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The Magazine of the Rotman School of Management UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
WINTER 2022
SUSTAINABILITY NOW! PAGES 20, 38, 89
MANAGEMENT
The Disrupted Issue
QUESTIONS FOR
Ella Bell Smith and Stella M. Nkomo, Professors and Co-authors, Our Separate Ways
Q &A
Two experts on empowering women in the workplace share their insights on what it takes for women of colour to succeed. Interview by Karen Christensen
You believe an imperative now exists in the minds of our best leaders around diversity, equity and inclusion. Is a major disruption of the status quo on the horizon? Stella Nkomo: There is good news along with a cautionary
tale. The good news is, with international outcry over the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests, it does appear that corporate America and businesses around the world have experienced a reckoning and now realize that they have to take action on racism. The question is whether all the talk will be turned into real action. We certainly hope that companies will begin to understand what they need to do to address racism in the workplace. Particularly with respect to the status of Black women and women of colour in organizations, radical change is required. But we’ll have to wait and see if leaders do what needs to be done. rotmanmagazine.ca / 93
Your book (Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity) was originally published 20 years ago, when there were six female CEOs in the Fortune 500 and none were Black. Where do we stand today? SN: Ursula Burns became the first African American wom-
an CEO in 2009, when she was tapped to head Xerox (eight years after our book was published). There are now two African American women CEOs in the Fortune 500, four other women of colour and the remaining 35 are white women. So yes, the numbers have improved for women overall, but the numbers for women of colour remain pitiful. No one in their right mind would rave about having two African American female CEOs on that list. The reality is, we still have a long way to go.
the same time as us. The next day, the woman came over to us at the hotel and said, “Oh hi, we saw you at the restaurant last night, and I told my husband that I had never seen women eat as elegantly as the three of you. You used all the silverware in the right way.” I was like, I beg your pardon? Did she expect us to be eating with our hands? She thought she was giving us a compliment, but it was far from it. Day after day, these micro-attacks occur when you least expect it. People often sugarcoat their message so if you come back at them in a hostile way — which I was tempted to do — then you’re an ‘angry Black woman’. This is an ongoing reality for Black people once we walk out of our front door every day and enter the dominant culture. By the end of the day, you’re worn out and angry, but there’s nowhere to put that anger, so you internalize it.
Not only are women of colour not getting into the C-Suite, they’re barely making it into the first rungs of management. Why is that? Ella Bell Smith: The fact is, a higher percentage of Afri-
You touched earlier on Black Lives Matter. Do you feel there have been any positive repercussions to this movement yet? EBS: The sad fact is that, even with Black Lives Matter,
can American women have college degrees, so it’s not that they aren’t prepared academically. The issue is, how can you navigate the corporate environment when you don’t have any role models or ‘co-conspirators’ who are willing to roll up their sleeves and fight with you? That’s a pretty isolating place to be in, and many of these women are ‘first generation’ in this sense: Their mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles didn’t have a corporate background. They have very little working knowledge of how to navigate corporations — and that puts them behind the eight ball in terms of advancing in a company. You have used the term ‘everyday racism’. How do you define it? EBS: Let me illustrate it with a personal story. Two of my
girlfriends and I travelled to North Carolina recently. We were eating in an Italian restaurant one night, and there was a white couple from our hotel eating in the restaurant at 94 / Rotman Management Winter 2022
there’s been pushback, and I worry about that. Many companies think the solution is, ‘Let’s just focus more on diversity’, but they’re not looking at the issue strategically. What is required is a strong commitment from the Board down to every level of management to change the status of African American women, women of colour and BIPOC in general. We’re seeing a lot of businesses throwing money at community groups or donating to Black Lives Matter, because they think ‘this is a Black problem, so let’s give money to Black people’. They haven’t taken ownership or used their power to tackle the internal work that they need to do. They’re not looking at their talent pool to determine where it comes from or taking steps to fill the pipeline. That’s what I’m seeing, and until it changes, I don’t see any real substantial change taking place. Corporations only have so many resources, and when they take an external focus, they often forget about the internal. It’s not about being all Kumbaya about it. There are
We need to better understand the intersection of race with class and how it influences women’s beliefs.
serious, rooted issues here: Systemic racism occurs in terms of promotion, in terms of pay equity, in terms of visibility, in terms of resources and in terms of career development. Leaders need to be prepared to roll up their sleeves and recognize that these issues have to be monitored and reviewed on a regular basis. In my experience companies just want to check a box and be able to say, ‘We did what we could do; now on to the next problem’. In the book, you touch on the role of early life experiences in corporate success for women of colour. What were some key takeaways? EBS: We tend to assume that a person becomes a leader
on the day they get anointed in that role. But our leadership capacity is developed from the day we are born. Our values are shaped over time and our traditions, our belief system and our relationships — all of these things play a role in our career success. Culture is a powerful teacher. When we talk about race, we tend to talk about racism, but there are related issues around socioeconomic status and class. I will use stories from our book to illustrate my point. There are two girls who come from very humble, poor backgrounds, one white and the other Black. The white girl’s mother has passed away. She lives with the stepfather, who’s an alcoholic. He doesn’t want to deal with her, so he tells her to go live with her aunt. But the aunt has few resources, and she ends up taking care of the aunt’s children. Along with attending school, she is working two jobs, basically. Nevertheless, she is named class valedictorian; but knowing her background, the principal tells her, ‘Given your situation, you should go right out and get a job, maybe as a secretary.’ Switch to the African American girl. Her mother is alive, but she has many siblings. There are no resources and she has to help her mother clean white people’s houses on the other side of town. She, too, becomes valedictorian, but her principal comes to her home and tells her mother, ‘Your daughter is very bright; she needs to go to college’. The mother says, ‘I have no money’, so he says, ‘Don’t
worry about that’ — and he pays the costs for all the applications himself. She gets accepted with a scholarship, and her church makes sure that she has nice clothing to pack to wear to college. For the white girl who grew up in poverty, there is shame, embarrassment, no resources and no support. She learns not to expect anything from anybody. And that’s the type of leader she’s going to become: highly individualistic, not good at building relationships and very dominant. The Black girl, on the other hand, grows up believing in the power of community and lifting others up. She approaches her leadership with a belief that everyone can succeed. These stories — which are true — show why we can’t just look at race alone. We need to understand the intersections of race with class and how this influences women’s beliefs about leading and working with others. What initial steps can leaders take to become what you call ‘collaborative co-conspirators’ on these issues? SN: First, you need to be grounded in who you are so that
you have the courage to reach out to people who are different from you. If you look at some of the early initiatives for women, they were a small win for White women, but they weren’t a win for women of colour — and definitely not for Black women. If you want to make a difference, you need to understand that the spoils from winning must be shared. And you must be willing to put your reputation on the line. You can’t just say, ‘Oh sure, I’ll support you’. You’ve got to be prepared to use your voice, to speak up and be present for the other person as her co-conspirator. This is especially important because there are so few women in senior leadership. So when we get a seat at the table, we must be change agents for gender and racial equality in the workplace. There is no backing out: we must remain vigilant if we have any hope of making a difference. EBS: The fact is, if women don’t start co-conspiring with each other, we will be having these conversations forever. rotmanmagazine.ca / 95
Women have to perform twice as well as men to succeed, and Black women have to perform three to four times as well.
Are there key lessons that you have picked up on your own personal journeys that might help others? SN: One lesson for me is that you have to always quiet that
outside noise that tells you you’re not good enough, you’re not worthy. We wrote about the everyday racism the women in our book experienced. I don’t care how smart or stoic you are, that negativity gets into your head. So it’s important to be aware when it’s happening and to remind yourself that you are worthy and capable. The second lesson for me is that when I achieve, I need to help others. And not necessarily based on their race. If we’re going to create a world where everyone can reach their potential, those of us who do achieve must support others. We need to help change the culture of organizations to move away from the ‘winner takes all’ approach, because Black people have no chance in that kind of tournament. It’s like those old Roman movies where people were thrown into the lion’s den and had to fight their way out. What chance do we have? Succeeding as a woman of colour demands resilience, because you’re going to get knocked down a lot and you have to be able to get back up and carry on. EBS: I would add one other lesson, which is that nobody does it alone. My mother had a sixth grade education and my dad went to eighth grade. When I accepted my first academic position at Yale, my mother didn’t even know what it was. She went to a library to find out, and she listen was not happy about me going there because she felt all the ‘rich white people’, as she called them, wouldn’t respect me. I still remember how isolated and lonely I felt in that first position. After a while I met Stella, who happened to be in another school and a bit senior to me. If it weren’t for her, I don’t think I would have made it. Her support and our being able to work together was invaluable to me. We didn’t come together easily, because we both like to think we know everything. Amazingly, we found out later that our families knew each other, and we had gone to the same schools growing up. Stella’s younger sister was actually a dear friend of mine in junior high school and high school. That created a powerful union. 96 / Rotman Management Winter 2022
The fact is, nobody succeeds without support, which is why I always ask women, Who is there for you? Who’s got your back? Who can you go to and just break down, yell and scream? It’s important to have people who believe in you and can lift you up. Women have to perform twice as well as men, and Black women have to perform three to four times as well. That’s just the reality of the landscape. But performance alone is not going to get you where you want to be. You still have to build relationships, and as Stella indicates, you’ve got to be able to swallow those everyday doses of racism. A few years ago my husband was diagnosed with leukemia and we learned he was going to die. My colleagues (many of whom were white) cooked countless meals for me and my kids; they came to the hospital to see us, and they told my husband, ‘You don’t have to worry about her. We’ve got her’. You have to make efforts to understand other people and build authentic relationships with them. It takes time and patience, but it is critical, because no one can succeed alone.
Ella Bell Smith is a Professor of Management Sciences at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. Stella M. Nkomo is a Professor in the Department of Human Resource Management at the University of Pretoria and President of the Africa Academy of Management (AFAM). They are the co-authors of Our Separate Ways: Black and White Women and the Struggle for Professional Identity (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2001 and Harvard Business Review Press, 2021).
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