I learned silence early.

As a queer, fat, Black, multiply neurodivergent woman, I learned that my voice was too much. Too loud. Too honest.

Even when I whisper, even when I covered my words in flowers and acquiescence, even sometimes when I was silent I was still too loud.

I’ve been the bad guy. And I’ve made others into one too. It’s a tempting and societally pressured response to many feelings of discomfort.

The problem with bad guys

As much as life might be easier, more comfortable, if there was a villian it leads us nowhere. We get to point the finger. “If they would just change everything would be better”. It halts real progress.

So I read a book about leadership recently. It was written by a white woman who’s worked for huge companies like Google and Apple. The book is called Radical Candor by Kim Scott and I really enjoyed it.

The premise is basically this: for leaders, there is an axis of caring personally and challenging directly. You want high levels of both to run an effective team.

Let’s break the axis down…

I did notice that I kept feeling behind this year. I do think some of that is a function of coming into the late part of my early career and I think some of it is more systemic than will ever be something that I can take responsibility for or action about.

But some of it is also that I am surrounded by people who are further along than I am.