Every October, the Black History Month performance begins again. Panels, hashtags, branded posts – all celebrating Black excellence. And then, silence.

Representation rises. But influence doesn’t move.

HR has done what it can within the limits of the system it inherited. But that system was never built for shared power – and the cracks are showing. Black History Month isn’t a marketing opportunity. It’s a pressure test for how leadership really works when the spotlight fades. The silence that follows shows whether inclusion is built into the organisation or just performed for approval.

Because real leadership isn’t proven when everyone’s watching; it’s revealed when the noise dies down.

The faces in the room have changed, but the flow of authority hasn’t.

The influence gap: An illusion of progress

Representation opens the door, but you need influence to move the room. And, without both, diversity merely becomes decoration – progress without propulsion. 

It’s important not to perceive influence as simply charm or confidence. Influence is what I define as calibrated motion – the disciplined force that turns clarity into traction. It’s what makes decisions stick and change happen under pressure. Think of a leader who notices her team is hesitant to challenge poor decisions. Instead of demanding more ‘confidence’, she redesigns the meeting rhythm so that every voice carries weight. Influence moves because the system moves – not the personalities.

Right now, too many organisations are frozen. HR has mastered access, but not motion.
The faces in the room have changed, but the flow of authority hasn’t.

That’s the influence gap – the space between who’s present and who’s powerful.

The traps that keep systems safe and stuck

• Access without agency
  Diversity without decision rights isn’t inclusion – it’s choreography. People are invited in, applauded, and then quietly sidelined when it’s time to decide.
• Sponsorship without redesign
  Mentors and sponsors open doors, but the structure decides who stays. Power shifts when influence is redistributed by design, not when introductions are made.
• Celebration without engineering
  You can’t shape cultures by campaigns. You have to engineer through systems – the rituals, meetings, and reward structures that decide whose voice carries weight. If you don’t design that system intentionally, it defaults to comfort.
  

Influence is often assumed to be a personal trait when it is actually a systemic condition.

From awareness to architecture

Inclusion fatigue sets in when people talk about change inside systems built to resist it. The next evolution of HR goes beyond messaging and awareness campaigns. It demands structural courage – redesigning how power moves, how decisions are made, and how leadership behaviours generate momentum instead of noise.

That’s what I mean by redesigning motion: creating systems where influence travels freely, not selectively.

At The Maverick Paradox, we use my Influence Blueprint™ to reveal how influence flows through an organisation – and where it stops. It looks through four lenses:

• Capability: Who’s equipped, emotionally and intellectually, to lead?
• Decisiveness: Who’s trusted to make the call?
• Power: Who’s shaping agendas rather than serving them?
• Impact: Whose outcomes actually count?

When capability exists but decisiveness is denied, potential dies. When power pools in comfort zones, innovation suffocates. And when impact goes unrecognised, people leave.

Influence is often assumed to be a personal trait when it is actually a systemic condition. HR either maintains the old circuitry or rewires it for shared strength.

How can HR close the influence gap?

• Diagnose the flow: Run an influence audit. Map who holds sway, who acts as gatekeeper, and who enables progress informally. Every organisation has hidden conduits – HR needs to see them clearly.
• Shift what’s rewarded: Redesign performance metrics and recognition frameworks to value those who build influence capacity across others – not just those who deliver results solo.
• Develop contextual leadership: Train leaders to recognise when their authority needs to expand, share, or step back. Influence grows when leadership adjusts dynamically to context.
• Embed influence equity in succession: Build pathways where diverse talent has decision-making exposure early – not just visibility. Equity without power is theatre.
• Challenge comfort as a KPI: If every conversation feels safe, nothing’s moving. HR’s role is to create productive tension – clarity without conflict avoidance.

If HR wants inclusion that lasts, it must stop celebrating who’s visible and start rebuilding how influence flows.

The lesson history keeps teaching

Instead of viewing Black history as a retrospective, see it as an operations manual for leadership under constraint.

Mary Seacole built networks of care that outperformed rigid institutions. Olive Morris and Martin Luther King Jr. built movements through disciplined motion – not borrowed power, but constructed influence.

They understood that change is engineered, not granted – something many of us still resist. They didn’t just challenge the system, they showed how to move within it until it changed shape. That’s the mindset HR must now apply.

Polite inclusion keeps people comfortable. Liberated inclusion changes how things move.

Black History Month shouldn’t be a mirror for performance – it should be a map for reconstruction. If HR wants inclusion that lasts, it must stop celebrating who’s visible and start rebuilding how influence flows.

Culture should be designed, not used as decoration. And power, used well, is movement.

Your next read: Black History Month: How can HR be part of the change?