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Seattle Learning Circle: A Conversation About Leadership and Race |
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Date: March 16 from 11:30 – 2:00 - Brown Bag Lunch
Location: Casey Family Program Field Office
1123 23rd Avenue, Seattle
Hosted by:
Leadership Learning Community
Casey Family Programs
Minority Executive Directors Coalition
Non-Profit Anti-Racism Coalition
Center for Ethical Leadership
Description:
The Leadership Learning Community, a national organization located in Oakland California, launched a collaborative learning initiative called Leadership for a New Era (LNE). This initiative includes a diverse group of partners who believe that we need to radically expand the ways in which we think about and develop leadership to become more inclusive, networked and collective. This change will be critical to breakthroughs needed to realize social and racial equity.
The first draft on Leadership and Race was posted to LNE’s collaborative workspace and is being edited by partners who have contributed their work to the summary. Over 45 people gathered in the Bay Area for an LLC Circle meeting to discuss this work and decided to continue meeting. We are inviting you to join us in bringing this conversation to the Puget Sound to see how we can bring a racial lens tot our work. The summary addresses the following questions:
Open Space Notes:
Undoing White Dominant Professional Culture at the Leadership Level
There is a lack of awareness, mostly among white people, and the baggage that they (we) bring to conversation around ending institutional racism. How do we bring this awareness when we are who we are? We are trying to overcome group think and the outliers are not treated as credible. How can we address organizational structure which is the way it is because of financial purposes and facing a powerful status quo, i.e. that's the way its always been.
We need to develop leaders of color, but what about the need for leaders of color to succeed within white culture? A significant portion of professional culture is racist. There is a large reaction to fear and economics. Whites never had to live in any other culture the way people of color have had to live in white culture. Its difficult to have honest conversations about power.
What we can do:
Collective Leadership
Systemic Structures:
Collective leadership is not just about leaders, but also people impacted by the system. Collective Leadership brings different people to the table.
Its important to analyze the system before a crisis occurs, (e.g. subprime). Its easy to come up with a solution, but what will the impact be? It should be possible to come up wiht a formula common to all policy situations that collective leadership can use.
We recommend placing a disclaimer at the top of the page when you are getting ready to edit it, i.e. "In Use". You can then save the page immediately - this will alert all other users that the page is being edited. When you are done editing, please remove the disclaimer and save your edits. This will prevent potential conflicts with multiple edits happening at the same time.
Date: March 16 from 11:30 – 2:00 - Brown Bag Lunch
Location: Casey Family Program Field Office
1123 23rd Avenue, Seattle
Hosted by:
Leadership Learning Community
Casey Family Programs
Minority Executive Directors Coalition
Non-Profit Anti-Racism Coalition
Center for Ethical Leadership
Description:
The Leadership Learning Community, a national organization located in Oakland California, launched a collaborative learning initiative called Leadership for a New Era (LNE). This initiative includes a diverse group of partners who believe that we need to radically expand the ways in which we think about and develop leadership to become more inclusive, networked and collective. This change will be critical to breakthroughs needed to realize social and racial equity.The first draft on Leadership and Race was posted to LNE’s collaborative workspace and is being edited by partners who have contributed their work to the summary. Over 45 people gathered in the Bay Area for an LLC Circle meeting to discuss this work and decided to continue meeting. We are inviting you to join us in bringing this conversation to the Puget Sound to see how we can bring a racial lens tot our work. The summary addresses the following questions:
- Does current leadership thinking and practice contribute to structural racism?
- Why are leadership strategies vital to achieving racial justice?
- What leadership development approaches support racial equity?
- What changes in our evaluation work will support racial equity?
Meeting Notes:
Open Space Notes:
Undoing White Dominant Professional Culture at the Leadership Level
There is a lack of awareness, mostly among white people, and the baggage that they (we) bring to conversation around ending institutional racism. How do we bring this awareness when we are who we are? We are trying to overcome group think and the outliers are not treated as credible. How can we address organizational structure which is the way it is because of financial purposes and facing a powerful status quo, i.e. that's the way its always been.
We need to develop leaders of color, but what about the need for leaders of color to succeed within white culture? A significant portion of professional culture is racist. There is a large reaction to fear and economics. Whites never had to live in any other culture the way people of color have had to live in white culture. Its difficult to have honest conversations about power.
What we can do:
- Find out and be open about what your values are
- Use story
- Become more aware of our assumptions and what we assume to be true. Name our assumptions
- Its important to start by acknowledging that we are not where we want to be, instead of focusing on everything that is wrong, start with where we want to be.
- When we need to realize that we bring in people of color or clients to a different way of doing things, we often fail them and then blame the "the other" and not ourselves.
- Working in isolation at leadership levels insulates leaders from positively influenced or inspired to do "the work" be peers in community.
Collective Leadership
Systemic Structures:
Collective leadership is not just about leaders, but also people impacted by the system. Collective Leadership brings different people to the table.
Its important to analyze the system before a crisis occurs, (e.g. subprime). Its easy to come up with a solution, but what will the impact be? It should be possible to come up wiht a formula common to all policy situations that collective leadership can use.
