Equity Leadership Framework

What is an Equity-Conscious Leader?

Equity–conscious leaders have an enhanced awareness and moral imperative to notice, reflect, and act to interrupt inequities (i.e., educational, social, environmental, political). They inspire passion, purpose, and action in people to actively disrupt systemic inequities. In both formal and non-formal positions of leadership, equity-conscious leaders reflect on their own identities, assumptions, and worldviews as they explore equity gaps in their organizations. Every willing person can be an equity-conscious leader. Take inventory of where you are, collaborate with the people around you, and boldly start this important journey of pursuing equity and excellence in your organization today.

Equity-Conscious Leadership Framework

This functional framework assists leaders to transform and create alignment and coherence in their systems across their goals, initiatives, and actions. We have provided a snippet for each of the six grounding dimensions of the Equity-Conscious Leadership Framework below. These are key research-informed stances for engaging in equity-centered improvement:

●      Truth and Reconciliation: Open Hearts and Minds for Healing – Reconciliation, the noun of the verb “to reconcile” comes from the Latin word, “reconciliāre”, meaning “to make good again” or “to repair.” In equity work, reconciliation involves acknowledging how historical and current inequities and power dynamics have harmed those on the margins of society (e.g., BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, differently abled, women).

●      Deep Listening and Dialogue: Share Unique Experiences and Co-construct Solutions -– Meaningful dialogue begins with deep listening. Humans are hardwired for social interaction and belonging. High-belonging at work has been linked to increased job performance, decreased sick days, and decreased turnover (Carr et.al, 2019). Belonging work begins with becoming comfortable with uncomfortable conversations.

●      Collaboration and Teaming: Illuminate Collective Wisdom – High-performing teams intentionally engage in structured collaboration and teaming opportunities. Essential to teaming and collaboration is establishing psychological safety. The term psychological safety was originally coined by Harvard Business School professor, Amy Edmondson. She defines it as a “shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking”.

●      Inquiry and Equity-Conscious Design: Co-design Systems – Building more human-centered, innovative, and liberated systems necessitates integrating an inquiry and equity-conscious design. This inquiry approach supports team and community partners to collaborate, solve problems, address power dynamics, and integrate healing practices to improve outcomes and transform systems.

●      Strategic Implementation and Accountability: Move Toward Positive Impact – High-performing organizations prioritize key implementation strategies to effectively realize equity goals and initiatives. During the strategic implementation process, teams act by adjusting and adapting their change ideas as they align their work, create coherence, and scale up the work across the system (Kramer et al., 2018).

●      Impact and Systems Change: Drive Transformational Change – Transformational leaders imagine and co-create the conditions for collective change as they build an ecosystem of belonging, reconciliation, and healing; deep listening and dialogue; collaboration and teaming; inquiry and equity-conscious design; and strategic implementation and accountability. Equity-conscious leaders identify what high impact equity work and outcomes look like, consistently measure this impact, support change agents, and ensure those on the margins (e.g., BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, women) are leading the design and decision-making process.