A Black Executive Perspective now presents Need to Know with the award winning hyphenated Dr. Nsenga Burton. Dr. Burton. What do we need to know?

Good morning and welcome to Need to Know with Dr. Nsenga Burton. It is me, Dr. Nsenga, and I am here today to talk to you about the necessity of keeping personal lives safe. Separate from professional lives, and particularly when we talk about it from a black executive perspective, um, as you know, you know, being a person of color, uh, in general, a black person, specifically, we've said this, you know, a billion times. You have to work twice as hard to get half as far. You often are not given the same grace as others. And so when you make mistakes or have challenges, they are not forgiven. And they often result in your. Demotion or termination or what have you, while you have watched other people just fail up and fail upward and fail upward and fail upward, um, for whatever reasons, um, some of it's, you know, culture, some of it's racism, some of it's sexism, some of it's all of the isms, uh, but for whatever reasons, uh, and there are many. Uh, when you are in a particular place, as you're an executive, your CEO, your president in the C suite, if you will, when you are a black person, a person of color, and you haven't been there before, right? Um, you're not new to it, but, you know, we always say I'm not new to this. I'm true to this. But when you are in certain environments, um, and climates that are very different from where you typically move, um, or work, then the stakes are higher. And so we're seeing that, uh, particularly in, I would say as a Gen Xr, uh, you're seeing a lot of that with people who have really risen, uh, and achieved, I mean, amazing things professionally in the workplace. You know, they have transgressed every type of financial economic, I would even say racial boundary based on their ability to accumulate enormous wealth and access to resources that are traditionally historically hard to access when you come from a historically disenfranchised population. So when you do have the opportunity to get to that place, the stakes are higher in terms of how you conduct yourself personally, um, as it relates to your professional brand or image. And so you may be able to, so despite the fact that you are an amazing, Entrepreneur or an amazing business person or an amazing executive or whatever term you want to use. And you are functioning at the highest level of the profession. You know, you are an influencer. You are a game changer. You are a trailblazer. You can create a life. Opportunities for others. You can move in a way that most people are unable to move within your industry. And even to those industries that are tangential based on who you are and what you have come and which which who you are, who you have become and what you have built. But having said all of that. When your personal life is not in alignment with your professional rise, that's when you see the downfall. So, you know, a lot of people are talking about, um, Sean Combs, uh, you can look at Jeffrey Epstein, you can look at Russell Simmons, you can look at, um, You know, lots of people I'm blanking on the woman, um, who's now in jail, uh, who built this company and, you know, it turned out she was a fraudster and all the things, but, you know, it cuts across class, race, gender, all of the things, but what doesn't. Is the, what doesn't, um, you can look at a number of examples of real, of real world examples where this has happened, but you know, despite the differences in those people, the one thing that remains unchanged is if your personal life is not together, i. e. In lockstep pretty much with normative values, then the fall will be harder. Right? And so what you might think is acceptable behavior because you're an entertainment, if you will, entertainment, let me just say, as someone who's worked in entertainment and continues to work in entertainment to some extent, based on my areas of expertise and my skill set and what I went to school for entertainment can be a very. Disgusting place. And now when I think about the things when I was younger. Like, the only time I've ever been offered, uh, drugs, illicit drugs, e cocaine, or whatever, is in entertainment spaces. I mean, at work. You don't even have to be at a party. Um, but it is just a very complicated place. It is, um, you know, the boundaries are blurred between what's appropriate and what isn't in some cases. In other cases, it's just downright. Um, denigrating for women, I would say, most women, if not all women, and certainly people who are trying to get into these places and trying to rise in these places. And then there's a culture of debauchery. I mean, it's just point blank and this is not with did not originate with Gen X, you know, casting couch term goes all the way back to the turn of the last century. Um, and so these things have been happening, um, and they have been allowed to happen and to go on, you know, for decades. See Hugh Hefner. All right, um You know, because the business prevailed, right? So if you are meeting a bottom line, if you are celebrating a society based on your business, acumen and achievements, um, you know, in the United States, we worship wealth. You know, people don't like to say that I worship God. Yeah, a lot of us worship wealth and don't know the difference, but that's another, that's another podcast. So we worship wealth and things of that nature. Um, and so people who participate in these, um, you know, some of these heinous acts. You know, like, sex trafficking and things of that nature, um, are often elevated, you know, professionally, but what always happens in 2024, and I would say successive years, you're going to be caught and you're going to fall because culture has changed and society has changed. Right. And so even though. We don't want to go back to a time where we had these rigid, uh, gender norms and these rigid, um, uh, ideas about what constitutes a family. Um, you know, I'm not talking about archaic things, um, that are just, you know, Not really reflective of the society in which we live. Right. And have always lived, you know, quite frankly, but I'm talking about the illegal activities or anything that can be construed as illegal, um, based on behaviors that are just not normative. And when that bleeds into your professional space. That's how you fall. So it's not, you know, uh, people going after Mr. Cosby because, um, he tried to buy NBC people going after, uh, Mr. Combs because he, um, tried to buy BET or whatever is really because the behaviors that they've been engaging in are, um, not in keeping with what is not only, uh, consider appropriate for someone of their status, but also, you know, It is not keeping up with the laws and how the laws have changed and continue to change, um, you know, throughout history, throughout society, throughout time. And so if you can't get a handle on your personal behavior, then follow the law, and that should help you. Um, because the point of this podcast is to say that when you are working and operating at a higher level. When you become a role model, when you become the CEO of something, when you become a billionaire or close to a billionaire, the stakes are higher and the expectations are greater in terms of what your behavior will be. And so you can't do what you did at 20. For 30 years and think it's not going to come back and haunt you and get you you can't it laws change over time So even if you got away with it at 20, you're not getting away with it at 40 Definitely not at 50 certainly not at 60. You're not getting away with it Um, and so I just want to say on this black executive podcast perspective That um something we should always be thinking about is how do we represent ourselves in our personal lives? You What are the things that we do, um, for our community as we get older, we are supposed to mature and our behaviors are supposed to shift. I'm not saying that you have to be boring or you can't have fun or you can't be wild. All the things that people like to do what I am saying is when you reach a certain level, you can no longer do the things that you did previously. Even if they were legal at the time, and they're now illegal, um, because you should have outgrown it anyway. All right. So this, uh, arrested development that we want to stay in, you know, as we grow higher professionally, as we achieve more professionally, as we achieve more socially and economically, this desire to remain where you were when you were 18 years old or 20 years old has to go when it does not go. And when those things are not in alignment, particularly with the mission of your organization. You will fall. So without further ado, I just want to say make sure that your actions Align with where you are in the workplace if you have no desire to move up if you are happy You know, I keep seeing all these videos which make me laugh I actually send them around where people are saying what they will and won't do and i'm being demure today I'm not going to work today. Here's a song about me not wanting to go to work and all that kind of stuff Hey, that's cool. That's fun. That's fun You know, it makes me laugh. I think we all have some of that in our heads sometimes. Like, oh my gosh, do I not, why do I have to go to work today? I don't feel like it, but you have to do it. Right. So I get that. But if you have goals and aspirations, if you want to rise to the top of your field, the top of your company, you have a company, you own your own company and you want to do business with major corporations or government entities, uh, things of that nature. Uh, nonprofits, same thing that you have got to have your personal life together and it has to align such that your personal life does not become a problem for your professional life and vice versa, I would add. So thank you for tuning in to a black executive podcast perspective. So thank you for tuning into a black executive perspective podcast today, and I'll see you next week.

A black executive perspective.