Discussion response.

Billi Bartley

WHO AM I? A BLACK LEADER’S

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS OF THAT

JOURNEY

The article offers insights into the intricacies of black leadership development. It explores the personal and professional development of ‘self’ in relation to black leadership within white British social, educational and employment contexts. It provides illustrations of self discovery to support black leaders operating closer to who they are.

Keywords Black; leadership; personal; professional; development

Introduction

My primary interest in writing this paper was to document a personal experience of leadership from a black Caribbean/British female perspective as so little of the intricacies of these experiences are written about. I grew up in the 1970 – 1980s Britain on a diet of black deference in relation to white social and educational norms and wanted to document something about the extent to which this type of experience can plague and interrupt who you are as a black leader in a leadership position – in relation to whiteness and the operations of white organisations. In this reflective exploration of my own leadership journey from childhood, adolescence through to adulthood, I share family, school, university, work and leadership experiences to illustrate the internal/external working realities of a black leader’s self development from a position of deference to a position of full presence (Kahn, 1992). I begin by sharing matters surrounding early black self development in relation to whiteness. I then explore how this development was nurtured in school and reinforced through college, university and work. I move on to examine these former experiences and their collective impact on my present-day leadership capacity to operate in the ‘other’ or ‘as I am’. Finally, I offer some concluding thoughts in the hope that future black leaders might engage in their own exploratory reflections to benefit deeper understanding whilst navigating their own journeys.

Childhood private/public black identity development

I suspect that my aspirations for ‘leadership’ were established across childhood, adolescent and young adult experiences. The earliest I recall was around age seven, being left ‘in charge’ at home, taking care of small domestic duties and acting responsibly for younger and older siblings, whilst my parents went out to work.

q 2013 GAPS

Journal of Social Work Practice, 2013

Vol. 27, No. 2, 163–176, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02650533.2013.798153

Although hardly communicated, I knew my parents considered me sensible (responsible). I was inspired by their covert expectations of me, which in turn sponsored aspirations within me about ‘doing well’. These unspoken expectations and aspirations were shared with overheard parental grumblings about ‘black people having to stick together’ and white bosses treating my parents like ‘pickney’ – a deferential slave term for child. At that age, I did not entirely understand all that was meant by these things, I just knew my parents worked hard and subserviently for these white people to secure the promise of the ‘better life’ they often spoke about – as Jamaicans who emigrated to England in the 1960s.

Around this age, I was also conscious of operating a private/internal and public/external existence. For example, privately, I spoke patois, ate yams and green bananas at home, and publicly spoke ‘white English’ and ate things like ‘sausage and mash’ at school. I shrank inwardly when quizzed by white peers about my ‘woolly’ hair, black hands and white palms, and had no retort for these personal inquisitions because white hair, hands and palms were ‘right’. I discovered ways to minimise and veil my black experience in front of inquisitory white peers – never inviting them home or sharing personal black intricacies in fear of the ‘argh factor’. Where these did arise I internalised their put-downs because I had no answer to them.

These childhood experiences shaped my developing black identity as a child growing up in white Britain. Essentially, I was learning how to split my internal black self into a private/public entity in my relations with white experience. I was also starting to internalise negative white curiosities about my black experience as if they were my own.

Nurturing a split black/white identity in school

My parents were keen for their children to receive a ‘good’ British education, irrespective of its colonial footprint (Lowe, 2008). I knew they knew that I was the academic one in the family and I was quietly inspired by their unspoken expectations around my academic ability. I sensed they had not had the same educational opportunities growing up in the Caribbean, and having emigrated to the ‘motherland’ (England) they were prepared for the British school system to foster their academic aspirations of me. In my primary school days, I did not disappoint them; I loved school and craved learning, and what my parents lacked in practical academic support, for example in my reading, writing and maths development, white teachers provided in abundance. This primary school experience nurtured an internal academic anchor in relation to what achieving felt and looked like (white) and the tangible external means by which achieving could occur (white). As a black child, I nurtured this internal relationship with white academia for some time at the expense of developing an internal black academic self that I would later understand as necessary to contend with the complexities of my internal/external black/white academic self relations.

During adolescence, I continued a diet of Eurocentric educational and social experiences where white people took up ‘in charge’ positions such as teachers, youth club leaders and employers. They featured prominently in comic books, on television and in newspapers, and I paid particular attention to the prominence of these white roles. They became my external image of what it was to do well. In contrast, I

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observed few black role models, and where they were publicly evident, their roles were tinged with ridicule in television shows like ‘love thy neighbour’ and toys like the ‘golliwog’. These social experiences reinforced my vision of whiteness being associated with opportunity and possibility and blackness with degradation and caricature. ‘White’ became an external inspiration, reflected in the books and magazines I read, the music I listened to and the friendships I made. In parallel, school experiences occurred that stirred inner conflicts regarding this aspirational white vision of ‘being’ that I was nurturing for myself.

The first experience I want to describe was in relation to the first black novel I remember reading. It was Rosa Guy’s ‘The Friends’, read as part of the English syllabus. I recall with vivid accuracy the ridicule that the nappy-headed girl, the protagonist, suffered from white peers. It was as if she were me, our experiences, thoughts and feelings inextricably connected, transcending the words on the page and my live experience (Davids, 2006). The book exposed aspects of the private black life (for example, the ‘battle’ with my natural black hair) that I had so far kept secret from white friends. And whilst this type of external exposure was just about manageable, it was the type of experience I describe next that more painfully exposed deeper internal conflicts about black/white relations operating within me.

Walking arm in arm along a street, chatting and laughing with a white school friend, a group of white boys walked towards us. As the friend saw them approach she let go of me. (Personal vignette)

The movement on her part was swift, but gentle as if practised, but not entirely understood. I remember the emotional jolt and the overwhelming sense of rejection of my black self. Burns (1948, p. 89) said, ‘as colour is the most obvious outward manifestation of race it has been made the criterion by which men are judged, irrespective of their social or educational attainments’.

This covert judgement of my blackness fed a psychological view that I was ‘lesser than’, ‘not good enough’ in relation to whiteness. Most painfully, I felt the simplicity of being dis-guarded, despite the investment that had been made in the friendship. However, coupled to my sense of rejection, there was an unexpected ‘switching on’ to my blackness (Cross, 1991) that caused further dilemma in my black/white internal/external self relations.

I became invested in a friendship with a group of black girls; together we challenged and defied teachers, were disruptive and denied ourselves and others opportunities to learn. This behaviour did not sit entirely well with me because rearing against white school authority was inextricably linked to realising or not my academic dreams. I was conflicted by these thoughts until an incident occurred involving a white teacher.

A group of girls, including myself had not been allowed to join a school trip because of our bad behaviour. We remained in class, challenging the teacher’s authority. Exasperated, the teacher shared her disappointment that we were not fulfilling our potential; and her frustration that everyone that had been left behind; she physically pointed out was black . . . , black . . . and black. (Personal vignette)

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The teacher’s comments stirred a sense of personal disappointment and frustration within me – disappointment that I was presenting as a failing black pupil, contrary to what I imagined in me and my parents for me, and frustration that my ability to succeed was indeed inextricably linked to my academic dreams, but also to my blackness. Too late to realise my academic potential in secondary school, I chose to attend a college outside my local area to study ‘O’ and subsequently ‘A’ levels. At the time, I did not fully appreciate the underlying urge I must have had to escape the confines of my black experience to date, for example parents who worked hard trying to make ends meet, living on a deprived inner city housing estate and memories of negative black exposure in school.

Forging black/white splits in college and at work

In college, I was entirely invested in doing well and revelled in the status of student, but I was worried about my academic results not matching up to the intellectual I was striving to be. As I reflect now, I suspect there was a discord in my academic capacity. That is capacity, externally formed in my black self relations with whiteness that informed my vision of the ideal intellectual, compared to incapacity, internally formed in relation to a ridiculed and hated academic black self. I had developed a self that operated in between these two dimensions that Davids (2006) referred to as ‘other’ and I would struggle to thwart operating in the ‘other’ for some time.

In college, I made new friendships with predominantly white peers who introduced me to a whole new social world of arts, cinema, travel, café life, etc. These new experiences inspired me and my aspirations to be successful blossomed, but at the same time they reinforced the split between my negative internal black self and my external black/white self relations. My preoccupation with all things Eurocentric drew snide remarks from my siblings about my lack of interest in black music, my indulgence in books and my developing network of white friends. With these white friends, I shared the parts of me that I deemed palatable and nurturing of the relationships. Where issues of race overtly presented themselves, I shrunk and tiptoed around them, for example the Brixton riots of 1981 (Scarman, 1981). At home, my emotional connection with my siblings and parents was fraught with my yearning for more than what I thought they could offer in ‘making it’ beyond, instead of ‘just outside’ our black experience.

Driven by these feelings, at the age of 17, I sought work beyond the local confines of my black experience. I worked part-time for a major British retailer in central London and recall the excitement of engaging with wealthy British and international shoppers. The experience engendered hope that I might escape my ‘black life’ and realise bolder aspirations through this type of white experience. This was a manifestation of the chains of my own psychological slavery (Akbar, 1996) whereby, similar to field slaves wanting to escape life in the cotton fields, I psychologically supplanted employment in the big house for the major retail institution.

I gained my first full-time unemployment in an unemployment benefit office, which I left after a fortnight stifled by the reams of benefit forms. I went onto work for a large government department, filing and photocopying for a senior white, middle- class civil servant, who, despite what I reflect now was her deferential attitude towards

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me, reinforced my fantasies about leadership. I fetched and carried for this leader until I was promoted, but the work was mundane. Unsatisfied, I left taking with me a psychological vision of the leader I decided to be.

It is difficult to identify the locus of my desire to work in the social care field, but I like to think that there was a balance between wanting to challenge the ill-effects of social and economic inequalities manifesting, for example in the high unemployment and low employment status of black people (Lowe, 2008), and internally working to break the chains of my own psychological slavery (Akbar, 1996). I secured an administrative role working for an inner city social services department children and families office, where I encountered the first leader who reflected aspects of my private and public black self. She was a black woman of Caribbean/British descent. She was professionally qualified and had a wealth of practice and management experience – basically, a local girl made good and a tangible object to reflect my own leadership aspirations. But her leadership presence stirred a host of ambivalent feelings within me.

On the one hand, I was full of admiration for this black woman, who was a manifestation of the leadership that I felt externally possible within me. On the other hand, I hated how she presented aspects of her black self within the institution we were employed. For example, patois leaked into her communications, she ‘kissed her teeth’ in frustration and she took every opportunity to voice views about ‘our’ history of racial oppression. I was conflicted by this black woman leader representing both the object of my desire for leadership and the antithesis of that desire – to be black and a leader.

Whilst these thoughts and feelings seem nonsensical to me now, clearly they evidenced the internalised racism that was operating in my relations with the external world (Lipsky, 1987). That is, I, an aspiring black woman with a fantastic opportunity to engage with a black female leader, could not connect with her because her black presentations stirred the denigrated black self I had created through my negative relations with ‘whiteness’, for example in school, on television and in books. Having internalised white slights and inquisitions about blackness, it was as if they had become truths in my mind that I could not bear to see in myself or in others and especially in public (Fanon, 2008). In my mind, the black manager had failed to project the best race image; she was causing me ‘spotlight anxiety’ (Cross, 1991); essentially her leadership was too black.

University

The impetus for pursuing a university education was based on my need to do well, to feel important. I visualised achieving this through a particular experience and so set about securing a place outside of London/beyond my ‘black life’. I was accepted to study for a degree and social work qualification at a South Yorkshire polytechnic. I took inspiration from living and studying in a dedicated learning environment and revelled in this ‘other’ experience of expectation and possibility. I did well academically, even in subjects I found difficult. Trying to understand this now, it was as if I was unable to connect achieving with the achievement. That is, I did not own the achieving and achievement – it existed as an external reality that I had yet to internalise. This is an important distinction, the difference between operating from within – as one’s self – and

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operating from the position of ‘other’ in relation to an external reality. Davids (2006) described this as a psychological struggle that black people endure in white society and I return to this struggle later in relation to my experience of leadership.

Up to this point, my experiences suggested a propensity to adapt, to compromise and render aspects of my black self invisible in order to marry up my aspirations with the ‘right’ white experiences. I had been inspired by the verbal and written language of teachers, lecturers and managers, and cultivated a speaking and writing style to match those external realities. Patois, my language of origin, was confined to private conversations with family. I cultivated a social life around ‘white’ social experiences and adopted them as my own. It is worth noting that there were many occasions where I advocated on black issues – the disproportionate representation of black students, the absence of black tutors, the overthrowing of the South African apartheid regime – but if I am honest this involvement came from an external place of being seen to do the right thing in the presence of black and white people and not from a place of ‘internalised blackness’ (Cross, 1991). My conflict was that I was serving two masters neither of which was my own.

Black leadership in white organisations – operating in the ‘other’

My university experiences inspired me to seek new challenges, including those where black issues were a central focus. As a social work student, I negotiated a placement researching the disproportionate confinement of black men in mental health institutions in South Wales and was subsequently employed in a developmental role, challenging and pioneering a mental health organisation into the era of anti- discriminatory practice. I returned to London after two years as a children and families social worker, but within two weeks of taking up the position I sought an alternative job location and six weeks later an alternative team location, fearing that my potential might be stifled, first by a white manager who in my mind exuded stupidity and then by a black manager exuding incompetence. Neither manager matched my internal vision of leadership that had ultimately remained ‘intelligent and white’.

As I overcame these incidental challenges, I basked in the authority that protecting vulnerable children gave me and confidently challenged colleagues, managers and even the organisational status quo. I went on to hold successive senior practitioner and deputy manager positions and had a sense of my leadership aspirations being alive within me. I had been post-qualified six years at this point and remember the sense of having it all – status, authority and respect (Obholzer, 1994). But the black self foundations upon which these things had been constructed within me proved tenuous as the following vignette illustrates.

I was asked to work a complex child protection case; a black family of five children and a new born infant whose parents held stringent religious and cultural beliefs. The case had passed through several workers due to the parents’ hostility towards professionals. Although anxious for my safety, the case appealed to my sense of seniority. (Personal vignette)

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Concerns about the children’s emotional and physical welfare had been expressed by professionals and neglect was apparent. I worked the case jointly with an independent worker who was also black. Several home visits passed as we conducted our assessment. Despite efforts, I failed to make an emotional connection with the parents and the older children who held on to their parents’ wariness of me. During what turned out to be my final visit, I made an innocuous (unrecalled) comment to the mother about her infant. In doing so, I felt a tumble of fists rain down on me as the mother punched and pushed me out of the house. Mother, hostile and scared, chased me in fear of my life down the street.

In the days that followed, I was instructed by senior managers to continue working with the family, despite expressing fears about my safety. I also had a recurring dream about a naked black infant that I was responsible for protecting, being threateningly placed – as if in sacrifice – over a red-hot griddle. Despite every effort, I was unable to save the baby from its fate and as its skin made contact with the hot griddle its screams curdled my senses. After contact with the griddle, the infant would transform into a ghoulish figure scaring the living daylights out of me.

I recalled this dream as I wrote this paper, and trying to make sense of it now I wondered (a) if the infant’s pain symbolised the unconscious pain of denouncing my black self in operation of the ‘other’; (b) if the threat in the dream symbolised the unconscious threat I felt from white people’s power to dis-guard/sacrifice me at a whim, as I had experienced before; (c) if my inability to protect the infant in the dream symbolised my unconscious need to be/feel protected by an internal black maternal figure who I had spent so much time splitting as a bad internal object; and (d) if all these things together symbolised the fragility of the black leadership operating within me (Obholzer, 1994) in terms of my black self and black/white self relations.

Depressed by these experiences, a friend encouraged me to apply for a management post, which resulted in returning to South Wales. For the next four years, I predominantly worked alongside white professionals and service users, who affirmed and commended my practice and management abilities. However, I struggled to own these external affirmations as ‘I’, constantly questioning whether this feedback was a true reflection of my capabilities or a reflection of white colleagues’ lower expectations of black leaders compared to their white counterparts. This second guessing operated like an ‘invisible wound’ of an internal racial oppression where I experienced difficulties dispelling the psychological myth that like slaves before me I was ‘not good enough’, ‘as good as white people’ (Alleyne, 2005).

Four years later, I returned to London as a manager working for the same organisation, where I remain to the present day. In this period, I was made redundant three times and took job ‘opportunities’ that when truly thinking about it were confined to meeting the organisation’s needs as opposed to any professional career needs of my own. I was stuck in a phase of professional and personal development, carrying a false sense of security and lacking direction in my role as a black leader in the white organisation (Dickens & Dickens, 1991).

My career progression had stalled, and trying to make sense of this, I started a focus on my internal development. In doing so, I was struck by my pattern for managing intrapersonal conflicts such as my black self relations with black/white external dilemmas. The pattern was to extrapolate myself from the physicality of the dilemma, for example my move from the ‘inner city black school to the suburban white

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college’, my move from the ‘too black manager/work place to the predominantly white polytechnic’ and my move from the ‘black assault/threatening white managers’ to the white working environment in Wales. These self reflections also deepened my understanding of black/white figures operating within me – black figures that were persecutory, deferential and bad and white figures that were good, affirming and right. Fanon (2008) succinctly described this in terms of the following: – ‘for the black man there is only one destiny. And it is White’ (p. 4); and this had been my leadership destiny to date.

Black leadership in white organisations – operating ‘as I am’

Knowing ‘who you are’ and operating ‘as you are’ are significant aspects of self that determine the nature of our presence in experiences, including leadership experiences. This ‘psychological presence’ (Kahn, 1992) reflects presenting the fullness of one’s inner self in relation to external experiences. However, if as I describe so far black people like me grow up having to split aspects of their black self to relate in white external experiences, what is it that the aspiring black leader needs to reconcile inside and outside themselves in order to truly aspire in the white experience? What losses do we experience along the way, what compromises are made and most importantly what opportunities for developmental growth do we allow ourselves (Cross, 1991)? I intend to explore these things through my experience of a programme of study at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust (Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust, Postgraduate Certificate in Black Leadership in White Organisation (D66; 2009 – 2010), course organisers A. Bryan and F. Lowe), and through my present-day leadership experience.

Knowing ‘who you are’ and operating ‘as you are’ in a leadership role were crucial elements of study on the black leadership programme. Similarly, operating with authenticity and congruently is considered key to establishing an important aspect of leadership that materialises within oneself (Armstrong, 2005). It was this aspect of the programme that evoked my most painful self reflections – that is my lack of authenticity as a black woman and operating congruently in relation to the leadership for which I aspired. A couple of vignettes follow to illustrate what I mean.

After presenting at a Tavistock work discussion, it was reflected back to me that whilst I presented eloquently and competently about the leadership example there was a sense of dissonance between ‘owning’ (operating from within) and ‘acting’ (attending to the other) in my retelling of the experience. As a deeper examination of the presentation unfolded students commented that despite portraying a sense of authority, I had in fact unconsciously passed it onto others. The question being in whose authority was I invested. (Personal vignette)

The second illustration occurred in a brief exchange between me and one of the black tutors on the course.

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Students were asked to identify black leaders that had inspired them. Amongst others, I identified, Barack Obama. As I shared what I admired about him, I commented on the enormity of his task and that ‘I wouldn’t want to be him’ to which the tutor responded ‘no, you wouldn’t you would want to be you’. (Personal vignette)

I was taken aback by the tutor’s comment because it alerted me to the possibility that metaphorically speaking ‘I had not been operating as me’. That is, for as long as I could remember, I had been emulating and echoing the success of others, predominantly white others at the expense of operating as myself. During the programme, these mini self discoveries overwhelmed me; I felt ashamed and internally belittled by them. Yet, at the same time I was enlivened by what they illuminated about my internal leadership self. That is, as a black leader in a predominantly white organisation, my leadership experiences manifested in relation to the splitting of ‘self’ – a self objectified by internalised racism where black was negative, unworthy and secret and white was positive, worthy and public. From this, I recognised that until now my leadership aspirations had been fostered through this internal lens of black/white relations that had compromised my ability to operate an authentic black self required for realising congruent leadership.

The emotional impact of these emerging self discoveries was tempered by the containing aspects of the black leadership programme, a formal space to explore personal dilemmas associated with black leadership alongside other aspiring black leaders examining their own intrapersonal and interpersonal leadership relations within the white institutions they worked. I had spent so much time investing in the experiences of white aspirational leadership that I had failed to appreciate the developmental value of sharing in an exclusively black learning support experience (Bryan, 2001). The experience challenged and inspired me towards developing a congruent form of internal/external leadership relations emanating from the black self.

An aim of the black leadership programme was to support personal and professional black leadership development. My professional developmental materialised by first securing a secondment opportunity and a subsequent management position. However, despite these achievements, I was plagued by personal doubts suggesting a lag in my personal development, an example of which I share below.

My interview preparation for the management position had been comprehensive. It included researching the opportunity, career coaching, skills, knowledge and presentation preparation. At interview, I responded to questions ‘in role’ and for the first time sensed my congruence, my presence of self in pursuit of the role. I felt ‘the job had my name on it’ factor that I’d heard white people talk about. (Personal vignette)

Unfortunately, these feelings did not last because, as the interview progressed, I began to see the white panel looking across at me not just as work superiors, but as white superiors – looking down at me, questioning the ‘uppity black me’ standing before them. I felt myself psychologically cancelling out of the interview as my historical slave past symbolised by white power (white interviewers) and black subjugation (black interviewee) swept into the present (Alleyne, 2005).

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Given my mindset during the interview, I was astounded when offered the position, but rather than glory in the achievement I was swallowed up by further doubts. For example, ‘maybe allowances had been made because I already held the secondment position’ or ‘maybe the other candidates were so dire, I was the best of a bad bunch’. These doubts, although exhausting, were not exhaustive and they spiralled into doubts about my ability in the leadership position. I gave cursory thought to the fact that I was one of only two black managers in the department and what this might mean in terms of my ongoing development, learning and support.

Taking up the leadership role meant joining a new management team, working alongside white colleagues, some of whom I had known for years. I experienced some as professionally close and generally felt the majority respected me. However, something had shifted in our relations and I felt this especially in management meetings. These colleagues were openly challenging and questioning, sniping and even rude; they were guarded, talking in asides and cast furtive looks between each other. Their behaviour stirred familiar feelings in me about being ‘cancelled out/dis-guarded’ by white people and the affect this had on me was profound. Absolutely everything I did in role was underpinned by self doubt and fear; I was silent and hesitant in meetings, I hung onto and affirmed the words of others because I found no words of my own. I carried an overwhelming anxiety that I would be exposed as ‘not good enough’ to sit amongst these white intellectual manager types that I had spent so much time wanting to emulate.

Trying to account for the depth to which I had been stirred up by these external experiences and their impact upon me, I realised there was a parallel dynamic in operation within me pertaining to my own internal exposure. This internal exposure was inextricably linked to the increased visibility of the external leadership position I currently held (Dickens & Dickens, 1991). It followed that the overwhelming degree of self doubt I was experiencing in role was not simply a consequence of the external questioning, guardedness and furtiveness that I felt in relation to others. The parallel dynamic in operation was that these same presentations were unconscious aspects of my internal black self relations with black/white good/bad objects. I was operating as my own oppressor (Alleyne, 2005). After all, I had nurtured internal furtiveness and guardedness as a protection to ward off persecutory questioning by white people about my black self for as long as I could remember. This conflicted dynamic was now manifesting at the interface of my internal/external leadership experience – where I, internally, and white colleagues, externally, were operating to cancel ‘me’ out.

I was dealing with early psychological splits of the mind and the behavioural contradictions arising from them. For example, enacting splits in my experience of ‘belonging’, in my experience of ‘who I was’ and in my experience of ‘who I was aspiring to be’ compromised my potential to be a fully present black leader (Kahn, 1992) in a leadership role. Taking up such a position would enable me to withstand the challenges being presented in the current leadership experience. I reasoned that I was so used to splitting aspects of my black self to accommodate the needs of white society that I was unable to operate as a congruent black leader in this white organisation. What I suspect was required was the reconciling of my black self in my white relations.

In an attempt to draw together what I have shared in this paper, I have chosen to present three personal vignettes and a dream to further illuminate my leadership journey and its relevance and impact on present-day black leadership experience. I also

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use the vignettes to convey the benefits of this type of interpersonal reflection that from a black leader’s perspective can support other aspiring black leaders in making deeper sense of their own leadership journeys.

The vignette comprises three incidents, which occurred in quick succession. All relate to the issue of operating in a place of knowing and feeling good enough.

(a) In a brief first face-to-face exchange between myself and my newly appointed white manager, she asked a couple of questions that I said I could not answer. With an element of banter, she retorted, ‘what good are you’. I received the retort like a psychological slap and, unable to muster a verbal response, offered an accommodating half-hearted smile.

(b) I was presenting a developmental paper to a group of white management peers, a trio of who relentlessly lambasted every detail of the ideas I offered. I could feel myself mentally shutting down, hearing their words in staccato, protecting myself from the onslaught of their knowledge and experience. Amidst their challenges, I managed to muster some placatory words to ease my inadequacies and to appease their assault.

(c) I had spent months contributing to a developmental project with an external partner who was leaving his agency. During a handover meeting, the exiting partner unequivocally stated to the colleague taking up the role that he alone had authored a paper. There was no mention of my contribution, and although I experienced the comment as an assault on my credibility, I sat in silence finding no words to reflect an alternative truth.

I wondered about my lacklustre responses in these and similar situations given my knowledge about being cancelled out by ‘whiteness’. I recognised the pattern of feeling under attack and shutting off mentally when overpowered by fear and anxiety and that this was an entirely internal emotional default that was constantly being provoked. Making sense of the experiences, I reflected on my personal history – parents treated like ‘pickney’ by white employers who nevertheless demanded their hard work, my secret life of language, food and self-care, my fostered white education, my being accepted, but unacceptable to white friends courting white boys, the exposure of being ‘outed’ as ‘black, black and black’. I surmised that these early experiences were being carried around in me like ‘micro assaults’ waiting to get stirred up and to stun in present-day situations (Alleyne, 2005).

I also reflected on how historic black/white slave relations pervade present-day experiences, evidenced in the white colleague who claimed exclusive authorship of the paper. Was the colleague operating an unconscious psychological default, presenting himself as the superior white master in relation to my representation as black slave helper whose contribution could be dismissed on a whim, without challenge? Or was I compromising my external presence because of deficits in the make-up of my internal black self?

I imagine these types of affronts are experienced daily by many black leaders working in white organisations. What I discovered here is the need to attend to these affronts externally as well as how we enact them internally.

I now turn to the dream, which occurred during my time on the black leadership programme. Until this time, I only had recurring dreams about being chased, of

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escaping, and whilst these dynamics remained evident within the dream, I was able to work through their deeper meaning.

I was chairing a meeting of white professionals, who openly ignored and challenged my authority. Two black workers also in the meeting talked discreetly together and also ignored me. Unable to manage the situation I went off to find and tell the chair, a white woman; but seamlessly, the white chair morphed into the black female leader of the Black Leadership programme. (Personal vignette)

Making sense of the dream, I detected that there was a childlike quality surrounding my ability to confront and challenge both white and black professionals at the meeting. I had the authority to do so, but failed to enact and portray ownership of the authority. Instead, I found myself running to the white chair who in my mind reflected the right white authority attributes to resolve the situation.

Further reflections challenged me to see the white/black woman chair as one in the same person – a black woman with black/white authority attributes. Yet, until this dream I had struggled to appreciate the possibility of reconciling this conflicted black/white split within me. In the dream, the white/black chair/leader representations crystallised the conflict between my internal ability as a black woman leader in relation to external leadership attributes that had been influenced and developed in relation to white socialisation, education and employment that I had experienced. I recognised that these things did not have to be polarised; they required exploration and understanding and an ability to act in relation to both internal/external black and white experience.

I have spoken in this paper about operating ‘as I am’ and in this vignette I illustrate how not feeling good enough gets in the way of this crucial aspect of growth and leadership.

I’d spent an inordinate amount of time perfecting a paper for which I required feedback from an external white male colleague. I approached most of the papers I wrote in a in a similar way, excessively writing and redrafting trying to anticipate all prospective criticisms. I waited for the feedback with my inevitable sense of trepidation. But instead of the expectant detailed critique, I received a simple affirmation that the paper was sound and sufficient. (Personal vignette)

Thinking about this experience led me to consider that my requesting and receiving feedback provoked an internal/external response. That is, whatever I produced could not be good enough because I lacked the internal resources to reflect ‘good enough’. I thought back again to my childhood and the lack of praise I received from parents who vested my academic potential to the British education system. This system was Eurocentric and predicated on the institutional racism (Macpherson, 1999) that provides that ‘yes you are equal’, but not as equal if you are black. I have already described incidents where I have internalised shades of these negative black/white relations. Most importantly, these experiences can amount and inform a black-hated self – one that is fuelled with uncertainties that seeks constant approval and that can never be good enough.

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As an aspiring black leader, early experiences and the negative internalisation of them can conspire to keep one in a perpetual state of anxiety about not being good enough. This can manifest as trepidation about the unknown and a constant psychological expectation of failure. I discovered this in my relationship and experience of feedback. What I also discovered was that trusting myself was a crucial component in understanding this aspect of my leadership experience.

Concluding thoughts

There is an African proverb that says, ‘if you want to know the end, look at the beginning’ and this is the approach I took in sharing my leadership journey with you. Writing this paper, I discovered how black deference in the 1970 – 1980s Britain operated similarly to the psychic stain of slavery that projects black subjugation and white superiority in the mind (Fanon, 2008). I also discovered the degree to which this psychological deference had permeated my internal aspirations about leadership and my external pursuit and experience of leadership to the present day. It was the intricacies of these reflections about a leadership journey spanning the past and present that I wanted to share with you – primarily in the hope that what I had to say might inspire other black leaders to navigate their own leadership journey from a position of deeper knowing.

Like me, some of you who read this paper will spend time occupying what we believe to be the leadership position in real time. In actual fact as my experience shows, we can occupy a position in relation to the ‘other’, operating competently and effectively, but privileging the leadership of white experience. I had to undergo a period of focussed interpersonal reflection to discover these things about myself. I examined how I engaged as a black leader, dissecting what I was thinking and feeling, what I was hearing and seeing in my everyday leadership experience. This type of examination supported me to see that the meaning I attributed to leadership situations were not all that I thought them to be. Some were dynamically drawn from my historical past, others from childhood, adolescent and adulthood experiences, but all heavily intertwined with my leadership behaviour in the present.

I think about the compromises made on my leadership journey from childhood to the present day in terms of ‘who I have been and who I am’ and this whilst operating within the conventions of white social, educational and organisational norms. In my experience, this has required some giving up around, for example, language and cultural style, but there have also been gains in terms of world experience, leadership experience and skills. Understanding this has enabled me to be more alert to reframing these experiences in order that they reflect and do not compromise me. My personal growth has been to present my black self rather than a self operating in the ‘other’ and in relation to whiteness.

Recognising, containing and managing the internal defaults in me such as those described in this paper, for example ‘not good enough’, ‘silenced’, ‘dis-guarded’, ‘furtive’, black in the negative’, have all impacted my present-day leadership. These dynamics exist within black leaders to a lesser or greater degree as well as externally in behaviour that surrounds and bombards us. I operate in a constant state of alertness and this may never change. What has changed, however, is that this alertness is now aligned with an acceptance of ‘self’ and operating in my own skin; and practically this means not

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operating in fear of black/white self relations. These relations can be reconciled by black leaders simply operating our own truth, expressing views and opinions in our own words and believing in them. In my experience, this has lessened the crushing impact of a received retort, a rude aside or a challenge from others because ‘this is my truth’.

Finally, if there is one message that I would wish the reader to take away from this paper it would be to invest in your own personal self exploration regarding leadership as it is this that will support externally in realising your leadership potential and internally in achieving your leadership aspirations.

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Billi Bartley was a student at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust

between 2009 and 2010. She is currently a manager at The National Society for the

Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Address: NSPCC 7–8 Greenland Place, Camden,

London NW1 OAP. [E-mail: [email protected]]

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