Equity leadership is treacherous in this current climate. Disingenuous actors are flooding the zone with misrepresentations to score points, raise their profile, and raise money. Some leaders committed to equity are giving up, and others are doubling down on self-righteousness. Neither will create more equity for us all.
Our Evolve Your Leadership Voice program focuses on helping leader evolve their capability, skills, and effectiveness at leading for equity, even in these perilous times. Here are 5 evolutions leaders can make to more effectively lead for equity.
1. From Denying → Curiosity & Unlearning
For leaders aspiring to lead for equity, getting critical feedback when we mess up (and we all mess up) can feel like a threat to our identity or even our goodness. Denying the criticism, the feedback, or that the thing even happened can feel like what we need to do to maintain our identity as “a good one” and keep our credibility. However, meeting our mistakes, criticism, and feedback with curiosity and an openness that we still have to unlearn is key to our learning and growth. Counterintuitively, being open to criticism doesn’t ruin our credibility or undermine trust; it actually raises it.
2. From Defensiveness → A Gift Toward My Own Liberation
We’ve all been very well miseducated by the culture, systems, and structures throughout our lives. Acknowledging this reality helps us respond to criticism not with defensiveness but by seeing it as a potential gift to our own liberation. Reframing feedback about an off-hand comment not as criticism to defend against but as a gift that can help you become freer from your harmful socialization is a transformational shift.
3. From Performative → Sincere
Performative allyship and equity work are easy to criticize for good reason. Yet, I’ve been noticing that equity work that is rooted in performativity is still equity work. It is often the place where folks who are new to this find an entry point. We don’t want them to stay there, but rather than make it wrong or bad and shame them, could we see performativity as a step on the journey toward sincerity? I’m reminded that change in behavior often comes before change in attitudes. Changing attitudes on recycling is hard, but making recycling incredibly easy can get people to get into the practice (maybe to be performative), but the behavior often leads to attitude change and a commitment to recycling specifically and sustainability more broadly. How can we see performative equity leadership as a step on the path and help those who are there continue their journey toward sincerity?
4. From Self-Righteousness → Effectiveness
It’s tempting to cling to being “right,” but this often alienates the very people we need to engage the most. How can we shift from a focus on being right to a focus on being effective? Effectiveness means meeting people where they are, building trust, and leading them forward without condescension or exclusion. If our goal is learning and growth, then how do we be good company on the journey?
5. From Shame/Blame → Change, Learning, and Growth
Shame shuts people down and focuses them not on their words or actions but on their humanity and goodness. Blame fosters and entrenches resistance. Shifting the focus to change, learning, and growth keeps the work moving forward and creates an environment where people are willing to try, fail, and try again, make mistakes and learn from them, and even share their missteps to help others learn from them with less harm to others.
These shifts aren’t always easy, but they are worth it. Leading for equity isn’t a destination; it’s a continuous practice. Each time we choose curiosity over denial, sincerity over performance, or growth over shame, we not only become better leaders, we help create better tomorrows for us all.
Evolve Your Leadership Voice
If you are interested in learning more about Evolve, let’s connect.
