Black and Brown Women in Leadership

Warning: Some of you may think this article might be too candid and incendiary. But nobody else is talking about the elephant in the room! So, I guess I will need to, in order to redeem my soul. Just know that this subject is not going to disappear just because organizations and the establishment choose to continue to mute themselves about it; in fact, I think it will get even worse. At this point in my life and career, whatever will be, will be. Enjoy!

I just finished a graduate course on organizational leadership where I learned about gender, race, and leadership. Our last class focused on organizational culture. I chose to write this article on the meaningfulness of work from the context of a Spiritual Culture, focusing on minority women in leadership. 

A spiritual culture is not about religious rituals or practices. A spiritual culture is one that recognizes that people have an inner life nourished by meaningful work, and that inner life is manifested in the context of community (Robbins, 2018).

Most companies would like to think that they have a spiritual culture. But when some of the Black and Brown women in the same organizations do not find that meaning in their work, don't feel part of that organizational community because of lack of inclusivity and only lip service is paid to diversity programs, what should these same organizations do? Some choose to place some of us in performance improvement plans because we just "do not fit in" or lack "cultural awareness"; labeling and classifying us into boxes as if we are objects to be discarded because we have no more utility for the organization. I warned you, some of you were not going to like this!

My context is personal. Over the years I have wondered, what meaning did my Black grandmother find when she was washing other people’s clothes for a few quarters? Was it strictly financial? What meaning did my great-great-grandmother find when she was a house slave? It is likely impossible for me to find those answers today. Yet I can explore the meaning of work for minority women in leadership to understand our motivation to continue showing up for our career’s day in and day out.

Many organizations are not aware that minority women’s unique contexts of identity, experiences of adversity, and marginalization shaped our leadership style to be more focused, resilient, collaborative, interpersonal, empathetic, flexible, creative, lateral, and innovative in our approaches to problem-solving and developing solutions to challenges. (Rodgers-Healey, 2017). 

To get ahead, minority women in leadership are forced to compromise, give, and negotiate more than a white male or female, and even minority men in the same leadership role. Regardless of my achievements over a thirty-year career, I still get up every morning prepared to subtly justify my presence in corporate America because it has been subtly demanded from me every day. Why do I continue to put myself through this? What is the meaningfulness of work to me? I'm not sure that I will find the answers in reading research papers or even this discussion, I may just need a psychiatrist’s couch.

An online questionnaire based on the Competing Values Framework was completed by 109 women leaders of various ethnicities in public and private enterprises in New Zealand. The purpose of this questionnaire was to obtain and analyze responses that would shed light on the relationship between the impacts of organizational culture and the meaningfulness of work experienced by women. The research effort revealed that organizations that underscore employee empowerment and growth, foster an atmosphere of mutual support that engenders meaningful work experiences for women. In the same study the opposite was found to be true in bureaucratic and hierarchical cultures (Miller, 2020).

Organizations that advocate a spiritual culture know that people want meaning and purpose in their work and seek to connect with others in the community (Robbins, 2018). Minority women in leadership seek the same meaning, purpose, and connection in our work as anyone else! Just without the adversity and marginalization that we face. Equal employment opportunity laws are a way to right the wrongs, but do not change the organizational culture! The lack of recent studies on the meaningfulness of work for minority women is appalling and is an indication of the lack of interest and support by the establishment who should be actively promoting the careers of minority women in leadership. A sign that minority women still need our bootstraps! I have tried to find commonality between the meaningfulness of work for minority women in leadership despite all the challenges and adversity that we have and continue to face. Certainly a subject I should focus on during my Ph.D. work.

References

Miller, S. M. (2020). EXPERIENCED MEANINGFULNESS OF WORK AMONG WOMEN LEADERS. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the MSc in Psychology. Canterbury, New Zealand: University of Canterbury.

Rodgers-Healey, D. (2017, September 13). What is different about minority women’s leadership? Retrieved from Women's Agenda: https://womensagenda.com.au/leadership/different-minority-womens-leadership/

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2018). Essentials of organizational behavior. New York, NY: Pearson Education Inc.