The COVID-19 crisis has triggered an economic crisis that made the gaps between the haves and have nots so much worse, especially for women, children and minorities. World hunger and poverty are on the rise. This is our global wake-up call to reduce inequities.
We need equity leaders to build story movements about unfairness. Telling, sharing and discussing our stories about unfairness has the potential to create the synergy and energy to make equity become the core attractor for scaling up transformational change. This is all about creating a more level playing field of fair opportunities for all. This story movement is also about building learning networks, communities and organizations to cultivate equity leadership development at all levels.
Equity leaders develop fair systems, structures and policies to cultivate cultures that give everyone fair opportunities to reach their highest potential of developing healthy well-being, human flourishing and virtues for the greater good of all.
Equity leaders redress the “isms” that perpetrate, perpetuate, and exacerbate inequities. Isms are micro-exclusions, micro-aggressions, negative oppressive biases (implicit and explicit) and prejudices embedded in our attitudes, beliefs, everyday language, metaphors, behaviors and actions that discriminate, hurt, stigmatize and traumatize others. Isms confer unfair advantages of one group over another.
Isms, inequities and the mega-problems of the 21st century are all interdependent. The COVID-19 crisis has also exposed our leadership weaknesses in addressing our mega-problems. As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats. Equity leaders do this and so much more.
Equity is the lead virtue for mobilizing all other virtues in a common cause for the greater good. Equity transforms us on how we ascend the upward spiral of true patriotism toward the transcendence of interdependencies and reverse the downward spiral of fake patriotism into the amoral abyss. Equity leaders take us upstream to the virtues that ethically redress the political, economic, educational, health and social determinants of inequities.
Equity leaders think anew and collaborate together in addressing the deep root causes of complex problems. They create designs across all sectors to build an equitable and sustainable future for the greater good of all. They inspire us to take aligned actions on improving our personal, population and planetary health all at the same time.
A new learning platform and podcast series addresses how we can cultivate the equity leadership mindsets and harness the transcendent power of interdependence to solve the mega-problem of the 21st century. This blog link provides the content for launching the learning platform, #WhyEquityMatters: give fairness a chance. It poses a series of evocative questions to launch your learning journey about equity leadership development.
Photo by Yuriy Kovalev on Unsplash
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