Foreword

When I read the manuscript of Carice Anderson’s book Intelligence Isn’t Enough, I felt like I was hearing advice from a highly experienced executive coach. Carice provides advice and guidance for people of color and women that is based on real-life experience and answers questions that these groups don’t know to ask or are afraid to ask. As I read the different business scenarios that she describes, I thought back to my own career and how I would have benefitted from this sage advice rather than having to learn from trial and error.

Early in the book, Carice makes one of the most important points that you can learn, and that is “When you join a corporation, it will be up to you to figure out what questions to ask and who to build relationships with.” This is not necessarily because a company is not interested in your success but because they are in business to achieve their corporate goals and are looking to you to work toward those goals. The company’s management probably assumes that if you don’t know something, you will ask or figure it out. However, we know that for people of color, this is not necessarily a comfortable thing to do.

Later, she makes the point that a corporation’s culture is not necessarily what is written on the website or printed on the wall; it is defined by who it recruits, rewards, and promotes. Learning this fact early in your career lets you know how the corporate culture meshes with your values and what will be required for you to be successful in this environment.

One section of Carice’s book that particularly resonated with me was her discussion of impostor syndrome. I learned about this issue very late in my career. I didn’t know that that gripping self-doubt that I felt even in the face of my success was something that many people experience. I thought it was a character flaw that I alone carried. In writing my book The Empress Has No Clothes . . . Conquering Self-doubt to Embrace Success, I learned that people of color and women are particularly impacted by this issue. Impostor syndrome usually occurs when you are different from most of the people you are competing against, working with, or engaged with in some way. The impostor syndrome causes you to question whether you are “enough” (smart enough, experienced enough, or whatever enough) when you compare yourself to others.

Carice has used her personal experience and her many executive-coaching sessions, especially those with people of color, to write a book that I believe you will find yourself referring to frequently to unlock the mysteries of career success.

Joyce M. Roché

Retired CEO of Girls Inc and

Former President of Carson Products, now Carson/Softsheen