Navigating Your Leadership Journey: Tailored Tips for Black Men in Mid-Level Roles
By Dominic George · August 2nd 2025

Happy Saturday! Word Count: 1959…15.05 minutes. Copy edited by Dominic George

Welcome to this week’s edition of the Vision Leadership for Life newsletter, designed with the specific challenges faced by Black men in mid-level leadership positions in mind. We understand the unique journey you’re on, and our goal is to provide practical insights to help you thrive in your professional evolution. So, lets dive into today’s topic and Elevate Your Leadership.

Black Men in Leadership: Discover the Power of Your Leadership DNA

Discovering Your Leadership DNA

Black men in leadership often find themselves walking into rooms where they are required to be many things. Strategic, but not aggressive. Competent, but not threatening. Authentic, but never too much. The deeper you go in your career, the more the room asks for your performance instead of your presence.

At some point, the game becomes familiar. You learn the language. You adapt to the expectations. You even become successful by their standards. But then it hits you, you’re performing leadership, not living it.

This is where your Leadership DNA becomes essential.

Your Leadership DNA is the part of you that existed before the title. It is the inner design that shapes how you lead, why you lead, and who you refuse to become in the process. It is not just about personality. It is about presence. It is about leading from your values, your culture, your instincts, your faith, and your lived experience, not from a script.

In The Authentic Edge: Leading Without Losing Yourself, I name it clearly: Leadership is not about climbing a ladder. It is about returning to who you were before the workplace tried to edit you. Discovering your Leadership DNA is not a branding exercise. It is a reclamation of power.

What Is Leadership DNA

Leadership DNA is the internal clarity that allows you to lead with consistency no matter what environment you are in. It is the anchor that keeps you from bending too far to be accepted. It is the compass that reminds you that your voice matters even when the room is quiet. It is the code written in your spirit that helps you navigate pressure, identity politics, and power in a way that does not compromise your integrity.

In the book The Authentic Edge: Leading Without Losing Yourself, I define authentic leadership as the ability to move in alignment with your identity even when your surroundings do not affirm it. Your Leadership DNA is the root of that authenticity.

Here is what your Leadership DNA includes:

• The lessons passed down to you through your culture and upbringing

• The values that you will not negotiate

• The clarity you have about your purpose and impact

• The inner code that keeps you grounded when others fold

• The emotional intelligence and spiritual discernment you developed just to survive

• The ability to see systems for what they are and still lead with integrity

When you lead from your DNA, your presence does the work. Your decisions have conviction. Your leadership creates alignment, not just compliance.

Additional Tip for Black Men: Name and release the personas you created to survive corporate spaces. Acknowledge the habits and tones you adopted to be accepted or avoid discomfort. They may have protected you but they should not define you.

Solution Shift: Identify one behavior that is not in alignment with your true self and consciously choose a new response that reflects your actual voice in your next meeting.

Why So Many Black Men Are Leading Outside Their DNA

Most of us were not taught to lead from identity. We were taught to lead from performance.

From a young age, we learned to adapt. We became excellent at fitting into spaces where we were rarely expected to belong. We made ourselves palatable. We became fluent in survival. And we started confusing that survival mode with success.

In the workplace, that shows up as overproducing. As silence in the face of injustice. As staying in roles that no longer reflect our growth. As shrinking when our instinct says speak. As becoming the “safe” Black guy because we have seen what happens to the bold one.

In The Authentic Edge: Leading Without Losing Yourself, I call this fragmentation. The slow erosion of self that happens when your professional mask starts to feel like your real face.

Leadership becomes painful when it asks you to perform without permission to be whole.

This is why discovering your Leadership DNA is not a soft skill. It is an act of rebellion and restoration.

The Cost of Leading Like Someone Else

Let’s speak plainly. You can succeed by mimicking others. You can move up. You can earn the salary. You can gain access to the rooms. But the question remains: at what cost?

When you lead outside of your DNA, you experience:

• Disconnection from your purpose

• Fatigue that success cannot fix

• Moments of leadership that feel hollow

• Quiet resentment for systems that never saw the real you

• A haunting sense that you have more to give but no safe place to give it

Eventually, your body will tell you the truth that your leadership persona tried to hide. The pressure will feel heavier. The meetings will feel empty. Your confidence will waver. Your sense of direction will blur. You will begin to question not just your role, but your identity.

This is the price of misalignment. And it is a price too many Black men in leadership are silently paying.

Discovering Your Leadership DNA

Discovering your DNA is not about leaving your job. It is about reentering your leadership with clarity. The kind of clarity that allows you to stop performing and start leading from the inside out.

In The Authentic Edge: Leading Without Losing Yourself, I offer a framework for leading without losing yourself. Here is how that begins:

Step One: Remember Your Becoming

Go back to the beginning. Who were you before you were told who to be? What values shaped your voice? What moments made you feel most aligned in your leadership? What did leadership look like when it was natural, not rehearsed?

These are not nostalgic questions. They are strategic. Your past holds the blueprint for your future clarity.

Step Two: Release the Costumes

You know what I am talking about. The tone shifts. The extra hours. The silence in the face of microaggressions. The hiding of parts of your culture to be accepted. The leadership behaviors that were never yours to begin with. Let them go. They served a season. But you cannot build authentic leadership on borrowed identities.

Step Three: Own Your Cultural Intelligence

Your background is not a weakness. It is an asset. The ability to read a room. The skill of knowing when to speak and when to pause. The resilience to lead through chaos. The relational awareness to manage up, down, and across with integrity. That is not soft. That is power. And it is yours.

Step Four: Align Your Environment

You cannot heal in the environment that made you hide. Audit the spaces you lead in. Are you celebrated or merely tolerated? Are you growing or just surviving? If your DNA feels unsafe in your current space, it is time to consider what your next environment should look like.

Step Five: Redefine the Narrative

You are not just a high performer. You are not just a team player. You are not just goal oriented. Those are the labels given to leaders they want to promote without having to understand. Rewrite your executive story. Include your values. Your voice. Your vision. Speak in the language of alignment, not assimilation.

What Happens When You Lead from DNA

When you are clear on your Leadership DNA, your presence shifts. Your strategy sharpens. You start building legacy, not just chasing leadership.

• You start saying no to misaligned yeses

• You attract aligned teams and repel dysfunctional cultures

• You become the standard instead of chasing one

• You lead with authority that does not depend on permission

• You build careers, organizations, and systems that reflect your soul

The Authentic Edge: Leading Without Losing Yourself is not a theory. It is a practice. It is a lifelong commitment to leading in a way that never asks you to leave yourself behind.

Additional Tip for Black Men: Redefine the environment you need to grow and lead fully. Leadership is not about enduring misaligned spaces. It is about creating or finding spaces where your identity and impact can thrive together.

Solution Shift: Audit your current role by asking yourself if it honors your growth and voice. If not, begin exploring new environments where you can lead from wholeness not performance.

Closing Thoughts:

In summary, our Leadership DNA is not what the world gave you. It is what you were born with. It is not up for negotiation. It is not here to be watered down. It is here to be honored.

You do not need to earn your authenticity. You just need to remember it.

The goal is not to become a leader who is accepted by the world. The goal is to become a leader who is aligned with himself.

When you discover your Leadership DNA, you stop chasing approval and start walking in authority.

That is the edge. That is the work. And you are ready.

That’s the new path forward.

Subscribe to the Vision Leadership for LIFE newsletter now for early access, if you want your insider tips, exclusive insights, and access to the strategies behind your leadership guidebook.

Get access to your leadership guide book by clicking this link: http://amazon.com/author/dominicgeorge 

Fellas, your journey is both unique and powerful. If you’re ready to start leading from your authentic edge, then your on the roadmap for greatness. When you’re leading from within, you are not only advancing your career but also paving the way for future leaders.

Feel free to reach out for personalized coaching or share your success stories.

Your success is our shared triumph.

Real Talk: If you’re ready to:

• Reclaim your voice in high-stakes spaces.

• Lead with strategy, not survival.

• Build a legacy that doesn’t require you to perform to belong.

You don’t have to lose yourself to lead. You just have to reclaim who you are, and lead from there.

Have a POWERFUL Day!

Dominic George

Founder, Vision Leadership for LIFE, LLC

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The content, concepts, and original expressions in this newsletter are the exclusive intellectual property of Dominic George and Vision Leadership for LIFE, LLC. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without prior written permission. This newsletter is intended for personal development and leadership growth. Respect the work. Honor the source.

The Authentic Edge™ framework and related materials are proprietary to Vision Leadership for LIFE, LLC.