Image description: A soft yellow bird perched on a branch adorned with green leaves, flowers, and red cherries, set against a soft sage green background. By BiancaVanDijk via Pixabay.
In March, our team gathered in North Andover, MA, for an in-person retreat – our first in five years. After half a decade of virtual collaboration and navigating global upheavals, coming together in person felt nothing short of revolutionary. And in the age of 47, with political uncertainty and social justice work more critical than ever, the timing could not have been more important.
For many, it was the first time meeting face-to-face. For others, it was a chance to deepen relationships with longtime colleagues and friends. And, because this room was mostly full of seasoned facilitators, you know we spent time reflecting on process, holding space, and (let’s be honest) probably overanalyzing the agendas. Over three days, we didn’t just talk about collaboration and love; we practiced them, in all their beautiful, messy, necessary forms. And perhaps to the surprise of no one, we reaffirmed that the strength of our work is rooted in the strength of our relationships.
A few takeaways from our time together:
Trust Grows in the Big and Small Moments We Share
Building a culture of trust is something that needs to be nurtured again and again through intentional actions and shared experiences. It’s not a bullet point on a strategic plan. Our retreat was designed to help us build trust in ways both big and small, and each activity played a role in strengthening our collective leadership.
Through laughter, tears, storytelling, sharing meals, nature walks, and so much more, we connected for the sake of connection. We engaged in Aikido, a martial art that teaches balance, fluidity, and responsiveness. Through movement, we explored what it means to be in a relationship with one another, practicing how to meet resistance without aggression and how to move in alignment rather than opposition. These lessons are central to how we navigate power, conflict, and change in our daily work.
To meaningfully close out our time together, we stood shoulder to shoulder in a circle and affirmed our commitment to one another as part of the journey ahead. We picked stones that drew us in, their colors and textures calling to us in various ways. Around the circle, each person had a chance to be heard and seen, and to drop our chosen stones into a jar filled to the brim with others. It was quiet, simple, and deeply powerful. We were reminded that while we each have a part, none of us can do this work alone.
Inclusion Is a Verb
Not everyone could physically be in the room, so we needed to ensure that our affiliates who joined virtually weren’t just passive observers but fully engaged participants. That meant:
Projecting their incredible faces as large as we could into the room.
Carrying a mic to each person speaking so remote participants could hear every voice clearly.
Facetiming them into breakout groups so they could participate in real discussions rather than just listening in.
Giving them key roles in in-person activities, including narrating performances and guiding discussions.
Hybrid spaces can easily feel exclusionary, but we worked to make everyone feel like they were part of the collective experience. A helpful reminder here: Inclusion isn’t just about who’s invited but how they are meaningfully included.
We also created “silent tables” during meals, so folks who didn’t feel like being social could have a space to just be. In a field that often prioritizes extroversion and constant engagement, this was a small but meaningful way to honor different needs.
Sometimes You Need to Dance Through the Hard Stuff
If you’ve attended our trainings before, you know it wouldn’t be an IISC space without joy. Yes, we had deep conversations. Yes, we held space for complexity. But there was also movement, play, and celebration. We shared poetry, sang, played board games, and even had a dance party. This work has always been challenging, and we know it will continue to be. And if we don’t make space for joy, movement, and real connection, we won’t last.
Why does this matter? Because social and racial justice work is long-haul work. Burnout and exhaustion are real, particularly for those historically marginalized, and our ability to sustain ourselves depends on how well we tend to joy, connection, and rest. This isn’t a distraction from the work; it literally is the work. A team that trusts one another and knows how to get through the hard stuff together is a team that can face what comes next with more clarity and strength.
Practice Makes…Better
IISC isn’t perfect. No organization is. We make mistakes, we hit rough patches, and we sometimes struggle to live up to our values. But what makes this work possible and what keeps us moving forward is our commitment to love and relationship.
As we return to our day-to-day work, we carry these lessons with us: the power of presence, the necessity of trust, and the radical act of making space for joy. After five years apart, this retreat was a reminder that our culture always needs tending to and that how we show up for one another while doing this important work really matters.
To everyone who made this gathering meaningful, thank you. May we continue to build a stronger ‘we’ and find ways to move forward.
Photo of over 20 IISC staff members at a retreat space in early March.Leave a commentFebruary 17, 2025
Image Description: Illustration of colorful valleys and peaks with the sun partially visible on the horizon in the distance. Getty Images via Unsplash.
There are many ways to measure time and multiple timelines unfolding at once. As the Year of the Snake begins and Q1 winds down, we (like many others) are juggling various practical, essential tasks: finalizing contracts, submitting reimbursements, and strategizing responses for the shifting funding landscape. We’re balancing these practical tasks with the metaphysical work of connecting with our values, intention setting, and reflection. This balance led us to revisit reflections from our colleagues who attended Race Forward’s biennial racial justice conference, Facing Race. That post-conference debrief quickly bloomed to include the wonderings, longings, and commitments we’re weaving into the months and years ahead.
We offer some of those reflections, takeaways, and questions here. May you also have time to attune to your longings and commitments (individual and collective) amidst the demands of this moment.
Democracy is a tall order, especially in a multiracial context. Post-conference and post-election, folks spoke of a deeper appreciation for the complex task of creating democratic processes when there isn’t a shared history, identity, experience, or geography on which to scaffold our efforts. We ask: How do we redefine “winning” so that all of us get our needs met?
Movement dogma — and the corresponding elitism — has reached a point of diminishing returns. Over the past decade some of our progressive movement practices have calcified into gospel that can’t be questioned without conflict. Additionally, some of our key concepts and tenets – like DEI and inclusion– have been reduced to buzzwords. The meaning behind the words gets diluted. And often the terms are US-centric, undermining our potential for international solidarity. In this moment, shared understanding and deep reciprocal learning need to be prioritized over semantics. We ask: How can we practice rigor without rigidity? How can we amplify true alignment instead of pressuring ourselves to conform to elitist-coded ideals?
“We will rescue ourselves through democracy, not in spite of it,” said Kim Anderson, Executive Director, National Education Association (NEA). We need each other. Connection and attunement are key across our multiple and layered differences, so that we can deepen our understanding of each other’s fears and motivations, needs and desires, gifts and strengths. Democracy doesn’t mean that we always agree, but that we turn towards each other, tune in, and find some agreement. It means that we prioritize ways of being that hold sacred our common humanity and the gift of life on this planet. We ask: How can we listen, collaborate and network to leverage each other’s skills, interests, and capacities for the benefit of all life?
Organizers have been strategizing for this moment. As a whole, IISC operates as a capacity-building nonprofit and is a step removed from front line organizing. Many of our practitioners come from political organizing backgrounds and/or participate in organizing efforts. Even the seasoned among us are working to get clear about how to organize in this moment and in this landscape. Folks who attended Facing Race were energized to hear from organizers who offered strategies and plans to meet this moment, like People’s Action. We ask: How can we infuse our capacity-building with an organizer’s mindset (i.e., amplifying people power, building critical connections, championing principled struggle)? How can we prioritize supporting organizers?
What questions are you and your community holding as you navigate this moment? What answers are emerging as you wonder? If you want to work or wonder together, know that we’re always here.
Note to readers: This blog is based on IISC’s internal exploration of shared leadership in our organization, our work with clients, and conversations with leadership practitioners in the Knowledge Share Group, a partnership of capacity and infrastructure building organizations around the country. I particularly want to thank Miriam Messinger, Sara Oaklander, Cynthia Silva Parker, and Jasmine Williams of IISC , as well as Shannon Ellis of CompassPoint, for their ideas which sharpened this blog post.
What is shared leadership in nonprofits and philanthropy? And why are some organizations turning to different leadership models to sustain their organization’s work, forge transformative collaboration, and generate powerful intergenerational models of running organizations? IISC and many of our peers in the Knowledge Share Group1 believe that shared leadership is a better model for the future of the nonprofit sector.
Why Shared Leadership?
Leadership and organizational models that rely on the one executive leader or the senior leadership team for success are not serving our organizations and communities. Leadership concentrated in the hands of a few leaves an organization vulnerable to a number of pitfalls: uninformed decision-making, deep inequities, limited perspectives in strategic direction setting, underutilized and disempowered staff, disruptive executive transitions, and exhaustion for leaders who hold too much responsibility.
We believe executive directors and other senior staff have a choice. They can continue to hold concentrated power and make decisions independently, or they can embrace shared leadership for collective action and responsibility. It is the latter that enables us to most fully live our missions and expand democracy. We must do everything we can to support leadership in all the places it exists in our organizations.
What is Shared Leadership?
Shared leadership is an evolving concept and practice. It’s one of the most compelling options social justice communities are experimenting with to heal our relationships with traditional manifestations of power, authority, and dominance. Based on IISC’s experience and learnings from the Knowledge Share Group, I define shared leadership as the ethos, structures, processes, practices, and behaviors that promote the equitable distribution and decentralization of information, roles, authority, decision-making, and labor.
What are the Key Features of Shared Leadership?
Nonprofits are essentially a network of people, programs, and ideas working together for transformative social outcomes. Shared leadership fuels that network, with more people generating and carrying out ideas for greater impact, and doing so in more equitable ways.
There are are five key features of shared leadership:
All people in the organization are viewed and operate as leaders, mutually accountable to a set of values and practices that are in service of collective goals. They make major decisions together and trust others for the rest.
They are mindful of and attend to the needs of the whole organization and how their work impacts the whole. And they take note of critical organizational gaps and see to it that they are filled. They build redundancies in roles and create back-up plans in the event someone is unavailable to work.
Shared leadership moves away from the notion that the solo leader or executive team has carte blanche to develop and implement solutions to problems in an organization. And instead moves toward a model that centers decentralization and multiracial and multigenerational leadership, with decision-making and problem-solving shared across the organization. It fosters what we teach at IISC –Facilitative Leadership, which is an intentional practice of creating the conditions for transformational collaboration in which people do their best work together to achieve optimal results.
Shared leadership assumes that power2 is not finite and can be meaningfully shared. It requires a shift in heartset and mindset from “it’s about me” to “it’s about us,” and from “power over” to “power with.” It dismantles concentrations of power and dominance, and prevents extraction, while creating environments where trust-building, transparency, and creative autonomy are cultivated and can flourish.
Shared leadership doesn’t necessarily mean an end to executive roles or hierarchy or even the creation of a completely flat organizational structure. Organizations can implement the values and practices of shared leadership within a myriad of different organizational models and structures. The key is that senior leaders and managers are not in a dominant position where they control the fate of the organization or its employees. They are instead part of the ecosystem with information and decision-making flowing across the organization.
What is IISC’s Evolving Shared Leadership Model?
At IISC, we are about to implement a network-based team model, and we are experimenting along the way, building off of our longstanding commitment and internal practices of collaboration and distributed leadership. We believe it will enable us to harness the leadership, creativity, and ideas of all of us who work for IISC.
In our model, we are experimenting with what we call shared and equitable leadership. We will have a single president and multiple teams convened by hosts and supported by facilitators that will make decisions for their areas, while other teams will provide cross-functional input and expertise to ensure the teams are connected around strategy. Ad hoc teams – each with a unique and time-bound task – are also part of this model.
A center-holding group with membership from the various teams will weave the domains of activity and ensure people have what they need and are empowered to make change in their domains. This group will also have a host and facilitator and will include the president of IISC, and it will shift in membership as the organization’s needs change and members rotate. The group will include people with different roles and tenures in the organization, not based on their seniority or executive functions.
BIPOC and next generation leaders will be prioritized to ensure that we don’t replicate the negative attributes of white dominant culture or rely on time in the organization as a proxy for knowledge and influence. The model assumes healthy redundancies so if people shift in and out of the organization, take on different roles, or attend to health or personal crises, we will be resilient and not fall off course from our goals. The distinction between part-time and full-time staff will only be the hours they work, not how much influence they have over the organization.
This model will initially take time to implement and decision-making may be slower at the start as people learn to trust each other and move into formation. Most people are accustomed to traditional hierarchy and know instinctively how to operate in that kind of system. It can be hard for people familiar with holding positional power to adjust to letting go of making decisions, especially when they may disagree with those decisions. And for people newer to decision-making, it takes time to build confidence and skills, and to accept accountability for the impacts of those decisions. Patience is needed and power struggles and mistakes will invariably happen. Staff need information, tools, and experience to get their feet planted and take initiative. And once they do, we expect creativity and problem solving to expand and positively impact the organization.
In my case, as president of IISC, I am already experiencing the benefits of this new approach as we pilot some aspects of it. Fewer people are coming to me for answers or expecting me to make decisions. Generative conflict is surfaced and negotiated at individual and team levels and rarely comes through to me to resolve. I’m less fatigued and more inspired. I can more fully focus on what I believe are my essential roles of strategy, partnership-building, board development, fundraising, and program work. I am now more of a coach, offering questions for people to explore and occasional wisdom for those who are really stuck.
But there are tough realities to face as we experiment with parts of the model. We cannot always keep up with the flow of decisions that are needed or handle the bigger ones quickly. In the end, though, I am already finding that the quality of our decisions are better. And when we face tougher times, either organizationally or financially, we tend to find ourselves reverting to old habits of command and control. We have to remember to snap ourselves out of old practice and reprioritize our values and return to our new model. And in the end, we’re becoming a more dynamic and responsible organization because of shared and equitable leadership.
Do You Want to Try on Shared Leadership?
Shared leadership can lead to more effective organizations as diverse minds and expertise are applied to solving problems. It can achieve more balance in the lives of people as decision-making, responsibilities, and burdens are shared across the organization.
Shared leadership rocks the boat. For many of us, it’s not what we’re used to. And it liberates people to act on their visions and solutions which improves organizational performance and cracks impenetrable systems of oppression that we live and work under.
What would it look like to try shared leadership practices and experiments in your organization or institution? Where are you having success with shared leadership? Please comment.
The Knowledge Share Group is a partnership of capacity and infrastructure building organizations in the United States. The groups include Change Elemental, CompassPoint, Crossroads Antiracism Organizing & Training, Interaction Institute for Social Change, ProInspire, and Rockwood Leadership Institute.↩︎
James Shelton III at the PolicyLink Equity Summit 2018 defined power simply and clearly as “power is the ability to create, limit or make choices for oneself or others.” ↩︎
If you’re like me, I never would have thought I would be leading an organization during epic extremes and upheaval in our nation. I was not prepared for this! On many days, I feel like I’m leading through total chaos without any kind of a manual for it. That’s why IISC is bringing leaders of all kinds together on May 7th in a virtual interactive learning experience. I’ll be there, along with my colleague Simone John. We will acknowledge and cultivate the orientation and skills that are needed to lead through, well, wild times.I could use expletives in place of “wild,” but I know you get the point.
I‘ve led six organizations over my three-decade nonprofit and social justice career and none of it prepared me for what I’m up against now or what has been going on since 2020. I’ve had to lead our staff through a global pandemic, weather disasters, political and social upheaval, as well as the day-to-day struggle of accelerating our mission for racial justice and creating an organization that centers human wellbeing.
What has helped me lead through it all? Frankly, it was partly being a black biracial woman who was raised in untenable circumstances and had no other choice than to be resourceful, rely on others, and blast music in my ears when I ran out of hope. The other critical part was working in an organization such as IISC that cultivates shared and equitable leadership through our collaborative change lens of love, equity, and networks.
No one should be alone, struggling, or pushing through leadership. Not when it’s so chaotic and absolutely wild and hard out there. Not when IISC has got some wisdom and tools we’re excited to share, and we bet you’ve got some gems to share, as well!
This work is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Traditional management has run its course. At IISC and in our network of clients and equity practitioners, we’re trying to create something new in its place. We don’t have all the answers, but we know it’s time to discover another way.
As a Generation X’er who worked “under” bosses trained in traditional command and control leadership, I saw the poor results of “do what I say” or “do as I do” leadership. In the 80s and 90s, management strategies were based on military and manufacturing leadership practices which relied on top-down hierarchies, rigid routines, and long work hours.
Obedience of the workforce was paramount. And it was suffocating.
A natural product of the system of racialized capitalism, management was – and in many cases still is – about dominion over people and making sure they work harder and faster to amass money and resources for those “at the top.” It’s too often about quantity and output over people and quality, rather than what you ultimately accomplish.
Fortunately, collaboration as a critical proposition for team effectiveness, and equity and wellbeing as vital strategies for organizational success, are now in play in more workplaces. And yet, if we’re honest, we’re still churning out work and people like generations before us. The pandemic tried to teach us otherwise, but now that we’ve moved from pandemic panic to endemic acceptance, we’ve fallen back into old habits. We’ve defaulted to management practices that are rooted in the anxiety that comes from living in a world of systems which perpetuate oppression, political chaos, and climate catastrophes. Anxiety compels us to micromanage, remove employee autonomy, and revert to workplace disciplinary practices,
At IISC we’re working hard to stay true to our values and practices by approaching our organizational structure and practices with intention. We’re moving away from traditional management to transformational leadership that is based in shared leadership and the facilitative leadership and equity practices we bring to others.
So what are we doing? Here are three strategies we’re trying:
We’re decentering ourselves as “managers.” We’re developing a new leadership and decision-making structure that envisions each of us as leaders in a network, offering our contributions individually and collectively to move the whole. People closest to their areas of work and the impact of the work will be entrusted with decisions in those domains. Multiracial and multigenerational leadership will be a core principle as we undo work norms that stem from cultures of white supremacy.
We’re creating a workplace that is about preserving dignity and wellbeing. We believe that policies that promote wellbeing help us approach our work with greater focus and creativity. And having more time outside of work to rest and connect enables us to see the world more clearly and better understand our organization’s role in making the world a better place. We have implemented a four-day work week to give people a greater balance between work and personal time, and we’ve launched a compensation pod to explore how to increase our wages through an equity lens. We’re repackaging some of our functions so they fit better within each person’s job and hiring more people to share those responsibilities. We avoid booking meetings before 10am so people have time to plan their days, do solo work, and attend to caregiving responsibilities.
We’re building new practices for holding each other accountable to our work goals and values by navigating the conflict that naturally arises in an organizational setting. We’ve had a dominant culture of “niceness” that allowed tensions to stay buried, leading to work inefficiencies and resentment. To address that, we’ve worked with transformative justice practitioners to learn to step into more radical candor with each other. We’ve learned it’s possible to have hard conversations and hold people with dignity by engaging in truth-telling that emphasizes impact over intent. And, last but not least, we’re piloting mechanisms for sharing feedback that are not based on a supervision model but rather on coaching and mutual accountability sessions.
I’m relieved that future generations may be spared the problematic management practices of the past that treated us like widgets instead of precious humans. But we need a lot more people and leaders who are willing to stand with us and our allies. And who are ready to lead us forward into this new way of working.
We want to hear from you! How are you trying to replace traditional management practices with transformational leadership? How do you want to take a stand?
Folks who know me as a facilitator know that one of my first and favorite questions in planning a meeting is “who’s deciding?” It’s a question that can be counter-cultural for groups that are unaccustomed to clearly defining the decision-making process. And yet, leaving the question unanswered or unclear is one of the fastest ways I have seen to erode trust and to drive people away from working together.
Tips for doing better
Answering a few simple questions can help to avoid a great deal of frustration and prevent the fracturing of collaborative work:
WHAT decision is being made? What information will we need to make the decision? What criteria will guide the decision?
WHY is this the decision we’re making? Is there something else that we need to address first?
WHO is the final decision maker? Is it the group that’s meeting now or is it actually some other group or individual?
HOW will the final decision be made? If the group is making the final decision together, do they have an understanding of what consensus is and how to reach it? What will they do if they can’t reach a consensus? If an individual is making the final decision, will they gather input from others or proceed alone? How will they share the factors that will be considered as the decision is made? How will people be informed about the final decision? (Check out our Levels of Involvement in Decision Making framework for many more details about options for how to involve people in decision making.) What constraints will shape the decision-making process (e.g., time available, resources needed, etc.)?
Using the Questions in Sticky Situations
Do any of these situations, which we’ve seen repeatedly in our work, sound familiar to you? Here are some ideas about how applying our tips could have helped.
A team receives a task with minimal guidance about constraints, other than when the project is due. They complete their task and are told, “No, we don’t have time or money to do all of that.” or “That’s not actually what we thought you’d do with the task.” The team is asked to go back to the drawing board but many members feel disrespected and frustrated, and are reluctant to continue working on the project.
The leader who set the team up with the project could have named specific time and resource constraints to help both the leader and the team set clear expectations, and could have indicated what would happen next if the group couldn’t make its decisions within those constraints.
A coalition is meeting to decide on its goals for the year. A few priorities rise to the top, but there is no moment when the group clearly affirms the choices. Everyone goes away feeling good, but thinking differently about what was actually decided. A few days later, members read the meeting notes, which sound to some participants like they were from an entirely different meeting. Frustration ensues as individuals jockey to get the items they thought were agreed upon onto the final list of goals.
The meeting facilitator could have explicitly checked for consensus as priorities began to emerge, and clearly identified where there was/was not agreement. The note taker could have recorded on chart paper or used a computer and projector (in an in-person meeting) or screen sharing or a shared online document (in an online meeting) so that everyone could see what was happening with the information in real time.
A team receives a meeting agenda saying that the outcome of the meeting is an agreement on a solution to a pressing organizational problem. During the meeting, people spend all of the time exploring the problem. Some people are frustrated that they didn’t even begin to move towards a solution. Others are frustrated with the stated meeting outcome, since there hadn’t been any problem analysis. The meeting ends without a clear sense of what to do next and what to say to those who are waiting for the solution.
Typically, if a group is deciding on solutions, they first need to understand the problem they are trying to solve so they can identify solutions that effectively address root causes. The facilitator and meeting planners could have designed pre-meeting work or discussions to build understanding of the problem before getting into solutions. Or, they could have shifted the timeline so the group could explore problems during this meeting and solutions later.
People leave a staff meeting thinking they have reached agreement on organizational priorities. A few days later, the CEO announces priorities, which are slightly different, thanking the group for the way the meeting helped her to make her final decision on priorities. Staff members are confused and frustrated because they thought they were all making the decision together. Some team members begin to wonder if they can trust the CEO.
The leader could have first asked herself whether this is a decision the team should actually make together. If the situation really did call for her to make the final decision after consulting with the team, she could have started and closed the discussion by clearly stating why she is the final decision maker and how this discussion gives the team a chance to inform her final decision.
A colleague sends you an email, assigning you a task that you didn’t know about and asking you to do it in a way that doesn’t make sense to you. They don’t invite any questions and do not appear willing to discuss your ideas about how to get the job done. You wrestle with how much energy you want to put into asking questions and whether you have the energy to deal with a potential conflict if you just do the task in a way that makes most sense to you.
The colleague could have explained who decided that the task needed to be done in this particular way and why, spelling out important factors that led to this decision. They could have asked for your questions, concerns, or ideas about how to proceed. And they could have explained any degrees of flexibility around how the task was to be accomplished.
While clarity about decision making isn’t magic, it will make many collaborative ventures much smoother. It will grow the precious resource of trust, without which your efforts to work together are destined to fall short. It will also give you new ways to explore and expand power, which is so often experienced through the act of decision making. Questions about who decides on things like priorities and strategy; the allocation of time, money, and other resources; involvement in designing and implementing activities; and who decides who gets a seat at the decision-making table are fundamentally questions about power. Clarity around decision making will create space to address power dynamics more directly and grow more shared power to accomplish together things that you could never accomplish on your own.
Let us know how these tips are helping your efforts to collaborate for social justice and racial equity.For more on power and power dynamics, check out our series Bringing Facilitative Leadership for Social Change to Your Virtual Work, which includes sessions on Managing Power Dynamics in Virtual Meetings and Collaborative Decision Making and Shared Leadership.
“We now know what each other is made of. We can start weaving this beautiful tapestry, this community.”
“I don’t want to wait another 8 months until we are back in person!”
“I want others to know about this. I’ve never experienced anything like this. Others should know about this.”
The three quotes above came from participants in the newest Food Solutions New England (FSNE) Network Leadership Institute cohort, at the close of our opening session two weeks ago. After a year of doing an on-line only Institute, we made the decision to move to a hybrid model for this sixth annual offering, launching and concluding in-person during the warmer months (September and June) and going on-line for five sessions during the colder months late fall through early spring 2023.
Like so many, we weighed many considerations before making this choice. As one participant said during the session, “Many of us had to push through vulnerabilities to be here.” Ultimately we felt we really needed to tap into the power of the in-person gathering to ground people and set an energetic tone for the rest of the program. Many conversations were had about COVID protocols that would ensure safety without being overly onerous. This ended up including a wrist band system (see photos below), testing the day before, at arrival and after upon returning home (tests provided by the program), meeting for the bulk of the time outdoors in a tent with plenty of ventilation, light and spacing, and making masks available for those who wanted them, when we met or ventured indoors.
Our COVID care station
The tone we aimed to set from the outset was one of community care and belonging, acknowledging that for some this would be a new and welcome experience, and others may well be feeling anxious and uncertain. Hosting is always a spirit we aim to bring to the Institute, whether in-person or virtual, and includes working to ensure that everyone feels welcome and that their well-being is front and center. This included providing clear information on the front end around expectations and supports, a warm welcome upon arrival, a care package of local/regional food items (appropriate to our common work), keeping food and beverages available and setting a tone of ease and enjoyment (fidget items on tables, art supplies and a diverse music playlist).
Co-faciltator Karen Spiller with the cohort
Since 2016, IISC has been partnering with the FSNE Backbone Team from the University of New Hampshire’s (UNH) Sustainability Institute, to support and connect people in this region who are committed to advancing the emergence of just, sustainable, collaboratively stewarded and self-determined food futures for all who live here. This network and leadership development offering initiative grew out of system mapping that FSNE undertook several years ago to identify areas of leverage to shift extractive, inequitable and life-depleting patterns of the dominant food system.
More recently, the network has honed its focus on four overlapping impact areas as its unique and essential contribution, complementing those of its partners in the region, to bringing the FSNE vision and values for food system transformation to life. The Network Leadership Institute (NLI) is an outgrowth of both Network Building & Strengthening as well as Racial Equity & Values Leadership, but also touches on the other two areas as well in its content.
From the start, we knew that the main value of any kind of leadership development program would be in the people that came together and the relationships they built with one another. You only need to read about the current cohort to feel how much potential there is in simply creating opportunities for these individuals to connect and identify as more of a collective! From there, we were interested in connecting those involved in the program with other values-aligned change agents in the region. In addition, we looked at giving people an experience of different and diverse places in our region (rural, urban, coastal) and to see their work in a regional context. Lastly, we wanted to offer an opportunity for participants to hone their skills as collaborative/network leaders and social (especially racial) equity champions.
This year’s program integrates all of these elements, again with a particular theme of care and welcome. What we heard from this year’s cohort was how this was very much appreciated and built over the course of the more than 24 hours we were together. Here are some highlights of the programmatic progression that were intended to contribute to our themes of care, trust, truth and belonging:
We began by breaking bread together, at small tables, in the tent. Good food, relaxing music and informal introductions were meant to help people land softly.
We formally opened, as we generally do during FSNE gatherings, with an offering and a grounding exercise. The offering might be a poem, a quote, a song, a short story, a dance …. We read one of our favorite stanzas of poetry from William Stafford’s “A Ritual to Read to Each Other,” (see below), again to set a tone for the session, and then led people who were interested (making sure to let people know it was voluntary) through an embodied exercise to ground bodies/nervous systems, honor feelings and any thoughts people might be having as we got going.
We were joined by NLI alum Rachel Sayet, a Mohegan tribal member, Indigenous educator, essential oil crafter and Reiki practitioner, to provide some background on the land on which we were meeting and the history and present of Indigenous peoples who have stewarded them. This included the terrible and truthful telling of the actions of Lord Jeffrey Amherst, for whom the town in which we were meeting is still named, as well as efforts by indigenous educators and students in the area to reclaim their foodways and advance food sovereignty.
If you don’t know the kind of person I am
and I don’t know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
We introduced everyone to the Welcome Table ritual, through which people share objects that are meaningful to and say something about them, and share a bit of that story. At the end of our session, participants are invited to take their object back and say what they have gained during their time with the group. People always remark how “deep” this goes very quickly in helping people get a sense of one another.
We collaboratively built community care agreements, by consensus, first by inviting people to consider their self-care practices and then inviting them into conversation with one another about what might support the entire “village.” We guided them through one of the Liberating Structures practices known as 1-2-4-All for this.
We introduced people to a brief history of the University of New Hampshire’s Sustainability Institute, the Backbone Organization (convenor, coordinator, communicator and fundraiser) for Food Solutions New England, how it defines “sustainability” broadly (including cultural diversity and social equity) as well as the history and current reality of FSNE. In presenting this, we made clear that this new cohort was already a part of FSNE and we welcomed their contributions not just to the Institute, but its various other programs and initiatives.
From UNH Sustainability Institute
We started our second day by sharing a land acknowledgment in the form of a poem (another favorite – “Being Human” by Naima Penniman) that personalizes our connections to the Earth).And we shared an offering with some of the same themes in the form of a quote by Penobscot educator and advocate Sherri Mitchell ((Weh’na Ha’mu’ Kwasset) from her book Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change(see below), which encourages the reader/listener to attune to the rhythms in the natural world for greater ease and alignment.
“When we merge our internal rhythms with the rhythms of creation, we develop grace in our movement, and without thought or effort we are able to slide into the perfectly choreographed dance of life.”
On our second day we also invited offeringsfrom the cohortmembers, whoever felt moved to do so. There were three – a short personal story, a reading and a poem. We look forward to more over the course of our next six sessions!
We invited people to get artistically expressive through illustrating their River of Life– with crayons, pencils, markers – and naming where they are in their leadership/change agency journeys. They then were invited to share these in trios and talk about how they want the Institute to support them moving forward, and what their intentions were for learning from and contributing to the program and one another’s journeys.
We delved into Facilitative Leadership for Social Change, our collaborative skills curriculum for the program, and led off with the practice of “Balancing Dimensions of Collaborative Success: Results, Process, Relationship.” This practice includes a small group challenge exercise (building a tower) that tends to bond people (lots of laughter) and helps them think about the trust, care, truth and belonging that is needed to ensure long-term “success” in collaborative change work.
Mutual trust, holistic care, truth-telling and equitable belonging. Those words were expressed throughout our first session in one form or another, in word and in deed, by the hosting team, guests and by the participants. It was evident how these were not just ideas, but becoming part of the collective body that will carry this program and network forward, as we move into an on-line season. “That’s okay,” said one participant,” as some bemoaned going back to more life on Zoom, “we know each other now. That will stay with us.” And we are delighted to already see one subset of the group looking to meet in person soon in the southeast of our region.
This is how we do and will do it, as the poet Marge Piercy writes in two stanzas of her poem “Seven of Pentacles” (see below image) …
Cohort 6, just before our closing, at The Welcome Table
Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses. Live a life you can endure: Make love that is loving. Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in, a thicket and bramble wilderness to the outside but to us interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.
Live as if you liked yourself, and it may happen: reach out, keep reaching out, keep bringing in. This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always, for every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting, after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.
As you review the framework, would you share your responses to the questions below in the comments?
What does it bring up for you?
Where do you find yourself focusing your thinking and efforts?
What might you want to explore, start, continue or further develop, or stop doing in any of the stages?How does the framework help you prioritize and perhaps find empowering areas for action and partnership?
As you navigate the complex times of COVID-19 and racial uprising, consider what it would take to transition through these four dimensions, what needs to be in place, what is already in place, and what we need to reimagine and rebuild.
1 – In the Trauma Dimension: How are we responding to the impact of trauma from COVID, racism, and other shocks?
Racial Equity & Justice:
Are we removing racialized barriers to emergency resources?
Are we using a racial equity impact analysis tool to understand and evaluate our response? Even when we feel rushed?
Are we recognizing deep racial harm in our organization and networks?
Collaboration:
Are we pausing and engaging in quick and meaningful stakeholder engagement to guide our responses and ensure less harm?
Are we attending to both relationships and results as we carry out our work?
Love:
Are we acting and responding with humility, empathy, and transparency?
Are we practicing presence and accountability?
Networks:
Are we connecting with diverse networks to gather and share information and foster flows to address critical needs?
2 – In the Reckoning Dimension: How are we grappling with deep distress and the reality of shifting resources? How are we embracing racial uprisings for change? How are we embracing uncertainty?
Racial Equity & Justice:
Are we acknowledging inequities revealed by crisis?
Are we acting to undo the racialized impacts of our actions?
How are we recognizing the leadership of Black people and what are the lessons for our organizations?
Are we engaged in transparent and collaborative decision-making?
Are we facilitating conversations and activities to face the pain and opportunity of this crisis, our potential power together to make change, while also planning for next steps?
Love:
Are we embracing where people are? Their feelings, conditions, perspectives?
Are we modeling vulnerability as a sign of strength?
Are we exploring the reality through the lens of love and possibility?
Networks:
Are we setting strategic direction with critical partners?
Are we listening for and following the ideas of BIPOC communities (Black, Indigenous, people of color)?
3 – In the Healing Dimension: How are we creating the conditions for healing and well-being?
Racial Equity & Justice:
Are we supporting BIPOC people and communities to move through trauma, grief and anger toward joy?
Are white people leaning into discomfort, trauma and pain, and working that through with other white allies?
Collaboration:
Are we generating and living into community care guidelines to support self-care and collective well-being?
Are we designing and facilitating in ways that allow people to process holistically – intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually?
Love:
Are we convening grounding conversations that allow for brave space, emotions, and truth sharing?
Are we offering resources for healing modalities?
Are we acknowledging all paths to healing?
Are we meeting pain with action and redistributing power and resources?
Networks:
Are we deepening networks and attending to flows of resources that create healing and well-being for people?
Are we setting up more distributive structures focusing on regenerative flows of resources of many kinds?
4 – In the Transformative Futures Dimension: How are we envisioning and living into equitable and resilient futures?
Racial Equity & Justice:
Are we pivoting from supremacist and extractive practices to what is liberating and life-honoring?
Collaboration:
Are we facilitating leaders to envision and invest in equitable and resilient futures?
Love:
Are we encouraging building futures from the lessons of love, possibility, and shared humanity?
Networks:
Are we fostering a new level of learning, sustainability, innovation and radical collaboration with people and our planet?
Are we focusing on systems change and building long-term movement?
Just wrapping up a bit of work with a national network that we at IISC helped to get off the ground 5 years ago, which has seen incredible growth and success in its efforts, and which continues to make progress in these times. For us, what this means is that they have really been hitting on what we call the collaborative dimensions of success – results, process and relationships (see image above). That said, some parts of the network (particular working groups) are humming along more so than others.
In our latest meeting with the network, we helped incubate new working groups (now taking their total to 13!) and also held a gathering of existing working group members to come up with a list of success factors and what they wish they had known at the outset to set themselves up for success. This list will be provided to the new working groups to help them along. I was struck by how many of the items on the list below align with what we teach in Facilitative Leadership for Social Change. While there is no exact recipe for success, we have found over the past 27 years that there are certain practices that create conditions for more likely fluid collaboration. ‘
Here is a list of 27 distinct but related success factors that were identified:
Diversity; people with different skills and experiences, a diversity of vantage points, ideas, and learning curves.
Dividing up roles – facilitator, recorder, timekeeper, liaison, etc.
Willingness to grow and change our roles; not feeling one has to be in the original role.
Establish group working agreements for collective accountability and be open to changing them as needed.
Strong facilitation.
Understanding of the difference between a working group chair and facilitator (these may or may not be the same person).
Ensure everyone feels like they are able to contribute to group conversations if they want to; check for accessibility issues of various kinds.
Intervene around those who would otherwise dominate conversation and shut others down.
Comfort with letting go of an idea once it has been incubated; people understand that when they generate an idea or proposal that it might be changed or critiqued by the rest of the working group, to make it better.
Loosen grip on ego.
Have consistent meetings and touch points – monthly or bi-weekly – to keep on track.
Practice an ethic of love, generosity and forgiveness.
Open up to bigger sources of inspiration and creativity.
Build common language; make sure that everyone understands any acronyms or technical terms being used.
Use a process guide/map for helping working groups in their overall development and work planning; they can adjust as they see fit, but having a framework can be very helpful.
Have an agenda for your meetings and follow it, until it doesn’t make sense to do so.
Set desired outcomes each meeting, so you can determine where any conversation or agenda item is heading and when it’s over.
Make sure your meeting agendas are realistic … put on it what you can actually get to; prioritize and manage the conversation.
Give people time to connect with one another.
Check for agreement and/or for clarity around key points before moving on.
Make sure action items/next steps are captured at the end of each meeting and restated at the top of your minutes/group memory; revisit in your next meeting.
Conduct process reviews of meetings (what worked, what could be improved); keep what’s working and make changes accordingly.
Keep easy-to-digest minutes/group memories to maintain momentum; having consistent and capable support around this kind of record keeping, including key agreements and next step.
Get meeting minutes/group memories out as soon as possible to everyone, including those who may have missed a meeting.
Support onboarding of new members, so they can catch up easily and step into the flow – think about one-on-one conversations and mentorship.
Provide easy access to/support around accessing shared documents, tools and platforms.
Keep group size manageable – 10 is a nice size; if more consider sub-dividing for certain tasks (think in terms of small group ministry).
Note: This blog was authored as a framework to assist leaders moving people and organizations through COVID-19. Shortly after it was written, the racial uprisings of 2020 began after the many deaths of Black people in the United States. We have since updated this framework to bridge the approaches we believe are necessary for navigating both COVID-19 and racial injustice. Please view this blog and new resource.
As we find ourselves rowing in uncharted, uncertain, and scary waters, feeling like we’re up against waves of deep tension and crisis, we know that we need to row together in new and deeply collaborative ways. Yet under current conditions, many leaders are overwhelmed with concern about their own organizations; their staff, volunteers, Board, constituencies, and networks. We are all problem solving minute-to-minute and facing many critical decisions – decisions which could determine if people have a source of income, if they will receive essential services, and, indeed, even if they will remain healthy and alive.
We need to support leaders at all levels – individually, organizationally, and at the level of the ecosystem of networks around them – to work strategically and collaboratively in this critical moment. We are using IISC’s Collaborative Change Lens, to harness the power of collaboration by focusing on love, racial equity, and networks. We are supporting leaders online, and will eventually support them in-person (yes, that day will come), to plan and move through the stages of transformation offered in this framework during the pandemic and beyond.
Organizations, communities, networks, and even individuals may experience these stages in linear ways. Or, they may dip in and out of the stages at different times as they move through challenges and opportunities. We are supporting them to shift from emergency responses to creating conditions for resilient futures that create regenerative and equitable systems that are sustainable for the longer-term. This includes helping individuals and groups “do what they do best and connect to the rest,” and to act in networked ways to strengthen response and movement.
As you review the framework, would you share your responses to the questions below in the comments?
What does it bring up for you?
Where do you find yourself focusing your thinking and efforts?
What might you want to explore, start, continue or further develop, or stop doing in any of the stages?How does the framework help you prioritize and perhaps find empowering areas for action and partnership?
Facilitate rapid problem-solving and decision-making in the face of immediate needs, heightened risk, chaos, and/or uncertainty.
_____
Collaboration Priorities:
Focus on relationships and results for rapid decision-making and crisis management
Engage in quick and meaningful stakeholder engagement of those impacted by critical and consequential decisions to generate effective responses.
Ground all decisions in what is best for our shared humanity and fate.
Love:
Act and respond with love, humility, empathy, and transparency.
Let those in critical need know they are not alone.
Show up with and model presence and focus.
Racial Equity:
Avoid “savior syndrome” and respect the dignity and voice of those most in need in the moment.
Recommit to racial equity practices and approaches from the organization’s past that can build resiliency.
Anticipate and remove racialized barriers to accessing emergency resources and uniquely tailor responses to account for historic inequities to eliminate disparities in the emergency response.
Networks:
Foster connectivity and flows between leaders in various sectors and ecosystems to gather and share information, understand the current reality, and respond to complex problems.
Tap into diverse networks to address critical needs and discover new possibilities.
Eliminate bottlenecks and liberate the flow of critical resources.
Grapple with the reality of fewer resources and more distress within the organization/community.
_____
Collaboration Priorities:
Facilitate conversations and coordinate activity to prepare for emerging into a period of relative stability, focusing on shared and equitable leadership.
Work with others to read patterns; probe, sense, and respond iteratively to achieve stability.
Love:
Shape conversations, cultures, and approaches to exploring the current reality through the lens of love and possibility.
Embrace the full complexity of where people are and how they are experiencing current reality.
Model vulnerability as strength.
Encourage people to reach for connection to experience belonging and avoid isolation.
Racial Equity:
Acknowledge and address the reality of stark racial disparities in our social systems that the emergency reveals. Remember and communicate that equity is not the same as equality.
Collect and examine data on who has been impacted by your and others’ decisions and how; determine new paths and approaches to root out inequities.
Foster deeper trust and network connections by continuing to exchange ideas and resources.
Build a gift culture where people offer what they can for the good of the whole.
Set strategic direction with critical stakeholders and partners. Join forces, align, or merge.
Create the conditions for healing and well-being for people in groups, networks, and sectors in which we live and work.
_____
Collaboration Priorities:
Model communication and consistent practices of support, cooperation, and coordination.
Generate and live into community care and mutual aid guidelines to support healing, refreshment, self-care, and improved physical and emotional well-being of oneself and others.
Love:
Convene healing conversations that allow for brave space, nourishment, emotions, truth, and care.
Leave channels of communication open for how people are feeling and experiencing things.
Remind everyone that individuals will be in different places at different times, and that is okay.
Racial Equity:
Make space for people with shared racial identities or a shared purpose to come together to move through and release trauma collectively, and to experience liberation.
Design and facilitate in ways that allow people to process holistically – intellectually, physically, emotionally, spiritually.
Networks:
Generate new connections or deepen older ones to refresh and heal on individual, interpersonal, organizational, and network levels.
Attend to flows of resources that create healing and well-being for people.
Envision, live into, and develop capacities for new and better futures
_____
Collaboration Priorities:
Facilitate leaders, organizations, and networks to envision and generate elements of a new future that is different from what was imagined before the emergency.
Create emergent learning spaces for people to share what they are experimenting with and learning.
Love:
Imagine a future from the lessons and examples of love, possibility, mutual aid, and collective care.
Build systems, processes, and practices that begin to manifest the future that you envision.
Racial Equity:
Design your vision and future practices by grounding them in the value of transformative equitable well-being and thriving.
Pivot from supremacist, extractive practices to what is fundamentally liberatory and life-honoring.
Many articles have been devoted to running effective meetings that build collaboration among teams, yet many fail to discuss the hidden element that can destroy a meeting almost without fail.
Power dynamics – the ways in which power works in a setting – can either sink a meeting and negatively impact relationships for years, or produce more shared power and capacity to get things done. A lot of the difference comes down to how we attend to power dynamics in meetings, how well we plan our meetings, how well we determine what happens within and outside of meetings, and how well we facilitate in the moment.
In every organization, there are people who hold formal power and informal power. Formal power is attributed to someone by virtue of their title or position in the organization. People carry informal power if they have influence over others or their organization, either because of their experience, force of personality or persuasion, unearned privilege, or because they have strong relationships with decision-makers and peers. Power is also deeply influenced by diversity and equity dynamics. In most Western societies today, many decisions in organizations are still controlled by people with certain backgrounds: over 40, male, white/European, heterosexual, and middle class and wealthy people. Many feel empowered to lead, speak, and make decisions by virtue of the standing society gives to them on the basis of their background. They get a lot of practice leading and people are acculturated to following and respecting them.
Power — the capacity to get things done — is neither positive nor negative in and of itself. It’s all about how we construct, reconstruct, and practice power. Individuals can exercise their power in healthy ways if they stay focused on making space for others and growing power to achieve positive outcomes by building “power with” others. Individuals and groups can exercise their power in unhealthy ways if they are focused on establishing “power over” others or concentrating power in a few.
At IISC we have made some key observations about power in meetings:
Power dynamics are always present in meetings whether we see them or not.
Every meeting is a chance to build a group’s power and transform power dynamics. It’s important to design and facilitate meetings to create opportunities for power to be shared and openly discussed.
Meeting designers and facilitators must attend to formal and informal power and the dynamics that come along with it.
Meeting facilitators should be mindful of and acknowledge their own power and enact it in a way that builds the power of the group.
Every element of meetings needs preparation to make power and decision-making transparent. Consider questions like: Who is at the meeting and who is not? Why or why not? What’s on the agenda and what’s not on the table for discussion that should be? Who will be making the decisions that flow from what will be discussed (both in the room and beyond)? Who plays which roles and why? What work will happen outside of the meeting? What information from the meeting should be shared and with whom?
So, what are some ways to attend to power dynamics in meetings?
Assume power dynamics are always present in meetings. Design your meeting agenda to include multiple voices and perspectives. Lightly encourage people to step forward to lead and participate, especially if they have less power in the organization either because of role, positional status, race, gender, or other factors. Encourage people with traditional forms of formal power to do more listening than speaking.
Build a culture of collaboration in meetings. Think of meetings as an opportunity for a team to build relationships, learn leadership, design good processes, and counteract unhealthy uses of power. Design your meetings for relationships, joy, and creativity. Good things will follow! Always build an agenda that allows people to first interact on a human basis, such as starting with opportunities for people to do a “check-in” to share how their day or week is going or to learn more about each other on a personal level. Ask people a question that surfaces their personal and professional purpose. Encourage honesty, vulnerability, and calling people “in”, instead of calling people “out”. Spread a little business love around the room, creating openings for people to feel heard and noticed, and to experience a sense of belonging and interconnectedness.
Openly discuss power in meetings. Discuss openly with your team the question, what would be the benefits to our group if we shared power? Remind them that power is not a finite pie; rather, it can be infinite, expanded, and shared among people and leaders. Prompt them to explore how they can share “power with” each other instead of “power over.” Make a list of meeting agreements the group will use to share power. Ask people to monitor the agreements and be brave enough to intervene if people are not practicing them. Make a list of “power over” moves, so people learn the behaviors that reinforce dominant voices and power and exclude others. Have people take mental note of who is speaking the most and who is not. Make sure your discussions of power go beyond yourselves as colleagues to the people or communities you serve. How are they “at the table?” How are their priorities, assets, and skills driving the discussion?
Remember that power is a social construct. We can design spaces where individuals and groups experience their own and others’ power differently. Be proactive about ways to amplify the power of people who are typically at the margins of the conversation. Challenge the group to pay at least as much attention to the expertise that comes from lived experience (say, of poverty) as from formal theories and data. Flip questions on their head by asking “why not do things differently?” instead of “how can we work within given boundaries?” Ensure that people who are affected by the issues you’re working on are at the center of the conversation and have meaningful roles in the work over time (inside meetings and beyond).
Use your role intentionally and thoughtfully if you’re the meeting facilitator. Don’t dominate the discussion. Don’t come up with all the ideas. Stay as impartial as possible, even though you can never truly be completely neutral. If you want to contribute an idea or experience, tell the group you are switching from facilitator role to express your view as an individual and then step back into your facilitator role. Examine who gets to facilitate meetings and who doesn’t. Meeting facilitators can change the outcome of the meeting just by how they design and run it. Rotating facilitation and supporting people to learn how to facilitate and run meetings distributes power and makes meetings more dynamic.
The skills of meeting facilitation with a lens to share power are teachable and replicable. At IISC, we share some of those skills through training and consulting. We have learned that meetings that are both well facilitated and that attend to power dynamics can transform groups into highly functioning teams with deeper purpose and intention for social change.
This post was originally published on this date in 2016 and we find it enduringly relevant today. It contains a true story and a Facilitator’s Guide for handling situations like this.
A True Story
At a recent training I was leading for an all queer and multiracial group, an older white man “John” took offense to my use of the word queer. As an icebreaker, I had asked the group to share in a pair, when did you first know you were queer? During the debrief, John took time to explain how the Q-word brought back painful memories of the many ways he was shamed growing up. As he explained, he got emotional and then said “using the Q-word is like using the N-word for me.” And he actually said the N-word.
The air in the room suddenly got heavy and many people shifted uncomfortably in their seats. The three black men in the group looked stunned, and the rest of the people of color in the circle turned to me to do something. The white man kept talking, completely unaware of that this micro-aggression had caused a change in the room. I waited for a white person to address what happened. But folks remained silent, so just as the next person began sharing, I stopped the process.
“I want to stop and check something out with you and the group. Is it ok if I do that?” I asked John and turned to the group to seek their approval. “John, thank you for sharing the impact that I had on you when I used the Q-word in this circle. I want to account to you for that. I also heard you use the N-word and I am wondering if you would be open to hearing the impact that that word could have had in the space?”
