HITTING THE HIGH NOTES
"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."
Audre Lorde
Our Sessions to Ground in Purpose, Strengths, and Leadership
Our whole curriculum is built around the intention of grounding women identified people of color organizers in a deep rooted sense of purpose and strengths. The sessions in this section bring it all together. Through centering activities and reflecting on leadership, the participants discern and put into action their leadership approach that counters societal norms and the multiple -isms shaping how they perceive themselves as leaders.
We find that these sessions are like hitting the high notes -- they go to the heart of this work and open the participants up to new visions of what is possible in their leadership. Like the part of the song that gets everyone on their feet, on the dance floor, hand in the air.
Description: This centering practice helps to ground participants in knowledge that they have a legacy of wisdom, strength, creativity, resilience and many other attributes from which they can recognize their own greatness.
Process: 60 minutes minimum with 14 people (15-30 minutes for opening and framing + 2-3 minutes per person for sharing)
Description: Purpose is our role—our unique contribution—in the group project of building a world where everyone can thrive. Clarity of purpose is what allows us to advance towards a vision that seems impossible. There are three different ways that you can use this practice: 1) as a stand alone session to uncover an individual's purpose, 2) as a tool to begin nurturing a practice of interdependence with a group, and 3) as a practice to reground us in purpose and push back on what disorganized us. Pair this practice with the activity How They Disorganize Us (Part 2 of Creating the Container).
Process: 90 min with 16 people
Description: Description: Strengths are the gifts and medicine that we can offer and draw on in building a world where everyone can thrive. Grounding in our strengths can allow us to become in touch with, imagine, and commit to leading from a strengths-based, healing justice politic. This practice builds on Clifton Strengths 34 and is offered in 2 parts. Note: Part 2 of this session does require having paid access to Clifton Strengths 34 assessment. If this is not accessible to your group, we offer an alternative tool.
Process: about 2 hours with 16 people
Description: Immunity to Change explores human behavior change by exploring our behaviors, competing commitments, assumptions and how our mindset impacts the process of change. The session offers an approach to understanding these aspects and how this can be a method to disrupt what gets in the way of change as leaders. We recommend facilitating this as an introduction to a tool and invite folks to learn and practice the tool ongoing.
Process: 90min with up to 20 people
Description: This is a two-part session that grounds participants in what it means to lead from a place of love and wholeheartedness.
Part 1, Leading with love offers some grounding in the concept of love and invites participants to reflect on love in relationship to their leadership and the way their organizations lead. It engages participants through frameworks offered from scholars such as bell hooks.
Part 2, Armored vs. Daring Leadership explores leadership behaviors through concepts borrowed from Brene Brown’s work, Dare to Lead. It examines leadership behaviors that are practiced across the spectrum of Armored and Daring leadership behaviors. The session helps participants understand how our environment impacts our behaviors and choices as leaders through the lens of internalized oppression and engages participants through reflection on how to identify their own leadership behaviors across the spectrum. Participants are invited to develop practices that shift armored behaviors towards daring ones through the lens offered in part 1, Leading with love.
Generative conflict and principled struggle are deep concepts that involve a lot of preparation, intention, and practice. With so many ways to engage with this work, we have a couple of different offerings to share:
Leaning into Generative Conflict and Principled Struggle: This session is facilitated as part of the Power50 and women's fellowship curriculum. If you are trying to put something together that's part of an ongoing learning cohort, check out this session that we've designed for that purpose.
Preparing for Generative Conflict and Principled Struggle series: This series of 3 sessions is another powerful offering to delve into these topics, focusing on the embodied experience. Check out this series if you're looking for ways to train with your group on this topic over an ongoing period.
Click here to learn more about both offerings.
Description: Our organizations are often not working at their best. While their justice vision might speak of liberation, the day-to-day working culture, conditions, and situations inside the organization do not yet reflect this transformed world. We know this gap between vision and the day-to-day is painful. In this context, this session invites participants to practice radical imagination in their leadership: How can we find more places to move from purpose and choice? How can we reclaim our power to imagine and create thriving?
Process: 120 minutes
Description: We live in times of uncertainty and chaos and so are navigating risk all the time. Risk may be an active conflict with a coworker, a possible transition from a job, or wanting to hire someone who breaks the mold of what’s expected.
In this session, we unpack the relationship between power and risk and activate our accountability to take strategic risks with the power we have. What is a strategic risk and what supports do I need? What does taking risk on purpose, for purpose look like? What are my choices? We anchor this session in a tool developed by Viveka Chen from the Purpose, Outcomes, Process model (created by Leslie Sholl Jaffe & Randy Alford) and How to Respond to Microaggressions (by Hahna Yoon).
Process: 125 minutes
Adapted with permission from the Omega Women’s Leadership Center leadership development planning tool
Description: This activity supports women of color to name and claim their leadership journeys. It supports them to claim strengths, break down their leadership journey into actionable goals and steps, and identify resources and supports for this journey. For programs that offer coaching (whether 1:1 or peer), this plan can also serve as a guide in supporting the women to move into their leadership purpose and practice.
Introduce activity and offer this example plan. Give participants about 45-60 minutes to fill this out solo, while playing music. Then have people pair up at the end to share their plan. This activity also pairs well with the I am poem. Recommend that participants hold onto this plan for the length of the program as it may be brought back into the practice.
Process: 45-60 min
Description: One of the most impactful things we can do as managers to support the effectiveness and impact of our staff and organization is to develop a culture of feedback. This allows everyone to continuously learn and grow, an essential part of creating a high-performing and joyful work environment. This series of activities draws from multiple sources to provide important concepts and tools to strengthen the ways we solicit, give, and encourage feedback across our teams and organizations.
Process: 3.25 to 3.5 hours