A Mid-Week Leadership Tip

Hey, leader folx! Happy Wednesday! Here's a leadership tip (that you should not need someone to give you because it should be a given) to guide the rest of your week: Show gratitude to your team members every day.

Yes. Seriously. Show gratitude to your team members. Every. Day.

They are bustin' their asses for you and your organization, putting in work that makes you and your organization look good in every arena. They give your team and organization their energy, insights, and skills daily. A chunk of their life is spent in your workplace, and this is time they will never get back to spend with their friends, families, and communities or even dedicate to their passions and healing. Please show them some respect every damn day. Thank them for all the work they do for you and everything they contribute to your organization, even the "basic" things that most of us easily take for granted. Let it be known to every other senior leader you work with that your success is team success, and your team should be thanked for their work. And if you're going to say thank you?

Mean it.

Don't be out here going through the motions and acting like someone is twisting your arm. Don't say thank you because "that's what you're supposed to do." You're not an automaton. You're a human being with a heart and soul. You have feelings. You know what it feels like not to be given respect or gratitude for the things you've done that you don't expect respect and appreciation for. You know what it feels like to bust your ass and have a leader not show you gratitude and take credit for your energy and effort. Take those feelings, handle them with humility and empathy, and don't pass them on to those you lead.

If you think you're leading with humanity, gratitude should be easy, like Sunday morning. And if it's difficult, like dodging a truck while wearing ankle weights?

It would be best if you got your weight up.

On Clothes, Comfort, Identity, White Supremacist Workplace Culture, and "Professional" Attire

It's wild to me that people who consider themselves "high-level professionals" still throw out "advice" around "professional" attire. Y'all ain't got nothin' better to do with your time? Don't you have a meaningless seminar to conduct somewhere for a bunch of "professionals" who don't want to be challenged but want to act as they have been for clout?

At the beginning of my career in Human Resources, I used to "dress the part": business casual from head to toe: polo shirts, khakis, dress shoes, short haircuts, no facial hair. I did it because I was keen on being taken seriously.

I hated that sh--.

Every morning I looked in the mirror, I could see it eating away at my soul. It made me feel inauthentic, like a caricature of myself. And I still wasn't being taken seriously. If anything, I was being treated like a token, which made me constantly sad and angry. I don't know what my breaking point was, but I got up one morning, and instead of grabbing a striped polo shirt, I grabbed a Batman t-shirt.

And I've never looked back.

The moment I stopped dressing like a corporate HR goon was when my career changed, for better and worse. But I would've never been able to embrace the better if I stayed in the space of conformity. I've lost opportunities, left money on the table, and endured trauma and harm because I don't fit the "professional" image that white supremacist workplace culture almost demands from melanated folx. But I'd rather have a few fewer dollars in my pocket than cosplay as a" professional" daily. And real talk?

Who cares about this clothing thing at this point?

Why is this nonsense still important to people?

For the past few years, we all have lived through a collective trauma event, and we're still coming out of the worst of it and trying to take care of ourselves, earn a living, and maintain a job or career. Why does anyone care if someone's wearing a Care Bears shirt and some pajama pants while doing their job? Did the work get done? If it did, what's the problem? Regardless of your positionality in a workplace, if you're spending time and energy judging somebody wearing flip-flops and board shorts, you need to see that this is a "you" problem. It sounds like you need to sit and unpack your ingrained white supremacist patriarchal need to police others and maybe look into why you want homogeneity and conformity in the workplace.

And don't pull out that "you represent [insert company here] and you should dress as such" defense. That's weak and archaic. Most companies don't have a dress code or enforce the ones they have. Most weren't verbalizing this "concern" until a damn pandemic found many of us at home sitting in our comfy clothing, realizing we don't need to be in business clothes and uniformity all the damn time to be considered good at what we do.

Sheesh. Let it go, y'all. It is not the key to success some of y’all act like it is.

One of these “business gurus” recently posted, "Dress not as who you are but who you want to be." The first thing that popped into my head was, "Well, I wanna be a happy, healthy, comfortable, joyful, thicc Black man who wears t-shirts that display my voice and interests."

I'd say I'm nailing it.

Let's make the space for others to nail it too.

To HR Directors, Boards of Directors, and Senior Leaders: Don't forget to take your pills.

Image description: A meme. In the upper half of the image, a white hand is holding a medication bottle. The bottle is labeled "Hard to swallow pills." Below that statement is, "Instructions: Take one (1) without water as needed." The lower half of the image shows the white hands from above with three pills resting in the palm of the left hand. The caption reads, "HR should not have unchecked control and the final say over the equity and inclusion efforts in any company, no matter how much the senior leadership team and Board of Directors want them to."

[Image description: A meme. In the upper half of the image, a white hand is holding a medication bottle. The bottle is labeled "Hard to swallow pills." Below that statement is, "Instructions: Take one (1) without water as needed." The lower half of the image shows the white hands from above with three pills resting in the palm of the left hand. The caption reads, "HR should not have unchecked control and the final say over the equity and inclusion efforts in any company, no matter how much the senior leadership team and Board of Directors want them to."]

On Wedding Websites and Rulings of Hate

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lorie Smith, a "Christian" graphic designer who wanted the right to discriminate against same-sex couples seeking her services. This ruling went in her favor despite a Colorado law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, gender, and other protected characteristics. Smith's argument? That the Colorado law violated her free speech rights.

The conservative U.S. Supreme Court agreed with her.

How did this law violate her "freedom of speech?" Your guess is as good as mine, seeing how no one was twisting her arm to force her to take jobs or be hateful.

Lorie's raggedy ass could've politely declined the request, stating she was busy or unavailable, but she didn't. I'm not saying this move is the right or best way to handle things because it would still be a hateful move, but it wouldn't be as confrontational and escalated as this situation became. Do you know how many white people I've encountered who dislike me and my people but decide their vitriol for me isn't worth escalating, so they passively opt out of things? Way more than you'd think. I know members of LGBTQIA+ communities face similar situations. The couple who sought out Lorie's services could've moved on, likely knowing that there was an underlying current of hate to their request being declined but maybe not feeling like this battle was worth escalating (sadly, many of us have to pick and choose which battles to fight and when).

Lorie didn't have to make it an openly hateful thing with these potential clients, but she did. Lorie didn't have to be aggressively homophobic but chose to be. But Lorie was worried about her "freedom of speech" being taken from her. Real talk?

Lorie wasn't worried about her freedom of speech. Lorie was worried about decency infringing on what she believes is her freedom to hate others "in the name of the Lord."

And now every hateful, homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, racist, bigoted, faux Christian business owner in the United States will refuse to serve countless communities because the U.S. Supreme Court has declared they have the right to do so.

You have the right to have your beliefs until your beliefs are constantly wielded as clubs of hatred, bigotry, and white supremacy that harm or murder others. Then they aren't beliefs anymore. They're hate crimes.

The U.S. Supreme Court thinks otherwise.

On Student Loan Debt and System Design

The student loan debt ruling was shared with the masses this morning. You can likely guess the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling without having to go and look it up.

🤦🏽‍♂️🤦🏿‍♀️🤦🏿‍♂️🤦🏾‍♀️🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏽‍♀️

And there goes the possibility of millions of U.S. Americans being able to break cycles of debt and poverty in their lifetime and generations to come. And all because they wanted an education to improve things for themselves and their families. That's what we were told to do, right? Take out loans that have grown increasingly more predatory over the past thirty years with little to no governmental checks and balances to go to college to get degrees that we might barely earn a living with, if we're lucky, just enough left over to spend the next fifty years of our lives trying to repay them while trying to eat, pay our bills, take care of our mental and physical health, and save money to help the next generation seek an education without the shackles they witness us unable to break.

The beat goes on.

And it's all by design in a country whose decision-makers have openly let it be known how they feel about the masses being educated, especially the poor and underserved, the melanated, and those whom the original sins of this unceded land have rendered invisible and subhuman.

I guess most of us best get back to budgeting. September will be here before we know it.