E16: Black Professionals, We Are Enough!

Well, hello everyone. Welcome to Inclusion Unscripted live on LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. I'm Margaret Spence. Welcome to Inclusion Unscripted. Inclusion Unscripted is where we're not just talking about diversity and inclusion. We're living it. I'm living it. It's built on the premise that we've got to live more powerfully in the roles that we occupy. We have to be more powerful around what we do when it comes to diversity, equity, equality, and inclusion. And we have to be more deliberate in building belonging for everyone. This podcast is a safe space to discuss what can't be said. The topics that I bring forward are not comfortable. They are uncomfortable topics. They are what makes us think, and that's what I try to do every Friday at 2 PM Eastern. So thank you for joining me. My name is Margaret Spence. I am the founder of Inclusion Unscripted podcast and also the CEO and founder of the Inclusion Learning Lab, where we help organizations become more deliberately inclusive. So have you ever wanted to find a place where you could say what needed to be said in the space of diversity and inclusion? Have you ever been in a spot where you thought to yourself, I need to say what needs to be said, There's no need to sugarcoat it. There's no need to put, um, lens or spotlights on it. We just need to say what needs to be said in a bold way. A lot of you can't say what you're feeling because you're internal in organizations, and I don't want you to be unemployed. I want you to be employed. From the lens of being a DE&I HR consultant, I bring to you my real world that I live in every day. And so today's bold topic is, are we enough Black professionals? And for Black History Month, I have one more, um, podcast episode for this month. The issue today, the discussion today is, are we enough? And that is where we're going to start. So if you want to listen to the other episodes that I have for Inclusion Unscripted, you can find this on your favorite podcast apps. They're all recorded and they live here on LinkedIn. They also are on YouTube, all 15 episodes that I've done so far. Are out on YouTube, and you can feel free to watch it there or listen to the audio on your favorite podcast app. And we are on Podbean if you can't find us.

So what does it mean when we say we are enough?

Why is this even a topic that's necessary? Margaret Spence, why are you bringing this topic today? Why do you think we need to talk about being enough? I think over the last several weeks I have struggled, um, and I'll be honest with all of you. I think in order for me to do this work, I have to be real honest with my own personal struggles, with struggles with the work that I do every day as a consultant, struggles with bringing inclusion and diversity to spaces that may not be ready for us to be there or ready for us to live in the power that we're asking for. So when I thought about Black History Month, which is built around wellness— this month, the theme of the 2022 Black History Month is wellness. And so over the last several weeks, I've been talking about our own personal psychological safety. What does that look like for us as people of color? What does our psychological safety look like? And how do we maintain a lens of psychological safety while we operate in spaces that clearly jeopardize our psychological safety? And so we could sugarcoat the topic. We could not talk about this at all. We could pretend that as Black professionals, we don't feel inferior in the spaces that we occupy. We could also pretend like the spaces that we occupy aren't designed to make us feel inferior. We, we, we could pretend that. We could pretend that the organizations we work in have decided that they're putting, for lack of a better word, you know, lipstick on the diversity and inclusion process. We could decide that that's not happening. It's not happening. We could say as well that organizations haven't shifted themselves since George Floyd was murdered. See, in 2020 and early parts of 2021, organizations got religion around diversity and inclusion. For years, I would approach organizations and say, "Do you want to have a diversity evaluation?" And they'd say, "No, we're good.

Peace." We're good.

We got this. We all get along here.

Even though their leadership ladders, their processes were lily white and had no diversity. I spoke for 8 years in a row at the SHRM Diversity Conference. I led a program called Dismantling the Silos through SHRM. And everyone came to those sessions. I remember being in San Francisco at a SHRM conference there, or being in Austin, Texas at another one, speaking on DE&I and trying to empower organizations to see us as people.

I remember doing that.

And I remember organizations saying, "Peace, we're good.

We got this. Go away nicely." But you guys, continue to exist in those psychologically unsafe work environments.

And every day you show up in organizations that are not ready for us to be there. Every day we show up in those places, every single solid day.

But what we have to get to as Black people is that we are enough despite what happens in the spaces that we show up in.

We are enough. That's what we're going to talk about today. That's what we're going to talk about in a bold way. We are going to talk about us being enough.

Because here's what I know.

Here's the work of HR that I know. When you raise your hand in the arena for promotions, for opportunity, and your manager says to you, Margaret, you're not ready for that role.

When your manager says that to you, and he knows, or she knows, deep in her ever-loving soul that you are more qualified than anybody else they could pick in that role.

But because of who you are, you are being told that you are not the right person. Here's what I want to say to you: you are enough. Here's what I want to say to you. You are enough. When they tell you no and you know you're qualified, you are enough.

You are enough. When you, when you are asked to come up with leadership attributes and nobody gave you the guardrails for those leadership attributes, but you're struggling to figure it out and find your leadership voice, You are enough. You are enough. When the words that are used to describe us as, as minority professionals is so jaded that it is meant to put us down in the best ways possible, you are enough. When they say it in such nice ways, when they put us down with a dagger, you are enough. When we are overlooked for promotions and development, know in your soul that you are enough. When the organizations that we work for, that we give our sweat equity to, can't find the boldness to live in the truth of diversity and inclusion, and they treat us with indifference, know that you are enough. You are enough. We as a people have always been enough. We have entered imperfect spaces that was never ready for us. We entered those spaces and we had to exist in perfection in those spaces, and no one cared about our psychological safety, but we are enough. When your career is derailed because you had the audacity to open your mouth and challenge the system, and they decided that the fact that you tried to be powerful, you should be put back into the container, know that you are enough. Our foreparents were enough. See, here's the thing: we were never slaves. Slavery was done to us. And now we come into 2022 and we have to understand that we were always enough in this process. We were never not enough. We were enough. Our foreparents were enough. The ground and the land we stand on gave us the opportunity to be enough. If the organization cannot see that we are enough, you must know that you are enough. It is essential that we understand this at our core. Because we cannot build a legacy for ourselves if we do not understand at the fundamental level that we are enough. We cannot do it when your family doesn't support your vision, when your family is the ones pushing you down. Remember that you are standing in your power of being enough. For a lot of us as Black professionals, we haven't figured out that we are enough.

For a lot of us as minority professionals, we haven't figured out that we are enough.

We are. The mere fact that the being of our life is here, the mere fact that we have a God-given breath that we are using right now, gives us the power to say we are enough. The universe did not put us here for us to not be enough. The universe put us here because— but for— because we are enough. We don't need to change us. We need to develop ourselves more, but we don't need to change who we are at our essence. At our essence, we are enough. If your cup is not full, if the organization is not feeding you so that you are thriving, know that you can find a place to thrive. But never forget, at your core, you are enough. That is it. We have to understand that. We have to understand and appreciate who we are at our essence. At our essence, at our core, the gift that we have been given called life makes us enough. If we, if we plan to move ourselves from point A to point B and we are not centered in the fact that we are good enough and we have earned the right to stand in the room, we've earned the right to be there, then others get to define us. We have to understand at our, at our core, COVID-19 came here to teach us some lessons, and a lot of us aren't getting them. The lesson is that life itself makes us worthy of anything that we want. Of all the people that died over the last 2 years from COVID-19 and isolation and sadness, and who took their life because they were sad. I'm speaking to all of you, all of you that are still here breathing. Recognize that you will never find what you're looking for if your organization and the company you work for is who you are depending to give it to you. They are not designed to fill our cup. They are designed for us to work. That's what they're designed for. Yet we show up waiting for managers to fill our cups. Their cup is empty because nobody filled their cup. And so organizations build leadership development programs. And you build all kinds of things, but the leaders at the core of the process, their cups are empty and they don't even know that they are enough. So they try to put an imaginary process onto us as people of color to be enough in their eyes, but we have to be enough in our eyes. In who we are at our core. We have to speak our truth. Our truth is we exist in imperfect places that will never be perfect for us to exist and be psychologically safe and feel that we are enough. So we have to go out of these systems to fill ourselves up. You know, in a prior episode I talked about the church ladies that pray us up every Sunday to come back to this dysfunction. What the church ladies aren't telling you is, sister and brother, you are enough. We are. That is where we start, at our core. We cannot expect an organization to build us from an empty cup. We have to fill our cup first. You know, when you get on the airline, they say put the seat belt on yourself first, worry about the kid later. As mothers, as women, as wives, we as women, diverse women, We have so much that is taken from us, and we question every day our importance, our relevance, our spot in the world, because we have been taught that it doesn't matter if we are enough. We must keep giving. Today, I want to end that for this Black History Month. I want you all to know that your cup must be filled. In order for it to be full and for us to step into the roles that we want to occupy. If we go into these roles without feeling that we are enough, we will be set up to fail. We will be set up to fail. We cannot continue to exist in a place where we don't understand our power, our internal power, the life that we've been given. Are you living the life that you've been given? Are you stepping in with grace and power to your enoughness? That is essential.

That is essential for us as people of color.

Whether you are Black, Hispanic, Asian, LGBTQ, it doesn't matter. We have been taught that we are marginalized. We have been taught that we are not accepted. We have been taught that we are not wanted. We have been taught that the organizations will not be ready. We have been taught that we must diminish our power so people can be comfortable. We have been taught that we should silence our voice because if we speak, they will tell us we're woke. We have been taught that we must not show up powerfully. We must be humble. And our own people have reinforced this be humble garbage. No, we were built and born with the tools of success. The world that we live in has said to us, you cannot be successful. What I want to say to all of you today is we at our core are successful. Black people are the most educated groups in the planet because we have been taught be educated. But when we get to the organization, they tell us the education isn't good enough. And so we believe them and we go get more education. And we go stand on another ground. And even with all of that, they don't promote us, they don't give us the opportunity, they don't advance us. They find more reasons to actually demoralize us, to feel that we are not enough. Because what happens is, as we get close to the goal post, they move the post down the street because they're afraid that we're coming in the door. And because they're afraid we're coming in the door, They tell us and they make us feel that we are not enough. That is what happens. That is what happens. That is what we're living with. And we show up every day putting our soul in a trash can just to exist in these spaces that helps us feel every day that we are not and will never be enough. Because the system was designed to make sure that we questioned, we questioned our enoughness. It was built to sow self-doubt in our power. It was built to stand without us in the room. That's how it was built. And somehow in that process, we've had to figure out our greatness. We've had to figure it out. We've had to scratch and try to find our power. But at the end of the day, a system that was designed to show us that we are not enough will not exist. It will exist for a time and a place, but it will eventually fall away because it is our God-given right to be enough. It is our birthright to be enough. The fact that we have survived a pandemic and we're still alive, we are enough. This is a tough topic. I have walked into spaces over the last 6 to 8 weeks where I have not felt that I am enough to be in those spaces. I have walked into spaces where I have been made to feel that I'm not enough. I have walked into spaces where my competency is questioned.

I don't mind people questioning my competency, but don't try to make me feel that I'm not enough.

See, one of the things that we have to talk about and we have to address it is when our spaces that we occupy The spaces we occupy have been weaponized against us. We have to talk about that because we don't talk about that enough. See, we weaponize opportunity, we weaponize diversity, we weaponize inclusion, we weaponize equality We weaponize equity. We weaponize belonging. We weaponize thriving. We weaponize those things. We do.

You do.

And then on top of that, we are pitted against each other in this scarcity mindset that is created in corporate spaces where only the good survives.

Where only the best floats to the top and the others are marginalized and left behind.

That is what we're living in. We are living in a system that is built to devalue us every day. And the backhand of this is that the people who are doing it don't even know that that is what they're delivering to us through their processes. That is what's happening. That is what's happening to us. If we mess up, we're treated with indifference. If we make a mistake, It's amplified because it's made by us. If we forget who we are— Black people, brown people, LGBTQ people, Asian, Native American— when we forget that first process, we are easily reminded that we were given access to the room and we should be quiet in that room. That's how organizationals— organizations weaponize our own personal growth and then affect our psychological well-being.

That's how it happens.

This is how it works. And it doesn't matter if we want to write D&I policies, we want to write women's leadership policies, it doesn't matter. Because if we weaponize the process through our intentions, then no one will grow from that. But at our core, if we forget that we are enough, if we forget that core principle of being enough, then we will suffer internally and die internally because the barrage of things that's coming to us Every day affects our psychological safety, and it makes us question our—

at our core, who we are.

It makes us question that.

So for all of you today, I'm not just here today to talk about us being enough. I want to give you some tools to walk out of this podcast, this livecast, with.

I don't want us to continue to feel that we are not enough.

We need to start asking ourselves bolder questions that are not tied to our organizations, because here's what I know: the organization will live long after we are gone.

But if we die inside, we will slowly kill our purpose, our passion, our potential, and we will eventually show up with our light bulb completely turned off, and our soul will die in organizations that are imperfect and not ready for us.

We've gotta do our work as people of color. The organization cannot do our work. We have to do our work.

As women, we have to do our work. Here's something I tell people all the time.

Every week I set aside 2 hours to coach a woman for free.

I do this.

I've been doing it for 20 years.

Women will get on my schedule. They will send me messages.

I will talk to them for 1 hour, and that person will walk away feeling that they are enough. And what I figured out after the 2 phone calls I had this week and the work I'm doing in diversity and equity and inclusion I realize that at our core, we are battling with feeling that we are enough, and we are battling with feeling that we've earned the right to be in the rooms that we are in.

And if we don't get comfortable with the fact that we've earned the right to be there, that we are enough when we enter there, that all the institution is doing is giving us some skills to do the job, but at our core, we are enough. If we don't get that message, we are setting ourselves up for failure.

So what should we be doing? The first thing is I want all of you to write down on your cell phones.

Put a daily reminder, a daily calendar reminder that says, I am enough. Let it hit you every morning. Let that hit you every single morning.

I have it on my cell phone, on my cell phone. The very first message that I see every morning is, Margaret, you are enough. Because even I need to be reminded, because I enter spaces that are toxic, that I have to work through with organizations to help them see their own toxicity. But I have to remind myself that I'm enough in those spaces. The second thing that I want you all to do is I need you all to write this question down: What do you want and why don't you have it now? It is not a two-question, it is a one-question. In order for us to feel that we are enough We have to be able to answer what we want, and we've got to be able to define why we don't have it now. And here is a tip: why you don't have it now is not because of your boss or the organization or the dysfunctional team you're a part of or the fact that the organization has no diversity.

It is not because of that. Why you don't have it now is because you're not bold enough, you haven't found your voice, you are not walking in your purpose, you are not in your presence, you haven't found your power, you haven't figured out who you are.

That is the other half of this question.

That's the other half. The next question is who are you at your core? Because if we don't know who we are at our core, at our fundamental inner self, if we don't know who we are at our core, we are allowed to let people shape who we should become. Let me give you an example. I've keynoted thousands of conferences. Across the globe, from the Caribbean to Europe to the, to the Middle East. I've been everywhere keynoting conferences. And I went to keynote a conference. Let me tell you how you see this. Let me give it to you straight.

So I went to keynote a conference, and for all of you that know me, my hair is actually down my back. It's really long.

It's curly right now.

It's curled up. And I decided 5 years ago that I was going to go natural with my hair. But I've kept my professional pictures because they cost a lot of money. I'm not redoing them because some days I will show up with my hair straight and some days I'll show up with it curly. The organization hired me and the organizational leader hired me because of my background. And when I arrived, the person looked at my professional picture and said to me in a nice way, "Well, you clean up nicely." Oh yeah, "You clean up nicely." And I turned around and said, "The person I am showed up today. It has nothing to do with my hair." If you don't know who you are at your core, the organization gets to tell you who you should be. And they will define who you should become. And a lot of you have hitched your ladders to organizations, and you should unhitch— unhitch your ladder. You should unhook it because you hooked your ladder to an organization that will never make you feel like you're enough.

But because you don't know who you are at your core You continue to hitch the ladder to their building, and you are still empty, and they're making you feel more empty every day.

But your ladder is still hitched, and it's hitched there because you don't know where you're going.

You have no idea where you're going.

You're so busy being tactically smart while people are coming in that don't look like you and they're walking over you because you haven't figured out that you're enough right now. And you can raise your hand in the arena and say to the organization and test their ability to make you feel like you're enough by raising your hand and saying, I wanna be ready for that role today. What do I need to do? So we continue to hitch our ladder because our parents, our parents, my parents told me, you just need an opportunity, you need a foot in the door.

Damn it, we've got our foot in the door and we're not advancing. So what we don't need is a foot in the door.

We need to know where we're going.

A lot of you are apologizing for your ambition. Let me say that to you.

You're apologizing for your ambition.

You're apologizing for wanting more. You are.

You are apologizing for wanting more. Stop apologizing. Ask for what you want and figure out why you don't have it now. And realize and ask yourself keenly, is my ladder attached to the right place? Because if your ladder is not attached to the right place, you will never be successful.

A lot of you have picked up labels that define you.

Here's a label for the HR folks: I'm an HR generalist. No, people want to know specifically what you are. They want to know it. We pick up the label.

We pick up the label of being difficult. We pick up the label of being powerful. I was doing a program a few months ago, and I went out and I did my Enneagram because I wanted to know how I show up.

Margaret, how do you show up in the room? So I did my Enneagram. I went and I did it like 6 years before, and I actually took a class on the Enneagram, and I found out that I show up as an 8, meaning I'm full throttle every time I show up. And I realized that people aren't ready for full throttle Margaret Spence, but I decided that I'm not willing to allow them to dampen me and give me a different label. I was on a panel discussion and I said to someone, I show up as an 8 on the Enneagram with full power. Do I make mistakes? Every day.

Do I have regrets?

All the time. But I'm showing up in my power. So define the label that you have lived up to. Define the label that you have lived up to. The other question is, what do you want next?

From here, in your enoughness, what is next for you? In your enoughness, what is next for you? What do you want next? It doesn't have to be a promotion. What you could want next is for the organization to help you thrive. What you could want next is for the organization to support you fully. What you could want next is for the organization to say, "You're doing a great job." We have to know what we want next.

And we have to be willing to ask for it.

99.9% of you are living in fear, and the fear stops you from feeling that you are enough. The fear stops you from feeling it. The fear— you are afraid. You're afraid to put your voice in the room. You're afraid to raise your hand. You're afraid to just be living. A lot of you are afraid to be alive. My God, stop being afraid to live.

Live!

We are the survivors of the pandemic. Live like you've never lived before. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. I tell myself this every day. Don't be afraid of showing up in your full self. Don't be afraid of saying who you are. Don't be afraid of doing this podcast fully raw, no script. I'm not reading anything.

This is from my heart and soul.

What are you afraid of? And finally, in the 8 core things, what is your I Am? What is your I Am? Are you powerful? Are you worthy? Are you proactive? Are you living your power? Are you paying it forward? Are you unstoppable? Are you determined even when the organizations close the door? Are you determined to achieve what you should achieve? Our birthright as Black people, as brown people, as minorities makes us enough, and it says that our I am will not be determined by somebody else. Our I am will be determined by us. At my core, I am powerful Margaret Spence. I don't need validation from anybody to be Margaret Spence. My mother, God rest her soul, Clementine Douglas gave birth to me. I am the half survivor of a twin.

My twin brother passed away.

I am enough. And I stand in my power every day, even when I can't speak my truth in spaces that I want to speak my truth in. I am still standing in my power because it's not my job to help you feel comfortable with me, it is my job to show up with the gifts that God dispone upon me in your room. And if you're uncomfortable, too damn bad. That's how we need to show up. We need to show up because we are worthy of our enoughness.

We are worthy of our enoughness. We are worthy of our enoughness. We are worthy of our enoughness. So I want to thank all of you that joined me today. Thank you for the beautiful comments. Um, thank you for everything you've put in the chat. Um, thank you for listening to the fact that you are enough. Thank you all for listening to the fact that you are enough. Don't second-guess yourself ever. Don't ever second-guess yourself. Don't second-guess yourself at all. So thank you, um, and Annie, thank you so much for being here, my good friend Annie. Um, what I want to say to all of you in closing today is I want to remind you that we all have a mission when it comes to life. We all have a mission. It's imperative that you find your mission and your voice. It's imperative that you find your purpose. It's imperative that you find your power. The organizations we work for were not designed to give us that. Stop asking them to do it. That's not why they're there. They're there to give us skills, and knowledge and ex— and experience and help grow us to be in the professions that we're in. But they are not designed to make us feel that we are enough. Our birthright gives us the tools and the skills to be enough. So I wanna thank all of you for joining me today. I know this was a tough topic. I will be back next Friday at 2 o'clock where we're gonna talk, we're gonna wrap and put a bow on Black History Month 2022. Join me at inclusionlearninglab.com. Our upcoming schedule is being posted for March and April. Um, and join me back here every Friday at 2:00 PM Eastern, live on LinkedIn, Facebook, Facebook and YouTube. And remember, for all of you, keep the faith and never forget that you are enough. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you all. Yeah, thank you for, for, um, being here, and thank you for showing up and listening. And I hope and I trust that you will find your space in your heart to know that you are enough.

You're like a circle that floats around me, keeping me safe and sound. And when I fall, you tied a rope to me. You're blessing me every day. I was down with an illusion.

Well, thank you everyone. Have a fantastic weekend and see you next Friday.