1. Transformative
Leadership in
the 21st Century
john a. powell
Williams Chair in Civil Rights & Civil
Liberties, Moritz College of Law
Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race
and Ethnicity
2. landscape of the present environment
“the whole financial
system has been rigged
against lower income
communities in general
and communities of
color in particular”
Source: Program for Environmental and Regional Equity
3. tackling the pressing issues …
“if we are going to turn the
financial industry back into
something that benefits the
“our financial system consumer … WE HAVE TO SHIFT
has a distinctly racial THE UNDERLYING BALANCE OF
character, one that POWER”
requires a response
rooted in racial and
social justice”
Source: Program for Environmental and Regional Equity
4. “money seems to be the
easiest way to power …
Need for the focus should not be
social simply on foreclosure
movements relief, but on a new
for financial financial frame that has at
equity its heart the restoration of
opportunity for all”
5. 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.
6. opportunity
• we can define opportunity through access
• opportunity includes access to:
▫ Healthcare
▫ Education
▫ Employment
▫ Services
▫ Healthy food
7. opportunity is racialized
• In 1960, African-American School
Lower
families in poverty were 3.8 Segregation &
Educational
times more likely to be Concentrated
Outcomes
concentrated in high- Poverty
poverty neighborhoods
than poor whites.
• In 2000, they were 7.3 Increased
times more likely. Neighborhood Flight
Segregation of Affluent
Families
8. 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
9. We must adjust our lens of analysis to reflect
these changing conditions
Moving towards a systems approach of
problem solving and identifying
solutions
11. • 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.
12. • 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.
13. • 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
14. 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.
15. • Transformational Leadership
▫ transformational leaders have been written about for
thousands of years … praised and cursed.
▫ implement new ideas
▫ continually change
themselves
Jesus Buddha
▫ flexible and adaptable
Genghis Khan ▫ 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. 16
17. Systems thinking
An analysis of any one
Health
area will yield an
incomplete Childcare Employment
understanding. Housing
Effective
Education
Participation
We must consider how Transportation
institutions interact
with one another to
produce racialized
outcomes.
18. black leadership: from civil rights to the Age of Obama
Charismatic, religious, spiritual leaders
New, modern, political leaders
influence policy directly
19. Black political leadership and the white power structure
Emerging 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.
20
21. GROUP/COMMUNITY DYNAMICS:
• keep grounded to your community/group
• but ALSO serve as a bridge for your
community/group with other communities/groups
21
22. leadership coalitions
• 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
Source: African American Leadership, Ronald W. Walters, Robert Charles Smith
23. build coalitions across racial groups/interests
• 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.
Source: Program for Environmental and Regional Equity
24. leaders must be collaborators and connectors
• 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
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. 25
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?')
26
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.
27
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.
28
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
29
30. 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
31. FOR MORE INFORMATION:
http://www.KirwanInstitute.org
www.facebook.com/kirwaninstitute
www.twitter.com/kirwaninstitute
