Working Mother, December/January 2007

Hiding who you really are at work may be hurting—not helping—your career. Here’s how to show your true colors and get ahead.

The first day Mary Cofer wore braids to work, she was nervous. She’d spent ten years at American Electric Power just trying to blend in, with her hair relaxed stick straight, dressed in the corporate uniform of navy blue suit and pencil tie instead of the more colorful clothes she prefers. “I started at AEP in 1976. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964,” says Mary. “Technically, [African Americans] had only been human for twelve years. I felt that I had to assimilate.”

For Mary, then a manager at the Columbus, OH, firm, conforming meant concealing a key part of herself: her culture. She blended in so well, in fact, that when she spoke up in meetings with her white colleagues, nobody paid much attention. By assimilating, she realized she’d essentially rendered herself invisible. After a decade of trying to be a facsimile of her white coworkers, Mary had an epiphany. Ayana, her 5-year-old daughter, was being shunned by her mainly white Catholic school classmates because of her dark skin. To help instill a sense of pride, Mary took Ayana to a local African cultural center. “I felt so hypocritical because here I was, trying to teach her the value of her culture, and I was stifling all that within myself,” she says. “I had to dig deep and ask myself, ‘How can you expect her to model these behaviors that you’re saying are so valuable when you’re not doing it yourself?’ ”

Like Mary, many women of color feel conflicted about whether they can be their true selves at work. If they infuse their culture into the way they dress, speak and behave, will it negatively affect their colleagues’ ability to accept them? Will it hurt their chances of getting promoted?

Many companies, recognizing the richness that diversity provides, are creating affinity groups and having candid conversations about ways to make minority employees feel not simply accepted, but happy. But despite innovative diversity initiatives and equal opportunity employment, many women of color say that racism still exists, and that they need to fight negative stereotypes to legitimize their presence in corporate America. “Wherever there’s a majority corporate culture that seems difficult to infiltrate, there’s a pressure to comply,” says Jane Hyun, author of Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling. Whether that means stifling an accent or straightening hair, the goal is to make white colleagues and bosses comfortable by appearing to be just like everyone else.

Women of color we polled at our Working Mother Media Multicultural Conference confirm this. Almost half of the black women we polled (46 percent) said they couldn’t be themselves at work, followed by 29 percent of Latinas and 24 percent of Asian-American women.

Not surprisingly, being on guard and monitoring yourself so you fit in can affect performance, not to mention morale. Some experts suggest that the pressure to conform often comes not from external sources, but from within: “People aren’t closing the door on us as much as we’re expecting them to,” says Atlanta, GA-based professional coach Kelly Jones. If this is the case, how can women move beyond feeling forced to choose between dual identities—one cultural, one corporate—and simply be themselves? Can they really feel free to display their ethnicity and expect to get ahead?

Fitting in, collard greens and all
The key to being yourself at work is finding the right cultural fit. Six years ago, Katika Jones was the first African-American woman hired in the New York office of a small San Francisco–based merchant bank. Though none of her colleagues referred to her race outright, Katika says she felt the “energy” was such that she couldn’t be herself. “I had to hide my blackness. I dressed very plainly so that I wouldn’t bring attention to myself and was careful to stay out of conversations that involved politics or race. I stopped eating certain foods at work because I once brought in collard greens and had people ask, ‘What is that? Why does it smell like that?’”

Last year, Katika decided to find a company with more black employees and a culture that truly embraced diversity. She’s now an administrative coordinator at Citigroup, where she feels free to celebrate her heritage, down to wearing her dreadlocked hair in sculptured styles. “I would have enjoyed work more and been more efficient at my previous employer if I hadn’t been so concerned about standing out,” she says. “Now I’m able to focus on my work because I’m not worried about being something other than myself.”

Finding the right fit goes beyond simply identifying a company with employees who look like you. “When you’re looking at a job, you have to consider who you really are, and ask yourself if the company is aligned with your values,” says Jones.

That’s how Carla Harris picked New York City–based Morgan Stanley over other firms she interviewed with. She found a natural rapport with the company’s recruiters that made her interaction with others seem forced by comparison: When Morgan Stanley’s people took her to dinner, they talked about everything from interest rates to AIDS to teenage pregnancy until the restaurant closed. Carla, who is African American, is now managing director of global capital markets and says that during her 19 years with the firm, she’s “never been anything else but Carla Harris.” She adds: “In this business, where it’s all about relationships, being yourself means that you’ll be consistent, and that engenders trust.”

Like Morgan Stanley, many other companies are working to create an environment where individuality is celebrated as it benefits not only the employees, but the business itself. All 2000 partners at Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC), ranked one of our best companies for women of color, meet annually in part to discuss ways to create a welcoming workplace for minority employees. “We’re a public accounting firm, our success depends on intellectual capital and we want the best people, of every ethnicity,” says Jennifer Allyn, managing director in the office of diversity at PWC. Since 2001, when PWC first started seriously focusing on diversity, Allyn says: “Turnover has dropped and that in turn has helped boost our bottom line.”

An accent that comes and goes
Being your true self can be challenging for women of color who worry about being labeled. Many Latinas, for instance, say that assumptions are made about their nationality, class and education based on their accent or word choice. A consultant of Dominican descent who works at one of the Big Four accounting firms alters her accent on interviews and when she first starts working at any company to combat whatever negative stereotypes it might conjure up. On occasions when she has let her guard down and transitioned to her natural accent, people have made comments. Most don’t say anything negative, just “Oh, you have an accent,” though they have gone as far as to make inappropriate jokes about her heritage.

“Some colleagues and I were having a conversation about politics,” she says. “I kept quiet for the most part.” But when the conversation turned to immigration, she brought up the fact that immigrants make a valuable contribution, doing jobs that many Americans won’t. One of her bosses replied offhand, “Oh, just go back to your country.”

“He said he was joking, but I took offense,” she says. “I sit next to a woman who is Italian, and no one has ever told her to go back to her country. I was born here and am as American as anyone else.”

‘Little Asian girl’
While accents are also an issue for some Asian-American women, the challenges they face can be unique. Rather than trying to find a way to be themselves, they often must actually overcome cultural traditions to excel in the workplace. “Generally speaking, in Asian culture there’s a tremendous amount of respect for authority and a reluctance to self-promote,” says Hyun. “Asian-American women often transfer that respect for elders to their bosses, creating distance. In the corporate workplace, where you need to have really natural, informal relationships to create strong networks, that respectful distance can create barriers.”
Emily Chiu, assistant vice president at a top global bank, was raised by her immigrant parents and grandparents according to Chinese traditions. She found it difficult to call her boss by his first name when she started working six years ago, and since her family placed such stress on having perfect attendance at school, was uncomfortable asking to take vacation days.

“In many ways, I stripped my personality in order to feel like I fit in,” says Emily. Whenever colleagues tried to discuss aspects of her culture as a way to make conversation, she changed the subject. She worked late on Chinese New Year’s Eve when she should have been home for the traditional family dinner because she was afraid to mention the importance of the date to her manager, who knew nothing about the holiday.

Emily, who is petite and says she feels many might view her as the stereotypical “little Asian girl,” is now more proactive about voicing her opinion. She also projects her voice rather than speaking in a quiet tone. Still, she wishes she’d learned these lessons sooner. “I went to a New York high school that was fifty-one percent Asian and associated mainly with Asians in college,” she says. “I wish I’d branched out and exposed myself to a demographic more reflective of corporate America.”

The cost of staying true to you
Certain industries may be more accepting of diversity than others. Yet even in the communications field, where individuality and authenticity are often celebrated, being yourself can have repercussions. Fifteen years ago, Chiqui Cartagena. author of Latino Boom, was fired from a news station, a firing that she believes was the result of her being openly gay at work. She was called into the news director’s office and told to remove a picture of her lover from her desk. “I asked why, because everyone knew I was gay,” says Chiqui. “My boss said, ‘If you ever want to advance in the corporate world, then you have to hide this.’ ”

Chiqui left the picture up, and two weeks later she was fired. “I’m a woman, I’m a lesbian, and I’m Latina—what am I supposed to do? There are too many labels to hide, so early on I very clearly made a choice that I was going to be myself.” Chiqui moved on, and while she was job hunting, made sure to ask companies about domestic partner benefits. “It was a way of coming out in the interview process to test the company’s tolerance, as well as to find out information that was important to me,” she says. She is now managing director of multicultural communications for Meredith Integrated Marketing in New York City and attributes her success, in part, to being true to herself. Still, she says, “I’ve gotten this far because of who I am and the way I behave, but I also think that my growth opportunities may be limited by being who I am. I’m okay with that.”

Free to be me
When Mary Cofer began wearing braids to work, her white colleagues readily accepted and even complimented her new style. To her surprise, it was her younger black colleagues who made negative comments, afraid, they said, that she would be fired for being so overtly black. “When I was younger, I guess I, too, felt that I had to be black only after five and on weekends. As you get older, you’re not as fearful,” she says.

Mary is now director of culture and diversity at AEP, has long dreadlocks and sometimes wears Afrocentric attire to work. By being herself, she became a more integral part of her team, and rather than ignoring her, her colleagues now seek out her opinion. “By speaking up and acknowledging my own worth, I forced them to do the same,” she says.

Being yourself while successfully navigating the corporate landscape is a balancing act. It doesn’t mean completely ignoring corporate culture or refusing to partake in other people’s interests. For example, Emily Chiu follows football, even though she has no interest in sports, so that she can make small talk and network with her mostly male colleagues.

Your authentic self might be met with resistance, but so what? “You can’t become preoccupied with people’s preconceived notions or what you think others think of you,” says Carla Harris. “[Your company] hired you for a reason. Think about that, leverage that and find ways that you can use who you are to add value.”