Illustration by Ivy Liu, Digiday.com , 2021

Childhood, Compliance, Therapy, and Personal Growth

I spent my childhood in a state of compliance; obedient with no question to my parents and primarily experiencing a sense of self-worth when receiving praise from said parents or other authoritative figures like my teachers. When it became clear that performing well in school generated praise, I fixated on not only meeting but exceeding standards. I then realized the best way to make it out was to earn some sort of scholarship for college that could justify moving away from home. I did just that. I moved 1,000 miles away from home and only came back when campus housing shut down. I studied incessantly, at the expense of socializing, at the expense of sleep, at the expense of wellness. I missed family milestones to avoid uncomfortable dialogue with family members, and school was always the perfect excuse. So much of my time was centered around academic performance that when I finally got a D in a course and felt my control slip, I then lost control. I won’t detail my rock bottom. My therapists know all about that. To J and N, thank you for helping me save my own life.

In therapy and through my own practice, I learned to set boundaries with family and people who compromise my sense of self. I created a home that I love to be in and have saturated my free time with people who respect my boundaries and pour love into me. In direct contrast with this, I have already self-selected for a career path that favors the work-consumed, family-avoidant person I used to be. And to top it all off, I have an advanced degree that I had to fight tooth and nail for, I’ll be damned if I don’t use it. So what is a girl to do?

Workplace Challenges and Bias

Well… I suppose I could try to set boundaries with work. Maintain a 40-hour work week, use my full lunch break, and take my paid time off (PTO), right? Wrong. Prioritization of wellness is perceived as a lack of ambition. My favorite example: I requested PTO a month in advance of a trip. About 10 days prior to my trip, a ‘high priority’ meeting was scheduled to take place two days after I would be out of the office and on the beach. My data needed to be polished and assembled for a slide deck in advance of the meeting, and thus my departure, for editing and refinement. I got the deck to an 80% completion. This includes experiment planning, execution, data generation, and analysis, and performing the image analysis. A team member was appointed to finish the remaining editing. During a later evaluation, I was told, “we don’t want a team member who just says, screw it, because they are going on PTO.”

I beg your sincerest pardon? And what’s more, when I hold up a mirror to the real issue: poor communication and management, I have now stepped on toes and have been described as “inflexible and difficult to work with.” There are 3 types of leadership: orchestration, innovation, and agitation; for whatever reason the spirit of agitation resides in me. It is not easy to routinely be the person who reflects areas that require improvement to people who control your income, but it is necessary. I would personally like to work on the development of positive relationships with “stakeholders” ahead of holding up the mirror because plot twist white people find me threatening. Surprise, surprise. While it is not my job to police the way others perceive, it is my job and personal mission to maintain my CHEQUE, and leave each place I work in better than I found it; but don’t forget, I will LEAVE. Now for the tea:

Data and a Call for Action

A study published in November 2023 by investigators at the Harvard Kennedy School discusses the effects of white coworkers on their black peers and how the careers of black women are negatively affected with regard to turnover, retention, and promotion outcomes. Black women are more likely to be labeled as low performers in their first performance review. The turnover rate of black women decreases (in other words, retention of black women is increased) when there is a higher percentage of black peers on their team (Linos et al., 2023). This article calls for revisions of management practices that have implicit bias and an effort to RETAIN diversity that matches that of recruitment. I feel like I have spent my life calling for action, and action is not picking up the phone. I need to think critically about if I am ready to summon the orchestration season in my leadership and what that may look like.

Readership, if you had unlimited resources, what action would you feel called to do from this article?

Until next time,

Stef