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Balancing Personal and Professional Life: A Black Executive's Guide
Episode 189 • 21st November 2024 • TonyTidbit: A Black Executive Perspective • TonyTidbit ™
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Episode Audio Link: https://podcast.ablackexec.com/episode/Balancing Personal and Professional Life: A Black Executive's Guide

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In this episode of 'Need to Know with Dr. Nsenga Burton,' Dr. Burton discusses the critical importance of keeping personal lives separate from professional lives, especially for Black executives. Highlighting the extra challenges faced by Black professionals, she explains how personal missteps can lead to severe professional consequences. She cites high-profile examples like Sean Combs and Jeffrey Epstein to illustrate her points. Dr. Burton emphasizes the need for behavior to align with professional expectations, and how, as one ascends in one’s career, the stakes become higher. She advises maintaining personal integrity to ensure professional success and discusses the cultural shifts affecting societal norms and legal standards.

▶︎ In This Episode

00:00: Introduction to Need to Know with Dr. Nsenga Burton

00:27: Challenges Faced by Black Executives

02:21: The Importance of Personal and Professional Alignment

03:17: Consequences of Misaligned Personal Lives

04:23: The Entertainment Industry's Dark Side

06:16: Society's Changing Norms and Legal Expectations

08:02: Final Thoughts and Advice for Black Executives

10:57: Conclusion and Farewell

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Transcripts

BEP Narrator:

A Black Executive Perspective now presents Need to Know

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with the award winning hyphenated Dr.

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Nsenga Burton.

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Dr.

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Burton.

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What do we need to know?

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Dr. Nsenga Burton: Good morning and

welcome to Need to Know with Dr.

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Nsenga Burton.

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It is me, Dr.

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Nsenga, and I am here today to

talk to you about the necessity

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of keeping personal lives safe.

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Separate from professional lives, and

particularly when we talk about it

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from a black executive perspective,

um, as you know, you know, being a

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person of color, uh, in general, a

black person, specifically, we've

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said this, you know, a billion times.

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You have to work twice as

hard to get half as far.

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You often are not given

the same grace as others.

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And so when you make mistakes or have

challenges, they are not forgiven.

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And they often result in your.

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Demotion or termination or what have you,

while you have watched other people just

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fail up and fail upward and fail upward

and fail upward, um, for whatever reasons,

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um, some of it's, you know, culture,

some of it's racism, some of it's sexism,

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some of it's all of the isms, uh, but for

whatever reasons, uh, and there are many.

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Uh, when you are in a particular

place, as you're an executive, your

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CEO, your president in the C suite,

if you will, when you are a black

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person, a person of color, and you

haven't been there before, right?

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Um, you're not new to it, but, you

know, we always say I'm not new to this.

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I'm true to this.

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But when you are in certain environments,

um, and climates that are very different

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from where you typically move, um,

or work, then the stakes are higher.

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And so we're seeing that, uh,

particularly in, I would say as a Gen

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Xr, uh, you're seeing a lot of that

with people who have really risen, uh,

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and achieved, I mean, amazing things

professionally in the workplace.

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You know, they have transgressed

every type of financial economic,

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I would even say racial boundary

based on their ability to accumulate

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enormous wealth and access to resources

that are traditionally historically

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hard to access when you come from a

historically disenfranchised population.

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So when you do have the opportunity

to get to that place, the stakes are

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higher in terms of how you conduct

yourself personally, um, as it relates

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to your professional brand or image.

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And so you may be able to, so despite

the fact that you are an amazing,

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Entrepreneur or an amazing business

person or an amazing executive

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or whatever term you want to use.

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And you are functioning at the

highest level of the profession.

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You know, you are an influencer.

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You are a game changer.

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You are a trailblazer.

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You can create a life.

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Opportunities for others.

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You can move in a way that most people

are unable to move within your industry.

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And even to those industries that

are tangential based on who you are

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and what you have come and which

which who you are, who you have

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become and what you have built.

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But having said all of that.

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When your personal life is not in

alignment with your professional rise,

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that's when you see the downfall.

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So, you know, a lot of people are

talking about, um, Sean Combs, uh, you

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can look at Jeffrey Epstein, you can

look at Russell Simmons, you can look

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at, um, You know, lots of people I'm

blanking on the woman, um, who's now

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in jail, uh, who built this company

and, you know, it turned out she was a

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fraudster and all the things, but, you

know, it cuts across class, race, gender,

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all of the things, but what doesn't.

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Is the, what doesn't, um, you can look

at a number of examples of real, of

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real world examples where this has

happened, but you know, despite the

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differences in those people, the one

thing that remains unchanged is if

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your personal life is not together, i.

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e.

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In lockstep pretty much with normative

values, then the fall will be harder.

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Right?

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And so what you might think is acceptable

behavior because you're an entertainment,

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if you will, entertainment, let me

just say, as someone who's worked in

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entertainment and continues to work

in entertainment to some extent,

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based on my areas of expertise and my

skill set and what I went to school

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for entertainment can be a very.

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Disgusting place.

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And now when I think about

the things when I was younger.

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Like, the only time I've ever

been offered, uh, drugs, illicit

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drugs, e cocaine, or whatever,

is in entertainment spaces.

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I mean, at work.

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You don't even have to be at a party.

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Um, but it is just a

very complicated place.

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It is, um, you know, the boundaries

are blurred between what's appropriate

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and what isn't in some cases.

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In other cases, it's just downright.

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Um, denigrating for women, I would

say, most women, if not all women,

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and certainly people who are

trying to get into these places

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and trying to rise in these places.

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And then there's a culture of debauchery.

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I mean, it's just point blank and this

is not with did not originate with Gen X,

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you know, casting couch term goes all the

way back to the turn of the last century.

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Um, and so these things have

been happening, um, and they

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have been allowed to happen and

to go on, you know, for decades.

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See Hugh Hefner.

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All right, um You know, because

the business prevailed, right?

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So if you are meeting a bottom line,

if you are celebrating a society

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based on your business, acumen and

achievements, um, you know, in the

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United States, we worship wealth.

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You know, people don't like

to say that I worship God.

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Yeah, a lot of us worship wealth and

don't know the difference, but that's

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another, that's another podcast.

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So we worship wealth and

things of that nature.

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Um, and so people who participate

in these, um, you know,

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some of these heinous acts.

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You know, like, sex trafficking and

things of that nature, um, are often

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elevated, you know, professionally,

but what always happens in:

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and I would say successive years,

you're going to be caught and you're

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going to fall because culture has

changed and society has changed.

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Right.

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And so even though.

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We don't want to go back to a time

where we had these rigid, uh, gender

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norms and these rigid, um, uh, ideas

about what constitutes a family.

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Um, you know, I'm not talking about

archaic things, um, that are just,

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you know, Not really reflective

of the society in which we live.

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Right.

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And have always lived, you know, quite

frankly, but I'm talking about the

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illegal activities or anything that can

be construed as illegal, um, based on

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behaviors that are just not normative.

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And when that bleeds into

your professional space.

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That's how you fall.

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So it's not, you know,

uh, people going after Mr.

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Cosby because, um, he tried to buy

NBC people going after, uh, Mr.

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Combs because he, um, tried to buy BET or

whatever is really because the behaviors

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that they've been engaging in are, um,

not in keeping with what is not only,

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uh, consider appropriate for someone

of their status, but also, you know, It

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is not keeping up with the laws and how

the laws have changed and continue to

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change, um, you know, throughout history,

throughout society, throughout time.

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And so if you can't get a handle on

your personal behavior, then follow

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the law, and that should help you.

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Um, because the point of this podcast

is to say that when you are working

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and operating at a higher level.

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When you become a role model, when

you become the CEO of something, when

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you become a billionaire or close to

a billionaire, the stakes are higher

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and the expectations are greater in

terms of what your behavior will be.

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And so you can't do what you did at 20.

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For 30 years and think it's not going

to come back and haunt you and get you

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you can't it laws change over time So

even if you got away with it at 20,

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you're not getting away with it at 40

Definitely not at 50 certainly not at 60.

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You're not getting away with it Um,

and so I just want to say on this

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black executive podcast perspective

That um something we should always be

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thinking about is how do we represent

ourselves in our personal lives?

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You What are the things that we

do, um, for our community as we get

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older, we are supposed to mature and

our behaviors are supposed to shift.

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I'm not saying that you have

to be boring or you can't

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have fun or you can't be wild.

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All the things that people like to do

what I am saying is when you reach a

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certain level, you can no longer do

the things that you did previously.

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Even if they were legal at the time,

and they're now illegal, um, because

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you should have outgrown it anyway.

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All right.

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So this, uh, arrested development

that we want to stay in, you know,

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as we grow higher professionally, as

we achieve more professionally, as we

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achieve more socially and economically,

this desire to remain where you were

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when you were 18 years old or 20 years

old has to go when it does not go.

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And when those things are not in

alignment, particularly with the

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mission of your organization.

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You will fall.

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So without further ado, I just want to

say make sure that your actions Align

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with where you are in the workplace if

you have no desire to move up if you are

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happy You know, I keep seeing all these

videos which make me laugh I actually

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send them around where people are saying

what they will and won't do and i'm being

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demure today I'm not going to work today.

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Here's a song about me not

wanting to go to work and all that

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kind of stuff Hey, that's cool.

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That's fun.

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That's fun You know, it makes me laugh.

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I think we all have some of

that in our heads sometimes.

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Like, oh my gosh, do I not, why

do I have to go to work today?

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I don't feel like it,

but you have to do it.

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Right.

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So I get that.

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But if you have goals and aspirations,

if you want to rise to the top of

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your field, the top of your company,

you have a company, you own your own

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company and you want to do business

with major corporations or government

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entities, uh, things of that nature.

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Uh, nonprofits, same thing that you

have got to have your personal life

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together and it has to align such

that your personal life does not

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become a problem for your professional

life and vice versa, I would add.

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So thank you for tuning in to a

black executive podcast perspective.

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So thank you for tuning into a

black executive perspective podcast

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today, and I'll see you next week.

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BEP Narrator: A black

executive perspective.

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