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I am seeking a rewarding career, having recently completed my bachelor's degree in management. What obstacles will I likely need to overcome in the corporate world being an older, five-foot tall, African-American woman?
-Name Withheld, Houston

When we first received your letter, we put it into a file labelled, 'How To Succeed In Business While Looking Different.' There it joined about 15 other e-mails that have come in recent months, including ones sent by a Sri Lankan immigrant joining a company in Atlanta, a 64-year-old Puerto Rican nurse promoted into management in a Toronto hospital and a (closeted) gay man leading a Fortune 500 sales force.

Every e-mail in the 'How To Succeed...' folder tells a unique personal story. But the underlying question is always the same: can you get taken seriously Ð and get ahead Ð in corporate settings without seeming, well, traditionally corporate: ie, a straight, white man with a prestigious college degree. If only the answer was yes. Unfortunately, in our experience, it is only, "Yes, but it's harder." Not to vilify corporations. There isn't a CEO today who wouldn't tell you that he or she desperately wants a diverse workforce. And there isn't a global company that hasn't devoted significant resources to achieving those ends.

But deeply entrenched biases persist in society, and many corporations reflect that by remaining most advantageous to the careers of those whom some executives might call traditionally corporate, as defined above. As one African-American senior executive puts it, "Hiring managers are often uncomfortable based simply on a lack of familiarity. They want to associate with people like them."

Which doesn't put you out of corporate career competition, it just starts you behind. And the only way we know to overcome that deficit is with sheer, unbridled competence. Because more than anything else, companies want to win. So, while your performance may take longer to be rewarded, if you consistently deliver great results, eventually you will wear doubters down. They will come to need you too much.

Is this system fair? Of course not. Although we both have benefited from it to some extent, due to background and education, we have seen its inequities and the toll it can take on personal dignity. We have seen it make too many people feel disenfranchised. We have seen it make too many leave. And indeed, that is a viable alternative for you. Many younger companies Ð think Google and eBay do not have the same diversity issues as traditional corporations. Or you can go it alone; the economy is filled with businesses started by 'uncorporate' individuals who didn't want to wait for a bunch of middle-aged white men in suits to decide they were worth something. You can't blame them. But we wouldn't advise you Ð or anyone who feels 'different', for that matter to ditch a traditional corporate career. Big companies are getting better every day at inclusiveness; the vast majority of them are intensely trying to achieve that goal.

And corporations do offer immense opportunity for professional and personal growth. Once your career takes off, you can travel the world, manage teams and even launch whole new businesses. Perhaps most rewarding, you can use your platform to bring in and develop other different people like you, making the corporation and the world all the better for it.

So don't give up. If you feel you can survive the corporate journey with your sense of humour and humanity intact, know that your performance can ultimately get you to the top of the mountain. Just be prepared for a harder climb.

What are the keys to insuring a strong start in a leadership position?
Christopher Finlay, Chicago

You could fill a book with all the ways to get off to a good start as a leader. Get to know your people and learn what makes each one tick. Don't pretend you know everything about the job; ask a lot of questions and really listen to the answers. Figure out what it takes to win. Familiarise yourself with the competition. Worry about what market changes could kill you, if not next year, the year after. Pay visits to the customers who keep you alive. Pay longer visits to the customers who have recently kissed you goodbye.

The list goes on and on. But one thing you have to do as a new leader is define yourself. Make sure your people know what you stand for. Under no circumstances, no matter what the size of your company or the business you are in, should you ever let your team guess about your principles or why you make tough calls the way you do. Tell them yourself, and tell them again and again. Now, we are not saying you need to spend every minute of your day making a stump speech about your platform. Communication at its best is two-way, and leaders should always be engaged in dialogue with people throughout the organisation.

But in times of change or crisis, if you don't talk openly about your reasoning, you're in trouble. Take, for painful example, the mess involving US President George W Bush and his veto of a budget increase proposal for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). This column is not about the merit of SCHIP, a state-federal health insurance subsidy programme that Democrats and some Republicans were pushing to increase by US$35bn over five years, adding 4mn people to the 6.6mn already participating.

It is about how the president blew a massive leadership opportunity by staying quiet about his reasons for opposing the programme's expansion. As the Associated Press reported, only the fourth veto of his presidency ... the White House has sought as little attention as possible.

No, no, no! Especially when it comes to controversial decisions, leaders must communicate more, not less. Sure, President Bush explained his veto in his weekly radio address. That's when he said he blocked the expansion of SCHIP because it was too costly, and, in replacing private coverage with government payouts, represented a dangerous move toward socialised medicine. But the SCHIP veto was a huge principle vote, not only for the Bush presidency, but for his party going into the 2008 elections. For those reasons, President Bush had to get out there. He could have, for instance, appeared on national TV and explained, in the simplest possible language, what principles motivated his decision.

Instead, President Bush created a leadership vacuum. Worse, he gave his opponents a lay-up, and they easily scored, depicting him as heartless toward children. You won't likely face such hardball in your new leadership role, but somewhere along the way, you're sure to discover what's true in politics is true in business. If you don't define yourself, especially in tough times, you can be sure someone else will do it for you.

I'm a large account sales guy who loves what he does and wants to keep doing it until he retires. But what can I do to stay excited and current in this job, so I don't become the old guy?
Name Withheld, Hartford, CT

Here's one surefire way: become a great mentor. Keep selling, of course, you're obviously good at it. But to avoid that old guy label, take all that love you have for selling, and all that insight you have gained over the years, and spread them around. Coach, teach, inspire. You will feel younger every year.

Omer Murphy is the perfect example. He was one of the best salesmen that General Electric Plastics was ever lucky enough to employ, adored in equal measure by his customers, managers and peers. He closed every deal with everyone feeling good. Then, in his early 50s, Omer asked to not just sell but coach young salespeople. He went on customer calls with them and, afterward, constructively critiqued their presentations. Over time, he created what came to be known as Omer's Army, a legion of energised followers who performed at new levels thanks to his mentoring. The relationships energised Omer too. Until he died in 2001, he remained young at heart. If you take his lead, so will you.

As a baby boomer executive with 30 years of experience, I encounter many young people entering the business world today pretty sure they know it all. What is your opinion about Gen Y's sense of entitlement?
Chris Perkins, Vandalia, Ohio

We don't get it. That is, we don't get why everyone is so down on Gen Y. We think the crop of 20-somethings breaking into the business world right now is about as energised and exciting a group of kids as we've ever seen. And we've seen them a lot over the past several years visiting dozens of campuses, teaching in two different MBA programmes, consulting for companies that employ thousands of Gen Yers and hiring several onto our own team. Overwhelmingly, we have found Gen Yers to be hardworking, entrepreneurial, startlingly authentic, refreshingly candid and wonderfully upbeat.

Basically, not to get all mushy or anything, we love them. Don't get us wrong. We don't doubt that you've recently encountered any number of know-it-all young people. They're certainly out there. But they always have been that way.

After all, ever since the beginning of, well, higher education, every crop of graduates has contained its share of swaggering bigheads convinced that the grown-ups can go home now. Of course, most of these types end up eating humble pie after a few years, having discovered that ruling the world is not as easy as they originally thought.

Surely, some portion of Gen Y is headed for such a dismal fate. But we'd say most of them are headed for blue sky, in careers characterised by commitment and unbounded by convention. Everywhere we go, we meet MBAs who have decided to spurn the corporate world to start their own businesses. In the class taught by Jack at MIT's Sloan School of Management, some 20 per cent of the students have already launched a venture. Similarly, during a visit to Stanford Business School in 2005, we met a pair of students out of a central casting call for investment bankers. "So, what firm will you be joining in New York?" we asked them. We were surprised to hear they were launching a chain of upscale barbershops.

Of course, not every Gen Yer we've met is hankering to be an entrepreneur, but many still want to change the world with where and how they work. Now, may be Gen Y's reputation for entitlement derives from its apparent interest in making money lots of it, right away. We have read plenty about such greed. But what we've seen is different. On virtually every campus visit, Gen Yers have asked us about corporate ethics and social responsibility. Many have shown a thoughtful concern about how to strike a meaningful balance between work and life. Some of them have challenged us about the whole notion of winning, asking, "Does success only have to be about money?" When we have said no that success is about setting personal goals and achieving them Ð the response has been invariably positive.

Indeed, the same question came up just the other evening at dinner with a Gen Yer we know who earns a modest salary as an assistant golf pro. "I wake up every morning thrilled about getting to work and helping people," he told us. "That's what makes me feel successful." To our minds, his words were uplifting, but not particularly unusual from a person his age.

Which all begs the question we started with. Why does Gen Y get such a bad rap? We'd suggest two answers.

The first is the age-old human propensity to worry about the wayward values of kids these days. Your grandparents worried about your parents, who worried about you and someday your kids will worry about theirs.

The second reason is something we call trend inflation. With the explosion of media outlets in every form, all of them needing content, there has emerged a relentless parade of so-called trends and cultural phenomena based on little more than the vague phrase, experts say. In recent weeks, for instance, we have seen stories about the growing trends of weddings on Thursdays, pets coming to work and people making life lists to keep track of the things they want to do before they die. Surely, there is some truth in all of these reports, but some truth does not necessarily constitute reality.

So, yes, there are some entitled-acting young people entering business today, and they can come across as annoying. But in our experience, Gen Y is anything but. They're real driven, open-minded and thoughtful in a way that will be great for their careers and the entire economy to boot.
All they need to do is grow up.