Insights from Black Leaders at ELC's 2022 Mid-Level Manager's Symposium in Washington, DC

2022 Mid-Level Managers’ Symposium

I was blessed with the opportunity to attend the 2022 Mid-Level Management Symposium. The symposium is ran by the Executive Leadership Council and had keynote addresses from black thought leaders and successful black professionals, providing strategies to achieve your professional goals. I've embedded a video with the highlights below (video with music found here).

Insights from the Symposium?

While there, I enjoyed expanding my professional network of black professionals and having my spirit filled with an outpouring of knowledge from great black leaders. I found the knowledge have both business and personal applications. I want to pass this information on to those who couldn't attend. My notes come from the following leaders, present at the 2022 MLMS.

From the above speakers at the symposium, I captured the notes posted below. I've categorized them, in no particular order, into three main areas:

• Building Your Circle - how to build a community of people you can help and that can help you.
• Adversity - How to handle adversity in work and life.
• Self-Development - areas of change, new perspectives that better help you become the person you desire to be, achieving goals you desire to achieve
• General Advice - notes worth sharing I couldn't easily fit into a theme
• Mentors - Considerations for mentorship to accelerate your career, life.

My hope is that you can use these notes, applying them to life's situations as a way to accelerate achieving your desired outcomes.

Building Your Circle?

• Use the high-high-low methodology when hiring or collaborating with people. High Integrity with how they conduct themselves. They have High Talent (ability to execute) and Low Ego. With Egos, the problem is that the person can only see life through their own lens, not the lens of end-users, customers, people they lead, their leadership, romantic partners, friends, family, etc. Eventually this will kill team or relationship dynamics. Don’t confuse ego with competence and confidence.
• Look for the catalyst in communities and/or organizations. As a new leader, go around and ask people, "When you have a problem, who do you go to when you have a problem?" Often you'll find many people go to a few set of people to get unblocked and find resolutions. These people may not have leader in their title, but they are leaders who should be identified, supported and nurtured in their efforts helping others.?
• When building leaderships teams, get people who believe in the mission vs those who are compliant. Willing to take personal accountability for the mission (if it fails, I fail). Referencing enabling the first female students at Citidel, those who said they don’t believe women should be at the school but would be compliant in the federal mandate, weren’t selected as leaders.
• It's not enough to find people that are compliant, when building strong teams and communities get people who believe in the mission and are willing to take personal accountability for the outcome of the mission. Sometimes goals can't be achieved with those willing to be compliant to a mandate, audacious goals require passion and effort that come from true belief in the mission.?
• Place yourself in the right spaces before making decisions on building a team, community or relationships. By placing yourself in those right places, the people that are already there become the candidates for you to build with. Others can provide guiding input but the "right space" can only be defined by you.?
• Don’t delay hard decisions and/or discussions. Move fast to bring a “bad” relationships into resolution, whatever that resolution is. The longer these things linger, the more negative potential impact they can have.
• As a leader, it’s dangerous to not see the ground level truth. The truth allows you to make decisions on the actual facts vs something else. Get rid of people in your circle who won't have honest conversations and only tell you what you want to hear vs what you need to hear.?
• Don't be over responsible and take on other's desire's, goals, problems and issues at the cost of your own life's goals and mental well-being. Care for people, don’t coddle them.?
• Connect those with needs to those with the desire and ability to give.
• Just because a person is a high performer across individual contributions, doesn’t mean they'll be a high performing leader.
• Don’t be less of yourself to fit into a group. Bringing more of yourself to the group benefits the group. If you find yourself out of a group because of being your authentic self, consider yourself lucky.
• Don’t think of yourself as one black person working in corporate America, use the “power of the squad” mentality to leverage others around you who can help you be successful.
• Building an effective team may require your nucleus of people are polar opposites. When building a team or community, don’t only look for people like you.?
• A corporation is not a tangible object, it’s a group of individuals. Don’t expect a corporation to align with your goals, find individuals aligned with your objectives.
• "You are only as strong as your team. I have strong relationships with my teams and have been with them for over 10yrs. When I meet someone that is dope, I try to get them on my team."
• One great person is worth 50 good people. Don't sacrifice good for great.
• You can live in the same society and communities with people but their may still be a lack of intimate understanding of each other. It is important to engage with those diverse people in your communities, not just live amongst them.
• "When someone feels like it’s part theirs, they will fight hard to see that thing be successful. I split myself up as many ways as I can. I don’t want people to work for me but work with me and fight hard to see our mission successful"
• Set the expectations with others, “If you invest in me, then I’ll invest in you and we’ll grow together.” Anything less is unacceptable.

Adversity?

• Adversity can be rewarding. While some look at a major challenge and shy away as it isn't easy, may cause physical or emotional discomfort or doesn't gain accolades from the masses, some run to that adversity with open arms. David Rawlinson is that person who runs towards adversity and credited adversity and it's learnings as a major contributor to his success in becoming the CEO of Qurate Retail Group which makes Rawlinson 1 of 24 Fortune 500 Black CEOs since list first published in 1955 (one of six black CEOs in 2022).?
• Many judge the quality of a business, role or person only based on the problems they face. A more wholistic way to assess is to measure both the problems and the opportunities present in those problems and weigh out the risk vs potential reward.
• You must embrace that for everything you go after, the potential of failure exists. After you embrace that and get past the fear of failure, the journey to achieving becomes much easier.
• "To break my old mental model I had to embrace failure. I gave myself a threshold 5 failures a day, and unless I failed 5x in a day it’s not a bad day. Only I determine what a failure is."
• Rather than giving my energy to avoiding failure, I took that energy and applied it to my failure recovery process. Failure is going to happen, best to have a process for how to rebound rather than placing energy on avoiding the inevitable.
• "I learn 1 million times more from my failures compared to my successes. I don’t look back to my successes when thinking about doing what to do in the present, future. Be reflective, don’t analyze them to the point they make you feel depressed, sad, angry, ashamed."

Self-Development

• A principled person doesn't require confidence.
• A person can be 30 or 40 in age but still a teenager psychologically. Take time out to objectively examine yourself to see what areas you are under developed emotionally and psychologically. It may be adversely impacting your life in ways you experience but are not aware of.?
• When assessing yourself in life, focus on the tools you do have vs the tools you don’t have. You are capable of a lot more than you give yourself credit for. Focusing on what you don't have often lowers your self-perception?
• Definition of success is exhausting yourself on working towards your purpose in life. A hearse doesn’t have a luggage rack, exhaust all of your energy towards your life’s purpose while you can. You won't be able to take anything with you.
• Take periodic brakes to think deeply on where have you been, where are you now and where you want to go. Document and compare/contrast over the periods.?
• Set boundaries and a safe space for yourself. Don't apologize for having the boundaries, you don't have to justify them to others.
• Self-care is a practice of intentionality, not a single event like a spa day.
• Explore the reason you don't want to go forward. Extended physical exhaustion leads to you wanting to rest. Extended emotional exhaustion leads to you wanting to quit.
• Across life's situations where you ask yourself “what can I lose?.” Don't just consider loss of the tangible, consider whether the decision causes you to lose your authentic self. If so, the cost is too great.
• Know your voice. Don’t mute it.
• Take chances, don’t focus on the perception of the outcome.
• Bet on yourself
• "The mainstream bar was the bare minimum for me, I want to excel past that and set a new standard of excellence for blacks." & "I could never say, I’m going to make a hit, you have to say I’m going to do my best." Focusing on delivering his best effort, vs receiving accolades, and aiming for excellence, vs delivering a "mainstream me too", is how Kenya Barris created Emmy nominated, award winning content for Disney, Netflix, Warner Brothers, Universal, Pixar and others.
• Everyone’s story is amazing, it’s just a matter of the narrative you use when telling your story. Don’t lower the volume on your story to make other people more comfortable.
• It has to service your spirit, if not say no. And money doesn’t service your spirit. Do something that you will feel good about. If it works or not, you’ll still feel good about it. Note that all money is not good money. You may take an opportunity that helps you get money now but sets you back financially in the future or spiritually in the present.?
• Success requires a natural process. Don’t try to expedite it as you may bypass the learnings.?
• It’s not about being the youngest or first but it's about being their the longest. Don’t peak too early.
• One door closes and another one opens. Your lowest point can be when something amazing is about to happen. Keep your eyes open for the next opportunity.
• Don’t allow what you don’t know about yourself, or a lack of belief in self to deter you. Reverse from thoughts that don’t serve you to something that elevates you. Think differently about yourself.?

General Advice

• Conventional wisdom may have wisdom in the advice, but that advice may not be designed for you or the present moment, hence the term “conventional.” So when given conventional wisdom analyze it's applicability to your present situation, take what is applicable, leave what is not.
• Start with humility, make differences, even when small. Small can still be impactful. Small can become large.
• The people with more success than others on average are often people who have more failures than others on average. If you’re not willing to fail, you are not willing to do what it takes to be successful.?
• Diversity initiatives are often better aligned with corporate responsibility vs social impact. Aligning your diversity initiative with corporate responsibilities align with how the company increases the bottom line. If you don't do this, it becomes hard to measure social impact and people (executives) may stop investing and/or engaging in your diversity issue.
• “Don’t underestimate the power of black voices to influence public policy. Understand the power of your voice individually and collectively.?
• As black people, we don’t influence culture we are the culture.
• There are many different versions of black, you don’t have to subscribe to one. Find or create the version that makes sense for you.
• Rhetorical question parents can ask themselves, “We are taught to give kids more than what we have but when we do so what do they lose?”
• ?"There is more that unites black people than separates us. Don't be fooled into believing otherwise. Gossip, anonymous internet comments/forums, trash media, etc is not for us. Leave it alone."?
• With relationships and opportunities, the fortune can be in the follow up, not just the event itself.
• "It is important to be part owners in something. I started turning down offers of money for offers of ownership. With that said, sometimes someone offers you equity in a business because they don’t believe in it and want you to believe in it. Not all equity is good equity."

Mentorship

• Sometimes people can be too far away from your current position to be impactful with mentoring you. Honestly assess those providing advice and the level of empathy they can provide in a given situation, before seeking advice.
• Advocating (verbal) for yourself is whispering, being excellent (action) is the equivalent of shouting.
• No one can define or fill your purpose for you.?
• The hustle and grind is not enough, you need others to play specific roles in your life’s journey to achieve success. Some mentors share skill set, intellectual capital and motivation to believe you can achieve. Find all of the above as they are needed on your journey.
• "On my path to success, I didn’t have a lot of mentors, but had people who gave me opportunities. I also studied stories of the successful." For those without physical access to mentors, find other resources that can guide and motivate you towards your goals until mentors become available.
• Having black role models and someone who looked like them was influential to almost every one of the executives, leaders and participants who spoke. They directly attributed role models to choosing a career (life) path and success. Find a role model. Be a role model.

#mlms22 #blackprofessionals #professionaldevelopment

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