INCLUSIVE LEADERSHIP
Inclusive leadership is how you win
At Embodied Contribution we define Inclusive leadership as the persistent application of liberatory practices (not oppressive ones) as the main leadership strategy to achieve personal and organizational success and create psychological safety for all stakeholders.
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The Inclusive leadership Through Liberated Being method is rooted in a somatic liberation framework that equips leaders with the mindsets and skillsets to use liberatory practices such as Radical Honesty, Radical Aliveness, and Radical Non-participation as strategies to stay safe and produce results in a world that socializes us all to use oppressive strategies such as Perfectionism, Urgency, and Minimization. Beyond being misaligned with progressive values, oppression is a wasteful strategy that drains resources while creating costly problems now and in the future.
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Our method provides clients with somatic definitions of Oppression and Liberation and a robust list of 18 Liberatory Practices that can be applied on day one. Clients integrate these practices to form an internal compass for how to think and act from equity in any situation. Including complex and shifting circumstances. Cultivating an internal equity compass allows decision-makers to navigate the complexities of intersectionality, identity, and evolving societal norms with sensitivity and care while pivoting to stay aligned with their organizational mission and values. Our method builds organizational capacity to think and act from equity, decreasing dependence on outside equity experts.
What is Somatic Liberation?
The logical progression of justice work and equity work is liberation work, the practice of dignity through radical personal responsibility, and the reclaiming of personal power. Somatic work is work that acknowledges the presence and value of the body and gives space for emotional and physiological experiencing. Somatic liberation work is how we embody dignity and power and solve organizational problems that baffle others.
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What we currently refer to as "equity work" is an evolution of the civil rights movement. Many white Americans who resisted racial justice did so out of ignorance, not malice. So activists and advocates begin to think about how to teach about oppression. This move towards education brought us concepts such as Angela Davis' Four I's of Oppression, which is the foundation of modern thinking about equity, and The Privileged Identity Model, to name a few.
Some highly regarded thinkers, such as Audre Lorde and bell hooks, were not only teaching, they were doing the internal work to heal their internalized oppression. This was the natural progression of anti-oppression towards embodied empowerment: reclaiming our personal power and our ownership over our bodies. We do not empower others, we empower ourselves by claiming the power that is, and always has been, ours. This evolution brought anti-oppression work to its next logical step, liberation work.
Liberation Work can be thought of as practicing dignity through radical non-participation in oppression as an act of radical responsibility (for our interdependant wellbeing), no matter the consequences. With liberation work, we give ourselves radical permission to live a life free of oppression, now, no matter the consequence. For example, we stop toiling toward a world where we can rest or be treated with dignity and we simply rest and treat ourselves with dignity, now. With liberation work, we deal with the consequences of refusing to participate in our own oppression, not the consequences of continuing to participate.
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Organizationally, liberation work can be applied a the individual, interpersonal, and institutional level. Because oppression - the application of force, domination, control, or suppression of aliveness - is a wasteful strategy we become more productive and more joyful when we divest from oppression and practice liberation.
Explore how your organization can benefit from liberation work
What Leaders Say
"Leanne's work is what the world needs right now."
Harold Goldstein|Exec Dir|California Center for Public Health Advocacy
