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This Black History Month, we can learn a lot about how to move through challenging times by looking back at leaders who have experienced their fair share of challenges, too. It takes bravery, stamina, guts and a vision to move through dark eras and emerge victorious. As a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) consultant, I spend most of my days helping companies big and small navigate challenges, and I often look to Black leaders like Frederick Douglass as examples of what resiliency looks like.
Here are three lessons that all entrepreneurs can learn when navigating trying situations in their professional and personal lives.
Choose the path of self-development
In challenging times, sometimes our best teacher is ourselves. And no one knows that better than Frederick Douglass. Despite being born into slavery, Frederick Douglass knew his ticket to freedom was through education. At the age of 6, Douglass moved to the Wye House plantation, where he was looked after by Lucretia Auld, the wife of a recently deceased slave overseer. Later, she sent him to serve her family members, Hugh and Sophia Auld, in Baltimore. When Douglass was about 12 years old, Sophia Auld began teaching him the alphabet. However, her husband Hugh strongly disapproved as he felt that literacy encouraged enslaved people to seek freedom.
In secret, Douglass would teach himself to read and write and once said, “Knowledge is the pathway from slavery to freedom.” Douglass taught himself how to spell from Webster’s spelling books and began to read and write with inspiration from posters on cellar and barn doors. In his later years, he went on to write three bestselling biographies: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an enslaved American (1845), My Bondage and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1881).
The lesson is this: When it’s time to evolve and change, choose the hard path of self-development for long-term growth and success. Whether it’s getting an executive coach when you’re feeling stuck, honing your fundraising skills, or implementing a new DEI program that stakeholders are skeptical about, do the hard thing that you know will pay off later.
Do and say what’s right — even if no one’s listening
Douglass was known worldwide as a vocal abolitionist. He spent two years in Ireland and Great Britain, delivering lectures on the need to eliminate slavery in the United States. Sympathetic Europeans donated money to buy his freedom from the Auld family. When he returned to the U.S. in 1847, he started the first abolitionist newspaper, the North Star, where he advocated the abolition of slavery in writing.
Here’s the lesson: Say and do what you know is right. In business, we often follow our competitors, copy what they do, iterate on it, and try to outdo them. But some of the best entrepreneurs I know chart their own paths, often swimming upstream, innovating along the way, and doing something that no one has ever done. In challenging times, these may feel like risky moves to make. But, these entrepreneurs focus on their vision for the future and do what they think is right, even if others aren’t bought in.
Related: From Faith to Politics: How to Navigate Difficult Conversations in the Workplace
If you’re feeling alone, build coalitions
When you’re stuck in a challenging situation — whether fighting to keep your business afloat or navigating an uncertain market — you can weather the storm by building coalitions and partnerships with those around you. Frederick Douglass did exactly that but with the women’s suffrage movement.
In 1848, Douglass was the only Black person in the room as he attended the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention in New York. When others couldn’t see the connection between women’s suffrage and abolition, Douglass spoke firmly in favor of a woman’s right to vote and equated the rights of Black men with the plight of women to vote. He often said that the world would be a better place if women had the right and power to participate in politics. For this era, this kind of partnership was revolutionary. Douglass wouldn’t be alive to see the 19th Amendment passed, but his allyship and advocacy for civil rights and liberty for all will never be forgotten.
The lesson is this: Build partnerships. No one in business can survive alone. If you haven’t built as many partnerships, alliances, and relationships as you’d like, now’s the time. Douglass understood that by leaning on a community of people who shared similar values and goals, he could elevate his cause and create collective growth. When times get hard in business, it’s the strength of your partnerships that will see you through.
Related: It’s Black History Month. Here’s How to Show Black Employees You Care.
Final thoughts
Sometimes, it’s helpful to look back in order to move forward. Looking to leaders like Frederick Douglass is not only an inspirational choice but a smart one. He was a man who struggled to navigate life in the era of slavery and rose to the occasion to teach himself how to read, write, speak, and eventually become a vocal advocate for freedom and liberation. You can’t help but feel that Douglass would be someone you’d reach out to in need of advice if he were still alive. He’s one of many figures in Black history who can provide us with a guiding light in times of uncertainty and turmoil and can be a model for moving through challenges with fortitude, confidence, and hope.
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