Intention v. Impact

This is Chamel. She was a reservations agent at Wyndham when I was there, years ago. Every leader wanted to take her under their wing. She came to us for advice so we started giving her tips — mainly how to present herself differently in what she wore and how she communicated. She swapped hoodies for sweater vests before deciding she wasn’t interested in playing the game. We understood (or at least we thought we did). We’ve stayed close over the years, so I texted her at a protest on Sunday. “Hey! I’m over by the basketball court!” She texted back, “Me too. I’m by the tree.” I called her, laughing. “It’s a park. There are 800 trees!” When I finally found her, I hugged her tight. “Listen, this is a much longer conversation, but I want to say I’m sorry. Back in the day when we said you had to show up differently, what we were really saying was you had to act more White to succeed. That’s so wrong, friend. You deserved so much better from us.” This story is not uncommon. As leaders our job is to foster company cultures where everyone can belong and thrive while remaining true to who they are. The first step is recognizing all the places where our intentions and our impact are grossly misaligned — where we’re allowing oppression to succeed more than our employees.

🖤

#bethechange