May 20, 2025
The future of Black leadership depends on active involvement
By Tab Nkhereanye
You’ve seen all the headlines, think-pieces, and conversations in the media around Gen Z in the workplace. Corporations in all industries are trying to navigate a generation with expectations of the workplace, their career, value of inclusion in the workplace, flexibility, and purpose over prestige. These are especially magnified for Black Gen Z professionals, as they navigate systems like we did that have historically excluded them. These values aren’t just wishes — the culture is telling us where we are headed.
As executives, I believe that as a whole we need to do a better job at meeting the moment and provide framework to the professionals in our network and who are working with us to give them the tools to bridge the gap between to the current model and usher in a better way forward.
We can either double down on the current system or build new legacies by investing in the next generation. The future of black leadership depends on our active involvement in providing education, support, and space to have the next generation lead on their own terms.
Here are five ways that can help usher that environment and set our Gen Z colleagues up for success.
Understand The History
- To understand where things have worked or gone wrong and positively affect growth and change it is imperative that we teach our respective industry history to our staff. This goes beyond just showing how things work, but why they have worked that way and why the processes are in place. As a music executive this is especially pertinent — we have so many passionate young professionals who want to change the industry for good, but don’t understand how we got to where we are at this moment in time. To better position them to make the positive change to the industry as a whole, they have to use all of the historical context to then be able to adapt and innovate as needed.
Don’t Dismiss Cultural Capital and Lean Into Strengths
- As a leader, especially in the music industry, being able to listen to what is happening in the cultural conversation is incredibly valuable. Our young professionals are especially adept at this — this is a big strength that we need to lean into. This will not only allow for us to get a better understanding of what is important to those we want to coach, but also open up our creative capacity to make better business decisions.
Empower Ownership
- We need to go beyond just task-oriented assignments and give our teams the systems that allow them to operate and think like entrepreneurs. That means working with them hand-in-hand on projects where they are given structure to deliver results, space to take risks with guardrails and also learn from both successes and missteps. That requires more hands-on involvement from us as leaders, but when we can empower Black young professionals to solve real problems, grow critical thinking skills while also allowing them to see the impact of their work and build confidence.
Show Them The Big Picture
- Too often, young Black professionals are kept on the execution side and aren’t keyed into seeing the bigger picture of how that work impacts the bottom line — this can leave them feeling less than motivated and not as well-versed into how to deliver better results. With my team, I actively try to get them included in meetings that might be traditionally more senior leadership to have them listen in and take notes and contribute where needed. This helps broaden their perspectives and begin to think and execute at a higher level. This also is meant to showcase that their voice and insight are valued and respected.
Abandoning A Scarcity Mindset
- Real professional development doesn’t happen in a vacuum — this happens through us as leaders providing direction, inspiration, and a sounding board to those coming up behind us. In senior leadership positions as Black leaders, we have a duty to create a better pathway for those coming up behind us in a way that we didn’t have. This means making warm introductions, advocating to those behind closed doors, and pushing for our junior team to have a seat at the table. We need to create the trusted network that might not have been there for us.
We can’t just snap our fingers to have more Black voices and perspectives in our boardrooms, we need to actively invest in those coming up behind us. We need to educate, empower, and build frameworks that will allow the next generation to spread their wings professionally and be able to make the change they want to see.
