The imperative for a change in the ideals of “leadership”

The changing faces of organizational leadership

“The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie TED Talk titled “The Danger of a Single Story.”

From my late 20s onwards, I embraced numerous opportunities to manage large teams at various multinational companies. My initial and most profound leadership experiences were with Blackberry and Autodesk, two prominent organizations. Though I had led a small Design team when I worked for Siemens, it was not until I returned home to Canada that I grew into my shoes as a people leader.

At that time, and to a large extent even today, the majority of my team members, who I inherited from previous leaders, were white men, interspersed with a handful of “diverse females,” mainly of South Asian and Asian descent. This team composition was typical in the tech industry. Being a Black Caribbean woman, my presence in this environment was exceptional, adding a unique dimension to the teams I led. But it was nothing…