Life-Affirming Leadership: Three Contributing World-Views

My interest in Life-Affirming Leadership is grounded in the following three worldviews: Seventh Generation Thinking, environmental sustainability, and the Seventh Fire Prophesy. Today, my work continues to be influenced by other paradigms that deepen, support, and even challenge the initial foundation of this work. It is an intentional decision to remain open to how other ways of experiencing the world of leadership might influence my work.
____________________

There are three world views that are prominent in this inquiry and were really a guide for how I approached interpretation of the inquiry data. These world views are woven into my being through the many people who have come before and those who currently stand beside me in working for social justice.

The first worldview is the concept of Seventh Generation Thinking shared by the Iroquois people. Simply put, Seventh Generation Thinking advocates making decisions through considering the impact of those decisions for seven generations. Seventh Generation Thinking recognizes that there is an interconnectedness between all things and that decisions made today have an impact on future generations. In this line of thinking, environmental sustainability is the second contributing worldview.

Within my work environmental sustainability refers to the connection between leadership decisions and the environment in which those decisions are acted upon. I mean environments to be nature and also include environments such as environments of organizations.

The Seventh Fire Prophesy comes from the Ojibwa people and is one part of a larger set of prophesies that informs the Ojibwa about their nation’s past, future, and present. The Seventh Fire Prophesy specifically states that the young people who will create the needed social changes are in the communities, right now. They are already present. This belief that leadership for positive social change is already being present in communities is a keystone.

Leadership Vocabulary Overview: Why Offer a Leadership Vocabulary?

One of my longest standing critiques of leadership literature derives from my experience that there are many words within the leadership development, organizational development, and social movement literature that, when applied in the framework of social justice work, take on different meaning because they are used for different ends. The difference of leadership "for what end or purpose" often reveals theoretical, moral, economic, political, and social conflict between how words and concepts are applied in the field. Throughout my professional career and work as a scholar, I have consistently felt uncomfortable that context and end purpose are not more readily referenced, or are often ignored altogether when applying words and concepts originating in different fields (e.g., education, business, or public service). As such, I have developed a commitment to raising awareness about the distinctions that "break the chain of inference—from conjunction to categorization to commonality--[as] the norm" (Lakoff, 1987, p. 5). The vocabulary that I offer in this blog is based on my intentional work of breaking apart the chain of inferences and reveals my insights, biases, and shortcomings about how I interpret, develop, and apply the concepts that each word or phrase embodies.

The vocabulary that I will offer regularly in this blog relate directly to expanding the understanding of Life-Affirming Leadership practices as they relate to individuals working for social justice. I believe that these definitions have applicability to a broader audience interested in leadership from various perspectives and with diverse settings of application. Through sharing the concepts my work will be better understood from the context in which I apply these ideas providing utility for those interested in the subject.