Diversity Done Right

6Stereotypes

The Help

I remember a time I went down to meet with one of my company's largest clients. They were located in Texas. We brought our entire team. We were all gathered in the conference room and the head of HR walks in and says “OK I'm ready to get started. Time is limited. Pour the coffee and pass these reports out.”

She was talking to me. She assumed that I was the hired help. We sat down and I said, “I know you're busy and we want to get started. I'm Tyronne Stoudemire, the cluster manager for your account.” She continued talking as if she hadn't heard me. She asked questions directly to one of my White team members, David (not his real name). David was so nervous. You could see it in his body language. He was working up a sweat. At one point he said, “You keep talking to me but I'm not in charge. He's in charge.” He was pointing at me.

At this point she said, “Okay, let's take a break and come back.” She got up and stepped away. Again, she couldn't believe I was the one there leading the team and providing her with the results. I walked over to her and said, “I understand that you didn't know who I was. I don't want this to stop us from moving forward. If you have a problem with my presence just let me know; we can try something different.” I wanted to make sure that I confronted the issue but in a way that didn't totally disarm her. She made an attempt to reconcile and apologize during the break and, ultimately, we became friendly colleagues over time. But ...