Uncovering Your Untapped Leadership
The Untapped Leadership Framework pictured above, is the result of the work included in Untapped Leadership: Harnessing the Power of Underrepresented Leaders (out June 2023.)
The center of the framework is you now. At any given moment, to lead effectively, you must exercise contextual agility to move between the multiple realities within ourselves, our past, the systems we navigate (e.g., teams, orgs, society, etc.), and the future we want to see.
Too often, we see those with a lot of formal authority in organizations who do not consider the full breadth of context when making decisions and influencing organizational culture.
There are 5 Essential Aspects to Uncovering your Untapped Leadership
1. Understanding Yourself: You need to confidently understand the inherent power you have as an underrepresented leader. There is a lot of noise out in the world and a lot of misrepresented and even unrepresented perspectives when it comes to leadership. Your standpoint, and the most marginalized aspects of that standpoint, actually hold a unique understanding of a more nuanced and complex reality. Holding that perspective, and leveraging it in your leadership, is powerful.
2. Understanding the Past: There’s not much that is an isolated situation or occurrence. We are operating in organizations and societal structures that have histories that precede us. We might not consider them on the day-to-day, yet our current realities are threaded back to the past. When we look back, how does that shape our perspective of today? How can you leverage an understanding of historical context– both yours as an individual and more broadly as part of a system– to make decisions?
3. Understanding Systemic Forces: Systems are powerful, but you are not powerless. To uncover your untapped leadership, you know that the rules of the game are not the same for marginalized leaders, so we should be cautious of playing by the same rules and expecting the same results as others who represent the dominant culture. Having a keen understanding of when to push, pull, and pause in your workplace systems ensures that you stay in the game long enough to change the game.
4. Understanding Your Vision and How You’ll Get There: We all can likely name a host of things that could improve when it comes to work, life, career, anything. But, can you explicitly name the future that you want to see? The one that you want to work in because work is redefined? The one that you want to lead in because leadership is redefined? As we crystallize our vision for the future for ourselves and our communities, realities begin to shift.
5. Understanding How to Make Connections between 1-4 in Real-Time: It’s not enough unpacking and studying the 4 aspects of untapped leadership. The real work– the leadership moment– is making these connections in real-time as they all are informing your current reality and the opportunity you have to harness your untapped capacity.
It’s not easy, but leadership isn’t easy (pro tip: don’t buy the books that make it sound easy.)
The Untapped Leaders Community is built upon the experience and expertise of marginalized leaders who have long been overlooked in boardrooms and bookshelves.
We exist in this community to shift leadership paradigms and support each other as we do so. We commit to the complex, messy, yet real work of true leadership. And we do it together.
Let’s Lead Differently.
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