If you are reading this book, you might be the first woman of color in your position at your company. You might be the only woman of color on your team. You might be one of only a few women of color in your workplace. While these distinctions pose a whole host of challenges, they also add value—you are bringing something to your workplace that it very badly needs.

Being a first or only is a remarkable accomplishment. I don’t want that fact to get buried in our discussion of how hard it is. It is, absolutely, hard. And exhausting. And frustrating. I know it, I’ve lived it. And it is a big responsibility, while you might be the first, you don’t want to be the last. But being a first, an only, or one of the few is also something to be celebrated. You are breaking barriers. You are forging a path for the women of color who will come after you. But also, you are making your company look good. You look good to their stakeholders. You look good for their optics and PR. That’s not to say it’s why you are there—you brought skill or knowledge or experience or potential to the table, which is why they hired you. They could have gone with the status quo, the same hires they have made since the beginning of time. But the fact that you are a trailblazer reflects well on your company. You are making them look good, and it’s important not to forget that, because that is value. That is influence.

Understanding the full value that you bring to a company is important for a lot of reasons—it adds credibility to your requests for a promotion or a raise, it builds clout with your higher-ups, and it helps you self-promote or sell yourself if you’re looking for new opportunities. But it should also warrant extra support from your organization—if you and your success make them look good, then they should be helping to support that success. When it comes to being a first or an only, or even one of the few, it’s important that your company sets you up with the resources necessary to achieve your goals. And, if they won’t—if their promises to set you up for success turn out to just be lip service—it’s important you find that out ASAP.

There will be times when companies make hires or promotions to check a box. They’re getting pressure from outside and they want to make a quick change, so they execute a personnel shakeup as a Band-Aid measure rather than a true investment. They don’t do it for a sustained, long-term, positive effect. If you recognize yourself in this scenario, it doesn’t mean you’re not qualified for your job. Far from it. But it does mean that your company may not give you the resources required to do your job effectively. If you’re put in a high-profile position and expected to create great change but you aren’t given a budget or a strong team of workers reporting to you, how on earth can you be expected to do big things? What you need in this instance is important—you are making history, you are the first, all eyes are on you. You bring value as a change-maker. They need to recognize your value and match it with tools for
making change.

A lot of leadership promotions that fit this bill happened in 2020 and 2021, when companies across the country were trying to act fast and diversify in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the subsequent racial reckoning. But personnel shakeups are not always specifically about race or for diversity optics. Research shows that women and workers of color are often promoted to leadership roles in times when an organization is in crisis or downturn. In these moments, companies believe they need to think differently, so they put leaders in place who represent a change of pace from the long line of white men who have come before. But being put in charge when things are struggling does not exactly make for an easy path to success. The problem is what’s called the glass cliff: elevating women or workers of color into leadership positions when there’s a giant mess to clean up. We inherit the role at a time when there’s higher risk of failure—our hold on the top is precarious, and there’s a long way to fall if things don’t go well. Thus, the cliff.

If this is you, and you can tell early on that you are not going to get the resources or help you need—maybe you’ve been told there’s no budget, or that you’re reporting to someone who doesn’t have any power within your organization—then you have to take a step back. It’s hard, but this is when you say, “I’m not going to be successful in this role. I can’t take it on just because it will help the company look good.” Do not risk your own public failure for the company’s sake. Yes, you should always bet on yourself, but you have to be realistic. After all, your company is looking out for itself. If you succeed, they look great. If you don’t, the blame isn’t theirs. So make sure you ask the important questions, and make clear what you need in order to be successful. And if you’re met with stall tactics? If you ask what your budget is or what the reporting structure will look like or if you can bring in a new team and you’re told, “We don’t really know,” or “We’re not sure yet,” or “We’ll get back to you”? Well, then you have your answer. Companies are sure about everything else, so if they suddenly are unsure about this, then you are not going to get what you need to be successful in that role. You have value, and that value has power. Don’t give it away without getting anything in return. Because the alternative is that you don’t get what you need, you fail—how could you not?—and the company is not going to take responsibility. They are going to say, “We expected you to perform miracles with no resources, and you didn’t do it.” And then, behind closed doors, they’ll say, “Welp, we tried—that’s the last time we’re going to take that chance. Just look at this example; she didn’t work out, so let’s go back to the status quo.” You don’t need that. Sometimes knowing your value means walking away and saying thanks, but no thanks.

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Excerpted with permission from What Do You Need? How Women of Color Can Take Ownership of Their Careers and Accelerate Their Path to Success by Lauren Welsey Wilson (Hay House, 2024).

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