“strategically inclusive leadership” posts - table of contents

Main page: introduction to "strategically inclusive leadership"

introduction to "strategically inclusive leadership"

Concepts and exercises:

#1: names that matter, and who is at the margins

#2: Indigenizing the academy (part 1: concepts)

#2: Indigenizing the academy (part 2: exercises)

#3: the table I long for....

This work is ongoing and more items will be added here over time...

strategically inclusive leadership #3: the table I long for....

[core topic]

This is part of an ongoing series 
on strategically inclusive leadership. 
Read the introduction here.

You may be familiar with some sayings about "if they don't give you a seat at the table… then _______”. For example: “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring your own chair.” or “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, build your own table."

In the context of such sayings, “table” is usually the conference table, the executive decision-making table. 

I'd like to share a quote with you from Jeff Chu. Jeff is Chinese American, a journalist and author of Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America. Here’s what he said:

"The Table I long for...

is one where all are not just welcome

but desperately & fiercely wanted."

Isn’t that amazing? Wouldn’t that be the table to beat all tables?

reflect

Before we look at this in the context of strategically inclusive leadership, let's take a moment to reflect by ourselves. We won’t be asking anyone to share, or to draw pictures of what you thought about, or any of that. Let’s just close our eyes, slow down our breathing, and reflect: are there or have there been times and places where I am desperately and fiercely wanted? 

(Pause again to let people reflect)

That’s the personal backdrop… 

While Jeff  said this in the context of the communion table in his faith tradition, you as the leadership of a community organization or ERG could explore what this might look like by thinking of "the table" as your organization or ERG. 

sil #2: Indigenizing the academy (part 2: exercises)

[core topic]

This is part of an ongoing series 
on strategically inclusive leadership. 
Read the introduction here.

The purpose of this exercise is to explore the ideas presented in part 1 of Indigenization of the Academy in the context of your organization. The exercise presumes a larger organization at which you are part of a smaller part. For example, the following types of situations:

• A company or institution where you are involved in an Employee Resource Group
• A religious institution or faith community where you provide leadership in one particular location or sub-community
• A municipality where you are involved in a community association or cultural organization

getting practical with your team

part 1 - what the broader level is currently doing 

Draw the following chart on a whiteboard or large chart.

	Things our company / institution / organization /government currently does that matches each of the three categories:
Denial, status quo, continuing, etc.
Helping minoritized and racialized employees succeed in existing structure
Transforming the organization and building a new one together
Other thoughts and ideas

As a group, use sticky notes or just write down what your larger organization -- the company, government, etc. for which you work, is doing that matches each of the three categories on the left.. Additional thoughts which do not fit the three main categories can be put in the lower row.

sil #2: Indigenizing the academy (part 1: concepts)

[core topic]

This is part of an ongoing series 
on strategically inclusive leadership. 
Read the introduction here.

Before COVID, I went to MacEwan University on several different occasions to attend seminars and symposia. Outside, they fly the Treaty 6 flag. On the way in, I noted that each entrance has a land acknowledgement posted in both English and Cree, on a formal plaque.

There is a wonderful Indigenous Student Center with several staff, a resident Elder, cultural ceremonies, tutoring and other educational supports. There are introductory Indigenous awareness courses.

Allard Hall, the university's new Arts and Culture Building, has an atrium named after Elder Jerry Woods, who served as an elder for MacEwan and other institutions for many years. A display on the second level of the atrium commemorates him and his legacy at the school. It has a plaque with his picture and a statement in the middle, with a picture on one side and a framed ribbon shirt on the other. MacEwan also commissioned Christi Belcourt and Isaac Murdoch to create a mural for the university.

Today, these kinds of things tend to be fairly common for many post-secondary educational institutions in Canada. Thirty years ago, were educational institutions doing anything of the sort that I shared about MacEwan?

Not in the slightest…

The foundation of education institutions here in Canada, whether at an elementary or high school level or post secondary, is a Western colonial cisgender heterosexual patriarchal one. Did I miss anything in that description? This includes a denial of what happened to indigenous peoples in Indian Residential Schools, and an insistence on conformity to the dominant culture. This education acts as if Indigenous people were from long long ago and ignores their present reality.

We are going to look at some important concepts  of indigenization and the academy related to the above example. Then we will see how these concepts could apply in a roughly parallel way to other organizations and businesses. Finally, a few comments on what we as strategically inclusive leaders can - and cannot - readily do about this, as people involved in ERGs or community organizations.

strategically inclusive leadership #1: names that matter, and who is at the margins

[core topic]

This is part of an ongoing series 
on strategically inclusive leadership. 
Read the introduction here.

This idea comes partly from reading the article  “Names That Matter: Exploring the Tensions of Campus LGBTQ Centers and Trans* Inclusion” by Marine & Nicolazzo. The authors studied campus LGBTQ centers to see how much focus they put on each of the letters in their name (L, G, B, T, and Q). In particular, they were interested in knowing if the focus was mostly on lesbian and gay students, and how much transgender people were included and supported. They surveyed the programs, events and services offered to find out.

You can read the article to find out what their findings were, if you want, but the real point is that there are minorities within any minority, and these minorities that can be minoritized, neglected, forgotten or oppressed even by the minority demographic that they are part of. For example, think of the wide range of disabilities that people can have, and how some of these are talked about a lot, some of them we hear about sometimes, and others are never heard about and in fact you might not even know they exist. The key point is not so much whether they are heard about or whether you know about them, but whether the lesser-known ones receive equitable treatment and support and resources. Are they included or not?

Within this strategy / concept, if you are leading a community organization, or an employee resource group, or other groups of minoritized and racialized people, consider: of the people who are part of your demographic or community, who is left out, neglected, excluded?

The second thing to do is to take action. The following quote from Yvette Flunder, a Black lesbian Bishop (from her book Where the Edge Gathers) is enlightening for this part:

"An authentic ethic of inclusion must reach from the center 

to the farthest margin and work its way back."

If you wish to be inclusive, those who are at the center need to reach out to those at the farthest margins and work to bring them to the center. 

strategic inclusion: within my demographic, who is at the margins? Who is the minority within the minority? How can those at the center include, serve, embrace those at the margins?

introduction to "strategically inclusive leadership"

Introducing "strategically inclusive leadership", a term which, if you search for it with quotation marks, brings up about three Google results as of December 2022. Quite unusual considering that most Google searches bring thousands of results.

This has come about as a result of a lot of thinking and learning, and then subsequently being in a leadership position where I've realized that I could either spend my time doing "the usual things" which were done the year before (organize the usual type of meetings, provide input to the newsletter, etc.) or I could be strategic about what the group needed and what would truly make a difference. At some point in the past four months, the ideas that I was trying out and putting in place coalesced into a bigger idea that I'm calling "strategically inclusive leadership."

Here is my working definition of strategically inclusive leadership:

You’ll note that the focus of this definition of strategically inclusive leadership is those who “provide leadership for the flourishing of racialized and minoritized peoples.” This is not about a manager being inclusive of all the members of their work team, nor is this about being a good ally. I imagine that some of the topics we will cover will also be applicable to those who provide leadership in general, and that’s fine, but it’s not the primary focus.