Shared Leadership—It's About More Than Bandwidth
10/12/21
Two weekends ago, five members of the Light House community formed a co-leadership team to host the Lament+Light event we offered to the public.
It happened because one member of the community noticed a need, got inspired with an idea for how to meet that need, and brought the idea to us, along with the names of two other members of the community she wanted to invite into the leadership of the event.
In our community, we hold a value of shared leadership.
It's something we started doing somewhat accidentally.
As the founder and leader of the community, I had begun hosting weekly gatherings in early 2020 on different topics that would help nourish our light (we called them "glow-ups"), but I knew my skills and areas of expertise for leading those glow-ups only ranged so far—yet here was a whole community filled with people of diverse gifts and interests. The ways they could serve the community with their gifts and talents felt endless.
Then sharing the leadership became intentional.
When I started down the path of intentional diversity and anti-racism work in June 2020, I quickly saw that the place where I could have the greatest impact in disrupting white supremacy culture was within the Light House.
This is because one of my small business mentors shared a resource from Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones that spoke of 15 characteristics of white supremacy culture that leak into organizations without any conscious assent of those inside the organization. (You can find that resource here, if it interests you.)
These 15 characteristics are in the air we breathe. They're in the values our culture heralds. They seep quite unwittingly into our organizations. They're what most of us have come to assume is the way things ought to be.
But they're not. They don't have to be.
Through the reading of that work, I realized that in leading an organization like the Light House, our community could work together to disrupt these characteristics by the way we choose to be in community together.
So, for example, one of those characteristics? Power hoarding.
Its antidote? Shared leadership.
What started as something we did somewhat haphazardly has become something we do now with great intention, conviction, and gladness:
We ask members of the community to lead us in our weekly glow-up gatherings.
We are grounded in the wisdom and discernment of a Wisdom Council, made of up members who meet every other week to notice and listen to the invitations for growth and leadership of the community.
We encourage our members to take the lead on initiatives when they bring ideas to us.
I work in deliberate partnership with a programming partner in the community.
Our weekly examen groups are facilitated by a leader for the first 3-6 months and then go on to become self-led with a shared rotation among the group's members.
We still have far to go in our diversity work in the community, but I'm sharing this piece of what we do with you today so you know it's a part of who we are and why we do it. If you've been thinking of joining the Light House community, it might interest you to know these things.
If you'd like to learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, you can read our full DEI statement here.
And if you'd like to join us in a community that seeks to nurture your light and your contemplative identity on a regular basis, you can learn more about the Light House community, and find the options to join us, here.
Yours in contemplative light,
Christianne
PS: As an additional part of our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, we make three payment options available for membership—all providing equal access to the community. It's part of our belief in a benevolent economy. You can find more details here.