Chapter 1

A whole new world

So, let’s start with the good news. You successfully completed university or a master’s programme and did well enough for you to have been hired as a full-time employee. You skilfully navigated an arduous multiple-round interview process and landed a wonderful role in an amazing company. Getting a job is like qualifying to run a marathon. You have been admitted, your number has just been pinned to your chest but you still have to run the race. You have not done anything yet. The real work starts now.

Here’s the bad news: in my experience, only 30 per cent of your success can be attributed to your education and hard skills, which have been influenced and shaped by your intelligence quotient (IQ). You’ve probably spent the last 20 years focusing on these. The remaining 70 per cent of your success is based on your ability to understand and manage yourself and work well with others – qualities that most of you have probably never worked on. Bestselling author and emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman takes this argument one step further. He believes that emotional intelligence accounts for 80 to 90 per cent of the differentiating skills that contribute to success. Your efforts in school, university or college have been focused on mastering certain topics, and you’ve probably spent most of your academic career working as an individual contributor. You didn’t have to play nicely with the other kids in the class, and while you might have been on some challenging (read: horrific) group projects, you only had to spend a finite amount of time with your teammates. You may even have had the luxury of choosing your group. At work, you do not have that luxury. Although you might move from one group to another, you can neither control who you work with nor who your manager will be. To put it bluntly: until you are moved to another team or work for another company, work is one endless group project.

The 70-20-10 guidelines for learning how to be an effective leader were developed by the Center for Creative Leadership after more than 30 years of research. They are especially useful for thinking through your career and performance at work. According to these guidelines, 10 per cent of your learning comes from training, 20 per cent from other people (such as mentors, coaches, sponsors and managers), while a whopping 70 per cent comes from challenging on-the-job assignments and experiences. If you’re fresh out of university or college and you’ve just started out on your career, your learning has come solely from classroom training. You haven’t had the opportunity to build relationships with the individuals you will learn from, nor have you had key job experiences and assignments. These two elements, which you lack at this point, will eventually make up the bulk of the learning which you will need to be a leader in your workplace.

Remember, work is not like school. I know this may sound obvious, but it needs to be said. (I wish someone had said it to me when I first started working, or even ten years ago!) Even though I consciously knew I was starting my career, the switch did not flip that I was now in a different environment with different rules and that my approach would also have to change. The system worked, and I worked it, so if it ain’t broke, why fix it? As usual, I resolved to put my head down, work hard and put in long hours. I would be disciplined. That was pretty much the extent of my plan.

Let’s spell out a few differences between work and university. At university, having a great relationship with a professor is not a requirement for getting good grades. I never built any relationships with my professors and I still graduated with honours in the top 25 per cent of my class. You got the syllabus for the course. The professor told you when the exams were scheduled (unless they got you with the sneaky pop quiz from time to time). You knew what percentage of your final grade was made up of the final exam versus other components of the course. You knew that if you attended lectures, took notes, studied sufficiently and performed well on the test and/or delivered a high-quality paper, you would get a good grade. That was the formula. You knew that if you did your part, you would be successful.

Well, I quickly learnt that that ain’t work. In the workplace, you get no credit for showing up. And tests don’t come at scheduled times: they come every day, some of them big, some of them small. You are graded and evaluated continuously. Sometimes it’s clear what you are being tested on, but sometimes it’s not. And, unlike school, university or college, you can’t just drop your job like you would a class or lecture. Now you have financial obligations such as rent, car payments, food, insurance and utilities that you have to pay, and those bills keep coming every month. In addition, depending on your manager or the company culture, you may or may not be told what the rules are, what success looks like or how to achieve it.

When you join a corporation, it will be up to you to figure out what questions you need to ask and who to build relationships with. So what will best equip you to build the most effective relationships? What can you do to excel in those challenging job assignments and experiences that will constitute the bulk of your learning? And what do you need to know about your working environment for you to maximise those relationships and experiences?

It stands to reason that some people maximise these relationships, experiences and assignments better than others. What are the factors that make the difference?

Working in versus working on your career

Entrepreneurs often talk about the difference between working in their business and working on their business. Working in your business is about serving your customers and delivering whatever goods and/or services you sell. Working on your business, however, is about taking a step back and thinking strategically about how you spend your time and resources. It entails questioning your strategy and asking yourself whether you are serving the right customers and building important relationships.

Let’s use a cupcake company as an example. Working in your business is about buying the flour, eggs, sugar and other ingredients to make the cupcakes. It’s about making the cupcakes, delivering them and collecting the money. Working on your business is asking yourself whether you are selling the right mix of cupcakes to the right people at the right price. It’s about questioning whether your marketing efforts are reaching your ideal customers.

As I reflected on these questions over the years, I realised that you can look at your career in the same way. Working in your career is about working hard and doing your job well every day, which is critical. Working on your career, however, is about thinking through the enablers – relationships, opportunities, feedback, coaching, personal branding – that are critical to your success and advancement at work. It’s about examining whether you are spending your time on the most critical activities that will set you up to make an impact in your field.

Look at the table on the opposite page. The answers to the questions on the left will help you do well in the moment. The answers to the questions on the right will help you advance and build a career.

Working In vs Working On Your Career

We all know that we must put in the time, but I want to encourage you to ask yourself: how am I spending my time? Am I clear about all the areas that are most important and am I spending enough time on each one? Am I sacrificing the important for the urgent? Am I saying ‘no’ to the wrong activities and ‘yes’ to the right activities? Am I forming the right relationships at the right levels at the right time?

The Pareto Principle says that 80 per cent of your impact at work comes from 20 per cent of your efforts. Your job as a junior employee is to figure out what that 20 per cent is. Most of us have spent more time working in our careers than working on our careers because we didn’t understand our working environments and what it takes to be successful in those spaces. There are many elements of our work environments that we cannot control. Focusing on these reinforces a victim mindset and makes us feel powerless. However, focusing on what you can control is empowering and reinforces the idea that you do have significant opportunities to shape your experience.

Victim vs Victor mindset

Making important choices

When I started university, a lot of people told me what I should study. I got talked out of studying psychology and voice, and everyone urged me to major in business so that I could make a decent living with an undergraduate degree. So I decided to major in business, and around my second year, I had to pick a specific major in business. I remember looking at a piece of paper that listed all the major options for the undergraduate business school. Accounting? No. Finance? No. Economics? No. Health Care Management? No. Management? Sounded too generic – no. Marketing? That sounded cool. As long as it took me to read the options was as much time as I spent picking my major. I did not research any of them nor the possible careers I could pursue with each major.

During my third year, I took a sales class and on one occasion the professor said: ‘If you’re a marketing major, 90 per cent of you will have to go into sales.’ I had a very negative connotation around the term ‘sales’, and in an instant I was discouraged from exploring the work opportunities linked to my major. I took the word of this professor at face value because I respected his authority as an adult. That was a mistake. When I was growing up, I was taught to respect authority. I believed that adults were all-knowing, so I trusted their advice, usually without question. Adults don’t always know what they’re talking about. When it comes to your career, always question what they tell you. Do the research yourself. Get multiple opinions and compare them to your own personal goals and values. Don’t depend on misinformed, albeit well-meaning, adults to give you guidance about your life and career, because they often operate from what they know, which might be (and probably is) less than what you would think.

Your life and your career are not like picking the wrong class. As a working professional, your choices matter. Also, keep in mind that your next employer will ask you about your career choices to this point. Be prepared to answer questions such as: ‘Why did you choose this job?’ ‘Why did you choose to leave?’ ‘What skills or knowledge did you gain?’ ‘What did you learn about yourself and others?’ ‘And why do you want to go from that job to this one?’ ‘What is the connection between the two?’ ‘What is your path going forward?’

Besides having to answer these questions, sometimes your decisions can pigeonhole you. When I left my first full-time job, I was only approached for similar jobs. It was frustrating, because that job was not what I wanted to do but it was on my CV, so recruiters were drawn to it. Unlike me, you now have social media and the internet, which was only in its infancy when I was at university. Today, young people have a lot more ways to learn about what is available and how to go about getting there. Question your assumptions and the options you think are in front of you. Ask yourself: am I missing anything? Am I limiting myself? Am I basing my list of options on what people around me have said or done? What else could there be?

I spent several years running away from jobs that I did not enjoy and that didn’t energise me. Every time, my next job would be pretty much the same. I finally realised that if you decide to run away from something, make sure you also run towards something. If not, you’ll end up right back in the same position.

What work is really about

As you begin your career, it’s important to understand what work is about and the expansive purpose of this experience. If you don’t understand the entirety of the experience, you will most likely be frustrated and blindsided by your lack of awareness. We’re often told that work is all about working hard and delivering excellent results, but it is also about so much more. Work is really about learning and managing who you are and what is important to you, building and maintaining relationships with others despite the many differences that exist, and figuring out and navigating the organisational culture – all while working hard and delivering excellent results.

As you can see, there is much more involved than what you were told or taught. So the better you know yourself, the better you can try to position yourself for success through your choices about what to do, where to do it and who to do it with. And the better you understand others, the better your relationships and teams will be, and the more fun and impact you will ultimately have at work. When you start out, work can be very challenging because there is a lot to juggle, much of which you have not been prepared for. While you are figuring out yourself and others, you are also still expected to deliver high-quality work. This explains why you need to be thoughtful, strategic and deliberate about how you spend your time and energy.

Balance out your training

We have all been to the gym and seen that guy who has tremendous muscle mass in his arms, chest, back and shoulders but, sadly, toothpicks for legs. This is because he chose to only focus on his upper body. When parts of your body are underdeveloped, those parts are weak, which puts you at risk of injury. Your body will never reach its full potential unless you address the weaker, underdeveloped areas. If you have just started out on your career, you are like that guy at the gym. You have certain parts that are underdeveloped and you are out of balance, which puts you at risk. You could easily weaken your career and fail to reach your full potential in the corporate space.

Just like there are major muscle groups in the body (such as arms, legs and core), there are major muscle groups in your corporate career that you want to assess, exercise and build. They are knowing yourself, knowing others and knowing your environment. Just like you prepare your mind and body before you start exercising, you need to do the same with this journey. Chapter 1 lays the foundation and provides important truths and perspectives to cultivate the right conditions for maximum impact. Knowing yourself involves investigating your mindset and understanding your emotions (discussed in Chapter 2). Knowing others focuses on how you build and sustain important relationships in the workplace (discussed in Chapter 3), based on your emotional intelligence (emotional quotient, or EQ). Knowing your environment delves deeply into analysing your organisation’s culture (discussed in Chapter 4). The next step is for you to combine the knowledge from Chapters 1–4 to craft an authentic personal brand (discussed in Chapter 5) and communication style (discussed in Chapter 6) that help you maximise your impact.

Maximising Your Impact

People matter

People probably told you that you were going to do great things once you graduated and started your career. They probably said that the world would lay down for you and that you should work hard. What they probably didn’t tell you was that you would have to work hard and be excellent with, through and for other people. Excellence does not happen in isolation. Every business is a people business: you work with and for people to provide a service to other people. If you can look at your work through that lens, you’ll notice that your focus, approach and priorities will change.

It’s important to remember that people have feelings and emotions; they are irrational, illogical, insecure and fragile. Often, people make decisions based on instinct, not data. People are wounded, they can get hurt and they have unexamined triggers that set them off unexpectedly and prompt them to behave badly. People can also be lazy thinkers. They have unconscious biases and can make snap decisions based on those. People bring all their insecurities to work with them. To achieve excellent results, you must work through these insecurities.

But here’s the other side: you are exactly the same. You are not a robot, and you too have feelings and triggers, and can be irrational. So you have to navigate other people’s craziness as well as your own while trying to deliver great results at work. Even though it’s not easy, you will need to learn how to successfully navigate all these realities so that you can operate at an optimum level.

When I started my first job, I saw my manager as I would a professor at university or college. I thought that my manager was going to grade my work and that I didn’t need to have a relationship with her, because I didn’t have a relationship with my teachers or professors. But imagine the following scenario: a friend of yours, Thandi, is working for you. One day, she turns in a substandard document; you notice that her work is below average. Would you judge her solely on the quality of her work? Of course not. Instead, you would say to yourself: I know Thandi. I’m sure she tried her best even though it is not what I expected. I like her so much that I’m going to invest time to coach her on this work. I’m going to give her feedback so she can know exactly how to make it better. If, however, you did not know Thandi as a person, you could only judge her by her work. The truth is, you’ll probably judge her more harshly than someone you know well. You may also not have the desire to coach and mentor her, because you have no personal connection with her.

If your manager is not invested in you as a person, she will be less likely to invest in your growth and development. She may be less thoughtful about how she delivers feedback to you, perhaps even telling you that your work needs to improve and that you need to figure it out for yourself. Consequently, you might not do as well because your manager is not fully supporting and coaching you with constructive feedback. Thandi is the same person in each scenario, with the same level of intelligence, but the difference is in the amount and quality of investment from her manager. Remember that a key factor affecting a manager’s investment in you, and ultimately how well you do at work, is the quality of your relationship.

Your why

Your why is your big-picture reason for choosing to work in a certain role at a specific company. There is a reason you chose to work for a particular company in a particular role at a particular time in your career. Perhaps you wanted to have a certain experience, wanted to be exposed to a new place, product or business, work with certain leaders or develop a specific skill set. And later, once you’ve started working, your why might even be achieving a certain performance rating. Your why is therefore not just the reason you chose a specific company, but also what you want to accomplish during your tenure in a specific role.

Understanding your why is critical if you want to make peace with the sacrifices you will eventually have to make to achieve your goals. If you know what your why is, you can understand why you may need to work long nights – and sometimes weekends – to reread that report or work out the kinks in your presentation or Excel document so that it is ready for your manager on Monday. It might mean attending a team dinner to get to know your colleagues and bond with leadership when you really want to relax at home. When you sacrifice some of your free time, your time with friends and family or your time pursuing hobbies, you are moving closer to your goals.

Looking at your sacrifices through the lens of your why gives them meaning and purpose. Throughout my career, I have often seen how people without a why become resentful, angry and bitter because they don’t understand why they are making sacrifices. Their sacrifices feel empty, serving no clear purpose. They feel as if they are forced to give up what matters to them. Contrast this to someone who freely makes hard decisions: she knows that shortterm sacrifices will benefit her in the long run.

A few years ago, I was coaching a young female entrepreneur who wanted to increase her brand visibility. She was extremely knowledgeable about her products, as she had been intimately involved in their research and development. However, she made it clear that she had no desire to be the face of the brand in the marketing efforts. I was baffled. After some probing, she told me that she had been sexually assaulted multiple times as a young person and felt that being the face of this brand would make her vulnerable and a target. She wasn’t sure if she could survive another trauma.

I asked her to take a step back and tell me why she started her business. She said she grew up seeing many women who were stuck in abusive relationships because they did not have the economic means to leave. She wanted to create an opportunity that could empower women, giving them the means to be financially independent. I asked her how important this mission was to her. She said it was very important. ‘Is it important enough to put aside your fears and be the face of this business?’ I asked her. She paused for a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said. Her fear did not disappear right away but she kept coming back to her why when the fear crept back up.

Your why helps you put aside your fears and deal with the minor (and major) annoyances that you will face in any job. You won’t let those fears, inconveniences or annoyances get in the way of your larger mission. Without a bigger purpose, it’s very easy to let those negative factors make you abandon your job or business.

The idea of following your passion or purpose can be daunting, especially if you don’t know what yours is. If you’re unsure, follow the topics, challenges, problems or opportunities that you are most curious about, or that get you the most riled up. Spend time visualising what you want your life to be, and don’t worry too much about the how. You’ll get there. Some of you may have made an off-the-beaten-path choice, so be prepared that some of the people who love you might not understand or support your decision. For Phuti Mahanyele, the CEO of Naspers South Africa and former CEO of Shanduka Group, her decision to join an unknown company called Shanduka Group – instead of accepting an offer from Standard Bank – was something that her family didn’t understand. Her father thought she was crazy. ‘Sometimes you will make decisions that only make sense to you,’ she says. As much as the people around us want the best for us, the vision that you have for your life is yours, placed inside you. Others may not get it, and that’s okay. If it doesn’t work out, then you at least you know you’re living your life on your terms.

Something to keep in mind as you identify your why is whether you are serving a bigger purpose. This is what anchors and guides you. When we read about leaders who abuse their power, misappropriate funds or fall into corruption, it’s clear that the purpose of their leadership is to serve themselves or those close to them and not others outside their immediate circle. Is there an issue or group of people that you want to stand up for? Once you figure that out, go and do it. You can begin by making a choice or a move now that will eventually allow you to achieve that goal. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we all stood up for something we believed in? Something that energised us and made the world a better place?

When it comes to your career, spend time reflecting and determining what your why is, and be open to the idea that it may change over time as you evolve. What is important to you now may not be important to you once you are married, have children, are a caregiver for your elderly parents or have other priorities. Revisit your why on a monthly or quarterly basis to remind yourself of your ultimate goal for now, and update it as you gain more clarity on what really matters to you. Make sure to align your daily tasks, assignments and interactions with your goals. From my experience, success is not only found in those big, important, life-changing moments or achievements. Success is the culmination of the daily, hourly and even minute-by-minute choices we make. Those choices are how we close the gap between where we are now and where we want to be.

If you struggle to identify your why because you have such varied interests, you’re not alone. I struggled at first because I was passionate about leadership development and natural hair care for Black women and girls. I could not figure out how these two areas were even remotely connected. My friend Donna Rachelson, a personal branding expert, put the pieces together and helped me understand that my why is empowerment, which is all about helping others be stronger and more confident in who they are. My why might manifest in different forms, but empowerment is the overarching theme, and it’s the reason why I wrote this book.

Working on your master plan

So what is your plan? Who do you want to be at work? Imagine it is your first day on the job. You’ve come through onboarding and now it’s time to start working. What is your goal? Do you want to do just enough to not get fired? Do you want to be average? Above average? Or distinctive? When I started my first corporate job, unfortunately I had no plan. I had no goal and no professional expectations. I expected to do well. But here is the difference between expectations and goals: an expectation is something you are anticipating will happen, and it involves feeling assured that that event will occur, while a goal is the end towards which your efforts are directed. If you have a goal, you have an action plan to make that goal happen.

As a junior employee, I had expectations but no goals. I made assumptions, not plans. My personal goal was to make enough money so that I could be independent and come and go as I pleased. (In short, not living with my parents. I love you, Mom and Dad!) I was focused on myself and what I was expecting to get out of the deal. I didn’t know that I needed to fit my goals into the company’s goals – not the other way around. I showed up and assumed that I would do well, because I had always done well at school and university. I didn’t see being average, below average or even a complete failure as options because I had never been any of those things before.

What it takes to be successful at work is very different from what it takes to be successful at school. In a corporate environment, you have to be intentional about your performance because success does not just happen. While there are general principles for professional success, you have to understand how those principles apply to your specific environment. This requires investigating, listening, analysing, planning, acting, reflecting and adjusting.

Your definition of success

It’s important to know what success looks like for you. Your own definition of success will serve as a personal, internal metric that, in turn, will help you decide what you are working towards. Just like your why, re-evaluate your definition of success on a quarterly or semi-annual basis (or whatever interval suits you). Is success a financial goal? Is success being able to provide a certain lifestyle for yourself and/or your family? Is it a certain amount of freedom? Is it having a family and a successful relationship? Is it achieving a certain title or level of responsibility at work? Is it working in a certain type or size of company? Is it working in a certain industry? Or is it a combination of these? What are your values and how best can you honour these while being successful?

When it comes to your definition of success, also be prepared for it to evolve over time. What success means to one person is not the same for another. Success is not a one-size-fits-all. And what matters to you now may not matter as much in five or ten years. The more specific you can be about what success looks like to you, the easier it is to eliminate options or explore alternatives that give you more of what is important to you. This clarity also helps you figure out the path to that success. People may not always agree with your definition. They may have a different dream for you, but what is most important is that you achieve the dream you have for yourself.

As soon as you’ve identified what your idea of success is, it will be easier for you to make sacrifices. Throughout your life, there will be trade-offs in every decision you make, no matter how good it may seem. The question is not whether there will be a trade-off, but rather what the trade-off will be and whether you will be comfortable making it. There is always a price to pay to achieve your goals. That sacrifice can be time, money or even the positive opinions of others. I’ve seen many people who don’t ever want to have to make trade-offs and it creates a tremendous amount of frustration.

Once, when I was still at Harvard Business School, a prominent CEO came to speak during one of my classes. One thing that really stood out for me was when she said, ‘I have three priorities: my husband, my child and my job.’ She went on: ‘When I look at my calendar and there is an activity that doesn’t line up with one of those priorities, I don’t do it. My house is not the cleanest and I don’t cook. If friends come over, I ask them what kind of takeaways they want. I don’t cook because it takes away time from my three biggest priorities.’

In my life, attending Harvard Business School and moving to South Africa were two of the best decisions I have ever made. Both experiences opened up whole new worlds to me, allowing me to meet people I never would have met (including my husband) and to find passions that I never even knew I had. However, I sacrificed two years of salary and spent years paying off student loans, which had major financial implications. Over the last nine years living in South Africa, I have also missed many special moments and events in the lives of my family and friends back home in the United States.

While these are tough trade-offs, I am comfortable making them. I went into both situations with my eyes wide open and understood the trade-offs. And, despite the challenges, I would do it all over again, because I believe the benefits far outweigh the sacrifices. Sometimes new trade-offs only present themselves later. Your circumstances might change and you might have to reconsider whether the trade-offs are still worth it.

Once you figure out what success looks like to you and what kind of sacrifices you’ll have to make, it’s time to figure out what the purpose of that success is. Which group(s) of people and larger challenge(s) will be served by your success and your leadership?

Taking ownership

One of the most important concepts that I was introduced to at McKinsey was ownership. It’s the idea that when you are given a task, you should resolve it as if it is your problem – not your client’s, customer’s or manager’s. If left unresolved, the problem will directly affect you, so your sense of urgency and level of commitment in solving the problem will naturally be greater. In the consulting space, ownership focuses on three areas: ownership of the problem, ownership of professional and personal development and ownership of the culture and community in the office. I explain each of these below.

Ownership of the problem

Let’s say your manager asks you to conduct research for a particular project. Conducting the research as requested would be doing your work. If you do it as requested, but also anticipate issues that might be raised and research them as well, you would be taking ownership of the situation. You would evaluate both sets of research, consider which information is most relevant (and why), and formulate an opinion on why the remaining information is not useful. Ownership is thinking about the options that have emerged from your research, prioritising them and explaining why you ranked the options in that order. Ownership is being able to clearly and concisely articulate your research and your thoughts on the way forward.

But ownership is also about overcoming challenges. You don’t crumble and back down at the first obstacle. You make a way if there isn’t one and approach it with a can-do spirit. You want to be known as the person who goes above and beyond, instead of just doing the bare minimum. You need to have exhausted every option before giving up. Try to think about everything that could go wrong and develop contingency and backup plans. Don’t just bring problems: bring solutions, as well as your opinion on each possible option. Instead of dumping the problem in someone else’s lap, make it your problem too.

Taking ownership means creating ‘client/customer-ready’ reports and documents. Always approach a document with the idea that it is going straight to the final client, end customer or the most senior person in the company. Don’t depend on your manager or someone more senior to you to fix your spelling, content or numerical mistakes. And if you’re dealing with numbers, don’t just assume that your calculations are right and that your manager will catch any errors. Finally, it means ‘sense checking’ your work. Take a step back: consider everything you know about the project and its context and ask yourself whether everything (for example, final numbers, outputs, insights) seems reasonable. If it doesn’t, ask yourself where you went wrong.

Solving these problems also means taking ownership of how you will get your work done. Think about how to break down big projects into smaller tasks and when you need to hit key milestones along the way to achieve the overall goal. As much as ownership is about you, it is also about involving the right people at the right time if you need help, have questions or are facing roadblocks that might jeopardise your timeline or the quality of what you will deliver. In general, ownership is about going above and beyond what you were asked to do, thinking about new ways to add value and about applying your mind to solve a problem. Taking ownership is a way to distinguish yourself from your peers. Most people only do what they are told, and very few will go above and beyond. When you do that, people will take notice.

Ownership of your professional and personal development

Ownership is not just about taking responsibility for your work. It is also about owning your career. If you are lucky, you will work for a company that provides resources that can help you navigate your career. If you’re not so lucky, you will work for a company that doesn’t provide those resources. Nevertheless, very few companies – if any – are going to hold your hand and tell you how to get to where you want to be. You must do this yourself.

When you start at a new organisation or get into a new position, one of your biggest jobs will be to understand what is expected of you. This may be clearly laid out at your company or it may not; either way, it is your responsibility to understand what is expected of you. You have to speak to senior people that you think are doing interesting work and find out exactly what they do and how they got there. Don’t be shy to ask for coaching and feedback so that you become aware of your strengths and how to use them. This will help you to focus on the right developmental areas for your role and tenure and help you understand what the performance expectations are. Ownership implies that you keep asking questions until you have clarity on what you need to do to perform better.

Ownership is taking responsibility for your mistakes and acknowledging the role you might have played in them. Be accountable for poor performance and don’t make excuses; accept and learn from negative feedback. When you take this approach, you’ll learn something in the process, which means you will be better off in the long run. If you don’t understand your feedback, consider sharing it with multiple mentors and seniors in your company and ask them to help you interpret it. Ownership is creating an action plan to address development areas and leverage strengths to improve your performance. Be prepared to work on those areas consistently, to communicate your progress to all relevant stake-holders, to ask for help along the way and to make adjustments based on continuous feedback. Importantly, it is about making sure that you get the opportunities you need to develop the necessary skills.

As you advance in your career and start to focus on different areas, you need to understand how performance expectations shift. From a personal development standpoint, it’s about intentionally growing yourself as a person. Spend time learning about what you need to develop and what your triggers are, and then deliberately work on growing in those areas. (Useful ways of doing this are, for example, reflection, journaling, therapy, meditation and prayer.) It is not enough to only improve your technical skills. We all know people who are super-smart but who make poor choices or have behavioural patterns that derail their careers. These individuals serve as a cautionary tale, because you don’t want to become one yourself.

Taking ownership of your development also implies not immediately blaming poor feedback on racism on the part of your colleagues. Your response should be to evaluate and interrogate the substance of the feedback. Ask yourself: is the quality of my work the best that it can be? Am I really giving my all? Am I aware of what is expected of me? Have I spoken to people to understand what the expectations are? Do I know what the differences are between average, above-average and distinctive work? What am I expected to know for my role and tenure? Have I spoken to people who are advancing at an unusually fast pace to understand what they are doing to differentiate themselves? Have I spoken to the high-flyers in my company to understand what they are doing to differentiate themselves?

Remember that there are other successful people in your organisation who have advanced, been promoted and assumed different leadership roles, so you are not breaking new ground. Understand what the next level up for you would be. Find people in the organisation who are in roles that interest you and doing the work that you want to do. Ask them how they got there. What hard and soft skills did they have to develop? Which experiences best prepared them for each role? Which qualities best served them in each role to this point?

Ownership of the organisation

In the various consulting firms I’ve worked for over the years, it was always an unspoken, unwritten rule that you should participate in extracurricular office activities to grow the culture and community in the office. Partners expected you to take ownership of the office and participate in activities that helped people connect. You were seen as a leader in the office, even if you were still a junior. Remember that you are not a bystander or a voyeur in your organisation: you are an active participant and might be evaluated on your participation or lack thereof.

When you take ownership of your working environment, you will also, inevitably, see problems in the organisation. But you want to be known as someone who brings solutions, not just problems. Importantly, know that the way in which you take ownership might differ from department to department or from company to company What might be considered taking ownership in one environment might be seen as overstepping a boundary or being a slacker in another.

Racism and bias in the workplace

Let me be clear: taking ownership of your organisation and career does not imply placing any responsibility for fixing a toxic, racist and sexist environment on the shoulders of marginalised individuals. If you work in a company where victimisation takes place, I advise you to report what is happening to human resources (HR) or other leaders in the firm. If nothing changes, then the next step should be to leave that team, department or organisation. In no way should we absolve corporate leaders of their obligation, as good corporate citizens, to transform their cultures into inclusive environments where everyone – regardless of race, socio-economic status, physical ability, gender, religion, sexual orientation – feels like they belong and has an equal shot at success.

When we speak about taking ownership in the workplace, we also do not discount the existence of racism, stereotyping and unconscious bias in corporate environments. Unconscious bias can be described as stereotypes that people subconsciously hold about other groups of people. It can affect how companies recruit, onboard, develop, compensate, promote and retain employees. This concept really helped me make sense of some of the stereotypes and discrimination I’ve experienced and witnessed in the workplace. I would be lying if I told you that we live in a post-racial, post-gender world. And while some people are not aware that they hold unconscious biases, we have to admit that everyone has beliefs about various social and identity groups. These biases often stem from the human tendency to organise social worlds by category. If you are working in an institution where there are not many people of colour or women, especially in leadership, and/or not many of them have been successful historically, there is a high probability that you will face bias. If you work in a culture where people see age as a proxy for knowledge and credibility, you might face bias because of your age.

Historically speaking, if you’re working for a company that was founded in a country with a history of racial segregation, the chances are slight that the face of success at your workplace will be a person of colour. The chances are even slighter that it will be a woman of colour. Because you may not represent the success profile physically, people may unconsciously place you in the box of unsuccessful people. They may be less likely to forgive poor performance from you than they would be from a person of another race. During my career, I’ve seen how poor performance by white people is often interpreted as a blip on the screen or a wobble. However, when a Black person performs poorly, people can quickly ask whether that person has what it takes to be successful. If you’re working in a male-dominated field, the same snap judgements might be levelled against you if you are a woman.

Fundamentally, people of colour are questioned and doubted more than white people. If the leaders of a company have been at that company for many years and have seen very few successful people of colour or women and have had limited exposure to people of colour and/or women, some of them may believe, subconsciously, that those people don’t have what it takes. Unconscious bias is very real, and although you cannot control it, you can control how you respond to it.

Here is a situation that taught me about figuring out how to manage myself and my energy in the face of unconscious bias. Once, during a team meeting, I held a very firm boundary with my manager regarding my holiday dates. When she and I met one-onone, she imitated how I had behaved in the team meeting, complete with pointed finger and rolling neck. After she finished, I just sat back in my chair. I was stunned and shocked. I knew I had not behaved in that manner. I told my manager that her imitation of me was not only inaccurate but also highly racially offensive. She really struggled to understand why I was so offended. In the blink of an eye, she depicted me as a one-dimensional, angry Black woman in a Tyler Perry movie, a stereotype that many of us work tirelessly to avoid. I am not a neck-roller. I am not a finger-pointer. I was raised by a woman – my mother – who merely had to give you a look (no neck or fingers included) to let you know that you needed to stop whatever you were doing. That was the same look I gave my manager during the team meeting. No raised voice. No finger-pointing. No neck-rolling. But that was how my manager experienced me. Afterwards, I even went to a team member to ask her if I had done that and she said, ‘No, you didn’t. But you made it clear that the topic [my vacation dates] was not up for discussion.’ This was exactly how I remembered it too.

I had two big takeaways from the above situation: First, some people, whether they know or admit it or not, hold certain stereotypes about you as a person of colour or a person of intersectionality (for me, it’s that I’m Black and a woman). Sometimes people don’t realise how their perceptions of a group of people have been influenced by the few people from that group that they have seen in the media, news, movies and newspapers. Their bias is especially strong if they have never had an opportunity to interact with people that look like that group. They’ve had nothing to counter those narrow perspectives.

Second, I learnt that I should never work for nine months straight and only take one vacation day. Remember that one of the purposes of work is to better understand yourself and to learn the conditions under which you can show up in the best way. I should not have let myself get to that point of frustration. I should have taken other days off during that period, even if I just took a mentalhealth day to vegetate on the couch. It was unhealthy and borderline irresponsible of me not to recharge, because it made me irritable, impatient, intolerant and reduced my ability to be as thoughtful as I should have been about what I say and how I say it.

When you’re facing racism, sexism or any other type of bias, also remember that the ‘say the first thought that comes into your head’ approach does not always work well in a professional setting. Try to stay in touch with yourself and check how you are feeling. Are you feeling unusually tired? Are you losing your temper more quickly than usual? Are you more easily irritated? Those are the signs for me, but you have to figure out what the signs are for you. After that incident during the team meeting, I monitored how frequently I took days off and made sure I took an annual midyear break.

I also want to acknowledge the high price of Black tax. Black tax can be understood in various ways, but I’m referring to the notion that Black people have to work and perform regular tasks twice as well as white people. For many of us, Black tax is real. It’s unfair, and unfortunately it affects us in ways that other people will never understand. While we cannot control others’ expectations of us, we can be empowered enough to maximise our time, relationships, learning and impact at an organisation. Remember that every situation is an opportunity to learn something about yourself and other people. No matter how bad it is, no matter the outcome, no matter how badly you or the other person(s) might have behaved, you will always have to dissect it to see what you learnt and what your role in the situation was so that you can grow from it. That way, the situation isn’t a waste.

Having said that, two things can be true at the same time. Black tax, systemic racism and unconscious bias can exist in an organisation and there can still be some areas where we Black folks need to learn more and do better. A Black South African senior leader at a former employer told me: ‘I sometimes find that young Black people come in with their qualifications and they think they’ve arrived. They walk in with an “I deserve” mindset. But that is just the basic milestone. You still have to do more. Just because you passed the interview doesn’t mean that everyone was 100 per cent behind you. You are still being judged and people are still looking at you with suspicion. Will she fit in? Did we make the right call? Is this a mis-hire? You need to be open to learning and step up and show up in a big way. Focus. Listen to what the unspoken language is. And know that you’re going to have to work hard to earn the stripes to be there.’

I strongly believe there is a shared responsibility in a healthy professional relationship: the organisation has its part to play and you have yours. While organisational change is absolutely necessary, it takes time, determination and effort. In the meantime, work on bringing your best self to the relationship.

Making an impact

We can understand our impact at work as the positive difference between what our organisation or team was like before and after our arrival. In the workplace, your impact is the difference or improvement that you make and the value that you add to your teams, organisation, clients and customers. This is done through your performance, contribution, outputs, outcomes, deliverables and/or efforts every day. You want everyone you work with to see and feel the difference that your contributions have made to the team and/or company. Your clients and customers – both internal and external – should be better off for having you as part of the team and organisation. When you were in school, you got some credit merely for showing up. Well, those days are over. Instead of the grade, the distinction, the honour roll, the dean’s list, what matters now is impact.

If your goal is to have the maximum impact in your job, you need to ask yourself these questions: how can I best equip and position myself to do this? What do I need to know and do to maximise my impact? Whose help do I need? And how can I continue to improve and grow my skills? The illustration below shows the difference between what you might be thinking and what the real answer is.

It is important to view your career and your daily, weekly and monthly choices through the lens of impact. You need to ask yourself every day: is what I’m saying, doing, delivering and how I’m presenting myself helping me build or destroy the support that I will eventually need? And how are my organisation, my clients, customers and manager better off as a result of my contribution?

Becoming a leader

In The Five Levels of Leadership John Maxwell argues that the first level of leadership is when people follow and respect you because of your title. They will do just enough not to get fired. The second level is when people start to respect you so they choose to follow you. The third level is when people follow you because of the impact that you’ve had on the organisation. The fourth level is when people respect you because you develop other leaders, and the fifth is when people respect you because of who you are and what you represent. You should strive to be a level 4 or 5 leader. They are the ones who will change the world, solve the world’s biggest problems and grow other leaders in the process.

You’ll soon realise that true leadership has nothing to do with a title. It is about having a vision, inspiring others to help you realise that vision and role modelling what you want to see in others. The type of leader you will become starts with who you are right now, the awareness that you develop, the concepts you focus on and the strategies you employ early on in your career. You’ve probably heard the saying, ‘It’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks.’ It’s true: the older you become, the harder it is to think and behave differently. So start with good habits now and build a teachable mindset that helps you embrace new ideas and ways of doing things while you’re still young.

I worked in public education for three years before I moved to South Africa. My colleagues and I used to say, ‘Kids want to know you care before they care about what you know.’ Adults are the same. They want to see that you value, hear, understand, recognise and appreciate the people that you lead, work with and work for. If you want to win people’s hearts, if you want them to go the extra mile for you and give you their disposable time, you have to know their strengths and weaknesses, what keeps them up at night and what might be going on with them outside work.

Once your colleagues know that you genuinely care about them as people and that you want to add value to their lives, there is no limit to what they’ll do to help you achieve your vision. In this way, your vision becomes their vision and mission. Begin to practise and sharpen this skill right now as a junior employee. For many years, I thought that saying the right words was all that mattered. But I quickly learnt that people sense your energy. If your mouth is saying something that your heart doesn’t believe, people can sense it. They may not say anything about it, but when you’re unable to connect with them and you wonder why, check your heart. Check your intentions and work on aligning your heart, mind and words.

At high-performing companies, performance standards are always high, but I want to remind you about the high bar for leadership and character. This bar is just as important, if not more so, as the one for solving problems. Around the world, many of the problems we face today stem from a lack of values and authentic and inspiring people-driven leadership. You have to be clear on what your values are, the moral code that you live by and the boundaries that you set for yourself.

A situation early in my career made me examine my values and boundaries. I was working at Arthur Andersen when it imploded in 2002. Andersen was part of what was formerly known as the Big Five accounting firms, along with KPMG, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Today, Arthur Andersen no longer exists because a client team falsified financial statements on behalf of the notorious, now defunct energy trading company, Enron. During the implosion, it was revealed that a junior auditor had shredded documents that incriminated the two companies. I’m sure that the order to shred those documents came from a senior leader on the team. The actions of a few people in the Houston office of Andersen thus brought down the entire firm globally. People lost their jobs and others lost their retirement funds after decades of hard work.

When I learnt about the incident, I asked myself: would I have had the courage to disobey an order from a senior partner? I’m not sure I would have. I grew up in a very hierarchical, religious family, and on top of that I went to Catholic school for 13 years. I grew up following the rules and doing what my elders told me to do. But at Andersen I finally realised that I wasn’t a child anymore and that I could not blindly follow the instructions of my superiors or any other adult. I decided that if I was ever asked to do something that went against my values and my beliefs, I wouldn’t do it.

I define a moment of truth as a situation when you have to choose between following the path of least resistance or following your conscience, or what you know needs to be done. Learning about the incident during my tenure at Andersen was just such a moment of truth for me. You want to be able to look yourself in the mirror and sleep well. Since then, I have had many more moments of truth and I will continue to have them. Don’t allow the world to chip away at who you are and what you believe. So take a deep breath, centre yourself, reflect on who you are and stand firm in what you believe.

You can have the greatest ideas and the highest IQ in the world, but if you don’t have the character to see it through, it will never come to fruition. And if it does, you won’t be able to sustain it. Leadership is therefore not just about building followers but building other leaders. It is a privilege to serve the people you work with and for. It is about building relationships. Even as a junior, try to be a leader in your field so that when the opportunity arises for you to lead and develop others officially, you are ready.

The world is calling out for true leaders. For now, the only person you can change is you. And although systems need to be changed, you will have to build some credibility before you can start doing that. Take ownership, perform well, get to know your organisation’s culture and build relationships with decisionmakers and influencers. This will give you the licence, the credibility and the space to raise issues and present the solutions to the problems you see in your work environment. You are early enough in your career to make the necessary adjustments, rewire your brain to understand and manage work and your relationships differently and, ultimately, to have a greater impact in your organisation. Let the real work begin now.