REVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP
Revolutionary leadership is how you win
At Embodied Contribution, we define Revolutionary leadership as the persistent application of liberatory practices and strategies, in the face of fear, to achieve personal and organizational success and solve organizational problems that baffle others.
The Revolutionary leadership Through Liberated Being method is rooted in a somatic liberation framework that equips leaders with the mindsets and skillsets to use liberatory practices including Honesty, Aliveness, and Dignity as strategies to stay safe and produce results in a world that socializes us all to use oppressive strategies such as Perfectionism, Urgency, Minimization, etc. Oppression is not only misaligned with progressive values, it is a wasteful strategy that drains resources while creating costly problems now and in the future.
Our Liberated Being 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. As clients integrate these practices they develop an internal compass for how to think and act from equity in any situation. Cultivating an internal equity compass allows leaders and decision-makers to navigate the complexities of evolving societal norms related to power, identity, and equity while solving organizational problems that baffle inequitable organizations.
Learn how my unique leadership capacity-building model replaces guesswork and ends leadership isolation.
What is Somatic Liberation?
The logical progression of justice work and equity work is liberation work, the practice of Dignity through Radical Personal Responsibility for our (interdependent) wellbeing, and the Reclaiming of Personal Power. Somatic work is work that acknowledges the presence and power 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.
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, advocates, and educators began teaching about oppression. This move towards education brought us concepts such as the Four I's of Oppression created by the Women of Color Caucus of the National Organization of Women (NOW) in the 1980s, which is the foundation of modern thinking about equity. This model posits that oppression manifests in four domains that support and reinforce each other; ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized.
Some highly regarded thinkers, such as Audre Lorde and bell hooks, were not only teaching about oppression, they were doing their own work to heal their internalized oppression. This was the natural progression of anti-oppression work towards embodied empowerment work: reclaiming our personal power and our ownership over our bodies, minds, and lives. We can never empower others, but we each can 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 interdependent 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.
Organizationally, liberation work can be applied a the individual, interpersonal, and institutional levels. Because oppression - the 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.
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What Leaders Say
"Leanne's work is what the world needs right now."
Harold Goldstein|Exec Dir|California Center for Public Health Advocacy
