Doing the Right Thing

How would you describe your personality and behavioral preferences? And can you give some examples of how they shape your leadership style?

I would say my personal style and leadership preference is always doing the right thing. And it seems too easy to say that, right? It’s like, oh, yeah, we should all be doing the right thing. But you’d be shocked to find how many people choose not to do the right thing. They choose to do the thing that only benefits them. They choose to do the thing that only benefits a certain outcome that they want to see.

Doing the right thing is probably one of the hardest things to do in your life, especially as people are inherently selfish. People are inherently ego-driven. Everybody has an ego, let’s be real about that. But doing the right thing is a gut check to say, I have two choices every time, and what choice benefits more people than just myself? And I’ve always held that dear, because I think in the beginning of my career, I saw a lot of people look out for themselves, just themselves. And I think that through those experiences, I got burned a lot. I saw what it looks like to be on the receiving end of someone taking advantage of you.

Can you give us a specific example of that? Is there an anecdote here somewhere?

Yeah. I mean, when you are young and ambitious and a hard worker, a lot of people see that as an asset that they can leverage for their own. So whether that’s them just getting you to do the work for them, right. And in my 20s, I would do that in a heartbeat. I would work tireless hours, making sure something is done, because I just wanted to say yes, I just wanted to say yes, because I thought that that was the right thing to do. But then ultimately, when they go up on stage, and they talk about what they made, and what they created, and what they accomplished with that, and they don’t say thank you to the people that brought that to life, myself, you realize what you just did, and you realize that you were taken advantage of. And that’s happened honestly, throughout, you know, I would say multiple companies.

I’m not going to name names there obviously. But this happens literally all the time. And it happens even worse to people of color, and it happens even worse to females of color, and it breaks down even worse from there. And I think the more that we can understand that, the more that we can realize that, the more that we can counter that and say, “No, no, I’m not going to do this. But rather, I am going to advocate for myself to make sure that I get the credit, to make sure you understand that this is a partnership, and I’m not just doing it for you.” And I think that’s why to me, doing the right thing is making sure that I’m doing the right thing not just for myself, but I try to make an impact with every decision I make, on more people than just myself.