Transforming Power and Privilege: A 21ST CENTURY LEADERSHIP COMPETENCY

Leadership Learning Community Leadership Webinar Series February 27, 2013

Renato P. Almanzor, PhD Director of Programs, LeaderSpring

renato@leaderspring.org (510) 286-8949

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

What are the necessary leadership competencies for transforming power and privilege?

What are the conditions necessary to develop

these competencies in the context of leadership development programming?

• Introduction and overview

• LeaderSpring’s philosophy on leadership development

• Competence: Transforming power and privilege

• Knowledge: Vision for well-being • Skills: Altering arrangements • Capacity: Agency • Will: Purpose

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AGENDA

Heart and Head: An integrated, holistic approach to leadership development. LeaderSpring’s learning communities of practice blend rigorous standards of performance; reflective learning; trusting relationships; and personal renewal.

Collaboration: Integrating services and leveraging resources toward a common goal. LeaderSpring fosters agency collaborations toward transformative impact in community.

Equity: The elimination of racial, economic, and social disparities. LeaderSpring strengthens social sector leaders and organizations committed to fostering equity in their communities.

Community well-being: A balanced satisfaction of personal, interpersonal and collective needs. LeaderSpring helps leaders strengthen skills and relationships so they may create something more meaningful and larger than the sum of their parts.

Our dream is that leaders, organizations and communities in the social sector achieve their promise and potential to create a healthy and equitable society.

LeaderSpring fosters a powerful, equity-driven social sector by:

➤ Strengthening leaders and organizations, ➤ Developing communities of leaders, and ➤ Transforming the systems in which they work.

Leadership: Taking responsibility for what matters. Leadership is an on-going practice at all levels of an organization and community, transcending title or position. LeaderSpring trains emerging, mid-career and senior leaders, and helps them foster leadership in others.

VISION

MISSION

VALUES

↘ Leader

Network

Transforming Systems

Consulting Group

Fellowship Program

PROGRAMS

Community isn’t always synonymous with warmth and harmony. Politeness is often a veneer for understanding, when in reality it masks uncovered territory, the unspeakable pit that we turn from because we know the pain and anger that can dwell there. It is important to remind ourselves that real community is forged out of struggle. This is the crucible from which a real community grows.

--Linda Christensen

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Leadership Development through Cohort Development

Will • Purpose • Principles • Curiosity/Honoring

MEANING

ACTION THOUGHT ALIGNMENT

Knowledge • Theories • Frameworks • Processes (e.g., change)

Skills • Intellectual rigor • Behavioral discipline • Emotional intelligence

Adapted from “Success Built to Last” by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson

Capacity • Readiness • Time • Resources

COMPETENCE

• Knowledge: Vision for well-being – Power – Well-being

• Skills: Altering arrangements – Systems thinking and analysis – Designing social change

• Capacity: Resolve with personal agency – “A part of, not apart from…” – Confidence and courage

• Will: To actively engage with power and love – Personal, relational and collective purpose

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COMPETENCE: TRANSFORMING POWER AND PRIVILEGE

Adapted from Doing Psychology Critically by Isaac Prilleltensky & Geoff Nelson

OPPRESSION

LIBERATION

Power

WELL-BEING

Knowledge: Vision for well-being Power

Well-being: the balanced and simultaneous satisfaction of personal, relational and collective needs.

KNOWLEDGE: VISION FOR WELL-BEING

Values, Resources, Programmes, Policies

Adapted from Doing Psychology Critically by Isaac Prilleltensky & Geoff Nelson

The system is perfectly designed to produce the results it is now producing.

SKILLS: ALTERING ARRANGEMENTS SYSTEMS THINKING AND ANALYSIS

Adapted from john powell

SKILLS: ALTERING ARRANGEMENTS

Enhancing Well-Being

Studying Social Justice

Designing Social Change

Adapted from Social Justice: Theories, issues and movements by Loretta Capeheart and Dragan Milovanovic

Adapted from Playbook for Progressives by Eric Mann

SKILLS: ALTERING ARRANGEMENTS ROLES AND QUALITIES

Roles

Qualities

Group builder

Builds a base and never walks alone

Strategist

A good investigator

Tactician

Tactically agile: masters the decision of the moment

Political educator

Reflective practitioner

Builder of shared experience

Courageous and self-sustaining

• Personal, political and professional “story line”

• Passion and Humility

• Confidence and Courage – Vulnerability

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CAPACITY Resolve with personal agency

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Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy -- the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light. -- Brené Brown

CAPACITY

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WILL TO ACTIVELY ENGAGE WITH POWER AND LOVE

Power • The drive of everything living to

realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity.

Love • The drive towards the unity of

the separated.

Adapted from Love, Power and Justice: Ontological analyses and ethical applications, by Paul Tillich

WILL: PURPOSE