Transformative Leadership in the 21st Century

john a. powellWilliams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil Liberties, Moritz College of Law

Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity

landscape of the present environment

Source: Program for Environmental and Regional Equity

“the whole financial system has been riggedagainst lower income communities in general and communities of color in particular”

“our financial system has a distinctly racial character, one that requires a response rooted in racial and social justice”

Source: Program for Environmental and Regional Equity

tackling the pressing issues …

“if we are going to turn the financial industry back into something that benefits the consumer … WE HAVE TO SHIFT THE UNDERLYING BALANCE OF POWER”

Need for social movements for financial equity

“money seems to be the easiest way to power … the focus should not be simply on foreclosure relief, but on a new financial frame that has at its heart the restoration of opportunity for all”

structural racialization

it is a very different way of looking at race

the practices, cultural norms and institutional arrangements that help create & maintain (disparate) racialized outcomes

structures unevenly distribute benefits, burdens, and racialized meaning.

opportunity•we can define opportunity through access

•opportunity includes access to:▫Healthcare▫Education▫Employment▫Services▫Healthy food

Lower Education

alOutcomes

Increased Flight

of Affluent Families

Neighborhood

Segregation

SchoolSegregatio

n &Concentrated Poverty

opportunity is racialized

• In 1960, African-American families in poverty were 3.8 times more likely to be concentrated in high-poverty neighborhoods than poor whites.

• In 2000, they were 7.3 times more likely.

opportunity is global• our world today is more complex and

interconnected.

• current and future changes will not be only driven by local/national issues, but influenced by systemic global trends and challenges

▫ examples globalization climate change the credit and foreclosure crisis growing diversity and widening inequality

We must adjust our lens of analysis to reflect these changing conditions

Moving towards a systems approach of problem solving and identifying solutions

Types of Leadership • Laissez Faire Leadership

•Autocratic Leadership

•Participative Leadership

•Emergent Leadership

•Transactional Leadership

•Transformational LeadershipSource: http://www.legacee.com

• Laissez Faire Leadership

▫ "hands off" view that tends to minimize the amount of direction and face time required.

▫works well if you have highly trained and highly motivated direct reports.

•Autocratic Leadership

▫ falling out of favor in many countries.

▫ the style is popular with today's CEOs, who have much in common with feudal lords in Medieval Europe.

•Participative Leadership

▫addresses difficulties in demanding someone to be creative, perform as a team, solve complex problems, improve quality, and provide outstanding customer service.

▫presents a happy medium between over controlling (micromanaging) and not being engaged

▫ and tends to be seen in organizations that must innovate to prosper.

•Emergent Leadership

▫Contrary to the belief of many, groups do not automatically accept a new "boss" as leader.

▫a number of ineffective managers don’t know the behaviors to use when taking over a new group

Transactional Leadership

▫emphasizes work within the umbrella of the status quo; almost in opposition to the goals of the transformational leadership.

▫ considered to be a "by the book" approach in which the person works within the rules.

▫ commonly seen in large, bureaucratic organizations.

•Transformational Leadership

▫ transformational leaders have been written about for thousands of years … praised and cursed.

Jesus Buddha

Genghis Khan

▫implement new ideas

▫continually change themselves

▫flexible and adaptable

▫improve those around them.

16

Transformative Thinking• transformative thinking to combat structural

racialization

•we need to find new approaches.

•personal and social responsibility are important: we should maintain them in our advocacy and analysis

•approaches should consider the structures that are creating and perpetuating these disparities and work to reform them for lasting change.

Systems thinking

Housing

Childcare Employment

Education

Health

Transportation

Effective Participation

An analysis of any one area will yield an

incomplete understanding.

We must consider how institutions interact with one another to produce racialized

outcomes.

black leadership: from civil rights to the Age of Obama

Charismatic, religious, spiritual leaders

New, modern, political leaders influence policy directly

Black political leadership and the white power structureEmerging black leaders:

• came of age after Jim Crow segregation and the Civil Rights Movement

• were raised in integrated neighborhoods and educated in majority white institutions,

• are more likely to embrace deracialized campaign and governance strategies

• will have a wholly different relationship with white culture

Source: Whose Black Politics? Cases in Post-Racial Black Leadership

20

Challenges to Leaders of Color in a More Diverse World

• tensions within own community/group vs. outside his/her community/group

• not distance the community from others but link to other communities

• resist the trap of focusing particularly and wholly on one community.

21

•keep grounded to your community/group

•but ALSO serve as a bridge for your community/group with other communities/groups

GROUP/COMMUNITY DYNAMICS:

leadership coalitions

Source: African American Leadership, Ronald W. Walters, Robert Charles Smith

• connect with leaders from other communities to learn from each other, open a constructive dialogue between leadership of particular communities.

• have the knowledge of what is happening in other communities, this can inform work within one’s own community

• recognize the importance of collaborative discourse

• multi-issue and multi-constituency

• take up issues, but do not be defined by them

• be motivated by the unequal balance of power between the financial elite and everyone else.

build coalitions across racial groups/interests

Source: Program for Environmental and Regional Equity

• willingness to network w/ other movements

• ability to bring divergent actors together

• commitment for the long haul

• having a wide vision for sustainable advocacy/work

Source: Program for Environmental and Regional Equity

leaders must be collaborators and connectors

25

linked fate: why should others care about equity and inclusion?

▫ a region and all its residents share a linked fate.

▫ inequality is a sign of an economically/socially inefficient region, where proper investments are not made in human capital, and where much of the population can not meet its creative potential.

26

leaders can change how we talk about race• should not focus solely on disparities.

▫the disparity model is limiting when talking about the racialization of poverty:

stress of poor white middle class

fear of (white) middle class that welfare programs might be disadvantageous for them (that feeling of 'what about us?')

27

• start from the assumption that an awareness of racial disparities is fundamental to fostering race conscious approaches to social justice policy:

▫disparities are seen as absent, trivial, or declining, support for color-conscious policies will wane.

▫ increasing awareness of racial disparities may not be sufficient to change attitudes.

• it is also necessary to foster the proper explanations for racial disparities.

28

•The final step in successful race talk must counter the perception that social justice programs that take race into account are somehow inconsistent with treasured American ideals such as egalitarianism and meritocracy.

•Tell a story with everyone in it.

•Talk about our values.

29

interconnectedness▫ should be collaborative and focus on coalition building

▫ recognize the interconnectedness of our being and our fate

▫ focus on targeting within universalism

▫be the natural extension of an overarching, shared vision and framework

▫ re-conceptualize society to promote the political, economic, spiritual, and psychological health of all

We must consider how we each stand differently with respect to our opportunities for work, education, parenting, retirement…

We must understand the work our institutions do, not what we wished they would do, in order to make them more equitable and fair

http://www.KirwanInstitute.org

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

www.facebook.com/kirwaninstitute

www.twitter.com/kirwaninstitute