Secrets 0f Success

In her new book, Double Outsiders, Jessica Faye Carter reveals the unspoken rules for reaching the executive suite.

Getting tapped as a high-potential employee to fast-track your career is not an exact science. Companies generally select high-potential employees and develop succession plans at high-level meetings, behind closed doors. A combination of factors—including excellent performance, professional image and exposure to key sponsors, mentors and informal networks—is necessary for women of color to get ahead in corporate America.

If you believe that you hold these keys, but your career still seems stalled, it may be time to ask some tough questions. Check in with a trusted friend or advisor to ask: What do you see as developmental opportunities for me? How do you think I am perceived in the organization? What behaviors do you think it takes to be successful at this company?

Get the Signal
Read the “tea leaves.” One way talented women of color miss out on being considered high-potentials is to miss important signals. For even where selection of high-potentials is a secretive process, companies still have ways of indicating who is being groomed for future leadership. Signals may vary somewhat across industries; still, there are some commonalities.

One common signal is an invitation to work on special projects or task forces that report their findings to senior management. These projects allow you to demonstrate your abilities to others in the group and to senior management, providing you with much-needed exposure. The company benefits by testing how its high-potentials work together and by helping them build solid support networks. These networks can help
ensure future success at the company.

Be on the lookout for invitation-only leadership development programs sponsored by your company. If you are invited to such an event, know that you are likely receiving a signal that the company supports your professional development.

Another signal involves increased attention from senior managers and colleagues. This can range from casual
inquiries about your current projects to more frequent invitations for lunch or coffee to “talk shop.” This attention indicates that people like being around you and value your opinion. Conversely, a lack of interest from your colleagues is also telling and may indicate that you are not on your way up the corporate ladder.

And finally, consider your company’s financial investment in you. This is one of the more important signs of corporate approval that you can receive. When a company pays for you to attend external leadership retreats or invests in an executive coach for you, it is helping you to better develop your abilities. This means that it considers you an asset worth investing in.

Make Connections
Isolation is not a good sign of your future success. Instead, make sure you build solid relationships with colleagues. Ask yourself whether anyone knows you besides your boss and close circle of coworkers. Have you been selected recently for a cross-functional initiative or an important assignment?

Also, make sure you find the right mentors. Seek out a sponsor—a senior in the organization who is interested in your career. But don’t settle for just one or limit yourself to only those who share your ethnicity or gender. A common mistake women of color make is to believe that someone who shares your ethnicity is necessarily your ally.

Be open and flexible to mentors and sponsors who do not resemble you.
In addition, women of color should have a diversity of relationships at work. In the same way that you have differ-ent friends who meet different needs in your personal life, you should have different professional relationships that meet your different professional needs. This strategy can help you, especially if one of your key mentors leaves the organization. Develop enough of your own relationships to continue your ascent, even after a mentor’s departure.

Have a Written Plan
Women of color should come up with a written plan detailing their goals and objectives in the organization. This is for your own use only—not for sharing with colleagues. This plan can help prevent women of color from being sidetracked into roles with a low career trajectory. Sometimes roles or functions that sound good will not ultimately move you ahead in the organization. Take control of your own career—for, although nothing is guaranteed, you are likely to fare much better with a plan.

Find Support and Balance
Make connections both within your organization and outside it with friends who can understand the challenges you face at work. Once you have support, it’s time to pursue some measure of balance in your life and find time for friends and family. Women of color should seek balance, which can help you to be healthy and happy. An additional benefit of balance is that healthy, happy people are much more enjoyable to be around. Because likability is an important factor in building relationships at work, balance can benefit your career.

Be a Power Player
Generally, women believe that men and women use power differently. Both powerful men and women “make things happen” and “achieve results,” but women tend to view powerful men as using their power over others. In contrast, they view powerful women as being more collaborative. This has led researchers to believe that men are more apt to use power over others, whereas women tend to be more comfortable using power through others.

But to exercise power, you must first acquire it. Women tend to acquire power in ways that reflect their usage
of it: through building relationships and achieving results. This strategy makes sense for women (who use power through others) because the relationships that they build become the means through which they achieve results. Women of color, however, tend not to acquire power in this way; they are likely to focus more on achieving results than on building relationships. Ultimately, this lessens their power base because it results in poor relationships and therefore the inability to achieve results through others. For women of color to use power effectively, they must take the time to build relationships and alliances.

This will also come into play when managing others—one of the most important facets of organizational life. The ability to manage others, and to elicit the best performance from them, is one of the hallmarks of a leader, and such a reputation will serve you well for your entire career. Good managers engender loyalty from their staff and respect from their peers.

Learn the Rules
How men and women use power is not the only Mars vs. Venus difference. Competition at work needs to be dealt with very carefully due to a broad backdrop of “unspoken rules” that exist in corporate culture. Consider the following hypothetical scenario: In a meeting of vice presidents at Company X’s headquarters in New York City, a white male making an important point might pound his hand on the table for emphasis. The room’s likely response to his table banging? Nothing. Consider whether the room would have the same reaction to a white woman banging her hand on the table to make a point. You might already picture a few people looking askance at each other and maybe even a raised eyebrow. Now consider what the response of this same room would be if an African-American woman banged her hand on the table to make a point. Or an Asian-American woman. Just reading this, you already get a sense that this behavior would not be viewed the same as it would be for the white male (assuming that they all hold the same title and have similar work experience).

Understanding the “unspoken rules” is just one of several challenges. There are peaks and pitfalls to being in your company’s pipeline. At its peaks, you will benefit from access to senior managers and gain entrance into important networks. You will also learn more about the broader vision of the company and get a better sense of how it functions. Being aware of how you are perceived and forming relationships with key players are good ways to avoid potential traps. Add to that performing above expectations, and you are well on your way to career success.

Adapted from Double Outsiders: How Women of Color Can Succeed in Corporate America, by Jessica Faye Carter, JD, MBA. Click here to order your copy.