Ideas

“In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” —Great Law of Peace, Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy

This Indigenous teaching offers a timeless principle for today’s leaders. Rooted leadership is not about short-term gains or personal recognition, it is about grounding decisions in relationships, values, and accountability that will sustain communities well beyond our own lifetime. Community Science’s Organizational Effectiveness Practice Area views rooted leadership as essential for leaders navigating today’s challenges with clarity and purpose.

What Rooted Leadership Is

Rooted leadership draws strength not from charisma, a single leader, or credentials, but from connection to people, place, history, and values. It prioritizes listening before it leads. It enriches the soil before planting strategy—investing in foundational relationships and trust that are necessary nutrients for implementing initiatives. This leadership practice is not above community but of it.

Rooted leadership is deeply committed to collective well-being by considering the health, prosperity, and flourishing of entire communities rather than individual success alone. It examines how decisions impact interconnected relationships and structures over time, rather than focusing on isolated problems or quick fixes, and practices cultural responsiveness through an ongoing practice of learning from and being accountable to communities, especially those who have been historically marginalized.

Being rooted does not mean being rigid. Like a tree, rooted leadership holds firm in values while adapting to storms and blooms. It is a spectrum. Sometimes the roots stretch deep to stabilize, sometimes they extend wide to connect, and at other times they reach upward to model new possibilities. A rooted leader considers not what works right now, but what will nourish generations to come, drawing upon different ways of leading and sustainable practices that honor both immediate needs (e.g., shared power and vision) and long-term desires.

What Rooted Leadership Grows

We have already seen what rooted leadership can make possible. Often, it is most visible in moments when people respond to exclusion, uncertainty, or injustice with practices that center belonging, care, and accountability. These examples illustrate what ‘not above community but of it’ can look like across different contexts, communities, and challenges.

Rooted leadership can show up in structure. The Movement for Black Lives built a decentralized structure where no single hub controlled everything. Local groups shared resources while maintaining autonomy, ensuring resilience when faced with attacks. Similarly, leaders in the disability rights community have long practiced rooted leadership by centering the wisdom of those most impacted by systemic barriers. The principle “Nothing About Us, Without Us” embodies this approach—ensuring that people with disabilities lead efforts that affect their lives. Organizations like Disability Belongs advance this vision by fostering inclusive communities, creating pathways for leadership, and challenging ableist structures that exclude people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Their work demonstrates how rooted leadership not only amplifies disabled voices but also reshapes systems so that belonging is the norm, not the exception.

It can also show up in values. Black-led mutual aid burial funds functioned as collective insurance systems that ensured Black families received respect and care when denied access to traditional financial institutions. These funds were more than financial tools—they embodied collective responsibility and demonstrated how communities could organize around dignity, honor, and justice in the face of systemic exclusion. Asian immigrant mutual aid societies created belonging and protection where mainstream institutions that could appropriately address their concerns were unable or unwilling to appropriately address their concerns, showing how leadership grounded in community builds resilience even in unjust environments. Rural communities embody rooted leadership in volunteer fire brigades, cooperative farms, and informal caregiving networks that preserve life and dignity when formal systems are absent. These examples show how geographic place and environmental connection can ground leadership in support of everyone thriving.

And rooted leadership can show up in strategic design. Stacey Abrams and Fair Fight chose to invest in infrastructure, pipelines, and documentation rather than a single individual’s visibility, leaving a long-term legacy that reshaped Georgia’s political landscape. Southerners on New Ground carries forward Black queer feminist traditions by practicing relational organizing and collective care, honoring everyone’s humanity. Indigenous teachings embed accountability to future generations in governance structures. Latino farmworker cooperatives have demonstrated the strength of comunidad and compañerismo, building systems of solidarity where workers cared for each other and sustained movements for justice.

Across these examples, we see a shared commitment to responsiveness, relationships that sustain sense of community, and investments in long-term capacity building for future generations. They remind us that rooted leadership is not just about resisting harm. It is about transforming how we relate to each other and how we build just futures together.

Building on this, rooted leadership offers a path forward. It resists distortions of service by honoring care without allowing it to be taken for granted. It asks, “How can this work continue without me?” rather than “How can I do more?” It recognizes that sustainability requires building systems, not dependencies—a principle that applies whether leading a community organization, a corporate team, or a rural cooperative.

Why Rooted Leadership Matters Now

The current moment demands leadership approaches that can navigate complexity while maintaining integrity. We face interconnected challenges—disinformation, polarization, climate crisis, systemic inequities, and authoritarianism—that thrive on fear, fragmentation, and the lure of quick certainty. Rooted leadership interrupts these dynamics by offering an alternative grounded in relationship and long-term thinking.

In organizational contexts, rooted leadership helps institutions resist the pull toward reactive decision-making and instead build capacity for sustained change. Whether in nonprofits struggling with funding volatility, corporations navigating stakeholder expectations, or government agencies managing public trust, this approach emphasizes building the relational infrastructure that allows organizations to weather crises while staying true to their mission.

For individual leaders, this framework provides guidance for leading authentically in systems that may reward different values. It offers tools for sharing power appropriately, making decisions that honor community wisdom, and maintaining personal sustainability and responsibility while serving collective needs.

By holding firm to shared values, slowing down to build trust, and protecting community resilience, rooted leadership restores clarity and moral grounding. It helps organizations and communities resist fragmentation and focus instead on what can be sustained over time. Most importantly, it reminds us that leadership is not measured by individual achievement but by the health and flourishing of the collective.

Questions That Guide Rooted Leadership: These questions can help leaders at any level, from community organizers to corporate executives, assess and develop their practice:

Relationship and Trust Building:

• How does my leadership deepen trust and belonging across differences?
• What stories, practices, and values anchor our work together?
• How do I create space for voices that are often unheard in decision-making?

Systems and Sustainability:

• In what ways do our systems create more participation, autonomy, and longevity?
• How do we nurture capacity and joy, not only grit or resistance?
• What would need to be in place for this work to continue and thrive without me?

Accountability and Growth:

• Where am I called to practice humility, share power, and invite wisdom from others?
• How do I honor the knowledge that comes from lived experience, especially from marginalized communities?
• What feedback mechanisms help me stay accountable to collective well-being?

This leadership approach matters because it protects what is essential: people, culture, relationships, and the possibility of liberation for all.