Inclusive Leadership Development Through Participatory Inquiry

Unfinished Business: Advancing Workplace Gender Equity Through Complex Systems Strategies Supporting Work/Family Dynamics

“…Waddock suggests that "memes" or inspiring images tapping core cultural values are needed for visionary leadership supporting transformational change. While we agree with the importance of systems thinking and ethics in revisioning change, we believe, following the work of Robert Chambers in Participatory Rural Development and Meredith Minkler in Community Organizing for Health Equity (Minkler, 2012) that collaborative leadership informed by Participatory Research can best inspire and mobilize the shared work of identifying challenges and working toward agreed upon solutions required for large-scale change (George, Baker, Tracey, & Joshi, 2019;Shapiro & Little, 2020).…”

“…As a Cuban American immigrant woman, who has taken her share of hits for violating gendered cultural norms in both academic and family settings, Ester appreciates that our students have experienced both economic deprivation and educational inequalities "teaching" them to lower their aspirations and de-value their knowledge from hardwon experiences. For this reason, the course incorporates principles of Participatory Action Research supporting collaborative leadership development toward enhancing social change (Shapiro & Little, 2020). We begin class by sharing challenging experiences and affirming educational aspirations, valuing inclusive knowledge as "cultural wealth" (Yosso & Burciaga, 2016), celebrating the enormous diversity of backgrounds enriching our learning.…”

“…Striving toward a paradigm shift grounded in complexity sciences we contribute to the conversation on complexity sciences and systems thinking an integrative cultural/developmental life course approach (also see Shapiro & Little, 2020) with the following features:…”

Developing Cultural Humility in Leadership Education Programs to Promote Community Leadership

“…This perspective is essential to foster inclusion across communities of difference. Shapiro and Little (2020) determined that cultural humility is required to advance inclusive leadership development. Part of this process involves “recognizing the multisystemic complexity of co‐evolving individuals, organizations, and communities while collaborating toward equity with effectiveness across generations and settings” (p. 356).…”