Rethinking Leadership
The Shift Within: How We End Oppression and Divisiveness to Create Liberation and Indivisibility for All
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Rethinking Leadership
Throughout my life, I’ve often found myself in positions of leadership. As I reflect back I realize that this isn’t something that I ever intentionally set out to do however when I look at the qualities that leaders typically have it makes sense why. I’ve always been ambitious, a doer, and had the ability to inspire and guide others. As a teenager and young adult, I was the captain of my high school and college basketball teams and I consistently organized various initiatives, social gatherings, and trips for my peer groups and friends. As an adult, I took my leadership qualities into entrepreneurship. I’ve been a serial entrepreneur throughout my adult life and this has often required using my leadership skills to recruit, inspire, organize, and delegate.
Leadership has always been a part of human societies. Authoritarian leadership evolved and emerged from power-over systems to become the most common and widespread form of leadership after the agricultural revolution. Authoritarian leadership is a leadership style in which the leader has all the power and decision making authority and does not involve subordinates in the process.
For thousands of years rulers, monarchs, and oligarchs used fear, intimidation, and punishment to enforce their decisions and maintain their power. Over time as people resisted the absolute power of authoritarian leadership in societies, communities, and households the degrees of power-over and control have generally continued to lessen. However, the influence of authoritarian leadership behaviors and beliefs are still embedded in the societal fabric of most human societies and its elements can be found in every social system that has evolved and emerged from power-over systems.
As I was growing up I witnessed my parents, teachers, coaches, principals, pastors, older children, and others leverage elements of authoritarian leadership to influence and maintain a degree of power-over and control over others. As I was coming of age and leading others whether it was my younger siblings or cousins, my friends, or my teammates I am sure that I did the same to a degree because that’s what was modeled for me. Over time though I began to shift away from influencing others using fear and dominance to influencing others using inspiration and motivation because that was more aligned with my true nature.
In 2010, while teaching at an elementary school in East Point Ga., I decided to start a non-profit organization to run an afterschool youth development program. I shared my vision with a co-worker and he agreed to join me as the co-founder and help me build a team. By this time I was already enrolled in a doctoral program for organizational leadership and had taken a class about the different styles of leadership and organizational structures. So I shared with my co-founder that I wasn’t interested in running this non-profit using a conventional top-down hierarchical leadership model. So we adopted a shared leadership model with each team member being a leader within their role and each role being equally relevant and valuable.
This pattern continued in both my personal and business relationships throughout my adult life and up to the present. I don’t see my ability to lead as an advantage that I have over others that allows me to control others or that entitles me to exclusive privileges. I see my ability to lead as a natural skill that I can contribute to my family, business teams, and community in collaboration with the natural skills that others bring to achieve our shared goals.
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