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Values-Enacted Leadership

The themes of the 2022 Honors Leadership Conference were: Building Community, Being a Scholar, and Presenting Yourself. In my opening remarks to our first-year honors students, I focused on values-enacted leadership and the importance of cultivating intentional habits of authenticity and wellness in leadership practice.

To begin, we paused together to take a deep breath.

Light green slide with the text: “Use breath to cultivate patience in yourself and in the group. Values get lost in haste.” From brown, adrienne maree. Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation. Chico: AK Press, 2021, 170.

In Holding Change, adrienne maree brown reminds us of the power of breathing to focus our attention and settle ourselves into the present moment. This practice of breathing, of slowing down and settling back into ourselves, reconnects us with the core values at shape our purpose.

That purpose, for me, centers around a commitment to performative consistency, the alignment of who one is with what one does. James Baldwin expresses this idea eloquently when he writes:

A light green slide that says: “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.” From Baldwin, James. The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985, 594.

Performative consistency requires intentionally enacting your values in every encounter you have, every decision you make, every action you undertake. Performative consistency builds trust; and where there is trust, there is the possibility of transformative growth.

Values-enacted leadership is rooted in performative consistency.

Putting Values into Practice

Each theme of the conference is connected to values that must be put into intentional practice. For the purposes of my opening remarks, I have identified one value for each theme and connected that value to a specific practice.

Light green slide with the title: Building Community at the top, under which is the value: Connection, and the practice of Ethical Imagination. There is an square image on the right of the slide of tree roots with red leaves on the ground. The text about ethical imagination reads: "Ethical Imagination is the capacity to imagine one’s way into the position of another in order to discern and enact the just conditions for mutual flourishing."

For building community, one value is connection, and an important way to enact the value of meaningful connection is through practices of ethical imagination – the capacity not only for empathy, but the ability to imagine the position of another in order to discern and enact the just conditions for mutual flourishing. Community rooted in true connectivity recognizes the degree to which all flourishing is mutual.

Light green slide with the title: Being a Scholar. The value named on the slide under the title is Wisdom, and the practice is attention. On the right side of the slide, there is a picture on the right side of the slide of three water drops falling into water with a green reflection; the drops are rippling outward. The text to the left of the image reads: "Scholé - the free time we need to pursue activities that are valuable in and of themselves."

For the theme of Being a Scholar, I identified wisdom as the value, and attention as the practice. The Ancient Greek root of “scholar” is scholé, the free time one needs to pursue activities that are valuable in and of themselves. Scholarship involves this liberated time to focus on deepening our understanding of the world through careful attention.

Light green slide with the title: Presenting Yourself at the top, under which is the value: Integrity, and the practice of Ethical Imagination. There is a portrait shaped image on the right of the slide of a white flower growing out of a crack in grey asphalt. The text about ethical candor reads: "Ethical candor is conscience bound to truth. Self-deception is the opposite of ethical candor, the cultivated disposition to be honest with yourself."

For the theme of Presenting Yourself, I emphasized integrity as a core value, and ethical candor as a practice that cultivates integrity. Integrity is rooted in practices of self-reflection that reconnect you with your true self. My daughter, Hannah, and I call, our true selves our “alone selves.” Your alone self is most intimately connected with your conscience. Regular practices of self-reflection open spaces of quietude in which you can hear the voice of conscience that holds you accountable to what you know to be true.

Flowers of Wisdom

In 1709, Giambattista Vico, an Italian philosopher, was concerned about the division of education into specialized disciplines. While he recognized the depth and sophistication of disciplinary knowledge, he pointed to the dangers of losing a more organic, holistic, and humanistic understanding of the world we inhabit. In On the Study Methods of Our Time, he advocates for a more holistic approach, emphasizing that wisdom is rooted in a cultivated sense of the whole.

A light green slide with white text that says: “Students' education is so warped and perverted as a consequence [of the separation and disjunction of knowledge], that, although they may become extremely learned in some respects, their culture on the whole (and the whole is really the flower of wisdom) is incoherent.” The passage is from: Vico, Giambattista. On the Study Methods of Our Time. Translated by Elio Gianturco and Donald Phillip Verene. 1st edition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990; originally written in 1709, emphasis on the words "the whole is really the flower of wisdom" is mine.

The flowers of wisdom will not bloom if students focus exclusively on disciplinary expertise. The practices of ethical imagination, attention, and ethical candor empower you to come to a deeper understanding of yourself and a more holistic understanding of the world.

Image of a field of wildflowers, pink, violet, and red in green grass under a beautiful blue sky.

Finally, I concluded with two passages, one from adrienne maree brown that define authenticity as integrity between what you say and what you do, that is, in terms of performative consistency.

A green slide with white text reading: “Authenticity is having integrity between what you say and how you are or what you do. Intimacy is the closeness present when you can be yourself ...” This is from: brown, adrienne maree. Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation. Chico: AK Press, 2021, 135.

The second passage is from an interview with Toni Cade Bambara, who asks us to consider how serious we are about being whole, since being whole is, as she says, “quite a responsibility.”

Light green slide with white text reading: "Are you 'serious about being whole, about being healthy because' as Toni Cade Bambara reminds us, 'it is quite a responsibility'?"

Values-enacted leadership cultivates authentic communities in which each person is empowered to put their values into meaningful practice in ways that support mutual flourishing in a globally interconnected world.

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