I’ve been really enjoying reading the book Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age by Juana Bordas. It’s a great read, in which she describes leadership based on African American, Latino and Native American leadership models in the US, while making a global connection. Bordas calls us to broaden beyond a single view of leadership and work toward
“an inclusive and adaptable style that cultivates the ability to bring out the best in our diverse workforce and to fashion a sense of community with people from many parts of the globe. This inclusive form of leadership is in sync with many cultures, enabling a wide spectrum of people to engage, contribute and tap their potential.”
If you don’t have four minutes, make them! Here is one of the simplest explanations of the Cynefin framework and it is one of the most useful ways to understand the shift that we must make in the social sector. I start most of my client work by arguing that the problem we are facing in the sector is that our system has been developed to address complex problems as if they were complicated. For example, our urban public schools are trying to teach many kids who might be facing hunger, trauma, violence, lack of documentation and a myriad other social ills, but we are spending our time arguing about curricula and standardized tests.
Last week one of my heroes died. The first time I remember being with Howard Zinn was at an anti-war meeting at Boston University in 1970. Even then his strong presence guided so many of us by providing a deep historical perspective on activism and resistance and their rightful place in a healthy democracy.
He figured large in my life in the years since then. Through his writing and speaking he articulated a thoughtful rationale for an alternative point of view to traditional mainstream media analysis.
|Photo by victoriapeckham|http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoriapeckham/164175205/|
In this post I take a look at the overlap and differences between three leadership approaches to which we here at IISC regularly turn in light of our bent towards social change and beliefs about the world in which we live.
It is rare for any of us, by deliberate choice, to sit still and weave ourselves into a place, so that we know the wildflowers and rocks and politicians, so that we recognize faces wherever we turn, so that we feel a bond with everything in sight.”
|Photo by Muffet|http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/150903281/|
Some dozen years ago I went on a road trip with my grandfather to our ancestral home in Arkansas. Leaving from upstate New York at this time of year was not exactly a recipe for easy driving and awe-inspiring views. After a particularly dreary stretch in Ohio, I was ready to snooze the rest of the way when we crossed over into Kentucky. Suddenly things opened up. As we continued south on Route 75, I felt my body started settling into the lovely rolling farm-studded landscape. I remember how my breathing eased and the extraordinary sensation of “being home,” though I had only been to the state once before.
I’ve recently seen a few videos that have made me think about whether collaboration is a “natural” thing. (I tend to run from this kind of thinking – usually finding discussions of what is “natural” or what is “human nature” ways of making room for all kinds of human constructs.) My brother recently shared this video of Bottlenose Dolphins working together in what’s called “mud ring” feeding:
I was intrigued by the title of Mark Danner’s recent opinion in the New York Times, “To Heal Haiti, Look to History, Not Nature.” And I could not help making a connection to the recent “Che” movie I just watched. The Cuban and Haitian revolutions took place during very different historical periods, but both victories were a refusal to accept destiny as prescribed by the ruling world order of their time.
And each time the dominant world order responded with the same strategy – a policy of isolation.
I was intrigued by the title of Mark Danner’s recent opinion in the New York Times, “To Heal Haiti, Look to History, Not Nature.” And I could not help making a connection to the recent “Che” movie I just watched. The Cuban and Haitian revolutions took place during very different historical periods, but both victories were a refusal to accept destiny as prescribed by the ruling world order of their time.
And each time the dominant world order responded with the same strategy – a policy of isolation.
Having just come off the holidays, when family members are likely to be gathered around as captive (and hopefully not tortured) audiences, we experience those stand-out moments of the highly anticipated and often dreaded….intergenerational conversation.
And if you’re like me, you realize that although these conversations on issues we care about are often hard, emotionally charged and possibly frustrating Read More
|Photo by jaybergesen|http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaybergesen/232023995/|
As it turns out, the practice of brainstorming has something of a bad reputation, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from its prevalence in many well meaning groups and organizations. Research has shown that bringing people together to start brainstorming ideas yields fewer ideas overall, and fewer novel ideas, than having individuals first go off and think on their own and later compile their lists. The reason is that group think and social pressure can tend to tip and narrow group brainstorms in certain directions that rule out “out of the box” thinking. Furthermore, there is a tendency for many groups to want to come to agreement about certain ideas, preferring a sense of group cohesion and victory, over pushing one another and risking conflict and hurt feelings.
It’s the beginning of a new year, and all the treadmills are occupied at the gym. It’s hard to find any space in the locker room because so many people are set on establishing a new healthy routine for 2010. I’m not a new year’s resolution person, but I am thinking about fresh starts, renewed commitments to be good to myself, and shifts in the projects I’m going to put my energy towards. At IISC, we’ve committed to a new strategic direction for the next three years. Perhaps you’ve been mapping out your personal workplan for 2010 or doing some beginning of the year reflection with your peers, about how you want to work together this year to achieve progress on whatever social justice project you’re working on.
