On the ninth episode of the On the Balcony podcast, Michael welcomes Ashley B. Stewart to talk about Chapter 9 of Ron Heifetz’s, Leadership Without Easy Answers, the importance of pushing boundaries, taking risks and managing the dangers of practicing leadership  building from Ashley’s experience working as an Executive Coach, Transformation Facilitator, and Racial Consciousness Consultant as well as Executive Director for Talent and Organizational Development in the Baltimore City Public School System. 

Koehler and Stewart recall the 1965 Civil Rights activists who transformed and spearheaded the movement’s success while putting their lives on the line. Stewart analyzes how people without formal or informal authority practice leadership not despite, but because of their lack of power. He makes powerful connections to the racial justice work today and explores what it means to regulate the heat and orchestrate learning. 

The Finer Details of This Episode: 

• The dangers of practicing leadership without authority 
• 1965 Civil Rights activists successes and strategies 
• The risk in pushing boundaries and becoming a lighting rod. 
• Ashley’s experience in the public school system
• Why improvisation is necessary 

Quotes: 

"I'm black. And I pull on that part of my identity first. Because it is the part of my identity that I think has had the most harm done to it, is the part of my identity that needs the most repair.”

“I lived in a society where I got a steady diet that black is less than, and that people of color are not worthy of, or in some cases, not even whole humans. And so I have my own journey to walk around my internalized subordination and internalized oppression.”

“At every opportunity, I try to tell myself that black is amazing. It's beautiful. Period.”

“They decided to push Selma past the breaking point, and that meant that the nation and the federal government would have to provide a holding environment. It also meant that people might die.”

"What comes to me when I hear you read that text is the risk, the risk of not knowing what happens beyond the boundary, beyond the breaking point. It also conjures up in my mind, sort of this imagery of watershed moments, bloodshed, the spattering of blood from hard work and sacrifice, shedding of tears."

"What I was doing to this person was the very thing we don't want people to do to young people, which is to ‘other’. Which is to see them as an outcast, which is to like, feel the provocation and take it personally, and then try to push them aside. And that's what I did with my, with my, with my authority, until I realized with lots of coaching and lots of support from colleagues and family, I realized that, while I disagreed wholeheartedly with what this person was standing on, I respected the fact that it was drawing me to learn."

"A characteristic or aspect of white supremacy culture… is like, ‘There's one way to do it, and that's it, and we're not engaging other perspectives.’ And I engaged the perspectives that made me feel good. I engaged the perspectives that checked, double-clicked my ideas, that co-signed my initiatives, but I didn't listen to the naysayers. I didn't hear the provocation. I didn't hear the hole-poking. I wasn't open to acknowledging the space between the values I espoused and the values I was actually living."

"One of the things that I'm reminded from this article is that people without formal power still have all kinds of power, and it is sometimes work avoidance to spend too much time equivocating about how much power I have or don't have in relation to someone else. And probably more powerful taking stock of that which I can actually harness and wield."

“Everyone can lead because everybody can serve.”

Links: 

On the Balcony on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast

Leadership Without Easy Answers on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Without-Answers

Ashley Stewart on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ashleybstewart1

Ashley Stewart on LinkedIn: Uy3V9y5P4Z

Mentioned in this episode:

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