Breaking Through

Key Concepts

Black executives will likely face prejudice, but it can lead to a negative spiral if they internal it

“As a result of both kinds of prejudice, minorities frequently find themselves having to disprove the rule of their inferiority. With each change of job position or department, they find themselves needing once again to establish credibility and to counter and overcome stereotypes. Meeting such challenges requires time, effort, and mental energy not required of their white colleagues. A consequence is that minorities sometimes internalize these negative views of themselves and lower their own expectations. Alternatively, they become embittered and behave in ways that validate some stereotypes of them as not being team players or being too confrontational. They may also withdraw and fail to seek help and build alliances. The net result of any of these reactions is to collude with the forces of prejudice that exist, to take oneself as Ben Richardson would say ‘out of the game.’” (pp. 26-7)

Promotion is challenging for black professionals because they are often perceived as higher risk

“Many have written about the tension produced when members of different racial groups must work together closely. People habitually seem to prefer working with people who are racially similar. Thus, while superior-subordinate relationships that cross race lines may provide the interaction needed to get work done, they often fail to lead to the close interpersonal bonds that form between mentor and protégé.” (p. 27)

Black executives have a different path to executive roles

“The single most robust pattern found across all three companies is that the trajectories of minority executives in early career are different from those of white executives. The early career trajectory of white executives can be characterized as fast and steady. They experience a fast takeoff to upper-middle management in Stages 1 and 2, followed by a slower and steadier period of testing during their Stage 3 rise to the executive level. By contrast, the movement of minority executives, regardless of their ethnic group, is one of punctuated equilibrium. Minority executives move at a significantly slower rate during Stage 1, in their ascent to middle management, at which point their trajectory changes and their pace accelerates in the move to upper-middle management during Stage 2. It then levels off to approximately the same pace as the white executives during Stage 3 as both groups approach the executive level. Most noteworthy is the fact that the pace of minority executives’ movement to middle management in Stage 1 was roughly the same as whites who plateau in upper-middle management and only slightly faster than that of plateaued minority managers.” (p. 30)

“The normal rules of tournament competition for executive jobs do not apply to minorities. Being put on the management fast track early is not a prerequisite nor a predictor for becoming an executive, as appears to be the case for whites.” (p. 31)

Early experiences provide the foundation of success for minority executives

“What we discovered is that the early career period, Stage 1, is crucial to what happens later in the careers of minority executives. In this early period, the minority executives in our study developed three fundamental personal resources that were critical to their later success: competence, credibility, and confidence. These resources were acquired as a result of work experiences during their early career that provided them with a solid foundation. Family background, education, and the experiences of succeeding in multiracial settings were all critical factors on which this foundation was built. Most important, though, was the pattern of their early career experiences and the testing, coaching and mentoring they received during this crucial period.” (p. 31)

Minority executives’ path is longer because they have to prove themselves over and over again and because they can get derailed into non-core positions

“Another factor that added time to the early career paths of minority executives was the effort it took to get themselves in the right flow of opportunity. Due to a combination of naïveté and racial steering, some discovered that they were working in areas of the company that did not have the best opportunities. At Acme Industries, for instance, several minority executives were initially promoted to supervisory jobs in customer service and personnel, despite having started in an operations or other line function. They then had to lobby to get back into line operations, where the real opportunities lay.” (pp. 74-75)

“What makes the two tournaments different is that the rewards to those who are recognized as high performers in each successive round of competition in early career are different for minorities than for white players: Whites who perform exceedingly well and show potential are rewarded with promotion to the next level, while high-performing minorities are sometimes rewarded with a promotion but other times with enhanced resources, challenges, and the chance to play again at the same level. The tournaments, however, do not involve noncompetitive separate pools. Minorities and whites do compete against one another; the difference is that minority managers who perform better than other similarly situated managers—whites as well as minorities—may end up staying in a position for, say, an additional two or three years it is the different rewards given to minorities and whites for winning rounds that make the tournaments distinct.” (pp. 79-80)

Early exposure to predominantly white settings help minority executives learn how to navigate in the white world of corporate America

“Numerous scholars note that members of racial groups in the United States tend to grow up in segregated communities. Entering the predominantly white world of corporate America can require a significant amount of cultural and social adaptation in order to become bicultural and comfortable with oneself as a racial minority in the corporate context. Prior exposure to predominantly white contents can be advantageous. Likewise, the experiences of our minority executives and managers suggest that exposure to predominantly white settings prior to the start of one's career can be advantageous.” (p. 90)

“It is interesting to note that five of the six minority executives at Gant attended parochial schools, the majority of which were predominantly white. All of those born in the United States grew up in predominantly white neighborhoods, attended high schools where they were one of only a few minorities, or both. Similar patterns were evident among the minority executives we studied at Acme and Advanced. Forty percent at both companies attended predominantly white elementary or secondary schools. Even minorities reared outside the United States went to private high schools run by Europeans.” (p. 90)

Having an authentic love for the work helped minority executives sustain their energy (and delays in their progression)

“The minority executives in our study consistently reported that their vocational interests and aptitudes match their functional area of work in Stage 1; some of them even changed jobs once they perceived a mismatch. Minority executives described making early career choices in order to be at the leading edge of the work they liked. They were most enthusiastic about the work itself, and less so with how quickly—or slowly—they were promoted. In contrast, minority managers who subsequently plateaued were more likely to describe choosing the company or organization for fast-track opportunities to management rather than for the work itself.” (p 102)

“Butler and Waldroop maintain that Intrinsic motivation is critical to achieving and sustaining job satisfaction. Kotter describes the fit between an individual's interest and strength with the work and context of early career as being essential to building a power base of confidence and credibility. This type of alignment may even be more critical for minorities since the strategy of choosing work solely because it is the gateway to bigger and better things may not be enough to sustain the energy required to be successful over the long career haul, especially during their slower pace of advancement in Stage 1.” (p. 102)

“Another difference between the minority executives (e.g., Clarence Williams) and the plateaued minority managers (e.g., Bill Parsons) that we studied was that in order to fulfill their ambitions for upward mobility, the plateaued managers were more prone to take salary and title change promotions that offered little real increase in management responsibilities. As a consequence, some prematurely left the line of opportunity that was most likely to lead to the executive suite.” (p. 103)

Minority executives experiences less failure than their white counterparts

“A final, critical difference in the early careers of the three groups is the quality of their developmental experiences. Minority executives were less likely than their white counterparts to report a significant failure during these years in their career, and far less likely—in fact one fifth as likely—than plateaued minority managers to report such a failure. Some studies highlight the value of what are called constructive failures as sources of learning, but this may very well not be a common outcome for minorities. In terms of their own self definition, minorities me feel that failure is unacceptable getting extreme scrutiny they are likely to endure. Others have noted that poor performance of a minority is likely to be attributed by others to the actions of the individual, whereas the same performance by a member of the majority will be attributed to an inherently difficult situation. Thus, highly visible mistakes, as in the case of Roosevelt James and the failed international start-up, may shut minorities out from being sponsored for another good opportunity.” (pp. 107-8)

Having powerful and diverse mentors and sponsors was especially important for minority executives

“Minority executives attributed much of their later success to the presence of Developmental relationships with bosses, other superiors, and peers. Of course, having mentors and sponsors did not make them unique—all of the executives and managers we study, both whites and minorities, reported forming these important eyes. What distinguished the minority executives from the other groups, however, was that they had had many more such relationships and with a broader range of people, especially early in their careers.” (pp. 108-9)

“A telling difference between our sample’s African-American executives and plateaued African-American managers is that the latter tended to have less diverse networks. They either relied almost exclusively on members of their own ethnic group for developmental support or they had only whites for such support. By contrast, those who reached the executive level, especially the most successful among them, built genuine, personal long-term relations with both whites and other African Americans.” (p. 147)

“Competence, Credibility, and Confidence: Foundation for Success”

“Confidence has two components relevant to executive development: deep grounding in one or more areas of expertise and continual mastery of new and broader skills. For minority executives we studied, deep grounding was acquired in the functional area in which they began their managerial career was demonstrated through consistent, excellent performance over time.” (p. 114)

“The second dimension of competence is the capacity to reflect and learn from experiences and ongoing feedback. This component requires felt and self-awareness about one's own motivations and the desire for sustained learning. For minorities, this ongoing mastery also means learning to manage the complex interplay among race, racial identity, and the managerial role.” (p. 115)

“Minorities typically need an extremely high level of confidence to rise all the way to the executive level, as we learned in our study.” (p. 116)

What eventually differentiates those who are promoted to the executive level are high-consequence successes

“Many upper middle managers, both white and minority, continue to build track records of performance during Stage 3, so that at this level, there are many managers with strong performance records. A promotion to executive level often requires one or more widely visible or high-impact achievements which serve to distinguish the individual from the mini other qualified candidates.” (p. 137)

Minority executives should avoid the trap of moving for trivial promotions, especially in non-core areas of the business

“One might infer from these data that movement on its own is bad, but, in fact, minority executives were actually much more like much more mobile on each of these dimensions in Stage 2 then they were in Stage 1. But such Stage 2 movement almost always led to greater breadth, challenge, and extension of credibility and reputation. While minority managers receive more promotions, the promotions tended to be small in terms of increased responsibility. Sometimes the promotion came with the move from a line manager job to a staff job, resulting in no real increase in management authority or experience. Case by case, assignment patterns of minority executives are markedly less fragmented and discontinuous than those of minority managers, suggesting that while some change is fine, too much change is not. The pattern we see in Stage 2 for minority managers may be representative of the problems that began in Stage 1.” (pp. 143-4)

“Lessons for the Next Generation of Minority Executives”

Lesson #1: Choose work and an organization that suit your personality.

“Successful people take advantage of the resources at their disposal, including their own innate personality. Work that fits your strengths, interests, and motivation will increase the odds that you will be able to persist in the face of challenge and disappointment.” (p. 235)

Lesson #2: Choose high-quality experiences over fast advancement

Lesson #3 : Build a network of developmental relationships

Lesson #4: The organization matters.

Lesson #5: Take charge of your own career. 

“Remember that your performance, and others' evaluation of it, is dynamic, not static. Commitment to excellence means ongoing mastery of the technical and social requirements of the work.” (p. 245)

Lesson #6: Race matters, but it alone does not determine your fate.

“The implication of these observations is that you will benefit by working to create a healthy integration of your racial and professional identity you can facilitate this process by creating integrated support systems and finding ways early in your career to break out of constricting behavioral norms that leave you feeling self-conscious, inauthentic, and ultimately resentful.” (p. 247)

Lesson #7: Make sure it is worth the price.

Quotables

“The process of becoming a corporate executive has two important ingredients—preparation and opportunity. Careers can be derailed by a lack of one or the other. Succeeding at the highest levels of the corporation requires sufficient levels of both.” (p. 17)

Emmett Hines: “ I think there are two things, one is hard to deal in two worlds, how to deal with a black social world and how to deal in a majority white world where there are different rules, different biases, different values. And if you have early experiences you have an earlier opportunity to form a very clear picture about who you are. And that is important because [you have] to have your own set of principles, your own set of values, that can sustain you in crisis situations. Because in the end the trick is, how do you maintain your persona, how do you maintain being your own person, but still recognize how to maneuver in different worlds. I think that early experience led me to be confident as I crossed from one world to another.” (p. 91)

“Confidence, or self-confidence, may be the most important of the required personal resources, yet is perhaps the most intangible.” (p. 116)

“Everyone is capable of making unwise career choices. However, racial minorities pay a higher price for them. Because of biases, their failures are more likely to lead others to doubt their ability to perform. Feeling like a misfit or being unmotivated by the work will rapidly pull one into a negative performance spiral.” (p. 236)

“We frequently hear from people of color that they are tired of assuming additional responsibility for this issue. Certainly, we understand and think some degree of skepticism is healthy. You should avoid being boxed into Corners that place you in the role of “race-relations troubleshooter”—the minority manager gets all the “trouble minority employees”—while white managers are let off the hook for effectively developing and supervising them. This negative kind of effort needs to be extinguished, however, from a coordinated effort to create an enabling environment.” (pp. 243-4) 

“One thing we noticed about minority executives is that they went about solving race-related problems in much the same way they solve the other problems. Earl Randolph, an executive in the follow-up study, told us that he always approached career disappointments by asking himself and others “what could he have done differently.” Later in the interview, he said there have been times when you felt race had limited his opportunities. Asked how he coped with this, he replied, “I asked myself what I could have done differently to achieve my goals. That's what I always do. Same thing, same thing.” With this reasoning, Randolph refused to give any single factor in his life control over his fate, whether it was a skill deficiency or race.” (p. 249)