Usted es me todos: Best of the March-April 2018 Issue: What It Takes for People of Color to Get to the Top

February 22, 2018

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What It Takes for People of Color to Get to the Top

From Amy Bernstein
Editor, Harvard Business Review

The new issue of HBR, more than most, speaks to my heart. Many of the stories in our March-April edition—particularly several that deal with race and gender—add levels of humanity that too often are missing from management thinking. Taken together, their message is that unless we can all connect across differences, we'll never achieve real diversity.

In "Beating the Odds," Laura Morgan Roberts and her coauthors note the startling lack of black women in the C-suite and ask, What does it take for people of color to get ahead? To understand, they talked to black female graduates of Harvard Business School—a pretty rarefied group of achievers. What they learned is that getting ahead requires ample helpings of authenticity, resilience, agility, and emotional intelligence. As one alumna said, "A large part of the whole dance of being successful in corporate America is about creating space for people to trust you and for you to trust them."

Fostering this trust is hard, though. Take the case of Karen, a woman of color working in higher education, whom Katherine Phillips and coauthors describe in their article "Diversity and Authenticity." When a colleague asked how she spent her birthday, Karen hesitated to say she'd gone to a gospel concert. Her reluctance around this seemingly minor exchange points to a very real problem with today's emphasis on expressing one's "true self" at work. Research finds minorities often fear that highlighting their race might reinforce stereotypes that could undermine their career growth. As Karen put it, "If I am not comfortable with who I am, the music I like, the places I like to go, how can I expect my coworker to value me for who I am?"

Merck's Kenneth Frazier, one of the few African-American CEOs in the Fortune 500, offers another take on these challenges. Even with his Harvard Law School degree, he says, he had to make himself "user-friendly" for clients and partners at the white-shoe firm he once worked at. Frazier, you might remember, was the first to resign from President Trump's business advisory council in the wake of the racially charged events in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year. "I didn't see this as a political issue," he tells editor in chief Adi Ignatius. "It's an issue that goes to our fundamental values as a country."

And finally, don't miss our interview with the great Jane Fonda. When she started out in Hollywood, she too was a member of an underrepresented group and had to fight her own battles for equality and fairness. "There were directors who tried to have sex with me before they would give me a job, but I would just laugh," she recalls. "At that time—the early 1960s—objectification and sexism were all around you, and there wasn't a sense that you could do anything about it."

It's a good reminder that even amid the current turmoil, there's been a lot of progress—but we still have much left to do.

Thanks for reading,
Amy Bernstein

In the Issue:

Beating the Odds

by Laura Morgan Roberts, Anthony J. Mayo, Robin J. Ely, and David A. Thomas

Any list of top CEOs reveals a stunning lack of diversity. To understand more about why, researchers studied the careers of 67 African-American graduates of Harvard Business School who have attained top positions in corporations or professional services firms. What made them successful? These women thrived, it turns out, because of three characteristics key to resilience: emotional intelligence, authenticity, and agility. In addition, nurturing relationships with mentors were critical to their success.

Diversity and Authenticity

by Katherine W. Phillips, Tracy L. Dumas, and Nancy Rothbard

Career mobility is often affected by feelings of closeness or familiarity with colleagues. Building workplace relationships across racial boundaries, however, can be difficult. Being one's true self, disclosing elements of one's personal life, or forming social connections is harder across demographic backgrounds. But there are three things companies can do to make employees feel more comfortable doing so: create structures for employee interactions; adopt a learning orientation; and create informal mentorship opportunities.

"Businesses Exist to Deliver Value to Society"

by Adi Ignatius

As one of only a few African American CEOs in the Fortune 500, Merck's Kenneth Frasier gained widespread attention when he withdrew from President Trump's business council after the August 2017 events in Charlottesville, Virginia. In this interview, Frasier talks about why he made that decision. He also discusses his youth, his early days as a lawyer, the rationale for pricing lifesaving drugs so high, and balancing short-term pressures with long-term needs.

Life's Work: An Interview with Jane Fonda

by Gabriel Joseph-Dezaize

Jane Fonda overcame a tough childhood to find success as an actress and then greater purpose as an activist. She won two Oscars in the 1970s, became a fitness guru in the 1980s, focused on nonprofit work in the 1990s, and has since 2005 returned to acting, most recently in Grace and Frankie. In this interview, she discusses having the "Fonda" name, the ways she faced sexism in her career, and how she chooses her projects.