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Integral Practices for Women in Leadership: Aligning Values With Practice

Tue, June 18, 3:45 to 5:00pm, 1440 Multiversity, Redwood Auditorium

Short Description

In a climate that is witnessing an expanding awareness of the value of collaborative and participatory leadership, this roundtable of educators and practitioners seeks to frame a discussion that moves beyond rhetoric and into the realm of practice, application, and experience. Together we will explore some practical methods leaders and leadership educators can use to align their values with action and implementation.

Detailed Abstract

There is a growing awareness and recognition that leadership must embrace more inclusive, collaborative and participatory approaches that honor individual empowerment and community building. Multiple leadership scholars have identified these values as foundational to resist authoritarian top-down leadership that perpetuates oppressive power structures benefitting the few at the expense of many (Macy, Johnstone, 2012; Wheatley, 2017). We are witnessing a movement from command and control style leadership into one that seeks to inspire a community of action (George, 2011; Pearson, 2012; Roberts, 2016; Senge, Hamilton, Kania, 2015).

While leaders in many industries share these values, we as educators and practitioners of leadership are witnessing a dearth of knowledge on how one can practically implement these values. How can leaders implement collaboration, inclusion, inspiration, and empowerment in their everyday interactions and decisions? In this roundtable we will introduce some practical methods that lead us beyond a surface articulation of values and into a deepened state of awareness asserting that self development of “the leader” is essential for leadership to become a conduit for the greater good. We posit that leadership education and training programs must move beyond a heavy focus on externally projected skills and tools to also encompass an internal self reflexive journey. This internally reflective approach allows the leader to recognize the values at the core of their leadership approach and consider accountability and responsibility in aligning these values with practices as they integrate them into the world.

We invite an engagement beyond the rational mind, into the unconscious realm, exploring self-limiting beliefs and patterns. We invite access to all of our faculties - body sensations, emotions, and intuitive, imaginal wisdom as we explore methods and approaches that one can use in leadership classrooms, workshops, and other trainings.

Following a brief introduction, each roundtable presenter will offer a practice.

Business Development Consultant, leadership advisor, and transdisciplinary scholar, X is a trained yoga instructor, Zen meditation practioner, and studies Ayurvedic medicine. She was a female corporate leader for big Bay Area tech firms for the past 15 years, leading cross-functional go-to-market, marketing, and product development teams. X will bring an integral approach to leadership cultivation through presenting a practice that draws on Self connection, self-reflexivity, and holistic Ayurvedic principles. This is a method X integrates in her work as co-creator and board member for the MIT Integrated Design Management master’s program, 1:1 corporate leadership advisor, and CIIS Writing and Scholarship Fellow. X is pursuing a Transformative Studies PhD, with research focused on Transdisciplinary Educational Pedagogy and Integral Leadership.

Engineering leader and mindfulness practitioner Y is a software engineer, leadership coach, and studies holistic practices in her East-West Psychology M.A. program. Y developed and led cross-functional, global engineering teams where she found that many leaders believe in 21st century leadership values, yet have difficulty enacting them. To shift this dynamic, Y facilitates leaders engagement with their whole selves, beyond their rational minds. Her work cultivates collaboration, empowerment and inclusion through an integral consciousness framework that is founded in transformative theories and works on individual, team, and structural levels. In this panel, Y will present an embodied practice, Anchoring to One’s Core Self (Starhawk, 2011), which utilizes body sensations, imagination, and inner wisdom to empower centered and grounded leadership.

An educator in the Transformative Leadership Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), Z, PhD is passionate about the empowerment of women which she asserts will require transformative frameworks of leadership to dismantle male-centered patriarchal structures. In the classroom she develops processes, experiences, and methods to foster empowerment that comes from internal wisdom and knowing beyond the external constructions that contribute to the dominant culture’s common understandings of leadership. In this roundtable, she will describe a process of self inquiry and an articulation of values as a framework for conducting a 360 feedback exercise to support students in aligning their internal and external frames of reference and behavior.

A, PhD Is a late comer to academics, having had a long life-time working in and reflecting about life in a variety of organizations, groups, and communities. A has lived in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, San Jose, Santa Fe, and the Silicon Valley; working in sectors spanning market research, hospitality, international trade, medical and psychiatric social work, county government, technology, organizational consulting, and higher education. Having lived in Japan as a child for five years, A brings an appreciation for how each context holds different archetypes for how to relate, different horizons of what can be, and integral understandings of is self and other. A's scholarship inquires about transformative learning and about radical intersubjectivity and the conditions for awakening the educational and leaderly space to an allowing presence.

B, PhD is an associate professor in the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS. Her research explores the intersections of feminist theory, spiritual activism, and leadership. For this roundtable, B will introduce her concept of sacred dignity and how it can help women address patriarchal conditioning and the “imposter syndrome” (Clance and Imes, 1978). Drawing from the fields of mindfulness, somatics, and feminist spirituality, B will offer practices that can help women begin to tap into the felt sense of sacred dignity so that they can be more confident and effective leaders who serve the greater good.

Presenters