The Hidden Strengths of Minority Leadership

Minority professionals often hold leadership roles outside work, serving as pillars of their communities and churches and doing more than their share of mentoring. If you know many minority professionals (particularly women of color) then you know that these are the people who are called upon inordinately to lend their energies, perspectives, and guidance to activities outside their jobs. Because they have “made it,” and because often they have done so against heavy odds, they are mentors of choice to young people in their surrounding communities.
Within their workplaces, they serve on numerous diversity seeking task forces and spearhead minority recruitment efforts. They play high-profile volunteer roles in their towns, schools, and churches, and the amount of time they invest in these roles is substantial. In the words of Ella Bell, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, “Minorities comprise the backbone of religious organizations and provide a significant part of the energy driving community service in the United States.”

For many minority professionals, involvement in such activities is an important, inherently satisfying part of their lives. For some, it’s a way of giving back and or, more accurately, giving in turn the kind of help that benefited them early on. But it’s also a fertile source of continued personal growth. In these myriad roles, minority professionals own valuable leadership skills.
For example, Sheryl Battles is an African-American Vice President of corporate communications at a major global corporation. In addition to her primary responsibility managing executive and investor communications, she coordinates the corporation’s communications on issues of diversity and in that capacity supports 30 to 40 events a year. It’s a task that constitutes just 5% of her official job description but consumes roughly 25% of her 50-hour workweek. In her personal life, she speaks at community events and career seminars for minority students and is involved in the church that she, her husband, and their daughter attend. She is also on the board of a local organization for the arts and has been active in its African-American Cultural Heritage Series since its inception over a decade ago.

Over the years, Sheryl Battles has accumulated substantial cultural capital. Cultural capital is impossible to measure with any precision but is undeniably vital for anyone who wishes to exert influence through leadership in a neighborhood, a company, or a nation. Everyone accumulates a measure of cultural capital in their lives, but in the case of minority professionals, it is unusually rich. West, C. (2005). Leadership in Your Midst: Tapping the Hidden Strengths of Minority Executives. Harvard Business Review. 113-115 (2), 113-117.

You too can tap into your leadership capabilities through acknowledgement and gained cultural capital. Ask yourself, what are you doing to add value and encouragement towards society and better yet; your current surroundings?

“A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it.” Frederick Douglass