Black in Corporate America,” Black people are more likely to have greater career ambitions than their white counterparts. And when you take into account the barriers created by systemic racism, when you see a talented Black professional you’re likely seeing someone who is more experienced, more resilient, more driven than their peers.

Once we’re in the door, there is a lot of pressure for us to deliver. Black people don’t have the privilege of blending into the background until we figure things out. Similar to our adolescence, we aren’t afforded the luxury to make mistakes while we get up the learning curve. We have to hit the ground running because everyone is watching us — both those who are rooting for us to succeed, as well as those who want to see us fail. Both camps want to prove that either we do or don’t belong, and the net impact is we’re placed under more pressure to deliver than our peers.

While Black professionals are on their journey, those who want to see us fail are smart enough to not openly sabotage us. Instead, they’ll neglect us, or they will show up in our careers as benign saboteurs. (i.e. They will withhold information that can help us, or sit quietly by while we unknowingly head towards danger.) They didn’t place the danger in our path, but they intentionally chose to not warn us about it.

When we prove to be good enough to overcome the neglect of those who prayed for our downfall, there are those who will recognize our talent and will step up to become our mentor. Unequivocally, mentors are vital to anyone’s career. I routinely advise anyone starting out in their career to identify three key groups of people to have in their professional life: confidants who you can speak freely with, mentors who can help you improve at your given craft and sponsors who will champion your successes and open doors for your professional advancement.

As Black folks, when we prove we’re gifted, it’s relatively easy for us to find mentors. Who wouldn’t want to mentor a resourceful, battle-tested, driven individual who’s hungry to learn? It feels good for the mentor to give their time to someone who’s going to put it to good use. With the knowledge passed to us by our mentors, we quickly climb the functional expertise learning curve while producing best-in-class work. We create new product concepts, forecasting models and marketing campaigns that result in significant growth for the company.

So, why aren’t we, as talented, high-impact and ambitious Black professionals who have overcome so many socio-economic pitfalls to make it into the room, able to make it up the corporate ladder? Why are the ranks of senior leadership and company boards still devoid of Black people?

It’s because meritocracy is a myth. The key to making it from middle management to senior management isn’t about skill, talent or work ethic. Hell, it’s not even about being responsible for driving strong business results. The key to becoming a senior leader is receiving sponsorship from a senior leader. And Black people are rarely sponsored.

If making it to senior leadership was simply about hard work and skill, corporate America wouldn’t have a diversity issue. Gifted Black professionals would ride their performance to promotion after promotion, and corporate boards, at a minimum, would look like our broader society, in terms of racial representation. So, why don’t more white senior leaders sponsor talented Black professionals? I posit, that far too often, white senior leaders don’t see themselves in us.

As a senior leader, you can only sponsor so many people for the few senior jobs that come available. If a company is at least average at recruiting and retaining talent, it will have a decent bench of talent in middle management roles. When a senior management role opens up, there will be three to four middle managers capable of stepping into that role, and the deciding factor is almost always subjective. It comes down to having a sponsor who’s in the room where people’s careers are decided, someone who is willing to champion you. So, when we hear senior leaders say they’re committed to diversity and inclusion, ask them how many Black people have they sponsored. Ask them, how many Black people have they gotten promoted to VP and EVP roles.

I’ve been in rooms where people’s professional fates are being decided, and it amazes me how big of a role bias plays in these conversations. Phrases like “I think” and “I feel” are commonly used. In one instance, when I was in the room where a mentee of mine was being discussed during talent reviews, her stellar results were secondary to another manager’s feelings about what my mentee might want for her career. The cold reality was this person’s biases led her to conclude that my mentee wasn’t a good fit. (i.e. She didn’t like her.) But thankfully I was in the room and was able to advocate on my mentee’s behalf to focus the conversation on her actual performance and stated career interests.

My mentee is not the same race or gender as me, but I still saw myself in her work ethic and integrity, and I was willing to use my standing in the company to serve as her sponsor at that moment. But what will it take for white senior leaders to start seeing themselves in young Black professionals? Because until they do, Black careers will continue to stagnate; that, or the best and the brightest Black talent will continue to walk out the door in pursuit of a workplace that actually backs up their big talk about diversity and inclusion with real action.

It is inexcusable for any company in 2020 to not have a diverse leadership team. The riddle of diversity and inclusion has been solved by many institutions already, so any organization that is doing more than simply paying lip service to diversifying their workforce can replicate what other organizations have already done. The problem isn’t some institutional boogeyman that mysteriously kills Black professional advancement. The problem is the bias that lives in the hearts and minds of senior leaders who profess that they’re champions of diversity. Because if they were really about the work of diversity, they would have already reached back to help a brilliant Black professional.

Aniefre Essien

Writing since February 2022 · 1 story contributed