1. Transforming Power and Privilege:
A 21ST CENTURY LEADERSHIP COMPETENCY
Renato P. Almanzor, PhD
Director of Programs, LeaderSpring
renato@leaderspring.org
(510) 286-8949
Leadership Learning Community
Leadership Webinar Series
February 27, 2013

2. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
What are the necessary leadership competencies
for transforming power and privilege?
What are the conditions necessary to develop
these competencies in the context of leadership
development programming?

3. AGENDA
• Introduction and overview
• LeaderSpring’s philosophy on leadership
development
• Competence: Transforming power
and privilege
• Knowledge: Vision for well-being
• Skills: Altering arrangements
• Capacity: Agency
• Will: Purpose
3

4. VISION VALUES
Our dream is that leaders, organizations and communities in the Leadership: Taking responsibility for what matters. Leadership is an
social sector achieve their promise and potential to create a on-going practice at all levels of an organization and community,
healthy and equitable society. transcending title or position. LeaderSpring trains emerging, mid-
career and senior leaders, and helps them foster leadership in others.
MISSION Community well-being: A balanced satisfaction of personal,
LeaderSpring fosters a powerful, equity-driven social sector by: interpersonal and collective needs. LeaderSpring helps leaders
strengthen skills and relationships so they may create something
➤ Strengthening leaders and organizations, more meaningful and larger than the sum of their parts.
➤ Developing communities of leaders, and
➤ Transforming the systems in which they work.
Equity: The elimination of racial, economic, and social disparities.
LeaderSpring strengthens social sector leaders and organizations
committed to fostering equity in their communities.
PROGRAMS Leader
Network ↘
Collaboration: Integrating services and leveraging resources toward a
common goal. LeaderSpring fosters agency collaborations toward
Fellowship Transforming transformative impact in community.
Program Systems
Heart and Head: An integrated, holistic approach to leadership
Consulting
development. LeaderSpring’s learning communities of practice blend
Group
rigorous standards of performance; reflective learning; trusting
relationships; and personal renewal.

5. Leadership Development through Cohort Development
Community isn’t always synonymous with warmth and
harmony. Politeness is often a veneer for understanding,
when in reality it masks uncovered territory, the
unspeakable pit that we turn from because we know the
pain and anger that can dwell there. It is important to
remind ourselves that real community is forged out of
struggle. This is the crucible from which a real community
grows.
--Linda Christensen
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6. COMPETENCE
Will
Capacity
• Purpose
• Readiness
• Principles
• Time
• Curiosity/Honoring
• Resources
MEANING
ALIGNMENT
THOUGHT ACTION
Knowledge Skills
• Theories • Intellectual rigor
• Frameworks • Behavioral discipline
• Processes (e.g., change) • Emotional intelligence
Adapted from “Success Built to Last”
by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson

7. COMPETENCE:
TRANSFORMING POWER AND PRIVILEGE
• Knowledge: Vision for well-being
– Power
– Well-being
• Skills: Altering arrangements
– Systems thinking and analysis
– Designing social change
• Capacity: Resolve with personal agency
– “A part of, not apart from…”
– Confidence and courage
• Will: To actively engage with power and love
– Personal, relational and collective purpose
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8. Power
Knowledge: Vision for well-being
Power
WELL-BEING
LIBERATION
OPPRESSION
Adapted from Doing Psychology Critically by Isaac Prilleltensky & Geoff Nelson

9. KNOWLEDGE: VISION FOR WELL-BEING
Well-being: the balanced and simultaneous satisfaction
of personal, relational and collective needs.
Values,
Resources,
Programmes,
Policies
Adapted from Doing Psychology Critically by Isaac Prilleltensky & Geoff Nelson

10. SKILLS: ALTERING ARRANGEMENTS
SYSTEMS THINKING AND ANALYSIS
The system is perfectly designed to produce the results it is
now producing.
Adapted from john powell

11. SKILLS: ALTERING ARRANGEMENTS
Studying Social Designing Social
Justice Change
Enhancing
Well-Being
Adapted from Social Justice: Theories, issues and movements by Loretta
Capeheart and Dragan Milovanovic

12. SKILLS: ALTERING ARRANGEMENTS
ROLES AND QUALITIES
Roles Qualities
Group builder Builds a base and never walks alone
Strategist A good investigator
Tactician Tactically agile: masters the decision
of the moment
Political educator Reflective practitioner
Builder of shared experience Courageous and self-sustaining
Adapted from Playbook for Progressives by Eric Mann

13. CAPACITY
Resolve with personal agency
• Personal, political
and professional
“story line”
• Passion and Humility
• Confidence and
Courage
– Vulnerability
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14. CAPACITY
Owning our story can be hard
but not nearly as difficult as
spending our lives running from
it. Embracing our
vulnerabilities is risky but not
nearly as dangerous as giving
up on love and belonging and
joy -- the experiences that
make us the most vulnerable.
Only when we are brave
enough to explore the darkness
will we discover the infinite
power of our light.
-- Brené Brown
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15. WILL
TO ACTIVELY ENGAGE WITH POWER AND LOVE
Power
• The drive of everything living to
realize itself, with increasing
intensity and extensity.
Love
• The drive towards the unity of
the separated.
Adapted from Love, Power and Justice: Ontological analyses and ethical applications, by Paul Tillich 15

16. WILL: PURPOSE