(Illustration by Raffi Marhaba, The Dream Creative)
The dominant narrative around leadership in many areas of the world centers individualism over solidarity. It suggests that there is one kind of leadership and that a single person—one who intervenes to solve a problem or envision a bold new reality—embodies it. This “hero narrative” shows up in all spheres of life—in the lone TV show detective, for example, and in memoirs that credit Apple’s success primarily to Steve Jobs’ vision and relentless drive. It’s in remembrances of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work, which often leave out the stories of the people and activists who guided him and who took their own risks and actions toward greater justice.
The deeply entrenched notion of a leader as an individual hero is not accidental. Many individuals and organizations with positional power want to maintain the status quo—rooted in racism, colonialism, sexism, and other “isms”—of who has power and who has a voice. This manifests in numerous ways, not least in financial support. An Echoing Green and Bridgespan Group report on funding leaders of color notes, “Looking just at [Echoing Green’s] highest qualified applicants … our research found that on average the revenues of the Black-led organizations are 24 percent smaller than the revenues of their white-led counterparts. When it comes to the holy grail of financial support—unrestricted funding—the picture is even bleaker. The unrestricted net assets of the Black-led organizations are 76 percent smaller than their white-led counterparts.”
Even the most well-intentioned social change advocates can’t unsee the hero narrative that surrounds us all, and so unknowingly echo and perpetuate it in the ways they choose leaders, decide what skills are most vital, and reward individual rather than collective gain. The sector looks for exceptional, charismatic individuals, and aims to help them attain a core set of skills and greater positional authority within their organizations. The top-down, individual hero narrative drives the design, funding, and evaluation of most leadership development programming. Leadership programs still track who ascends to board positions, for example, and the number of articles alumni publish. But while these achievements can indicate people’s contribution to change, they aren’t the only ways to measure success. It’s important that those who exercise leadership participate in conversations that define what success looks like to them and in their unique leadership context.
Operating within the individual leadership model also ignores the fact that the leadership that drives systemic social change—the kind of change that embraces the complexity of problems and confronts their root causes—does not happen alone or in silos; it is rarely the result of the actions and capabilities of one individual. The model also deprives the world of the strengths and experiences that people who are closest to social issues have to offer. These groups have important insights into how to solve social problems but are often left out of the circles that set strategies and allocate resources. Indeed, because leadership is not finite—meaning one person’s leadership neither takes away from nor negates the leadership of someone else—it is stronger when people share and exercise it collectively, when it centers existing wisdom and experiences, and when it works toward a bold vision for a more equitable future.
Many people involved in leadership programs recognize this and have urged philanthropy to move from, as Sida Ly-Xiong of Nexus Community Partners puts it, “lessons learned to lessons practiced” when it comes to supporting leadership within the communities most affected by inequities. But moving from theory to action can be challenging, especially within institutions that have long done things one way. People looking to create new ways of working face systemic barriers, entrenched processes, and personal burnout.
Our team at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), alongside a collective of other leadership funders and practitioners, has been grappling with how to define, support, and fund leadership in ways that remove these barriers and advance equitable, systemic change. To kick off this article series, here is a look at our story, including: how we thought our leadership work centered equity and justice, and how we discovered we were missing the mark by focusing on leadership too singularly; how we modified our work in response; and what other funders and organizations might learn from our efforts.
Discovering the Need for Change
In 2016, after nearly 50 years of funding health and healthcare leadership development initiatives, RWJF launched four new leadership programs that sought to advance a Culture of Health, one that works to provide everyone in the United States a fair and just opportunity for health and well-being. Where once we focused on single-discipline, research- and clinician-focused leadership programs, we expanded our programs to include multidisciplinary teams and folks working in communities, with a specific focus on health equity.
We initially sought to define and strengthen a specific set of skills we hoped these programs would instill in participants but found that this inadvertently reinforced the hero narrative and the idea that there is only one right way to lead. We also realized that having a set curriculum assumes that individuals come to leadership programs as empty vessels—that they don’t already carry the expertise and experience they need to drive change.
Feedback from participants showed us that we designed our new programs based on what worked in the past, when we assumed that leadership development meant providing participants with more knowledge and skills. They also taught us how we could be more responsive to their needs and strengths, and the change they sought to create. Participants shared that the set curriculum missed important nuances related to the leadership capacities they needed to advance change in the unique places where they lived and worked. While our programs supported them as individuals, the fact that they didn’t address the barriers participants faced in their institutions, organizations, and communities was frustrating and isolating for them.
At the same time, in consultation with our partners at Metropolitan Group, we began to talk to other funders and practitioners working on leadership to learn about communications strategies, such as messaging strategies for reaching potential applicants. What started as a communications exploration led to the discovery that—though language was part of the problem—the bigger issue was that the programs themselves were not resonating with some of the people working at the community and movement levels, especially those who did not think of themselves as leaders.
Broadening the Narrative of Leadership
Our conversations with participants and other organizations showed us that our conception of leadership (that it comes from individual leaders) led us to support leadership in a monolithic way—and it was neither working for participants nor generating the greater health equity we sought.
The ways people practice, interact with, and read and learn about leadership shape how they see it, and through listening and exploration, we saw a broader narrative of leadership emerge that weaves together three core elements:
- Leadership manifests in multiple ways. It is as complex and dynamic as the people, communities, and situations that call it into being. Inspirations and actions that drive change are both individual and collective.
- Leadership is community-driven. It is relational and anchored in the wisdom of the people most impacted by social injustices. They understand their community’s needs and assets and have vital insights into potential solutions.
- Leadership, when diversified, drives systemic change. When there is room for all ways of leading, root causes and solutions come to light. Organizations and movements can accelerate change by shifting structures and cultures to support leadership in all its forms.
This notion of leadership is not new; people practicing leadership at the community level—however they define community—have been practicing leadership in this way for generations. Indeed, this narrative has emerged from and belongs to communities. This narrative is also not binary. Rather than comparing it to or indicting other approaches, it says that we need them all. Finally, narrative efforts are transformational only if organizations and institutions incorporate the broadened narrative of leadership across three dimensions: language and stories, policies and practices, and culture and behaviors. (A set of tools we developed to help leadership funders, practitioners, networks, and activists achieve greater alignment in these three areas is available here).
How Two Funders Are Putting the Narrative Into Practice
Statements like we heard from communities about how they define leadership—statements that shaped the broadened narrative of leadership—may feel “right on” when organizations first hear them. But after truly examining their words, actions, and practices, they may need to embrace some hard truths on the path to change.
In 2022, RWJF committed to speaking about, supporting, and funding leadership with this broader narrative in mind. This meant giving the words we use and the stories we tell more thoughtful attention. Language can inadvertently reinforce stereotypes, especially when people focus on the needs of communities, not their wisdom and strengths. Rather than referring to a community or person as disadvantaged or marginalized, we try our best to name the group, organization, and/or system that is oppressing them. This also helps us avoid reverberating narratives around individualism and deservingness, many of which argue that people are marginalized because of their personal decisions or behaviors, not because of systemic forces like structural racism.
We also wanted to avoid being another example of philanthropy studying a problem but not moving to authentic action. As part of our work to align our policies, practices, and behaviors with the new narrative, we’re now designing a program that goes beyond building standard leadership capacities to supporting the development of the capacities participants want to enhance in their collective efforts to upend racism and drive systemic change in the health systems where they work.
Another example in philanthropy is The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, which invests in the graduate education of immigrants and children of immigrants who are poised to significantly contribute to US society or culture, or their academic field. In its selection process, the program has an intentionally broad view of what leadership can look like. It takes into account more communally minded cultural backgrounds and considers leadership experience that is generally excluded from resumes, such as supporting family or community by taking care of a grandparent, serving as a family translator, or teaching English to a sibling. Though designed to help participants lead in their chosen fields, it does not market itself as a leadership program; it wants people who might not see themselves as leaders to feel welcome to apply, rather than self-selecting out.
Some Other Promising Efforts Underway
In our extended community and beyond, we see some promising efforts to incorporate these complex issues into leadership practices.
One helpful tool comes from Soul Fire Farm, an Afro-Indigenous-centered community farm committed to uprooting racism and seeing sovereignty in the food system. Understanding that the actions that constitute leadership can vary as much as leadership styles, Leah Penniman, the farm’s co-founder and co-director, invites social justice advocates to picture transformative social justice as a butterfly with four wings. Each wing represents a different leadership stance or way of being: resist, reform, build, and heal. Advocates often argue for the paramount importance of one wing, not seeing that they need all four to “take flight” and create sustainable change, and often deprioritize the healing wing.
The National League of Cities (NLC), an organization comprised of city, town, and village leaders dedicated to improving the quality of life for its constituents, similarly centers healing in its leadership efforts and among staff. For example, its leadership education team, NLC University (NLCU), encourages people to schedule 15 minutes each week for meditation and to take a moment at the start of meetings to arrive and be fully present. NLCU also provides opportunities for people to learn about emotional intelligence, stress, burnout, and navigating change, and produces a Vlog series called Leading in the Moment that features leaders’ personal narratives. This new approach has helped NLC members and staff rethink what “whole-person” leadership means in their offices and communities, placing greater emphasis on self-understanding, well-being, and connection.
Another example of an organization broadening the narrative is the Liberatory Leadership Partnership, a collaboration dedicated to reimagining and redefining leadership to ground it in love, wholeness, and interdependence. Through research and convenings, including webinars and learning communities, the group is interrogating how race, gender, and power manifest in leadership; challenging exclusive, hierarchical, white-dominant models; and exploring alternative possibilities. Its purpose is not to encourage the adoption of liberatory language but to adopt liberatory leadership practices that affirm wholeness, freedom, justice, and thriving for all people, and that result in a substantive change in communities.
Leading the Way to Greater Equity
The shifts that these organizations, including RWJF, are starting to make show that, by aligning with a broadened narrative, the social sector’s approach to leadership can be more equitable. The social sector must adopt and help spread a broader and more inclusive concept of leadership in our programming, workplaces, communities, and networks so that people exercising leadership—in their own ways—have the support and resources needed to dismantle structural racism on a path toward greater equity for all.
Support SSIR’s coverage of cross-sector solutions to global challenges.
Help us further the reach of innovative ideas. Donate today.
Read more stories by Deborah Bae & Kiernan Doherty.