A Black woman I'll call Maya sat across from her manager, waiting for the results of her performance review. She willed her body to relax, hoping her nervousness wouldn't show.
Chuck smiled and began. "Overall, you did very well. Your numbers are excellent—you and your team exceeded expectations again. Everyone talks about how collaborative you are. If there's one thing I consistently hear, it's that you're easy to work with."
Maya relaxed. She was used to excellent reviews, and this one was even better than she'd hoped.
Then: "At your current level, you're doing great. However, for the next level, I would need to see more."
Maya froze. More?
"Everyone sees you as collaborative, but where's the leadership? The ability to make hard decisions? The mental toughness? I don't see that—and for you to advance, that's what's required."
In Chuck's mind, he's not punishing Maya. He's telling her what's required.
Maya left confused. She had worked hard for her team and peers not to see her as the angry Black woman. Through hard knocks early in her career, she'd learned the importance of gaining buy-in before advancing new initiatives.
She had onboarded that new unit with care—assigning each person a buddy so they could learn the ropes.
And now she's being dinged for not demonstrating mental toughness? For being too collaborative?
"Are you kidding me?" she thought. "I can't win. No matter what I do, I'm always being tested with the next thing. I'm in an endless audition, constantly having to prove myself."
That evening, Chuck reflected on the meeting and prided himself on his growth. He'd grown up in a small-town White environment and was proud that now, as an adult, he could easily interact with people from different races. He was particularly proud of hiring Maya. He'd known few Black people before her, and he valued how well they got along.
Yet her collaborative nature—the very thing he praised—was part of what made him wonder if she had what it takes. The leaders he knew had a more commanding, forceful presence. She seemed almost too agreeable.
True, she'd handled every new challenge he'd given her. But how much was her leadership versus her strong team? She was constantly praising them, celebrating their successes. She'd hired most of them, so he could give her that. But still—was he seeing their work or hers?
Bottom line: she didn't act like the leaders at his level and above. She didn't fit the profile.
Chuck sees a steady, collaborative manager who isn't quite leadership material. Her way of leading doesn't fit his mental model.
Maya experiences a system where her competence gets downgraded, her leadership style is questioned, and the next level is blocked by a template that doesn't contain her image.
This gap isn't a character flaw. It's structural.
The unspoken template of the "ideal worker" is still implicitly White, male, and forceful—the tough army commanders or sheriffs who whip everyone into shape and make the hard calls. People who fit that template get an automatic presumption of competence. People who don't have to earn the right to even be seen.
Chuck grew up inside that template. He's never had to continuously prove his basic competence. He can afford to take his own legitimacy for granted.
He gives Maya new assignments again and again, waiting to see if she'll bomb out. He prides himself on testing her, on giving her the chance to be tested.
Maya experiences these repeated "opportunities" as endless auditions for the job she already has.
He sees his leadership as inclusive and objective. She experiences it as selective and conditional.
It's tempting to call this "gender bias" and move on. It's not that simple.
Research on bias in professional settings—including the "double bind" studies and work on intersectionality by Kimberlé Crenshaw—shows that race doesn't just add another layer. It reshapes the whole pattern. The bias a Black woman faces isn't "gender bias + racial bias" stacked together. It's a distinct, intersectional experience. Being a Black woman like Maya is not the same as being a White woman in her role, nor is it the same as being a Black man.
That distinction matters because of how racial stereotypes silently code behavior.
In many majority-White organizations, assertiveness in a White man reads as "executive presence." The same behavior in a Black woman is more likely to be read as "aggressive" or "intimidating." Calm, steady collaboration in a White man can be seen as "strategic" and "measured." In a Black woman, those same qualities become "supportive," "nice," "good for the team"—but somehow "not quite leadership."
When Maya's manager tells her she's "too collaborative" and lacks "real leadership," he's not inventing those categories. He's drawing on a mental model of leadership formed in a culture where White male leaders were the default and where relational, stabilizing work was invisible or downgraded.
Maya's leadership style—thoughtful delegation, psychological safety, surfacing problems early—is precisely what makes her team work. Those same behaviors, filtered through outdated templates, get reinterpreted as "good middle manager" rather than "future executive."
She isn't failing to lead. He's failing to recognize leadership that doesn't look like him.
On the org chart, Maya's manager can point to her role and say, "Look, she's at the table. We're inclusive."
But every organization has two structures: the formal one and the Ghost Network of Unwritten Rules.
The formal structure lives in charts, job descriptions, and official meeting invites. The Ghost Network structure lives in who texts whom, who gets looped into early drafts, who meets for coffee before the meeting, whose name gets floated when a new opportunity first appears.
The most consequential decisions—who gets the big project, who becomes visible to senior leadership, whose "potential" gets recognized—are seeded in the Ghost Network long before they show up in formal processes.
Maya's role is largely internal-facing. She doesn't regularly present to senior leaders outside her function. She isn't invited to the get-togethers and informal chats where her manager builds relationships with his peers. She learns about new initiatives when they're already staffed.
When he tells her she lacks "visibility," he's describing a problem he helped create.
From his perspective, he's not excluding her. He's simply spending time with people he already knows and feels comfortable with. From the perspective of the system, he's reinforcing an inner circle that looks like him—where someone like Maya is always adjacent but never central.
There's a distinction between being a good mentor and being a sponsor.
Good mentors are kind. They listen, empathize, offer advice. They give generous feedback in private. They may even feel protective of people like Maya.
Mentors are useful in their own right. They teach the ropes. They’re just not enough.
True sponsors use their reputational capital and access to change how rooms—both in person and online—behave. They name your contributions in public, not just praise you in private. They challenge dismissive comments when they happen. They bring you into the Ghost Network—the pre-meetings, the side conversations, the early drafts—so you're in the frame when opportunities emerge.
From Maya's vantage point, Chuck is a good mentor. He's encouraging, even fond. But when promotions are discussed in rooms she's not in, he doesn't insist she be considered. When someone questions her "leadership presence," he doesn't counter with evidence. When a big assignment is floated, he thinks of her as the person who will "keep things running" behind the scenes—not the person to put on stage.
He can afford to put forward only a very few people. That honor is reserved for his Mini-Me’s, those who remind him of himself. He understands their hopes and dreams, he knows how they can be shaped, and how to handle their flaws. He understands them as well as himself, because, in reality, they are a version of himself.
Supportive in private, silent in public isn't sponsorship. To Maya, it’s abandonment with a good heart attached.
I know what it feels like to have a boss who doesn't see me.
Early in my career, I had a manager who didn’t see me. I didn’t know how to reach him, so I left after a year.
After that, I spent most of my career in academia. By the time a new dean showed up who believed our faculty was too insular, too theoretical, I knew what to do. Prior to her tenure, I had devoted most of my time to research, scholarship, and teaching – what all new faculty are taught they needed to focus on. I downplayed my community involvement.
This new dean wanted community engagement, real-world application. Highly political, she wanted us to become well known as a college and make a visible impact on the community. I made sure she knew about my community partnerships, the ways I was already doing what she valued. In faculty meetings, I started speaking about bringing real-life examples into the classroom.
I didn’t abandon research and teaching. I understood the institution we were in. Yet I was also finding the core thing that mattered to her and delivering it—in my own way.
Here's the insight that took me years to learn: It's not about accommodating on everything. That's people-pleasing, and it will exhaust you. It's about identifying the one core thing your leader is looking for and finding opportunities to let them know you understand it—and that you deliver it, in your own style.
When I was in graduate school, I noticed I got my best grades when I figured out what rang the instructor's bell. I'd put that in the paper—and then do my thing on the rest. Similarly, in my career, I found I could do my thing if I first figured out that core thing the leader wanted and delivered it. Then they became open to everything else I had to offer.
This will make some people's stomachs turn.
Why should I have to conform to them? The system is rigged. Why is it on me?
I hear you. And you're right—it shouldn't be this way.
But here's what I've learned, both from my own career and from coaching women like Maya for decades: waiting for “them” to wake up is its own kind of trap. It's a form of internalized oppression—the belief that nothing you do will matter, so why try? That story keeps you stuck just as surely as his bias does.
The system is rigged. And Maya still has a move.
Maya's manager isn't evil. He's unaware. He genuinely doesn't see the gap between his intent and her experience. That's not an excuse—it's information. It tells her something about how to approach him.
This can't be a single confrontational conversation. It has to be a series of strategic conversations over time, where she pieces together what "real leadership" actually looks like in his mind—and then shows him how she already delivers it.
Not by abandoning her style. By translating it.
First: Resist the internal narrative. The voice that says he'll never change, there's nothing I can do, the game is rigged so why play—that voice feels protective, but it's a trap. It forecloses possibility before she's even tried. Maya has to recognize that story for what it is: internalized oppression dressed up as realism.
Second: Get curious about his mental model. What does "edge" mean to him? What does "visibility" look like? Who does he see as leadership material, and what do they do that she doesn't? Not because his model is right—but because she needs to understand the lock before she can pick it.
Third: Find the core thing and deliver it her way. Maybe he wants someone who "takes charge" in cross-functional meetings. Maya doesn't have to become aggressive. She can find her version—perhaps opening meetings by framing the problem and naming the decision that needs to be made. Same outcome, her style.
Fourth: Make her wins visible to him. Maya probably isn't tooting her own horn. Many Black women aren't—we've been trained not to. But if he doesn't know about her strategic thinking, her relationship-building with senior stakeholders, her early problem-surfacing that saved projects—he can't factor it into his mental model. She has to tell him. Repeatedly. In language that connects to what he values.
Fifth: Call him in, not out. This isn't about confronting him with "you're biased." It's about inviting him into a different understanding. "I've been thinking about what you said about visibility. Can we talk about what opportunities might help me build that?" That's a door, not a wall.
None of this is fair. Maya shouldn't have to do this work. The system should change. Her manager should educate himself.
And yet—here she is. In this role, with this boss, in this organization.
She can wait for the system to transform. Or she can make a strategic decision to reshape one person's thinking—not by abandoning herself, but by translating her leadership into language he can hear.
That's not selling out. That's Conscious Change.
If you've been Maya—if you've sat in that review, heard those words, felt that sinking recognition that your excellence still isn't enough—I want you to know: you have more moves than you think.
The endless audition doesn't end when they finally see you. It ends when you stop letting their blindness define your possibilities.
What's one relationship in your professional life where you suspect you might be in an endless audition? And what would it look like to find the core thing—and deliver it your way?
If you read Maya's story and felt that familiar tightness—the recognition that your excellence still isn't enough, that you're still auditioning for a role you've already earned—you're not alone. And you're not stuck.
I can help you find the core thing, translate your leadership without abandoning it, and stop letting someone else's blindness define your possibilities.
Reply, comment, or send me a direct message. Tell me a bit about your situation. We can see if a quick call would help.
I've also created a Skool community for Black women leaders at the director level and above—a space to share our unique experiences navigating organizations. If you're interested, here's the link to The Black Women Leader Gateway.
If you're not a Black woman leader but this work resonates with you, I'm forming other communities as interest grows. Join the waitlist and let me know what kind of group would serve you.
Leadership in demanding times is my passion. I'd love to hear from you.
With care,
Jean
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Horak, S., & Suseno, Y. (2022). Informal networks, informal institutions, and social exclusion in the workplace. Journal of Business Ethics, 186, 633–655.
Mize, T. D. (2024). Competence perceptions at the intersection of gender and race-ethnicity. Social Psychology Quarterly, 88, 271–284.
Ridgeway, C. L., Korn, R. M., & Williams, J. C. (2022). Documenting the routine burden of devalued difference in the professional workplace. Gender & Society, 36, 627–651.
Warren, M., & Bordoloi, S. (2021). Going beyond good colleagues: Male and female perspectives on allyship behaviors toward women faculty in male-dominated disciplines in academia. Gender and Education, 33(7), 892–908.
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