In this episode, the first of Black History Month 2023, I discuss what it takes to thrive, and not just survive, in the workplace as a Black woman at work, and as minorities in general. More specifically, I talk about the concept of “agile authenticity”, which requires awareness, impact and a master plan to succeed in the workplace on one’s own terms while still remaining authentic.
Listen in!
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In her book “ The Light We Carry”, Michelle Obama discusses the many challenges of navigating being a black woman in any type of workplace, many of which she experienced herself in her professional life and as First Lady of the United States. She refers to being a double minority in the workplace as navigating different worlds, their worlds of origin and the professional and/or social worlds they’re entering as minorities. This is something most Black women, and most minorities, can certainly identify with. It is this duality of experiences and being that has given rise to code switching, which as draining as it may be, is also a survival tool for many.
Being a minority in the workplace, at times the only minority or one of a very few, definitely means moving between different worlds. Many come from environments where they may be “the first”. The first to go to college. The first to attain a certain type of career success. The first to think, behave and grow differently. This already creates a chasm in their environments of origin, making them stand out, often alone. As they get into environments where they are “the only” or one of a very few, they also stand out, often alone. What we often don’t realize is that many, if not most minorities in the workplace, stand out in both their worlds of origin and their professional worlds, making it even more challenging for them to show up authentically and overcome the obstacles on their way, from discrimination to blatant inequities. Not only do they stand out in both worlds, but they often also feel a sense of needing to satisfy both worlds through performance, sacrifice, even rebellion…
For many, if not most Black women at work, making it professionally then becomes a matter of sheer survival. Many find themselves barely keeping their heads above water, as they tirelessly work to address the pressures from the inside, i.e. their personal and social environments, and those of the outside, i.e. their professional environments. This often results in an excruciating and toxic push and pull between where they are going in terms of professional, even personal, emotional and all around spiritual growth, and where they’re coming from.
So how does one reconcile this pull between worlds as minorities, more specifically as Black women in the workplace, without losing one’s authenticity? How does one achieve a sense of wholeness when pressures keep building in opposite directions? Most importantly, how does one authentically thrive, instead of barely surviving while standing out and often being isolated? It’s certainly a tall order, a dilemma for the ages that is going to require more than an article to solve. It’s also part of an ongoing conversation for us all to have. As part of this conversation, the concept of “agile authenticity” emerges, which combines the value of authenticity or knowing oneself with that of authentically adapting to the various seasons and environments we’re exposed to. As part of this, three principles arise, which I like to call the “AIM” framework of agile authenticity:
Awareness
When it comes to authentically thriving in the workplace as a Black woman, or any person of color at work, awareness is key! It begins with self-awarenessat the core of it, rooted in a solid and continuous understanding of one’s core values. Asking questions such as: “What are my core values in this season of my life and work?”, goes further than just identifying what is important to us. It digs deeper into our growth and current state as individuals, and also provides more information to build upon.
It also involves being acutely aware of one’s environments. Each environment, whether personal or professional, has its own implicit and not-so-implicit rules, processes and systems. Understanding our environments of origin and those we evolve in professionally is crucial to remaining grounded and agile as people and individuals. This is when we know when and what to share, how to present ourselves, and what boundaries to draw.
Impact
“What is the impact I can and want to have in my environments at this very moment?” This is a question that often eludes as minorities in the workplace, as the focus is often put on performance. Yet, even more than performance, impact is what helps us make a difference. If our performance does not positively impact our communities and those around us, what is the point?
Switching the focus from performance to impact, more specifically timely impact, then radically changes the way we think about work and life. Instead of endlessly measuring productivity on others’ timetables, we can measure the impact we have, whether in terms of cultural change, education, or increased equity.
Building a Master Plan
Last but not least, combining awareness and impact allows to build a master plan to thrive in, and even outside of work as Black women, and minorities in general. Being aware of oneself and one’s environments helps identify areas of strength and improvement, while allowing to assess which environments are best for us, and how best to operate in them. Thinking in terms of impact rather than performance gives an evolved perspective of the work we do and the real change we create. All this ultimately contributes to building an evolved career master plan that can help, rather than hinder, navigating the various environments around us.
All in all, thinking in terms of, and practicing agile authenticity as Black women, and minorities in the workplace, can help one thrive, instead of barely surviving in between different worlds. While it requires an acute sense of awareness and impact, it certainly can contribute in building one’s own master plan of success at work.
In this episode, I chat about planning for work-life integration instead of work-life balance. How about planning to integrate all the areas and aspects of our lives and careers, instead of compartmentalizing and attempting to balance it all! Listen in on this episode!
Thanks for Listening!
Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to this week’s episode! If you enjoyed this week’s episode, please share it by using the social media at the bottom of this post!
Also, leave me a review for the TCS podcast on Apple Podcasts !
Self-care? What self-care? That’s the question many working women and moms ask themselves (and others) when constantly pummeled with the urgency of self-care. When everything else is urgent, from the kids’ school activities to professional responsibilities and household duties, how do we make time for self-care? How do we even begin to care for ourselves when there is so much to do to care for others? And most importantly, how do we maintain a consistent habit of self-care when our schedules are prone to so much change and upheaval, from kids’ sick days to hybrid work?
If you’re reading this and nodding, then you know how setting and keeping self-care habits as a working woman and mom is daunting. It’s all fun and games to read the plethora of self-care advice out there, especially coming from women who are able to hire personal chefs, trainers and assistants? Yet, when you’re busy saving for the kids’ college and catching up on your own retirement, all the while trying to get your sleep on and snatching some childcare on the fly, where do you fit self-care?
Like so many other working women and moms, I have, and still am, grappling with all these questions, plus the undercover guilt of not properly taking care of myself at times. Finding the time, money and resources to practice and maintain proper self-care is no easy feat. So what are some simpler ways, accessible and available to most of us, to do this without breaking the bank, the schedule or losing our minds? Here are three simple ways to get started:
Build small self-care habits into your daily routine
Planning for the monthly spa date with the girls or a solo trip is certainly great for most of us. However, for many among us, it’s not always feasible. Even when it is, it may not be sustainable in the long run, what with the little one catching a cold, an unexpected bill popping up, or a marriage crisis brewing in the background. Besides, what are we to do in between the monthly spa dates and solo trips? This is where building self-care into your daily routine can make a difference. It starts by seeing self-care differently, as just the simple act of caring for oneself, and not necessarily champagne-infused indulgences at the local spa. This can be done by building small self-care habits in the margins of life and work, such as waking up a few minutes earlier to enjoy a cup of coffee alone, or going to bed earlier to read a few pages of your favorite novel before catching some zzz’s. Long commute? How about finding some self-care podcasts to listen to, such as one of my favorites, “The Science of Happiness”.
Set an easy budget
Google the word “self-care”, and you may easily be overwhelmed with glamorous pictures of girls’ trips in Napa valley sipping on some fancy wine, or overpriced spas offering the latest fad in Swedish massages…Even self-care apparently requires money these days. Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy a fancy spa and gourmet wine too, just not one that adds more financial stress…
If you’re like me, setting an easy “self-care” budget can help. This can be as easy as setting up an automatic $20 deduction a week from your paycheck into an account appropriately called “Self-Care” or “Self Love” (or whichever name will bring a smile of relief on your face). That’s $80 a month, $240 a year, and can take care of some the indulgences you would list under self-care.
Make it a family habit
For the working mamas reading this, we all know how self-care can be daunting. Just getting time on the toilet to gather your thoughts together or scroll through Instagram can be a challenge, never mind a stroll at the local mall or 15 minutes to get your eyebrows waxed without the little one requesting your undivided attention. So how about making self-care a family habit? I get it, the point is to get away from the family, however building family habits around self-care can help everyone understand and respect the need for it. This can take the form of implementing some “quiet time” at home, or teaching kids about the importance of self-care by helping them develop their own self-care habits.
Get a self-care accountability partner
One of the biggest obstacles to taking care of ourselves, is actually maintaining good self-care habits. Often, especially at the beginning of a year or season, we start on a good footing, only to fall back a few weeks or months later, overtaken by other “urgent” tasks and too tired to re-commit. This is where a self-care accountability partner can help. Sharing your self-care goals and being accountable to someone else can go a long way toward ensuring you don’t fall off the bandwagon. And if you do, someone will be there to catch you.
All in all, as attractive as the prospect of self-care can be, the reality is, it can also be daunting for many working women and moms already stretched too thin. However, by building self-care into our daily routine, setting an easy budget, making it a family habit, and getting a self-care accountability partner, it is possible to include more self-care into our daily lives.
When we think of working women and moms, we often think of work-life balance, this elusive Eldorado of perfect (or semi-perfect) equilibrium between motherhood, work, and life in general. An elusive Eldorado that has yet to be proven true, and whose impracticality and subjective nature keep pushing working women and moms everywhere over the edge… Countless articles and arguments have been written and built around this concept, only to slowly end in the sober realization that
work-life balance for working women and moms simply does not exist…Instead, shouldn’t we focus more on work-life integration?
How can one balance the deeply personal, unpredictable and subjective journey of motherhood with the creation and nurturing of a partnership or marriage, and the demands of a purposeful career interspersed with the many obstacles all too common to working women and mothers? How can one talk about balance when your average working mom performs at least five jobs before even leaving the house in the morning? And how can there ever be a sense of balance after the way women bore the brunt of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, from the home to the business and work front?
The simple answer, after all these years of building theories and concepts around work-life balance, is that there is none after all, at least not for working women and moms. The good news? There is a link between work and life, one that can finally be beneficial for working women and moms. It is not balance, but rather an integration of the various aspects and areas of our lives as working women and mothers.
While I, as a working woman and mom, do not pretend to or even desire to balance work and life, as it would suggest an equality of weights that does not even begin to exist; I can integrate them into the ever-evolving puzzle of my life. Here are a few steps to get started:
See your life as a whole
The first step is to stop giving in to the temptation of compartmentalizing the various areas of our lives. As effective as it may sound, I have found in my own experience as a working woman and mom it doesn’t exactly work. Planning for my work schedule without taking into account the kids’ school and activity schedule is a recipe for disaster. So is considering what my priorities at home are, without taking into account my professional life. Hence why it’s so important to see our lives as a whole, with inter-dependent and integrated areas as opposed to separate and independent aspects…
Consolidate what you can
When I started really understanding how connected the various areas of my life are, I began using the power of consolidation to bring them together. I have to say, my first motive was to make my life easier. The more I was able to consolidate tasks together, the better I was able to build and maintain habits that would otherwise be unsustainable for me. For instance, when I started building my schedule to allow me to go to the gym right after dropping off the kids, building a consistent exercising habit became easier. Since I already had to be out dropping off the kids, why not wrap my exercise into this continuum of activity? The more you can consolidate your habits, tasks and ultimately your day-to-day schedule, the more you can achieve a more integrated work and life. This way, switching from one activity to another goes from being this impossible task, to just being part of a flowing schedule.
Create and maintain margins
One of the biggest problems I face as a working woman and mom is having enough margin in my schedule. Instead, I often face, as many working women and moms, a packed-tight schedule with very little breathing room. The result? Feeling a sense of always running from one thing to the other, without enough breaks in between. Ultimately, this results in a sense of going from crisis to crisis and never catching a break.
This is when intentionally creating margins and breaks in your schedule can help. When we see and approach work, life, parenting, relationships, etc, as separate blocks to attend to, we tend to want to allow as much time as possible to each, thus foregoing the necessary spaces between them we need to breathe and recover. However, when integrating work and life, we’re able to allow the various areas of our lives to flow into each other, creating the much-needed margins we crave. For me, it means limiting multi-tasking, scheduling breaks, and allowing for at least an extra ten minutes for each task.
Overall, planning for more work-life integration as a working woman and mom requires the willingness to see our lives as a whole, instead of buckets to fill up and boxes to check at the end of the day. It also demands intention and some level of planning to consolidate what we can, and create the margins we need to breathe, recover and refuel. This year and beyond, I hope we can commit to more work-life integration and allow ourselves to live fully, rather in a compartmentalized way.
How will you integrate your work and life this year?
