#94 Succeeding at Work as a Black Professional

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Carice Anderson, a Harvard-trained global learning and organizational development leader, guest speaker, facilitator, and corporate veteran. She speaks at events and conferences all over the US and is the author of Intelligence Isn't Enough: A Black Professional's Guide to Thriving in the Workplace. So, Karyse, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me, Erika. I'm really looking forward to our conversation.

Me too. I'm so glad we're talking. As I said to you before we started, the topic of your book is an issue I've seen for decades, and I haven't known how to address it. I think lots of us are in that place. Just this fact that, you know, talented, ambitious, intelligent Black professionals often don't rise to the levels they deserve in corporate America, right? So let's dive in. Okay. So you say that in the workplace, the rules are often unwritten and the success principles remain unspoken, which is such a great line. Can you provide us some insight into how to decode these rules and principles?

Absolutely. So, I mean, first of all, I'll start off by saying that, you know, the framework for my book is know yourself, know others, know your environment. So integrate those 3 elements so that you can build a personal brand and a communication style that allows you to have maximum impact. So the question that you're asking is really aligned with the know your environment element in my framework. You know, so I often think about when you go to someone's house, You don't show up and just start doing whatever you want to do, right? You kind of listen, you kind of observe, you see, okay, well, they eat dinner at 7, so, okay, I'm going to eat dinner at 7, or they rise early in the morning, I'm going to get up early. You pretty much try to align yourself, obviously within reason, right?

Yeah.

What happens in that household? And the way I look at an organization is that's like a household.

Yes.

Into somebody else's domain. So I think, you know, I think about it kind of in 3 ways. I think the first thing you do is what you would do when you go to somebody's house. You're curious, you listen, and you observe. Number one, right? So that just means you ask questions. I think you listen for those commonly used words. What words do you hear people repeating over and over again? What seems to matter in this environment? I mean, Trying to understand the method behind the madness. I once spoke to a senior partner at McKinsey, and at McKinsey, they communicate in a top-down fashion, which basically means you give people the most important point that's going to really hook them so that they'll listen to the rest of what you have to say.

Yeah.

You know, and he's like, we communicate with very busy CEOs and, you know, other really important people. And so you got to get their attention first. And that's why we communicate in that way. So I think even understand what's the method behind the madness. How is the office run and organized? You know, places I've worked, they're a lot looser when it comes to having people that are not part of the organization in other parts of the building. Or I worked at, I worked for a client that the CFO sat in an open plan with everybody else. Like that communicates a certain message to people.

Yes. Yes.

You know, asking people like, what are they trying to achieve? So that's the first point. Be curious, listen, observe. The second one is talk to the right people. Because what I've found is that sometimes the people who are not doing that well or performing that well, or who are very unhappy in an organization, they are the most vocal and the ones with the most opinions and the most advice.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

So you want to talk to people who are high flyers, the people that other folks are always talking about. Carla Harris, who's the vice chair at Morgan Stanley, says you should ask, what is the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people in this organization?

Nice. And then you're saying, which I really like, consider your source. Just because somebody's saying all kinds of stuff to you doesn't mean they know what they're talking about.

And I've seen it because I would know people's ratings because I work in HR. And people would come to me and say, well, this person said, and I wanted to be like, well, this person is not doing all that. I can't say that. But that's all I'm saying. Consider your source. And just because somebody's been somewhere longer than you doesn't mean they know what they're talking about. So I said, be curious, listen and observe, talk to the right people. And then the And then the third point for me is just understand the business. Like, how does this organization make its money? And try to connect what you're doing to that. You know, understand what adding value looks like in that environment and then start trying to do that. Offer your help and try to work in a way that aligns with others' goals and what's important to the business. And then I think people will feed into you and they will, you know, want to develop you and tell you what some of those unwritten rules are.

Yeah.

You seem like you actually care about that environment. You understand how it works, and you're trying to align with what's important to the organization and the people that work in it.

Man, this is such wonderful practical advice. And as I'm listening to you, it's great. I mean, I think it's especially helpful for Black professionals, for people of color, for people who aren't from the same environment or the same background. But I think it's helpful for anybody who's starting in a new place, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I say that too, I mean, because You know, I was living in South Africa at the time when I published my book, and I saw a lot of Black professionals struggling. But I think if you're, like you said, if you don't come from a corporate family, you don't have people in your network who worked in corporate, if you're a first-generation corporate professional, yes, I think you can get a lot out of my book, even if you're not Black.

100%. This is really, really helpful. And I love, you know, I talk a lot about curiosity in all my books. And curiosity is just, as you know, jet fuel for learning. And it's so disarming, like, if there's something happening in your new organization, you're like, what the heck is this? And you go to somebody and say, I don't understand such and such. Can you explain that to me? Most people like being looked to for that kind of information, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. People love sharing their wisdom.

Yes.

And insights from their journey. It's just kind of like I was saying, just make sure you're getting it from the right people.

From the right people. Yeah, that's good. Okay. And then you also mentioned career-killing myths, which is another great phrase. So can you give some Sure.

So I thought about 4 off the top of my head. So the first one is I can be successful by myself. So I only need my IQ, my degrees, and my work ethic. That's another one. I think the second one is I don't have a brand because I'm not interested in having one and I don't believe in personal branding, so I don't have one. I think the third one, I don't have to manage my emotions and understand the emotions of others. Yeah.

I don't have to be a people person.

And then the 4th one for me was I don't have to learn how to manage conflict and have hard conversations. Like those 4 for me. And I say this, Erika, everything I'm saying is because I was that person. Of course.

We teach best what we learn ourselves.

Yeah, absolutely. That's why I think I can tap into kind of that mindset because that was me. You know, I grew up in a family where we over-indexed on degrees. It's like, Get as many letters behind your name as you can. And so I— and even the advice that I think a lot of people get, especially Black people, you know, it's work hard, put your head down, and go home.

Yeah.

You know, those people at work are not your friends. You didn't go there to make friends. They're going to take what you tell them and use it against you. So all of that language and advice, it comes from our well-meaning family and friends, but it just doesn't serve us because if you look Anybody that's successful, they will provide a laundry list of people who invested in them, gave them opportunities, advocated for them, defended them.

Yeah.

Making it to the top is not a solo mission.

You know, one great example of that, independent of anybody's politics, is how Kamala Harris rallied the whole Democratic apparatus around herself in the first 48 hours because she had good relationships that she could then on and say, are you with me? Can we do this? You know, there's no way she could have done that if she was just like, I'm just, it's just me. I don't depend on anybody else.

Absolutely. Relationships are critical. And I'm more and more convinced of that every day. I think, you know, the second point I mentioned was I don't have a brand. So I know some people have an allergic reaction to personal branding. I was one of those people. I thought it was complete garbage. I thought it was very contrived and very fake. And I'm just a really authentic person. Like what you see is what you get. But once I realized a brand is just the space that you occupy in people's heads, it's the emotion. And once I realized you have a brand, whether you want one or not, people are making judgments about you, will have perceptions of you. We, and we all do it, right? You meet somebody in seconds, you're like, oh, I don't like this person.

Yeah.

That's happening at work, right? And so if you're gonna have a brand, you might as well manage it. And you might as well make it be what you want it to be. And it should be authentic. I don't think it should be fake, right? Because if you think about the brands that we love the most, it's the ones that are the most consistent and the ones that are most authentic.

Man, I can't— I couldn't agree with that more. In fact, a lot of times when we've done brand work with clients, my favorite definition of brand, and it applies both to organizational brands and personal brands, is that a brand is the promise of an experience. Right? And that good brands deliver on that promise. And that's the way as an individual that you can be authentic. It's like, what experience do I want people to have in dealing with me? And how can I make sure that they actually have that experience? That's the essence of authenticity, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think sometimes, you know, people have such a disconnect. It's like, I want to be known as the person that you can count on, but I'm always late.

Right.

I deliver late, you know, I show up late, you know what I mean? I want to be known as a person who delivers high-quality work, but my work's not high quality. I'm doing what everybody else is doing. You know, I want to be known as somebody who goes above and beyond, but I kind of do what the average person's doing. Like, it has to line up because people are going to go with your behavior as opposed to what you say.

And that is so great. And so I love that because if you, if you get over your aversion to the idea of personal brand and you say, okay, Whatever I say my brand is, that has to be real. I have to deliver on it or I'm just going to lose all credibility. It holds you accountable, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that I'll quickly mention these last 2 points. I think that managing my own emotions and understanding and trying to influence the emotions of others is really important because I've interviewed about 30 people for my book, and there was one person I interviewed. His name is Shaka Booker. And I quoted him because he said, when you're leading people, you're not just leading the work. You're not— you're leading how people feel about their work. You know what I mean? And you— and the thing is, I think this goes back to being a leader too. You have to role model the behavior that you want to see in other people. I can't be immature and bad at communication and expect you to be mature and an effective communicator, right?

Yeah.

I have to lead from, you know, I have to lead from the front on these things that I'm asking other people to do. And I had to learn that because I'm very much like a very logical, rational person. But I realized everybody's not like that. And I have to be able to work with and lead people who are emotional and who make emotional decisions and whose emotions impact their work. One of the points he made was, if you can only lead people who are just like you, you're not going to have a lot of impact in the world.

Yeah, that's great. Oh, I really agree with that. Yeah.

And the emotions get in the way. They get in the way. You know, so you got to be able to manage them.

Yeah. And then you said, and then the 4th point is what?

The 4th point is, I don't have to learn how to manage conflict and have hard conversations. Right, right, right, right, right. I mean, I think, you know, there was a particular incident that I talk about in my book where I was working with a manager who I think was quite insecure and I just thought, well, I'm just going to ignore his insecurity and his kind of, you know, aggression towards me. And I'm just going to focus on the work. That doesn't work. Eventually we had this blowup that I think could have been avoided had I had that harder conversation with him much earlier.

Yeah.

Just ask him, hey, I'm sensing that there's some tension here. Is it something that I've said or done? You know, is it something that I need to do differently? Help me understand because I want us to get along. And that's critical to us being able to deliver a high-quality product. But I didn't have that skill set then. I just, I didn't have it. And I didn't like conflict and I didn't know how to handle it in a professional way. So I just chose to be silent, which did not work.

Totally. A couple of podcasts ago, I spoke to this wonderful, wonderful woman named Tuba Bilicek, who's an international mediator. And she said exactly what you said is that the Worst thing is just to avoid it because then it almost inevitably just builds up and gets worse and—

Absolutely.

—lock into more extreme positions.

So that's a great point.

Yeah.

All right.

So we always promise practical takeaways. And everything you've said so far has been very practical. But what would you suggest that are some steps? Like, let's say I'm a Black professional. I'm in a corporate job. I know I'm not doing some stuff that I ought to be doing. What can I do? And what can I ask my allies to do right now to kind of support career success?

I think the number one thing is be a student of you. Like, really understand who you are, what your triggers are, what your strengths, your areas of development, your aspirations, what motivates you, what demotivates you, what de-energizes you. I think that's really important because this is the hardest person you'll ever have to lead is yourself. And so it— and this is the only person you really have control over. And I think The more you work on yourself, you'll be able to handle any situation, any person, any dynamic that you find yourself in. So that, that's really number one. Number 2 is understanding that success requires collaboration. So you've got to learn how to build relationships with your manager, with peers, mentors, sponsors, coaches, stakeholders, right? You can't do it by yourself.

Yeah.

Just put that idea out of your mind. So building the skills, To maintain and nurture relationships, handle conflict, have courageous and sometimes hard conversations. Really, really important. And then the third thing I say to people is owning your everything. Own your brand, own your delivery, own your relationships. Like nobody's ever going to care as much about your career as you do. So if you don't take the reins, nobody else will. So you have to really take ownership. I think in terms of allies, I say, you know, 3 things, right? I want allies to do some self-reflection, speak up, and then sponsor. So the self-reflection is really check your biases, think about your own story and how it influences who you hire, who you develop, who you sponsor, how you evaluate people, what success really looks like. Because then that, I think, influences the second point, which is who you sponsor.

Mm-hmm.

You know, if I have idea that a successful profile in my organization looks a certain way, acts a certain way, communicates a certain way. And if somebody shows up that doesn't fit squarely into that mold, am I not willing to sponsor that person? And am I not willing to advocate for that person, right?

Yeah.

And I think that, that third point for me is just the speaking up, like using your power to advocate, to get fresh perspectives, challenge peers on outdated ways of thinking. Asking yourself when you're making critical decisions, what perspectives are missing from this room right now?

Oh, that's great. This is really great stuff. Okay, so we could keep talking for an hour, but I know we always say let's keep it short and sweet. So thank you so much. I mean, this is just an introduction, I know, but still so helpful, so much good and practical stuff.

Thank you so much. Yeah, I tried to really make my book practical.

Yeah.

It's almost like in every chapter I try to give people like, hey, here's some things you could do. Here's a template. Here's a model. Here's some questions you can ask yourself because I didn't want people to just read my book. I wanted people to live my book. And I'm actually turning my book into an online course for that very reason because I want to help people really figure out what are the 2 to 3 takeaways from my book that you want to put into action, that you want to execute on to really have impact in your career and And in your organization and in your relationships.

Wow. Okay. Well, so listeners, to find out more about Carissa and the work to come and to buy Intelligence Isn't Enough, you can just go to carissaanderson.com. And to find out more about how Proteus supports leaders to succeed, just go to proteus-international.com. So thank you again. This has been fantastic.

Thank you so much, Erica. I appreciate it.

And thank you everyone for listening. And until next time, here's to creating the life you truly want.

We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. To find out more about how we support our clients in leadership, learning, and change, visit us at proteus-international.com. Have an excellent day and thanks for listening.