Summary: The Other: How to Own Your Power at Work as a Woman of Color by Daniela Pierre-Bravo

Recommendation

Women of color face a unique mix of challenges in the workplace, both external and internal. When striving to get ahead in their careers, they can have difficulty unpacking the relationship between the bias and discrimination they face, their internalized limiting beliefs, and the imperfect coping strategies they develop to survive. In her empowering book, Chilean-born immigrant Daniela Pierre-Bravo provides emotional insight and practical tools to help women of color summon the strength to assert themselves professionally and demand equity.

Take-Aways

• ​​​​​​The rules women of color follow to fit in can undermine their ability to lead, influence and exert power.
• Pierre-Bravo’s upbringing taught her to hide parts of her identity, as a means of achieving psychological safety.
• “Limiting beliefs” result in internal, self-imposed constraints.
• You will truly belong when you stop trying to fit in.
• Doing other people’s emotional and mental work depletes you.
• Knowing your “Why” helps you stay focused in the face of adversity.
• Use your unique voice to assert your value and build a community of professional allies.

Summary

​​​​​​The rules women of color follow to fit in can undermine their ability to lead, influence and exert power.

Daniela Pierre-Bravo was on the way to achieving her career dreams when she realized the fragmented parts of her identity has finally caught up with her. She was the first person in her family with a shot at financial stability and career fulfillment. Hustle was her default mode. When Pierre-Bravo felt overwhelmed by the chaos of her life, she just worked harder.

She moved to New York and worked unpaid internships and multiple jobs until she landed a role as a production coordinator for a cable news show. But Pierre-Bravo’s trouble finding her voice and second-guessing of her choices and value only intensified as she moved into that role of authority.

“I was Jekyll and Hyde in my own mind, allowing myself to feel these emotions, then scolding myself for them.”

Women of color, immigrants or children of immigrants learn to prove themselves through productivity. But they have problems reconciling the need to express and advocate their unique ideas with the need to show they belong and gain acceptance in a group that’s not like them.

Don’t criticize yourself for the paralysis that keeps you from doing what you need to do to get ahead. These feelings are symptoms of deep-rooted obstacles you must examine to understand what holds you back.

Pierre-Bravo’s upbringing taught her to hide parts of her identity, as a means of achieving psychological safety.

When you are an undocumented immigrant, you can’t apply for financial aid for university. You can’t get car insurance. Her freshman year of college, Pierre-Bravo was working multiple jobs and selling Mary Kay makeup door-to-door when she got into a minor fender-bender. She had to pay the other driver out of pocket, wiping out the money she had saved for school.

“A stream of nightmare scenarios flashed across my mind: Jail. Never going back to school. Separated from my family. Detention center. Deported. I squeezed the steering wheel until my knuckles turned bright white.”

This experience underscored a stark truth Pierre-Bravo already knew too well: For people like her, “There were no safety nets.” Years of operating in “survival mode” trained Pierre-Bravo to take advantage of every possible academic and career opportunity that presented itself, but it also taught her to hide her authentic self. She worked hard and kept her head down, making herself useful to her superiors and focusing on earning their approval.

“Ever since my promotion, something had felt off. I was doing everything to remain in the shadows and downplay this development.”

When you default to survival mode, your capacity for self-reflection suffers. You unconsciously adopt rules that you never challenge. You avoid doing anything that could confirm people’s prejudiced assumptions, developing a hyper-awareness of the impression you make and trying to be like your colleagues. You might avoid expressing a different opinion or disagreeing for fear of their labeling you an “angry” Black woman or an “emotional” Latina. But once you rise through the ranks, the very rules that enabled your success begin to sabotage you. Asserting yourself flies in the face of the strategies you depended upon to get that far.

“Limiting beliefs” result in internal, self-imposed constraints.

Limiting beliefs come from a lifetime of experiences of feeling “less than.”

Frances, an Asian-American colleague of Pierre-Bravo, was in casual conversation with colleagues at work when her manager told her she looked like a “China doll.” The manager followed up by saying, “You know what I mean,” essentially asking Frances to validate her comment. Though she said nothing in the moment, Frances dwelled on the comment for months. The remark made it clear that her manager – someone who should be her advocate and mentor – regarded Frances as an “Other.”

“If she had any doubt that her race, in one way or another, made her different, it was gone now. How do you bounce back from a situation like that and reclaim your power?”

Women of color and immigrants often find themselves in environments, in both their work and private lives, where they do not feel safe. To create their own sense of safety, they learn to follow unwritten rules that let them avoid situations that encourage other people’s biases to rear their heads.

Sociologist Erving Goffman calls this behavior “covering”: People with stigmatized identities take on the responsibility of downplaying that stigma themselves. When you feel you have everything to lose, you never call people out for their poor behavior. Instead, you hide aspects of yourself to avoid the alienation you feel when people reduce you to your ethnicity, gender or immigration status. You then come to view aspects of your identity negatively because of their connection to the structural disadvantages or prejudice you experience. You work so hard to fit in, you lose sight of what makes you unique.

“Throughout my life as an adolescent and teen, I had trouble separating my circumstances from my identity. I was falling prey to the narratives about my otherness that I believed others had.”

Pierre-Bravo believed that she wouldn’t belong until she proved herself to others. Beliefs of this sort result in internal, self-imposed limitations. Thinking your success hinges on others’ approval makes you dependent on external validation. The need for validation impedes you from progressing into a leadership role.

“It took years for me to be comfortable wearing hoop earrings at work at my corporate job, because even as a proud Latina, I felt like it was too Latina-looking.” (Lord, the internalized bias ran deep.)

To move past limiting beliefs, identify them:

• Reflect – Think about moments when you changed your behavior to make other people comfortable. Has your expectation of encountering bias made you turn back, rather than treating it as an obstacle to overcome?
• List your limiting beliefs – Trace those beliefs back to the experiences that made you feel that way. For example: “I feel I will be judged. I started to feel this way when…”
• Change your mind-set – Write down affirmations and action-driven statements that directly challenge these narratives. For example: “I am safe taking up space as I am. Going forward, I will not stay quiet for fear of criticism if I have something of value to add because I know my wholeness is important and valuable.”

You will truly belong when you stop trying to fit in.

In her book The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown points out that belonging never results from working hard to fit in. Fitting in and belonging are two completely different activities. Fitting in requires you to modify who you are; belonging requires you to be who you are. An internalized narrative that tells you that you don’t fit in can cause you to stick too closely to society’s rules and rules you created for yourself.

“Make room for a mentality that doesn’t require the permission of others. Don’t stay in your lane. Rewrite the script.”

Would you apply for a job if you fit most of the requirements of the description, or would you focus on the one or two areas where you fear you come up short? A career is a path you make for yourself. That involves taking risks. Bias in the hiring process is a barrier for women of color and immigrants. However, your limiting beliefs could cause you to hesitate and overestimate the risk involved in pursuing something you want.

“We’ve become so used to monitoring ourselves that it doesn’t come easily to us to utilize our differences at work.”

When you detach from a limiting belief, the skills you learned as “the Other” become strengths. Those who live as the Other can fit in anywhere. They are hyper-aware of their effect on those around them, a unique source of insight.

Trust your ideas and gut instincts. You might not fit the traditional, accepted rules of what qualifies you for a position, but you can leverage your different experiences and creative ideas. Take stock of the tools and insights your multicultural background grants you that make you better at your job, such as emotional intelligence.

“So forget being grateful, forget being ‘found out,’ forget feeling different. It’s time to show up as someone more authentic and aligned with who you are.”

Acknowledging your ability makes you feel strong and lets you trust in and rely on yourself. Be your own source of validation. Acknowledge your wins. Practice talking about your achievements out loud. If doing so feels strange, start small with something like, “I’m really proud of myself because I managed to…” or, “I’m really happy because I was able to….” Over time, this exercise increases your confidence and motivation.

Doing other people’s emotional and mental work depletes you.

It’s time to stop doing the work for other people who see a specific aspect of your identity and put you in a box. Their ignorance is their problem and represents work they need to do.

“Next time you’re met with an off-color comment, a sexist or racist remark, or a statement that makes you uncomfortable, turn the tables.”

Instead of hiding the discomfort that an inappropriate comment causes you, change the power dynamic:

• Mirror back what the person said to you with a question – When confronted with prejudice, ask, “What do you mean?” or repeat what the person said. This allows you to remain professional and forces them to register for themselves what they have said. It puts the ball in their court to self-correct or get more information, rather than putting the onus on you to explain or defend yourself.
• Eliminate the chatter – “Chatter” is what psychologist and researcher Ethan Kross calls the mental noise that persists after uncomfortable interactions. Pay attention to how you talk to yourself. Instead of thinking, “I’ll never fit in,” reframe your thinking as, “That person has some learning to do about my community.”
• Talk yourself through it in the third person – This helps you gain distance from a situation that has you thinking in circles. It helps you self-regulate, emotionally.

“Create your own go-to phrase to squash any chatter that could plant seeds of doubt. ‘Not my truth.’ ‘That’s not me.’ ‘Hell no.”

When you free yourself from the need to spend all your energy covering, pleasing and playing it safe, you release a vast reservoir of energy you can devote to propelling yourself forward. You can’t control the discrimination you encounter, but you can control how it defines the stories you tell about yourself and what you are willing to demand.

Knowing your “Why” helps you stay focused in the face of adversity.

For years, Pierre-Bravo worked hard and received stellar performance reviews. But she felt boxed in. So she began pursuing stories that spoke to her passions: reporting about marginalized communities and sharing content and resources that empowered women. The move away from “hard news” felt risky, but Pierre-Bravo acknowledged that these were the topics that fueled her – they were the Why behind her work. Sharing these stories provided a sense of purpose that career success alone did not.

Leaving your comfort zone gives you self-knowledge. Failure and rejection are an inevitable part of any journey; if you have a sense of the destination, you can walk through them instead of walking away. Put your values at the center of your work life. Become more strategic about when and how you work.

“You are allowed to be multidimensional, damn it!”

If you feel stuck on a hamster wheel trying to please people instead of focusing on long-term goals, try this exercise:

• Make a list of your short- and long-term duties and roles at work.
• Rank them according to your career goals: Highest rank goes to the core duties of your job, then tasks you take on because they will help you in your career – for example, if you want to gain a new skill.
• Now look at what’s left. Why are these things on the list? How did you become the go-to person to do them?
• If the tasks take away from work that builds your value, have a conversation with your boss. Remind him or her about the work you do and discuss how you might eliminate some of your nonessential jobs. This frees up time and energy for the tasks that best serve your goals.

Use your unique voice to assert your value and build a community of professional allies.

Find people who support you because your “Whys” align. Aim for relationship equity: The other person will vouch for you because they believe in your values and because you support them, in turn. Ask them questions about themselves and share your ideas. Explain what’s important to you and why.

“Just the thought of sticking your neck out before you feel ready can be terrifying, I know, but if you have a grip on the subject matter, go for it.”

Talk about earnings with people in roles similar to yours, so you can make reasonable salary requests. Discomfort with this topic hurts women of color, who may earn as little as a third of the salary of their white male peers. Going into a conversation about salary, define your objective beforehand and ground your negotiation in that goal, with arguments to back it up, instead of waiting to see what the other person will offer. Say what you want and then let the other person make the next move. Three seconds of silence gives you a better chance of getting more value out of a negotiation.

About the Author

Daniela Pierre-Bravo is a reporter for MSNBC’s Morning Joe and co-wrote, with Mika Brzezinski, Earn It!

Review

Introduction

In “The Other: How to Own Your Power at Work as a Woman of Color,” Daniela Pierre-Bravo offers a powerful and timely guide for women of color seeking to assert their authority in predominantly white workplaces. The book provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the unique challenges faced by women of color in the workplace and offers practical strategies for overcoming these challenges. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to foster a more inclusive and equitable work environment.

Summary

In “The Other,” Pierre-Bravo argues that the traditional workplace model is designed to marginalize and disempower women of color, who are often seen as “others” in the workplace. She contends that this marginalization stems from systemic racism and sexism, which perpetuate stereotypes and limit opportunities for women of color. Pierre-Bravo asserts that in order to overcome these obstacles, women of color must develop a deep understanding of their own power and learn to assert it in meaningful ways.

The book is divided into four parts, each of which focuses on a different aspect of owning one’s power at work. Part one provides an overview of the challenges faced by women of color in the workplace, while parts two through four offer practical strategies for overcoming these challenges. These strategies include developing a growth mindset, building a strong support network, and using one’s voice to advocate for oneself and others.

Key Takeaways

• Understanding the Intersectionality of Race and Gender: Pierre-Bravo emphasizes the importance of understanding the intersections of race and gender in the workplace, arguing that these intersections are crucial to understanding the unique challenges faced by women of color.
• Recognizing and Challenging Stereotypes: Pierre-Bravo provides insightful analysis of the stereotypes that often limit the opportunities and potential of women of color in the workplace, and offers strategies for challenging these stereotypes and building a more inclusive work culture.
• Building a Support Network: Pierre-Bravo stresses the importance of building a strong support network of women of color in the workplace, arguing that this network can provide a vital source of emotional support and professional guidance.
• Using One’s Voice: Pierre-Bravo offers practical strategies for using one’s voice to advocate for oneself and others, including strategies for effective communication and negotiation.

Strengths

• Comprehensive framework: Pierre-Bravo provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the challenges faced by women of color in the workplace and offers practical strategies for overcoming these challenges.
• Insightful analysis: Pierre-Bravo’s analysis of the stereotypes and biases that limit the opportunities and potential of women of color in the workplace is both insightful and thought-provoking.
• Practical strategies: The book offers a wealth of practical strategies for women of color looking to assert their authority in predominantly white workplaces.

Weaknesses

• Limited scope: While the book provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the challenges faced by women of color in the workplace, it does not address the broader social and political issues that contribute to these challenges.
• Lack of case studies: The book could benefit from case studies or real-world examples of women of color who have successfully navigated the challenges of the workplace.

Conclusion

In conclusion, “The Other: How to Own Your Power at Work as a Woman of Color” is a must-read for any woman of color seeking to assert her authority in a predominantly white workplace. Pierre-Bravo’s comprehensive framework and practical strategies offer a roadmap for overcoming the unique challenges faced by women of color in the workplace. While the book has some limitations, its strengths make it an invaluable resource for anyone looking to foster a more inclusive and equitable work environment.