Abstract
The research aimed to gain understanding of the self-perceptions of black professionals in relation to business leadership, and how these self-perceptions influenced their behaviors, aspirations and self-perceived abilities in leadership positions. The study was specifically focused on black South African professionals. Black professionals were found to exhibit signs of deep-rooted pain, anger and general emotional fatigue stemming from workplace-, socio-economic- and political triggers that evoked generational trauma and overall negative black lived experiences. The negative lived experiences could have led to racial identity dissonance and, in extreme cases, complete racial identity disassociation. Moreover, black professionals were found to display symptoms of ‘survivor guilt,’ stemming from the shared history of oppression amongst black people in South Africa. The ‘survivor guilt’ contributed toward a profound sense of shared responsibility and purpose to change the circumstances, experiences and overall perceptions about the capabilities of black professionals. Results showed that upbringing, determination, resilience, black support networks, and black leadership representation within organizational structures were important ingredients that positively contributed to the leadership aspirations and success of black professionals. The research discovered that, in some cases, black professionals leveraged white relationships to propel their careers forward, however, this practice reportedly resulted in the black professionals experiencing feelings of self-doubt in their own abilities. Self-doubt, also found to be a result of historical oppression, could have and have been shown to eventually lead to self-deselection, negatively impacting the aspirations and career advancement prospects of black professionals in organizational leadership. Furthermore, the research found that black leaders believed that their blackness, specifically, its unique texture of experiences and history in South Africa, provided them with superior empathetic leadership abilities toward other black employees. Black leaders frequently highlighted the distinctive values of ubuntu as the cornerstone of their leadership approach. In addition, it was found that black professionals also considered their blackness, particularly the shade of their skin, to detract from their leadership opportunities, as it reduced the odds of being authorized as natural leaders, thus fortifying a skewed self-perception of their own leadership capabilities.
Highlights
LITERATURE REVIEWOur research aimed to gain understanding of the selfperceptions of atypical black professionals in relation to business leadership and how these self-perceptions influence the emergence, or lack thereof, in terms of their behaviors, aspirations, and self-perceived abilities in leadership positions prototypically held by white, mainly male, professionals
Our research found that the self-perceptions of black South African professionals and leaders could be diagrammatically represented as follows (Figure 2), a conceptualization of the emotions and behaviors of black professionals and leaders as well as the circumstances under which these are triggered that was systematically built from the participants’ own accounts of their lived experiences and the associated emotions and behaviors they exhibited, which were mapped diagrammatically using self-perception theory
Consequences of Atypical Black Leadership in the South African Context Representation Our findings revealed that black professionals and leaders find themselves extremely racially isolated within organizations
Summary
Our research aimed to gain understanding of the selfperceptions of atypical black professionals in relation to business leadership and how these self-perceptions influence the emergence, or lack thereof, in terms of their behaviors, aspirations, and self-perceived abilities in leadership positions prototypically held by white, mainly male, professionals. We argue that both political- and social power continue to fail to unseat the patterns of economic power and historic practices, embedded over centuries of oppression in South Africa, that ascribes white males to positions of business leadership. Decolonization does not mean ignorance of colonizing ideas, notions, traditions and structures of power – it means a denial of their authority over African thinking and ways of being, a moving away from blind allegiance to them and, in particular, in our notions of what, and which pathways, determine competent leadership
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