3 Steps to Courageous Leadership: What Womxn of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table
Like Beyonce, I did not wake up like this. It takes work to pull up your seat at the table. Here are three steps to how to get there.
1- Decide what you are going to be courageous about
What is your place in this leadership role? Being a courageous leader takes vision or courageous acts. To be a leader you have to speak on things that made some feel uncomfortable.
By us leaning into our courage and advocating for ourselves, we are shaping a workplace that is beneficial for all of us. It’s creating a space so that future womxn of color will not have to go home and share our same workplace tears. So that they won’t have to go home and replay that micro aggression that happened to them, on a wheel over and over and over.
2 — Get clear on your intent
You have to be intentional about the work you are going to do. Courageous leadership is making sure you are using your voice. Securing a seat at the table, not to obtain it simply to kick back. You have to use that seat to use your voice, to represent. Courageous leaders don’t just make decisions based on their bottom line, but the bottom line of future generations.
Step into your courage for the womxn who will be in your seat in 2099. You’re doing it for future generations that are coming behind you. As allies, courageous leadership is not shrinking in the face of adversity or turning a blind eye to injustice. It takes vision and revolution. It takes risk.
It’s not easy! That’s why not everyone can hold a leadership title. It’s not a badge of honor you pick up at the local bodega. It’s something you earn.
3 — Legacy building
What legacy do you want to leave for the current and future generations for womxn of color? Again, who are you being courageous for? Courageous leadership requires you to take another step. When you don’t have diversity at the highest levels of leadership, they will make decisions for our future. Our future generation.
All you need is one courageous person to walk into their leadership with you. One person can make a difference to open a door for the next person to lean into their courage. If we have to defer our dreams, we might just be at the wrong table.
We will all be able to show up as our authentic selves whatever that may be. Not based on historical sense of authenticity but of our genuine lead to want to be authentic. Courageous leadership is necessary. Nobody benefits when we are cautious.
Lead with empathy. Listen with curiosity. Each of us has access to that. Leadership sees no race, orientation, religion; it sees activation. It takes you to activate your courage.
Courage is something we all have access to. It’s already inside of you, it’s waiting on you to activate it. We all feel anxiety or fear. But, we always have a choice: to be cautious or courageous?
So, when you’re in the face of adversity, will you be cautious or courageous?
This post was adapted from theVirtual Assembly’s Closing Keynote “Courageous Leadership” by Minda Harts, Author of The Memo: What Women of Color Need to Know to Secure a Seat at the Table.
