Leadership in Your Midst: Tapping the Hidden Strengths of Minority Executives
Summary.
Minority professionals offer tremendous — yet often overlooked — leadership potential. In this piece, the authors outline four ways companies can leverage their hidden skills and support both their own growth and that of the organization: First, develop a new level of awareness around minority professionals’ invisible lives. Second, appreciate the outsized burdens these professionals carry and try to lighten them. Third, build trust by putting teeth into diversity goals. Finally, help minorities reflect on their off-hours experiences, extract and generalize these lessons, and apply what’s been learned in other settings. When minority professionals are empowered to speak openly and proudly of their lives, their core values, and their skills, it can be truly transformative of themselves, their teams, and society at large.
All companies value leadership—some of them enough to invest dearly in cultivating it. But few management teams seem to value one engine of leadership development that is right under their noses, churning out the kind of talent they need most. We’re referring to the deeply substantive outside lives of their minority executives.