Carice Anderson - Intelligence Isnt Enough: A Black Professionals Guide to Thriving in the Workplace

I graduated from university in 1998 and started my first full-time job only a few months later. After about a year, I came to hate that job so much that I distinctly remember hoping to get into a car accident so that I wouldnt have to go to work. I didnt want to die; I just wanted to break my right arm so that I couldnt write or type.

What I really needed was a break. I just needed my work frustration to stop, and in my desperate 23-year-old mind, this was the best solution. I could have taken a day off but that seemed too temporary. I felt helpless and probably a bit hopeless too. I didnt have the tools to diagnose my situation, let alone to fix it. All I knew was that I was miserable. I felt stuck.

Now, as I look back on 20 years of work experience, there were so many things I could have done differently. The power to change my perspective and my situation was in my hands, but I just didnt know it at the time. My goal in writing this book is to impart to you what Ive learnt so that you never have to feel the way I did. If Im too late and youre already feeling that way, I want to help you identify all the useful items in your toolbox that might help you to see your situation differently and ultimately to turn it around.

I was the first person in my family to major in business and the first to work in a corporate space. I come from a family of educators, social workers and ministers, so nobody in my close circle could advise me on what to expect or how to succeed in this new world. Back then, the internet wasnt what it is now, so I could not lean on the web to fill in the gaps. To be honest, even if I had had access to the internet, I would not have known to use it to navigate this unfamiliar territory. I did not know what I did not know, so I didnt even know what questions to ask. Admittedly, I have made many, many mistakes out of pure ignorance, coupled with a dash of youthful arrogance. Because I had the right undergraduate degree (and eventually the right masters degree), I thought I had everything I needed to succeed.

Fast-forward 13 years: in 2012, I started working at McKinsey & Company, an American management consulting firm. I joined their Johannesburg office as a Professional Development Manager (PDM). McKinsey is the oldest, biggest and most influential management consulting firm in the world, with over $10 billion in annual revenues, 127 offices and 27 000 employees around the world. As a PDM, I was responsible for staffing Black consultants on client engagements, for coaching, for giving feedback to consultants and for organising annual and midterm review meetings with leadership.

For the first time in my career I heard both sides of the story what consultants thought the expectation was versus what leadership actually expected. I realised that there was a huge gap between the two. I suddenly understood that many Black consultants were just as clueless as I had been in 1998. With the internet and all the other resources now available, I expected the new generation to be savvier and more hip to the game. But they werent. Many of them had no idea about the world they had stepped into. Like me, they did not know what they did not know.

I do not want the next generation to suffer the way I did. In this book, I want to share with you what Ive learnt over the course of my career in the USA and South Africa, across the public and private sectors. I share the insights I gained during my years at Harvard Business School (I was privileged enough to obtain an MBA from Harvard, one of the best universities in the world), as well as what Ive learnt while working for some of the best-known brands in the world, which include McKinsey and Deloitte. I impart lessons from my work as a Leadership Development Facilitator for Google, McKinsey, Bain & Company and the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation. My network includes some of the brightest Black leaders in the world, who have been educated in, and worked across, North America, Europe and Africa, and I offer their advice, experiences and perspectives as well as my own. Not everyone will have the opportunity to work in these environments, but I believe everyone should be exposed to the valuable lessons weve learnt and the mistakes weve made in these spaces. Our world, our organisations, our relationships and ultimately our ability to have an impact on our world will be the better for it.

Historically, Black people have been marginalised in certain parts of the world. Marginalised is defined as the state of being excluded from or existing outside the mainstream of society, a group, or a school of thought. For Black people, this implies that there are things we do not know or have not been exposed to. Even if you grew up in a place where Black people werent marginalised, it is highly unlikely that you, as a young Black person, are a fourth- or fifth-generation corporate employee.

From a professional development standpoint, the impact of the historical and global marginalisation of Black people has to be acknowledged. As Black people, we have to acknowledge that not every instance of poor performance can be blamed on racism or bias on the part of our colleagues. We need to admit that we might not know certain things and that a lack of knowledge affects our performance and our relationships at work.

I can just imagine how much more prepared I would have been, or how different my familys dinner-table conversations would have been, had my grandfather been an employee or partner at Goldman Sachs. But he wasnt. He worked in a steel mill for 41 years. This lack of exposure definitely contributes to Black peoples unfamiliarity with corporate environments. It does not mean that Black people cannot succeed in those areas, but it does mean that we have a lot of catching up to do.

Most universities and colleges do not adequately prepare young people to navigate corporate spaces. Many articles and books have been written about crafting the perfect CV, and many more tell you how to prepare for an interview and what to do if you want to get your dream job. However, very few if any have been written for Black professionals who are just starting out in their careers and are the first members of their family to have a white-collar, professional job. Even fewer provide those readers with the essential information they need to know and the important questions they need to ask as they figure out what works best in their environments.

Every organisation is different, so career advice cannot be a one-size-fits-all exercise. However, the sooner you understand the environment upon your arrival, the better you can do and the more fun you can have. If you ask certain key questions, half the battle has been won. In this book, I aim to provide young Black professionals with a number of critical questions to ask and to research. I also offer some commonly shared coaching tips while shining a light on a number of issues that do not garner enough attention.

Many of my Black professional friends sit around and lament the younger generations lack of readiness. Many Gen Xers or baby boomers are frustrated with millennials, complaining that they are impatient and want opportunities they havent earned and arent ready for. We, the older generation, tell you that you have to wait, but we never explain what you should be doing while you wait, how to succeed in your current role or how best to prepare for that next career move.