139: Why Black Women Leaders Get Overlooked (Even When They're the Most Qualified in the Room)

Hey Lady Leader. Welcome back to another episode of the Leading Her Introvert Wave podcast. Or if you are new here, I am very glad that you have found us. I'm Dr.

Nicole Bryan, your host and one of your biggest, biggest cheerleaders. I'm an executive leadership coach, I'm a psychologist, and a former Fortune 500 executive. And I created this podcast specifically for you. The ambitious, introverted black woman who knows she's meant for more.

Here we talk about getting you promoted to the executive level, growing into the leader that your title requires, and building a team that actually performs. And we do all of that without you having to shrink yourself, act extroverted, or hustle yourself into the ground. Now, if any of that sounds like what you need, then definitely stay tuned. Before we get into today's episode, and especially for anyone who is new here, I want to take just a moment to share exactly what we do and who we do it for.

Now I work specifically with ambitious black introverted female leaders, and the work that I do with them centers around three core problems. Problem number one is getting you your next executive level promotion because that path is not always clear and it is almost never handed directly to you. So we build the strategy together to get you there. Problem number two is closing the skill gap between being a strong manager and becoming a true executive leader.

Those two things are very, very different jobs. The transition requires you building new capabilities, new ways of thinking, and honestly, usually an entirely new leadership identity. And problem number three is setting you up with your new team or your new department and making sure that they become high performers as well. Because getting the seat is only the beginning.

What you do once you're in that seat determines everything that comes next for you. Now, if any of those three things describe the challenges you're facing right now, then you are in exactly the right place. Now let's go ahead and dive into today's episode. I want to start with a question.

When is the last time you showed up at work? Really showed up and let people see you. Not just your output, not just your deliverables, not just the polished, completely buttoned up, everything is fine version of you, but actually see you. If you had to think about it for more than a second, then this episode is for you.

Today we are talking about something I call protection masquerading as professionalism. It is one of the most common patterns I see in the women that I work with, and it is one of the quietest career killers out there because it doesn't look like a problem. It looks like discipline, it looks like focus, and it looks like keeping it all together. But underneath all of that, it is actually fair, and it's costing you more than you know.

Let me give you some context first because I don't think this pattern is accidental. I think it was built deliberately over time by a combination of who we are and when we entered the workforce. Think about the women who are listening to this right now. You may be Gen X, you might be an older millennial, but you came into the job market at a very specific moment in time.

A moment when the rules of professionalism were very strict, extremely rigid, and largely unspoken. And many of us were first, first in your family to get a college degree, maybe first to land a salary position, first to pursue a graduate degree, even first to sit in certain professional rooms. The weight of that is not small. When you are the first, you're not just representing yourself, you know that.

You have always known that. Now add introversion into that equation and the reality of being a black woman in a predominantly white professional space, and you have a combination that almost inevitably produces a very particular kind of self-management. You learned probably very early and probably from watching others exactly what professional was supposed to look like. And here is what that list looks like for most of us.

Don't be too emotional, don't be too loud. Always, always be put together. Your appearance, your hair, your clothes, all of it. Speak very clearly, complete sentences only, no slang, don't take up too much space, don't overshare, do not talk about your personal life.

Never ever wear jeans or sneakers or open-toed shoes. Hold your spine straight, shoulders back, head high. These were just some of the rules, and we followed them to the T because following them felt like survival. And for a long time, in many environments, it was.

Now, here is where it gets even more complicated. At some point, and this shift is so gradual that most of us women can't even tell you when it happened. The desire to appear professional stopped being about standards and it became about protection. Protection from being singled out, protection from being scrutinized, protection from having to speak up in rooms where you were not sure you would be heard.

Even protection from being vulnerable to anyone or anything in the workplace. And on the surface, that protection looked exactly like professionalism. It looked like composure, it looked like you having boundaries, it looked like not telling and not letting things get to you. It looked like being the woman who always had it together.

But protection and professionalism are not the same thing. And the difference matters very much for your career. Because professionalism is about how you show up. Protection is about how you hide.

And when you're hiding, even elegantly, even skillfully, the people around you can't fully see you. They cannot understand you. And here is the hard truth. Companies do not promote and reward people they don't know.

They do not reward people they can't understand. They do not bet on people they don't trust. Companies are not inanimate objects. They are collections of other people, collections of cultures, collections of relationships and perceptions and gut feelings about who has what it takes.

And no person, no sponsor, no hiring manager, no executive making decisions about who gets the next opportunity is going to advocate for someone they feel like they do not really know. So when you're protecting yourself so skillfully that no one gets close enough to see who you actually are and what you actually bring, you're not just protecting yourself from discomfort, you're protecting yourself from the very opportunities you're working hard to earn. One of my clients had been in her role for about 18 months.

She was good at her job, genuinely good, and she liked the work. She even liked the organization, and she was starting to feel that familiar itch. You know the one I'm talking about. It's where you are not miserable in your role, but you're not growing either, not in the way that you want to be growing.

And your eyes start drifting away toward what might be next for you. She was starting to have conversations around the company, talking to a couple of sponsors, exploring what a next opportunity or a next step might look like for her inside the organization. She was clear that she wanted to stay at the company. That was her preference, but she was open if she needed to leave.

So she was doing all the right things in terms of exploring. And then one day she came to a session visibly upset. And she told me that in a recent leadership team meeting, a meeting that she was a member of, not that she was running herself, she felt like her boss had called her out. So I asked her what happened.

She explained that she had not been feeling like herself that day. She wanted to be in the room and hear what was being said as part of the meeting, but not necessarily actively participate. And then someone asked her a direct question, which she answered very briefly and very concisely, and then she moved on. But the room wanted more.

There were a ton of follow-up questions for her, more curiosity than she had anticipated or that she was prepared for in that moment. And she was very frustrated. She felt exposed. She had wanted to just be left alone that day.

Now, I understood exactly what she was feeling. And I also had to be honest with her about what I was seeing. She was protecting herself in that moment from being seen. But at the same exact time, she was asking her organization to see her enough to move her forward, to move her up.

But you can't have it both ways. I understand why you would want to, believe me, I definitely do. But the people around you cannot read your mind. They can't flex on a week-to-week basis based on where your energy happens to be.

They're building a picture of you over time based on what they actually observe and what they experience with you. And if what they observe is someone who's closed off or hard to read and difficult to access, that's the picture that they're going to carry into the room when you are being talked about for the next promotion or the next bonus or the next initiative. I want to be clear about something here because I'm not asking you to perform vulnerability. And I'm not asking you necessarily to overshare or to make your colleagues your therapists or to abandon every boundary you have carefully and thoughtfully built.

What I am asking you to consider is this where has professionalism become a costume for you? Where are you using the language and the look of professionalism to stay invisible in rooms where being visible is exactly what your career requires? Because that is hiding in plain sight. And it is one of the most sophisticated and most costly forms of self-protection in your career that I know of.

The women I see doing this over and over and over again are not struggling because they're not capable. They're not struggling because they're not smart or talented or ready. They're struggling because they have mastered the art of being present without being known. And in a world where advancement depends on relationships, on trust, on people being willing to put their own credibility behind your name, that mastery is working against you.

You can't be both invisible and promoted. You're gonna have to choose. So what do you do with this, lady leader? So I'm not gonna give you a five-step framework, at least not this time, right?

This is not that kind of work. This is slower, this is more personal, but I will give you a starting place. Start by getting honest about where you are hiding, not globally, just in one specific context, one recurring meeting that you have to show up to, maybe one relationship that you have inside your organization, or one recurring situation where you already know, if you are honest with yourself, that you are showing up with the armor fully on and nothing getting in or getting out.

And then I wanted you to ask yourself, what the hell am I afraid would happen if I showed up differently here? What am I actually protecting myself from? Is there a threat? Is the threat real and current, or is it a threat that was real at some point in my past and I'm still defending myself against today?

Because a lot of the protection that we carry as women into our current workplaces are built from previous workplaces, from previous bosses, from prior environments that were genuinely unsafe for us or unwelcoming or even hostile. And the protection that made sense then doesn't make sense now. But you are not there anymore, right? And walking into a new room with armor built for a different battle is not professionalism.

It's a pattern, and patterns can be changed. So here's the through line of this entire summer series, lady leader. And if this is the first one that you're catching, definitely go back and start at episode 137. But from episodes 137 through 140, what we're talking about in this summer series is that you have been protecting yourself out of the career that you want, out of the advancement that you want.

Not because you're weak and not because you're wrong, but because you've learned from experience, from culture, from necessity that protection keeps you safe. And it did until it started to keep you stuck. The work that is in front of you now is not to abandon your professionalism, but is to start distinguishing between what is genuinely professional and what is your armor that you no longer need to wear. In our next episode, we're going to talk about something that lives underneath all of this, which is the joy that gets lost somewhere along the way.

Because reclaiming your joy is not a soft topic. It is not a luxury. It is one of the most important things that you can do for your leadership. And I think you're ready to hear it.

Now, before I let you go, I want to tell you about something that I've been building for you. It's a free quiz that will help you identify exactly where you are right now on your journey to the executive level. And more importantly, specifically what you need to focus on to get to the next level. It's almost ready.

And when it drops, I'll be announcing it here and on LinkedIn. So if you're not following me there yet, go and find me, Dr. Nicole Bryan, because that is where you will hear it first. And if you're already clear that you are ready to do this work, if any of the three problems I described at the top of this episode sound like exactly where you are, I want to invite you to have a conversation.

Whether you're working toward your next executive promotion or you're building the skills to make the leap from manager to senior leader, or you already landed your executive role and you're ready to hit the ground running, I work with women at all of these stages, both in coaching and in a more consultative capacity. The work has been deeply rewarding for me, and the results for my clients have been exceptional. If this is where you are, let's definitely talk. Book a call.

The link is in the show notes. You already know something needs to change. Let's figure out exactly what that is together. Until next time, lady leader, keep leading your introvert way.