"I think you need to stop being so difficult and just let this go," the senior leader said exasperated, handing my sheets back to me. He was annoyed. I took my sheets back and walked out. It was a battle I wasn't about to win.Those sheets outlined my compelling case for delaying the launch my team had been leading. The proposition wasn't differentiated. The media plan was underfunded. The estimates from sales teams were coming in lower than expected. My persistence, my persuasive business case, and my passion, all pointed in only one direction: that I was being difficult.In the end, the launch was never delayed. It went on as scheduled and underperformed terribly. The items were delisted within six months. And we never talked about that launch again. It was as if it had never happened.And all along I wondered: how could I have been less difficult?
On one of my first assignments at a large corporation, no one could remember my name. It wasn't because they couldn't pronounce it. It wasn't because they had never met me. It wasn't because they had forgotten it. It was because everyone kept calling me by someone else's name.
I'm writing this piece on a Thursday night, days after riots and protests erupted following the murder of George Floyd. Posting on social media didn't feel authentic to me. Protesting didn't feel enduring. For me, they both felt like actions that would temporarily make me feel good about myself without any real lasting impact.It took days to write this because I needed time for the words to catch up with my emotions. Since then, I've had a number of people reach out to me, some with genuine concern for my mental state and others who seemed to be offering a "check the box" gesture. They were mostly all the same in content: "What can I do?" or "If you need to talk or vent, I'm here." Some even expressed how sorry they were for what I must be going through. The problem is, no one should feel sorry for me. No one should feel sorry for Black people.