The 5 “Ruth BIPOC Sponsorship Commandments”
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve at least heard of the Netlix TV phenomenon - Ozark. At current time, I’ve lost several hours of meaningful sleep attempting to catch my wife at the series 4 mark of this compulsive train wreck of a TV show.
The combination of salacious crime, mischief, intrigue, and an unheralded display of White Privelege, makes this show, for a person of color, addictive yet oh so frustrating! A world turned upside down in the face of a quite self indulged suburban White family’s vacuum of poor yet, somehow acceptable and often celebrated decisions, is as much fiction as it is true life.
While there’s so much to explore within this show, each time I turn on my Roku to trade away a few useful hours of productivity with that of my new $17.99 monthly Netflix subscription, I find myself watching a twisted form of office politics and corporate culture, “ruthlessly” seeking a happy ending for the show’s closest representation of a meaningful BIPOC character narrative - Ruth Langmore.
I must be confused yeah? Ruth Langmore is a souther White blue collar young lady. She hasn’t a friend of color in sight. Her twang perks the ear as much as any Confederate Flag waiving “patriot” there ever was. BUT…but…SHE is the embodiment of the BIPOC story of trial, tribulation, and discovery within our modern day corporate world.
A close look at all that Ruth represents, experiences, and delivers creates a glaringly obvious set of rules for not only the BIPOC professional experience, but how to be a true sponsor of a great yet maybe underestimated talent like our friend Ruth Langmore. Take a seat, grab a pen, and breath in what should be now known as the “5 Ruth BIPOC Sponsorship Commandments”.
Rule Nombre Uno: Game must recognize Game:
To the common eye, Ruth, like many BIPOC talent, comes from an unfamiliar background as compared to their White, influential and likely more fortunate counterparts. Ruth comes from a place where her skills, her ability to bring people together, to create a plan, to find loopholes and “get it done” are often seen as misunderstood, less valuable, less applicable and possibly dangerous by most in power. The lack of cultural understanding makes it almost impossible for monolithic corporate cultures to see the value and parallels in a “Ruth-like” talent’s value and skills to the corporation’s future. It takes an unconventional, strategic, and maybe even “opportunist” leader (Marty maybe?) to look deeper and see the shine of a diamond, when everyone else sees a useless rock. A leader that while privileged, actually understands the risk and rules of “the game”, is able to see their own fault and imperfections in that game, and place a mutually beneficial bet on the table, that will not only help that talent, but if played carefully, help their own career.
Rule #2: See past failure as a gateway to unrelenting loyalty
Ruth’s past of school expulsion, an incarcerated father, and petty theft may appear to be a reason to “not hire”. To “not promote”. To “not place in a leadership position”, but maybe their past failure, was less failing, and more poor guidance, poor support, and less supportive environment. Have you ever experienced the love a once forgotten and punished child can give when brought into a new caring and safe home? A love that, if nurtured, can actually turn into the most valuable loyalty your organization will ever experience. The key here is patience, commitment, support, and CONCISTENCY. Simply “taking a risk" on talent and leaving them on an island isn’t the idea. The game changing mutual success comes with an unrelenting amount of commitment and consistent follow through to each other. This creates a sense of real “belonging” and commitment to not only the organization but YOU as a sponsor personally. Rewarding your talent with real meaningful professional rewards (Missouri Bell anyone?!) not just spot bonuses, or “great job” - to show that their “skin in the game” for you can actually help you both achieve your goals.
It was once said…There’s no love, like that of the unloved.
Rule #3: Give access to the bank, not just the coins
Ruth’s boss, Marty, is a wiz with numbers. His every breath is attached to his ability to see the statistics, to understand the finances, the real skills required to run a business and keep investors on his side. In many corporate environments, BIPOC talent is rewarded with senior diversity roles, innovation roles, etc…. Rarely do we see BIPOC leadership near the finances. Rarely do we see sponsorship that literally sits talent down and shows them “the books” - how the money is made. This lack of transparency and trust leaves too much opportunity for growth, inclusion, and quite honestly “independence” on the table. As a sponsor, your role is to create the next true leader and that requires you enabling their access to the doors that have been locked to them and others like them for so long. Giving big titles, or big promotions into tertiary parts of the organization’s real operations (as we saw with Marty’s kidnapping and Ruth’s subsequent financial knowledge failure in season 3) results in overall organizational demise. When everyone’s ass is on the line, you need this person to actually know the real deal, setting up that template and exposure intentionally is a game winning formula for success.
Rule #4: Reinforce your talent’s authority with any and everyone
When the Mexican Cartel waterboarded Ruth and humiliated her family, very little was done by Marty to protect her. Sure, the local strip club saw Ruth as an authority. Sure Ruth was making more money than she’d ever seen, but when a real threat to her authority came into play, Marty her boss, could do very little to reinforce what was clearly a false sense of Ruth’s true influence and authority. If this wasn’t bad enough, the KC mob nearly beats Ruth to death and again, no real retribution is achieved. This lack of reinforcement creates gaps in trust, weakens Ruth’s ability to fight away calls for retribution - quite frankly she is mentally destroyed. As a result, Ruth reluctantly exhibits dangerous behavior, she becomes susceptible to poaching. We see this happen all the time in BIPOC corporate culture. A big client meeting, a public setting, etc…. You are the ONLY BIPOC person on the line. Your boss doesn’t have your back. Your sponsor doesn’t fight against the haters. You have a bad meeting and the rolling eyes control your manager’s gestures. The moment the company, it’s partners and clients catch wind of this slight inconsistency in talent support, all is gone. The talen't’s loyalty will wane, their ability to be successful within the organization dissolves, and we lose the talent to competitors or worse. As a sponsor it is your duty to shout their authority, with or without you in the room to everyone. To enforce your will in ensuring that their authority is adhered to - IF you really want to see the success you seek to achieve together.
Rule #5: Build a BIPOC succession plan like your life depends on it
If you’ve done your job as a great sponsor, you’ve built an invaluable future and likely CURRENT leader of people and businesses. They feel enabled, they feel confident, they feel valued, and they are blindly loyal to you. They’ve passed up on opportunities and made a number of personal life decisions highly dependent on their trust in YOUR presence within their professional career. But YOU have your own life to live. That “Gold Coast” dream life will present itself to you and you can’t always take your supported talent along with you on this next journey. There is nothing wrong with this - you’ve done your job and deserve the beauty of that “next step”. But as we saw at the end of Ozarks season 2, Marty’s fear, selfishness, and poor foresight leads him to a dangerous, life threatening exit strategy and last minute succession planning for his business and Ruth. While Ruth is a competent and loyal solider, Ruth, up until this point, has very little exposure to the shareholders, higher level corporate governance, and low preparedness for actually running the business without Marty and all his capabilities. As a sponsor it is not only unfair, but it is irresponsible to not actively prepare your sponsored talent AND more importantly, other leaders within your organization, for successful support of your talent upon your departure. Properly investing time, transparency, and strategy into this next phase of the relationship is really what closes the opportunity gap for BIPOC leadership and growth.
Well, as Biggie tells us “follow these rules, you’ll have mad bread to break up” (that one was for you Ruth!).
Onwards to season 4 of Ozark and hopefully more successful sponsorship of amazing yet maybe underestimated talent that can change the future of your business and those around it.