In June 2018, I accepted a position within our sales organization. If you know me well, you probably know that I am not your traditional sales person and if you know me very well you probably know that at one point in my career I despised software sales people. The reason why I despised software sales people is because years ago I was responsible for implementing solutions that our sales people ‘sold’ and the majority of the time, what they ‘sold’, we couldn’t always fully deliver resulting in dissatisfied customers. Overtime, however, I’ve grown to understand that sales is about turning prospective customers into paying customers and that single transactions are what keeps the lights on in every business. I also began to notice that many CEOs and Top Level leaders came from a sales background.
Good sales people are great communicators, they articulate well, they are good listeners, detail oriented, strong relationship builders and great influencers. These are all attributes, especially communication and listening (just ask my wife) that I need to sharpen in order to enter the C-Suite. So when I was asked in June, if I would like to join our sales organization I was a bit reluctant. I mean, I was a leader of 181 people, one step from reporting into the CEO at 34 years old. My former boss and mentor said, “Antoine if you want to continue to move up, you should get closer to the revenue or the product.” I’ve heard this before, but really never paid it much attention. So here I am, an individual contributor, now 3 steps away from the CEO with a money bag that has 1.2 million printed on it. Guess what? 1.2 million is printed on every salespersons bag as well and it is our responsibility to fill it up. You fill it up, you are successful, if you don’t, you’ve failed. It’s black and white. It’s crystal clear.
So a few weeks ago I had my virtual assistant from uassistme.co researching articles about African Americans in Corporate America and she came across an article called, “Working While Black: For One Man, Corporate America Is About Competition, Not Race” by Wendy Todd. You should definitely read it. Wendy Todd writes about interviewing a successful African American named Gene R Todd who is a Managing Director of Wealth Management at First Bank. Although Wendy and Gene have the same last name, they are not related. Wendy describes Gene as somewhat of a unicorn because Gene says that he has not encountered any racial challenges in his career, none that he was aware of. This was very different from Wendy’s personal experiences and the experiences of other African Americans that she knew in Corporate America.
You see, Gene Todd is a finance professional with more than 20 years of experience. His career progressed fast after he started working on Wall Street at Morgan Stanley as a day trader. The process to get in was not only long, but also difficult, however, despite all of the obstacles, he was convinced it had nothing to do with race even though he noticed the low percentage of black people working there, which at the time was less than 5%. Gene was aware that his main obstacle was his school education. Gene did not attend a traditional Wall Street school. Traditional Wall Street schools are Harvard, Columbia and Wharton and Gene attended University of Michigan, which was ranked #5 of all business schools in the country at that time.
After a few years at Morgan Stanley, Gene began to grow within the company and continued being promoted to higher positions. This was of course achieved by his effort and abilities, but he also says that he believes he experienced success because he didn’t focus on race while he was at his workplace as he didn’t come across any obstacles or challenges caused by racism. He says “I will honestly tell you five days a week, 10 hours a day, sometimes longer, race has no bearing on who I am. I put on my uniform, which is a suit, and it’s game time. I’m focused on the game.”
Even though Gene shares his experience as being fortunate and blessed to not have a life that has been impacted by what others perceive as racism, he certainly is aware that thousands and thousands of people are mistreated in the US because of their skin color, sexuality, religion, and gender. “I pretty much have had an entire life, where I’ve had very little in the way of racial issues happen to me. And I realize I’m lucky. But that impacts how I think”.
Gene is not the only black man that I know that has expressed that race hasn’t impacted their life or career progression. There are many black unicorns. These black unicorns often fly under the radar, but the ones that I know that are doing very well are also not ones to accept excuses. Now, how do these black unicorns come together and work with others to mold future black unicorns? The answer is simple, Black Heights.
Remember, I am still holding a bag that says 1.2 million on it. The name of the game is to generate revenue. And for corporations to exist they have to employ some of the smartest, brightest, most qualified, results driven and most capable people that are out there. In this type of environment are corporations really thinking about race or more about competition? I remember a time when I was the captain of a pickup basketball game. I had the chance to pick 4 people to create my winning team. I chose 2 people from the losing team because they were really good and I chose 2 people from the sidelines who i knew could hoop. We won the next game. These are the same choices that people are making in corporations. They have a responsibility to select people to create the strongest and most successful team possible. It is far less about race, but more about having the winning team so you can beat out the competition.
I hope you all enjoyed reading this piece. If you like articles like this, please subscribe to the Black Heights Newsletter at https://blkheights.com/subscribe/
There is a message for Everyone… Not just African Americans.
Sources:
Michal Lev-Ram (2013, August 13), “The redemption of Charles Phillips”,
http://news.stlpublicradio.org/…/working-while-black-one-ma…, Accessed 10/10/2018
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