Leading Her Introvert Way: Conversations about executive leadership, career growth, business and mindset for mid-life Black women.

111: Why “Fitting In” Holds Back Black Introverted Women Leaders At Work

• Nicole Bryan • Episode 111

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If you’ve ever felt like the last to know, outside the circle, or fluent in the words but not the meaning of workplace jargon, this conversation is for you. We take on the “fitting in” problem head-on—why it weighs heavier on Black introverted women, how it quietly drains energy, and what changes when you choose self-acceptance over assimilation.

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SPEAKER_00:

Hi Lady Leader and welcome to this week's episode of Leading Her Introvert Way. I'm Dr. Nicole Bryan and I am your host. Well, hostess. Either way, I am the woman here behind the mic who shows up every week to have an important conversation with you all around leadership, introversion, and being a woman in this world of work that we all have to navigate. Before I even jump into today's topic, if you celebrate the US holiday of Thanksgiving, I sincerely hope that you had a great holiday. And if you do celebrate, I can only assume that this week you have answered the question, how was your Thanksgiving holiday? At least a hundred times. Because I have. And it's just one of those things that go along with being and working in a professional setting with other human beings. But I truly do hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We are all now heading into this month of December. I cannot believe it's December already. I don't know about you, but my goodness, I feel like it was just January 1st. But we are heading now into this month of December. And I think these last 30 days of the month are gonna go very, very quickly. And the holidays are gonna approach. And we are probably all in the midst of performance reviews. We're probably in the midst of budget conversations for the following year. We're thinking about our professional goals, our teen goals, and everything that we want and need to accomplish, not only as we round out the end and the close of this annual year, but as we prepare for the next year. And one of the things that I wanted to talk about is something that has been coming up quite a bit with my clients. And I know that I struggled with this a lot, particularly earlier on in my career. And I wanted to talk about it here on the podcast. And what I'm speaking of in particular is the fitting in problem. Now, I want to talk about what this is, why it hits different for us as Black introverted women. And I really want to challenge us to determine whether or not this is a real issue or real problem, or whether the concept of fitting in is the problem itself. And I think it's a particularly good time of the year to talk about it because I know many of us have engaged in feedback conversations from and with other people. And this topic of fitting in has come up. So let's jump into it. If fit is even on your radar, you're probably experiencing that you are not part of the in-crowd. And you may also be experiencing the fact that you're always the last to know about important decisions, business changes, and what's really happening in your work environment. It feels like you are on the outside looking in versus being inside with everybody else. You probably don't get half of the corporate jargon that's being talked about, even though you've been at your company for years at this point. You're still trying to catch up with what all these acronyms mean and what all the buzzwords are. And you've been there for years, like I said, and you're still trying to decode what people are actually saying. And more importantly, not just what they're saying, but maybe what they are meaning. You may understand the words that are coming out of their mouths, but still not quite getting the meaning behind them. And it's like everyone around you is speaking a different language. Maybe you've even gotten feedback directly that you are not a good fit for your current organization. Or maybe there's a gentler version that the organization may not be a good fit for you. And even if you haven't gotten that feedback where you currently are in your current role or in your current organization, you've received that feedback previously and it has haunted you. So much so that despite the fact that no one's saying that to you right now, you're wondering whether it is true, even despite you being in a different environment, a different team, a different organization. So those are some of the things that you might be experiencing at the moment when it comes to grappling around this concept of fit. Now, what you're experiencing is a little different than what you may be thinking and what you may be feeling. Some of the things you might be thinking are, I want to fit in. Like I want to feel included. And that is a natural inclination. You might also be thinking, I don't want to be on the outside looking in. I don't want to be ostracized by everyone. Another thing you might be thinking is, I am not like any of these people that I'm working with on a day-to-day basis. And none of these people are like me. But that is stuck in your mind. I am not like any of these people. None of these people are like me. And another thing you might be thinking, frankly, is maybe I don't really belong here. It's one thing to question it. It's another thing to start thinking it and believing it yourself. It's one thing to have someone else question it. It's a totally different thing when you internalize that questioning yourself. So you're likely thinking, maybe I really don't belong here. So we talked about what you might be experiencing. We talked about some of the things you might be thinking. You're likely also feeling something, some emotions related to this fit or don't fit concept. Like you're back in elementary school on the playground. I remember when I was in elementary school on the playground, and some days I felt like I was a part of the class. And there were other days where I literally was standing by myself while everybody else played. And that might be how you're feeling as you show up to work every day. It might feel like they are excluding you, like back in elementary school, right? They might be talking behind your back. If you are feeling as if you're not in the know, and not only are you not in the know about what's happening in the organization, but you suspect that conversations are being had about you without your awareness, then it is going to feel like you're back on the playground and your two besties are now best friends and have left you out of the mix. You might be also feeling like you are ostracized, like you are the odd one out. That may lead you to feel really exposed and very vulnerable. And you're exhausted just trying to figure out what you're doing wrong. If this is you, I want you to know that not only do I see you, but I've been you. And I need you to stay with me as we continue this conversation because we're about to flip this entire thing on its head. So the first question I have for you is when you say you want to fit in, what are you actually saying? Like what do you mean? Because I do think we should start the conversation out just normalizing something first. We all want to belong. I don't care what color you are, I don't care if you're male or female, I don't care what country you're originally from or your parents are originally from. We all as human beings want to belong. It is a natural ingrained human need. And frankly, there is nothing wrong with wanting a connection. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging that human need. But here's the question: who gets to decide if you belong or don't belong? Is it your company that gets to decide that? Is it your boss? Your colleagues? Or is it you? Do you get to decide that for yourself? Yes, as black introverted women, we have many differences from our colleagues. Some are physical. We're black, we're female, we dress differently. The way we wear our hair is different. The words that we use to express ourselves, I don't care how educated we are, the words that we use to express ourselves are usually different. But here's what we all often forget. At our very, very core, we are all human beings. We have more similarities to each other, regardless of background, experiences, creed, education. Regardless of those things, we as human beings have more similarities to each other than differences. And many of these differences people fixate on. They're social constructs. And even with real tangible differences, there are still opportunities to make connections on other levels. But we continue to put too much emphasis on fitting in at work. And one of the things that I often find myself talking about is do we really need to fit in at work? Like for what purpose are you trying to fit in at work? For what purpose do you want to fit in at work? Because remember, this is your professional life. This is not your personal life. What fitting in looks like in a business setting at work at the office should be different from what fitting in looks like in your friend group? These are two totally different contexts, right? With two different levels of expectations. So why, my question to you, is fitting in so important to you in your professional setting? And what does that actually mean for you at work? I mentioned before that I can relate because I have experienced this more than one time. But I remember the very first time I experienced it, I was working at Citibank. And Citibank, that was my first professional human resources job. And I was the HR person for the retail bank in Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island. Now, retail bank, all that means is the branches where the tellers and you know, where you would go and draw withdraw money before there were ATMs and all of that stuff. That is that's the business, the part of the business that I supported, right? In Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens. And I remember that as an HR person, I didn't have to show up to the branches every day. I actually had to show up to corporate, totally different building. And it was in Long Island City. And I was on a team of other HR people. So there were four of us on the team, very small team. And I was the only person of color, but I was not the only woman. So our boss was Joe, very nice man, very kind man, very smart man. Um, and he was the head of our department. And there were three of us who reported into Joe, and each one of us had a different section of the retail bank. We all did HR for a different section of the retail bank in New York. And the other two women were Caucasian. Remember, this is like 25 years ago. So I remember that I felt so different from everybody else on that team. I looked different, I spoke different, my background and experience was different. This was my first HR role. So at the time, I had just made a transition from my previous career, which was in procurement. So my professional background was different, but also my personal background was different. I was the only daughter of an immigrant. The other two young ladies were not. I was the only one who came from a poor working class neighborhood. The other two young ladies were not. Their parents were very affluent, thus, they were affluent. So backgrounds were very different. Even how I approached the work was different. I was very hands-on. I was in the field all the time. There was no requirement for us to be in the field all the time. And I know that my other two colleagues, they very rarely went to the branches. I spent like 80% of my time in the field, at the different branches, working side by side with all of the branch managers. So that was my approach. Theirs was not. Even though on a day-to-day basis, I wasn't even seeing these women. I was more so spending my time in the field. So I didn't have to be with them every day. But that desire to want to belong, that this thing of comparing myself to them was with me constantly. There were times that I literally wished that I could be more like them. But here's what I didn't recognize then. I didn't recognize that to fit in, I would have to strip away all the other aspects of my identity. To be included in the way that I thought I needed to be and that I thought I wanted to be, I would have had to deny every other essential part of my being. So I wasn't thinking I want to assimilate. I was thinking, I just want to fit in, I just want to belong. Without recognizing that those were the actual same thing. That's my story 25 years ago. I have a client that I'm currently working with, and she's a senior leader and she's dealing with the same thing. So I was at the beginning of my career when I was experiencing this, and now I am working with someone who is a senior leader. So she's a senior vice president, right? And she's experiencing the same thing. Now, she didn't use the words fitting in, but when she brought this issue to me originally, she was using the term wanting to be respected. And I'm sure you can relate because one of the things that we as Black introverted women deal with regularly is we are not feeling like our colleagues respect us or the organization respect our talents. And so was this senior leader. She was talking about wanting to be respected. Now, wanting to be respected is different than wanting to be in on what's happening with the business. And so how I, how we got to what she was really struggling with is I started to just ask a lot of questions. I was just curious in terms of what she was experiencing, what was causing this kind of deep desire to be respected, what were the examples she could share with me in terms of when she wasn't respected. And once we started digging, it became clear that what she was labeling as disrespect really wasn't disrespect. So she was feeling as if she was being excluded and not knowing what's happening with the business. She felt like she was the last to know things. And those are valid concerns. But then when we described and she got the opportunity to describe what fitting in looked like to her, she actually started talking about not being able to or not being included in kind of the gatherings before the meetings and after the meetings, not hanging out and being a part of the clique that things seem to revolve around at work, not being part of that inner circle socially. Well, here's what I had to challenge with her. That has nothing to do with whether you're respected as a contributor. Being part of the in-crowd at work, being invited to hang out outside of work, that has nothing to do with whether the organization sees you as a potential senior leader. So she was conflating social belonging with professional value. And that's the track. When black introverted women try to fit in, there's a number of things that happen, but here's the top of the chain in terms of what happens. When we try to fit in, we literally shrink ourselves. We have to. We have to. Because most of the environments that we are working in, the people like us, the people who look like us, talk like us, experience the world like us, are not the dominant individuals there. We're not the majority in the work environments that we're in. So when we're trying to fit in, we're trying to conform in ourselves or reshape ourselves in a way that better aligns with the people around us. We have to shrink ourselves. We also find ourselves code switching all the time. Most often it's not even intentional. It just happens. We alter the way we speak, we may alter the way we dress. We may alter the way we do our hair, all of these things in terms of code switching to fit in. Another thing, particularly from the introvert part of ourselves, we will hide our perspectives and we have opinions. Listen, I haven't met a black woman yet who doesn't have a lot of opinions. I don't care if she's a quiet person or she is a louder person. I don't care if she's an introvert or an extrovert. I don't care if she's from Africa, the Caribbean, or the United States. I have not met a black woman who doesn't have strong opinions. But when we're trying to fit in in our work environments, we hide those opinions. We downplay our perspectives. And we'll even go so far as to adopt the leadership style that is soft pedaling it, that doesn't necessarily work for us. But we believe, we think that that's what the organization wants. So that's the leadership style that we adapt. We'll exhaust ourselves trying to be someone we're not. And you know what? Even when we do all of those things, we still don't feel like we fit in. So what does that mean? It means that the standard that we're trying to fit into, it wasn't designed with us in mind. It wasn't designed for us. It wasn't designed by us. Fitting in often means fitting into someone else's definition of professional, of leader, of valuable. And for black women specifically, there's often this unspoken expectation to assimilate, to minimize our blackness, our different perspectives, our different ways of showing up. And for introverts, there's a pressure to be more extroverted, more out there, more like the louder voices in the room. And when I see this over and over and over again, it puts me in the position to have to hold up the mirror and challenge what's happening. Because I would love to say that it's everybody else who's talking about fitting in, that it's everybody else, our white counterparts, for example, who are forcing us to want to assimilate. But it's not. It is not. It is not. We may convince ourselves that others are making us do these things. But honestly, sis, I've got to ask you to pause and really think about it. Is it everybody else who's forcing you to want to fit in? Or is that you who wants to fit in? Even if you've gotten the feedback that maybe you don't fit here, have you internalized that? Have you said, you know what? They're right. I don't fit in here. And if you have, what the hell are we talking about? What does fitting in mean? And why is fitting in so important? You have to start challenging what it is you actually want in terms of fitting in and why you want it. Are you at work to make friends? Are you at work to make a living? Are you at work to ha ha and kiki it? Are you at work to make an impact? Are you at work to make a difference? Or you are are you at work not to be different? What is it that you are searching for here when you are looking to fit in? You will lose yourself and you still don't get promoted when you try to fit in. Because you're so busy trying to fit in that you're not showing yourself, your colleagues, your boss, the organization what it is that actually makes you valuable. You are performing for fit instead of demonstrating leadership. And maybe the problem isn't that you don't fit. Maybe the problem is that you're trying to fit into something that was never meant for you. And I don't mean you don't belong in corporate or in your nonprofit or in your startup or in leadership. I mean that the definition of fit is completely outdated. It's extremely narrow. And frankly, it's bullshit. So what if you stopped trying to fit in? What if instead of fitting in, you focused on self-acceptance, accepting that you are different, accepting that your differences are actually your strategic advantage. And self-acceptance can look a variety of different ways. It could be you leading your way, not trying to copy their way. It could be you bringing perspectives that they don't have. And that's why your perspective is so valuable. It could be and look like you showing up as you instead of code switching your way through every interaction. It could look like you positioning yourself as the leader who brings something different to the table and something that they need, even when they don't understand and realize yet that they need it. So, what happened when my client made this shift and she stopped trying to fit in? She stopped trying to be in the before and after meeting crowd because it wasn't serving her. She would come to the meeting on time, but she stopped trying to show up 15 minutes in advance so she could, you know, chit-chat with everybody. She showed up two, three minutes in advance, said her hellos, greeted everybody, and got down to business. She also started focusing on being undeniable in the actual work. She focused on her craft and what she was able to contribute to the organization and to her team. She started bringing her full perspective to strategy conversations, not just the whitewashed part of the dialogue. She started to bring in her experiences from childhood, her experience as a customer of her company, her experiences from friends and family members who also leveraged the products. She was bringing in all of this into the strategy conversations that were forward-looking for the company. And she started to lead in a way that she felt more like herself. She was being true to who she really was. And all of this helped to position her as someone who saw things that other people missed because she was connecting the dots in only the way that she could connect the dots. As you can imagine, six months in, she actually got her role extended. So she wasn't promoted to another level. She was already a senior VP. She got an expanded role where she became eligible for more stock options and she got a$43,000 bump in salary, and her annual bonus went up 10%. So all of this, in terms of her stop trying to fit in, allowed her to start focusing on the more important things. And she was able to actually prove to herself that fitting in wasn't the thing that was going to get her movement in her career. Not fitting in was the thing that actually got her movement in her career. And so all of this happened not because she finally fit in, but because she stopped trying to fit in. Look, companies say that they want diversity. And when they say they want diversity, some of them actually do. Some don't want diversity, but what they actually need is different. They need different perspectives, they need different approaches, and they need different kinds of leaders. But only if you're willing to show up as yourself. If you're busy trying to fit in, you're never going to be in a position where you give them, give the company, give yourself what is actually needed. So I want to ask you a question as we wrap up this episode. And I want you to sit with this question or series of questions, I should say. And if you haven't pulled out a pen by now, pull out a pen, piece of paper, your note apps, and write these things down because I really do want you to reflect on these. The first question I have for you is how much energy are you wasting right now trying to fit in? And by energy, I mean your thoughts, your feelings, your actions. How much energy are you wasting trying to fit in? And then what would happen if you redirected that energy into self-acceptance? I'm not saying that the organization has to accept you. Because frankly, how are you expecting the organization to accept you if you're not able to accept yourself? It's a conversation I've had with my ex several times, which is how are you expecting someone to love you if you don't love yourself? If you're not able to show people how to treat you, how do you expect people to treat you well? It's the same concept. If you don't accept yourself, love yourself, show up as yourself, how are you expecting the organization, your boss, your team to embrace you as you are? And how are you becoming undeniable at what you do? How are you showing up as yourself? Or how can you start showing up as yourself? Because here's what I know you might never fit in in the way that you think you want to. I know I never did. Back as when I was the HR person at Citibank for the Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Queens branches, I was in. That role for three and a half years, I never fit in the way I thought I wanted to fit in. And so you'll never fit in. But I'll tell you what I did do. I didn't fit in, but I stood out. And so can you. And when you stand out, that means you become memorable, you become different, you become undeniable. And that, my friend, is what will get you promoted. Fitting in is real comfortable. That's really what you're trying to do. You're trying to get more comfortable at work. When you fit in, you're trying to have other people wrap their proverbial arms around you and include you in things. Fitting in, it feels real comfortable. But self-acceptance is uber powerful. And power, my friend, is what gets you to the executive table. Okay. So listen, as we wrap up, I really want you to think about those things that we talked about. I want you to reflect on the questions that I asked you. And there's going to be a few things coming up in the next couple of weeks. Just to preview it, uh, mid-January, I'm going to be hosting a webinar and it's going to be focused all on how to get promoted as a Black introverted woman to the executive level. So if you are someone who's already thinking about 2026 and making the career move that you want and that you need for yourself, then make sure you stay tuned. Follow me on LinkedIn, subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already done it, so that you can be the first to hear about when this workshop is going to be happening in mid-January. The other thing is my leader lowdown community is growing. And if you want to continue these conversations offline, if you want to be a part of my small but mighty leader lowdown community and you want to be a part of the weekly series where we talk more in depth on these topics, then definitely go to the show notes, click the link, and sign up for my leader lowdown community. I am on a mission to continue to build and create a community of Black introverted women who are ambitious and who are ready to take over. That's right, I said take over, take over the world of work by getting ourselves into senior leadership and executive positions and who also want to do it without sacrificing who we are and where we come from. So if that's you, then I would love for you to be a part of my community on an ongoing basis. And in the meantime, keep leading your introvert way.