Publications

Key Considerations for Design and Evaluation of Leadership Development Programs with a Racial Equity and Social Justice Lens

July 2019

Community Science 

Preface

This paper represents an initial effort by Community Science to distill existing theoretical and practical knowledge about leadership development programs in support of racial equity and social justice into a set of key considerations for the design and evaluation of such programs. It was developed with support from the Bush Foundation and with guidance from Anita Patel, Leadership Programs Director. Kien Lee, Principal Associate, and Brandon Coffee Borden, Managing Associate, are leading and contributing authors, respectively. We would like to thank all the individuals who took the time to speak to us and share their insights, as well as the Leadership Funders Group for their review of the paper and comments. Community Science ii

Contents

1. Introduction

2. Four Parts of the Leadership Development Process

3. Key Considerations for Leadership Development Programs

4. Evaluation of Leadership Development Programs with RESJ Lens 

5. Conclusion and Future Directions 

References 

1. Introduction

There is a growing abundance of leadership development programs across the country designed to develop and support leaders who will promote racial equity and social justice (RESJ). These programs include those funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies, Barr Foundation, Bush Foundation, Connecticut Health Foundation, National Juvenile Justice Network, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF). The targeted audience of these programs has ranged from young emerging leaders to grassroots leaders to nonprofit executive directors at the height of their influence. These programs have attempted to strengthen leaders’ knowledge and skills to understand and shift systems; self-reflect to better understand where they are situated in the social hierarchy and ecosystem to leverage their power; enhance the effectiveness of their organizations; and use their influence and power to improve the communities and systems of which they may be a part. Some of these programs have adopted a cohort model based on the assumption that collective and shared leadership, beyond the capacity of a single leader, is necessary to change the systems that perpetuate racial inequity and social injustice.

Despite the growing number of leadership development programs that focus on diversity, community engagement, and racial equity, we still do not know enough about strategies and programmatic components that correlate with the desired outcomes beyond individual-level change. Some researchers and institutions have called for increased evaluation of leadership programs (Carman, 2007; WKKF, 2001), and the field has slowly begun to answer that call. However, the evaluations featuring frameworks and methods that focus on leadership development-program outcomes tend not to also have an equity focus (Riggio, 2008; Watkins, Lyso, & deMarrais, 2011). They tend to still concentrate on individual changes such as knowledge acquisition and skill development (Avolio et. al., 2009; Collins & Holton, 2004) and, to a slightly lesser extent, organizational changes. They do not emphasize the link between these changes and anticipated outcomes at the community and systems levels, which is essential if the intended impact is for leaders to actively work toward racial equity.

The purpose of this paper is to begin to organize the existing theoretical and practical knowledge about leadership development programs in support of RESJ into a set of key considerations for the design and evaluation of such programs. Funders, trainers, technical assistance providers, and evaluators of leadership development programs with an RESJ lens can use the key considerations in this paper as:

 A checklist for exploring the degree to which the programs they support reflect the knowledge and lessons cumulated to date, and where the strengths and limitations of the programs currently lie;

 Criteria for a program to develop and strengthen leaders to lead with a RESJ lens; and

 Evaluation framework for leadership development programs in support of RESJ.

To develop this paper, Community Science reviewed the literature on leadership development in corporate and community settings, social justice leadership, and evaluation of leadership development programs; spoke to several people who study leadership, design and fund leadership development programs for leaders who can lead with an RESJ lens, and evaluate such programs (including evaluators of the Rockwood Leadership Institute, a trainer with the Management Assistance Center, a professor and research scholar of leadership development at the University of Washington, one of the co-author of Vision of Change, a former executive who led his organization’s effort to apply a racial equity lens to their operations and practices, and a program officer at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation)1; and drew from the findings of evaluations we have conducted of leadership development programs, including the Bush Foundation’s Change Network initiative, Barr Foundation’s Fellows Program, and the National Juvenile Justice Network’s Leadership Program. We identified the practices, program elements, and challenges that consistently came up during our literature review, discussions, and evaluations, and synthesized them in this paper.

1 Community Science attempted to reach out to leaders of social justice organizations who have trained, nurtured, and supported cohorts of leaders; however, we were cautioned by a field leader about a growing concern among leaders of color regarding the lack of reciprocity with funders when they share their insights and experiences.

This paper is divided into three major sections after this introduction. Section 2 describes the four parts that constitute the leadership development process: leader, followers or supporters of the leader, context in which the leader is operating, and the issue(s) for which the leader is providing leadership. Section 3 summarizes the key considerations for leadership development programs aimed at strengthening leaders who can lead with an RESJ lens. Section 4 goes on to identify how evaluation of such leadership development programs can be more effectively monitored and evaluated. Section 5 concludes with a few questions for future inquiry.

2. Four Parts of the Leadership Development Process

Expanding on Avolio’s golden triangle theory (Avolio, 2016), evaluation findings for the Rockwood Leadership Institute (Learning for Action, 2016) and findings from studies conducted by Community Science (e.g., study of the definition and practice of civic engagement in immigrant communities, facilitation of the Immigrant Leadership Council), we surmise that the leadership development process is made up of four major parts: leader, followers or supporters of the leader, context in which the leader is operating, and the issue(s) for which the leader is providing leadership. The outcomes of leadership development programs depend on how these four parts come together—both through program design and also through natural circumstances at the time during and after the program.

“The literature refers to many definitions and traits of leadership. Based on our quest to characterize leadership with an RESJ lens, we propose this definition for consideration by funders, leadership program designers and managers, leaders, and evaluators:

Leadership means the capacity to inspire and mobilize a group of people to express, defend, and act towards achieving equity and social justice”.

Leaders. Leaders do not emerge, exist, or lead in a vacuum. They are leaders because there are people who will listen to them and be influenced by them. Leaders have to be able to create a vision, clarify the big picture, build confidence, inspire, empathize, and empower while also producing consistency, organization, and exchange of goods (Bass, 2003; Brown, 2006; Burns, 1978; Fluker, 2015; Kim & Kunreuther, 2012; Littlefield, 2002; McCleskey, 2014).

Followers or constituency. As mentioned above, leaders do not exist in a vacuum. Leaders have to have followers or a constituency in order to have opportunities to exert their leadership. The process of cultivating followers or a constituency is a relational and dynamic process—making leadership even more challenging to strengthen and practice. Sometimes new leaders may emerge from among the Community Science 3

followers or constituency, and their ideas could be supportive of or conflict with those of current leaders. This dynamic process, in particular, positively affects the pipeline of leaders in social movements working to disrupt the status quo and advance equity and social justice (Kim & Kunreuther, 2012). The symbiotic relationship between leaders and their followers or constituency may be affected by two key attributes: the extent to which the followers or supporters are critical thinkers and how active or passive they are in their support (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009). Existing leadership development programs have not paid sufficient attention to the relationship between leaders and their followers or constituency, in large part because they have focused primarily on the leader and changes in his or her mind-set, knowledge, and behaviors. This lack of attention and focus on discerning effective leader and follower or constituency relationships requires more attention if we are to inform effective leadership programming in the future.

Context. The context in which leaders operate and the ecosystem of which the context is a part will require leaders to configure and combine their skills differently. Depending on the context, followers also will show their support differently. There are three major types of context in which leaders operate: organization, community (i.e., a place), and network (i.e., relationships that are not limited by geography but based on a shared history or identity). All three contexts in turn can be situated within an ecology of systems and sectors that have to be leveraged and transformed in order to advance equity and social justice. For instance, a school leader operates in the context of the school as an organization and he or she may be part of a network of leaders who share the goal of closing the racial gap in academic achievement; at the same time, the school is part of the education system. Across these three contexts, followers can range from staff in an organization (e.g., teachers in a school) to residents of a neighborhood (e.g., parents whose children attend the school) and advocates in a social movement (e.g., advocates for quality education). The amount of time it will take for the outcomes of effective leadership to emerge and take hold will vary depending on the context. Generally, leaders who operate in the context of an organization may see the fruits of their leadership sooner than if they were leading in the context of a community or network (Black, 2009).

Issue. The issue for which leaders provide leadership is intertwined with the context in which they are leading and the scale of change desired. Also, the issue’s relevancy and urgency at the time of the leadership will affect the outcomes. For instance, a leader who is pushing to change a policy in his or her organization to allow flexible time for new mothers returning to work could gain more momentum if a relatively large number of staff happened to be new mothers. The outcome (i.e., policy change) may be more feasible to achieve, and the relationship between the leader, his or her followers, and the context will be more apparent. On the other hand, a leader who is pushing to change state policy to provide access to health care will need more time to galvanize support, especially if this effort is occurring in the context of state budget cuts. In this situation, it will take more time to observe the outcomes (i.e., policy change and a network of followers that can be remobilized in the future for a related issue). Community Science 4

3. Key Considerations for Leadership Development Programs

Section 2 established that there are four aspects to leadership development that require close attention for program designers and evaluators. In addition, there are key considerations for programs designed to cultivate and strengthen leadership with an RESJ lens. We mined the information sources mentioned in the introduction to identify these key considerations.

1 Leaders have to be developmentally ready to lead. Individuals who aspire to be leaders who lead with an RESJ lens have to be prepared at the time to self-reflect and self-improve, confront their own limitations, heal from their own trauma, and step up—sometimes at the risk of expressing an unpopular view. They have to consider these factors, and leadership development programs have to be designed to help them consider these factors during the application process and if accepted, to continue to consider these factors throughout their leadership journey. An executive director of a social justice organization may not be ready to lead if this person has limited time and is more concerned about keeping the organization alive and not losing his or her job to be able to support his or her family, no matter how inspirational this person might be (Kim & Kunreuther, 2012). On the other hand, an individual who has been involved in a social justice movement may be ready to commit to becoming a stronger leader and just need the opportunity to develop the confidence and hone his/her leadership skills (Learning for Action, 2016). Individuals may be more ready for one type of leadership development program and not another, depending on the criteria and expectations of the program.

2 Pay equal attention and time to assessing and strengthening leaders’ transactional and transformational skills. Leaders with an RESJ lens need to have both transformational and transactional capacities. They have to be able to create a vision, clarify the big picture, build confidence, inspire, empathize, and empower (transformational skills) while also producing consistency, organization, and exchange of goods (transactional skills; Bass, 2003; Brown, 2006; Burns, 1978; Chin & Kunreuther, 2012; Fluker, 2015; Littlefield, 2002; McCleskey, 2014). It is uncommon to find leaders who are equally able and accomplished in both transformational and transactional skills; they usually have strengths in one or the other and can benefit from leadership development programs that help them lift up and strengthen the capacity in which they were lacking or weak. A study by deMatthews, Mungal, and Carrola (2015) found that school principals who were working to create socially just schools had the necessary worldview and vision needed for the task but were not sufficiently skilled in navigating the daily complexities of their institutions and making decisions that would lead to a socially just school—the principals needed to strengthen the transactional skills to communicate, manage and coordinate, take action, and make decisions that support their values and vision. Kim and Kunreuther (2012) discussed how younger leaders in the social justice movement find themselves in need of stronger skills to operate and manage their social justice organizations.

3 Develop systems thinking ability. Leaders who lead with an RESJ lens, unlike corporate leaders or leaders addressing more general issues, have to understand structural racism—the historical and current policies, practices, and procedures across multiple institutions that benefit, inadvertently or unintentionally, White people more than people of color and that combined create a system that negatively impacts communities of color and the health and well-being of the individuals who are part of those communities (Kim & Kunreuther, 2012; Uhl-Bien & Marion, 2011). Structural racism and systems change are not easy or simple concepts to communicate; RESJ leaders have to be able to inspire followers or supporters by linking the consequences of structural racism to their daily experiences and Community Science 5

at the same time organize and sustain actions that will incrementally lead to systems change. This is akin to the idea of taking apart pieces of a plumbing system that no longer works and then reconfiguring the pieces differently to create a working system. Deep understanding of structural racism and systems thinking is also essential to enable leaders to comprehend and navigate tensions and relations between different historically marginalized groups (Kim & Kunreuther, 2012). Leaders who lead with an RESJ lens also must be adaptable and practice adaptive leadership to be able to mobilize people to deal with and thrive within environments characterized by stress, uncertainty, and difficulty, due to the consequences of structural racism. This means they have to be willing to adjust their agendas and plans, admit when they don’t know something, ask for help, be open to and take in different perspectives, and act accordingly (Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009). Leadership development programs need to help leaders who want to lead with an RESJ lens to develop these skills.

4 Focus on cultivating collective and shared leadership development. Historically, many leadership development programs, even if they use a cohort approach, have not fully recognized that groups of leaders, and not individual persons, are needed to facilitate change toward equity and social justice, regardless of the context in which they operate (Petrie, 2014). A focus on collective leadership development emphasizes how leaders can grow and engage in social change actions with one another, work across movements, and reduce the sense of isolation (Learning for Action, 2016; Littlefield et al., 2002; Wassenaar & Pearce, 2012). Leadership development programs have to design strategies that intentionally cultivate and support leaders to develop skills to identify common goals and develop a shared agenda to address a particular issue that will advance equity and social justice, adjusting the emphasis on “I” to “we” and in the process creating a sense of collective and shared leadership that will more likely benefit multiple communities (Bordas, 2007). Without this focus, leadership development programs will continue to only generate individual-level outcomes, and any outcomes beyond this level are left up to chance. This reality suggests that the funders and implementers of effective leadership development programs must find ways to engage in continuous reflection and adaption of lessons learn.

5 Help leaders take care of themselves in ways that rejuvenate them and enable them to deal with the challenges they face every day to advance equity and social justice. Leaders who lead with an RESJ lens can quickly become overwhelmed with the enormity of the struggle, burned out from the emotional and physical toil of the work, and even disenchanted with the slow progress. For leaders who come from a historically excluded group, from low-income communities of color to LBGTQ communities, they themselves may have experienced the oppression, and/or have close family members who have, and are still working through the trauma. They also experience microaggressions that over time can be debilitating if they do not have the support or space to deal with the consequences (Greene, 2017). Leaders in the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements, and other movements dealing with the consequences of structural racism, have encountered and are still working to heal from their own trauma. Sometimes their relationships with the people in their personal sphere can be affected because they changed or developed new perspectives not shared by their loved ones (Black, 2009). At the same time, they are expected to also help their communities heal from their painful past and inspire, organize, and act to dismantle decades of structural racism. Their leadership is both a professional and a personal journey. As such, they need space to process learning, make meaning of their history and experiences, heal, and be innovative about their ideas (Bordas, 2007; Brown, 2006; Kim & Kunreuther, 2012; Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 1998; Learning for Action, 2016; Littlefield et al., 2002; Matthews, Mungal, & Carrola, 2015; Raffo, 2012; Rimmer, 2016). Community Science 6

Funders and implements also must recognize that care is both a personal and collective process. Leaders have to shift their own thinking and practice, from feeling too busy to take time to rest and rejuvenate to understanding that taking time for oneself is a critical act of self-maintenance (Bordas, 2007; K. Brown, 2006; Kim & Kunreuther, 2012; Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 1998; Learning for Action, 2017; Littlefield et al., 2002; deMatthews, Mungal, & Carrola, 2015; Raffo, 2012; Rimmer, 2016). They also have to recognize that the people they lead are full beings with emotions, fears, desires, friends, families, and a need for self-fulfillment. As leaders, they have to cultivate a culture of collective care where they and the people they lead mutually care for one another. They have to be attuned to individuals’ life events — especially events that stress the individual — and institute policies and practices that allow everyone to adjust their situations to respond to the person’s needs. These policies and practices could include anything from facilitating discussions to share solutions to creating alternative work schedules to enable the person to rest and heal (Pour-Khorshid, 2016; Hernández Cárdenas and Tello Mendez, 2017).

6 Community matters, and deliberate attention must be paid to the relationship between leaders and community. The relationship between leaders and the community they serve is vital for the following reasons:

 They are frequently advocating on behalf of their communities, regardless of whether it is a place-based community or a network of trusted relationships based on shared history and identity (Larson & Murthada, 2002; Matthews, Mungal, & Carrola, 2015).

 Events in the community, from emerging needs to crises, can change the course of leaders, their role and function, and the capacities required of them.

 Community members have the power to propel their leaders forward or remove them from their leadership role and function, depending on whether they perceive their leaders as authentically serving their needs. As mentioned before, leadership does not occur in a vacuum (Etuk et al., 2013).

Funders of leadership development programs with an RESJ lens need to consider the concept of community for their programs. Frequently, funders determine the criteria for leadership and the type of leaders they wish to fund without community input. Minimally, they might consider these questions in their program design:

 Who are the communities — not individuals (i.e., leaders) — they wish to impact and why?

 Who do these communities consider “leaders” — informal and formal — and what are their expectations of these leaders?

 What specific community engagement skills do the leaders supported by the program need to build, strengthen, and practice?

7 Power has to be understood, examined, explored, and acted on in an intentional way. Power has to be intentionally and carefully examined at two levels. First, the leadership development program must help leaders conduct an analysis of where power lies in the context in which the leaders are operating and for the issue for which they are providing leadership. This analysis can help leaders develop a course of action. Second, the program must help leaders understand and balance their power. There is a risk of leaders adopting the role of a gate opener or a gatekeeper (Pigg, 2013). They might unconsciously shift from galvanizing and empowering to overprotecting or safeguarding their community at the risk of adopting a patronizing manner. Leaders’ understanding of the psychology of oppression is part of this possibility. They have to be conscious about why they might have a lack of confidence in others of their Community Science 7

demographic group or expect themselves and others to disregard their own culture and emulate White corporate or mainstream political leaders (Bordas, 2007). This requires extensive self-reflection and mindfulness on the leaders’ part.

8 Discuss and develop the capacity to be brokers and bridge builders between the communities they serve and mainstream systems. Leaders who lead with an RESJ lens often have to break down the injustice experienced by the communities they serve with the practices and responses of mainstream systems that perpetuate the injustice. This role places them in the situation of being a bridge builder, cultural broker, ambassador, translator or interpreter, advocate, and disruptor (Bordas, 2007). For example, leaders have to be able to inform, influence, and build the capacity of their followers or constituency to change the conditions of their community, and at the same time be able to engage city officials and business leaders to invest and support policies that will result in the desired changes. In such situations, they have to be mindful about being centered and their own authenticity and also how others perceive them and their authenticity in both situations—in the neighborhood and in the boardroom. Code-switching is a reality for many leaders of color, and the concept and practice have stirred a lot of controversy in the past. Leadership development programs have to pay attention to the realities of leaders who lead with an RESJ lens about their views regarding code-switching and what it means for their authenticity and impact as leaders.

9 Sense of safety during and outside of the leadership development program. Safety repeatedly came up in evaluating findings of leadership development programs as well as during interviews with program designers and coaches; it was especially salient for leaders of color. It came up in two ways:

 Program participants have to feel safe in sharing information that makes them vulnerable, from personal information about their background to how they feel or view another group of people different from them.

 They have to feel safe when they go back to their environments and take the risk of challenging the status quo.

Leadership development programs have to be able to cultivate and nurture a safe environment for participants while they are taking part in activities with other participants. Ground rules have to be developed about confidentiality and participant responses to their peers’ sharing of information and vulnerability. To address the second situation, leadership development programs need to help participants identify and engage allies in their environments who can help them strategize the actions they want to take to challenge the status quo.

10 Leaders have to be prepared for the disappointments, setbacks, and backlash that come with power. Related to the above point, leaders with an RESJ lens often find themselves taking on an oppressive system on behalf of their communities and challenging the status quo. They will inevitably encounter resistance from leaders and their followers in groups and institutions whose power and privilege are being challenged by them. Leaders who lead with an RESJ lens could experience harm on themselves personally or on the communities of which they are a part (e.g., newspaper articles that discredit them, threats, and physical assault). Funders of leadership development programs with an RESJ lens also have to be mindful of their role in facilitating the power of the leaders they support. They can inadvertently increase the power of individuals by elevating the individuals’ leadership role and function, and be unaware of the potential risks for the individuals. Funders and program implementers have to ensure that their programs help leaders prepare for risks they are taking, deal with the Community Science 8

disappointments and backlash, and take the necessary measures to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.

4. Evaluation of Leadership Development Programs with RESJ Lens

As mentioned before, leadership development programs tend to still concentrate on individual changes such as knowledge acquisition, skill development, and, to a slightly lesser extent, organizational changes. They do not sufficiently emphasize the link between these changes and anticipated outcomes at the community and systems levels, which are essential if the intended impact is for leaders to actively work toward RESJ.

The synthesis of the four essential aspects and ten key considerations for programs described in Sections 2 and 3 aimed at generating leaders with an RESJ lens is also helpful to inform how these programs should be evaluated. Our recommendations for the evaluation of these programs are summarized in this section.

Determine the level(s) at which change is expected by the program and the outcomes at that level. Using the model described in Section 2, evaluators need to work with the program funders and implementers to determine

 Who the leaders are that will participate in and benefit from the program and whether the emphasis of the program is on leaders’ transformational skills, transactional skills, or both; and

 What the context is within which leaders of the program are expected to lead and change—organization, community, or network.

Answers to the above questions will determine the level at which change is expected to occur and the outcome measures for the program.

Understand and document the relationship between the leaders in a program, their followers or constituency, and the issue they wish to impact, for each participating leader. The understanding, tracking, and documentation of this relationship will enable evaluators to focus on the two additional aspects of leadership development that could affect leaders’ effectiveness, including the degree of support from their followers and the political and policy climate surrounding the issue they intend to impact through their leadership. Monitoring these two aspects will allow evaluators to provide a more holistic assessment of the leaders’ effectiveness beyond individual change, where the most immediate and direct benefits of leadership development programs can be achieved (Black, 2009).

Understand and document the relationship between the leaders in a program and the community of which they are a part and whose concerns they are advocating for. As mentioned in one of the key considerations, funders and program implementers don’t always pay enough attention to the communities they hope their leadership development programs will ultimately benefit (i.e., the community-level outcome). To assess the extent to which leaders developed the capacity to advance equity and social justice for their communities require time and resources to identify other leaders in their community as well as community members to interview. It also requires the evaluation to extend beyond the program implementation period as the benefits may be realized long after the leader completes the program. Community Science 9

Ensure sufficient time and resources for interviews as a primary data collection strategy. In instances where resources are limited, it is tempting for evaluators to use surveys to collect data from leaders and other key informants (e.g., followers or constituency members, peers) about their experiences, capacities developed, and changes observed as a result of the program. This method is insufficient for capturing the diversity, depth, and extent of personal transformations and possible outcomes that can result from a leadership development program. Both funders and evaluators have to be clear about the trade-offs between a survey (more cost-efficient and can include a larger number of respondents) and interviews (more expensive and time consuming, can include only a small number of respondents, but can capture more meaningful information) when resources are limited.

Assess implementation of program components. Evaluators can use the list of key considerations in Section 3 as a checklist for assessing the degree to which leadership development programs are responsive to the capacity needs of leaders leading with an RESJ lens. Evaluators can develop process measures to determine if a component related to each key consideration exists or does not exist and the degree to which it is integrated into the program. For example, is self-care a major program component (e.g., a required sabbatical for participating leaders), a one-time activity (e.g., one workshop dedicated to the topic), or not included at all? Evaluators can also compare programs and determine how the presence, absence, and significance of a particular key consideration in the programs compared had any impact on the participating leaders’ effectiveness.

Extend the length of an evaluation’s performance period beyond the program’s conclusion. Leadership development programs designed to strengthen leaders to lead with an RESJ lens and achieve community and systemic outcomes will require more time to observe these outcomes. This means that these evaluations need to extend at least one year beyond the end of the program. This also means that resources for evaluation have to be stretched out for a longer period of time. There is limited knowledge—because the performance period for evaluations usually do not exceed the program period—about the impact of leadership development programs. Funders and leaders who graduated from a program will share anecdotal evidence about the program’s impact, but this evidence is insufficient to understanding the true potential and value proposition of leadership development programs. Nevertheless, the issue of limited resources is real; as such, funders and evaluators might want to limit the assessment to implementation outcomes while the program is in operation and save the resources for studying the outcomes one year later.

Conduct network analysis as part of the evaluation design. A network analysis will help identify and assess the degree to which leaders in a cohort and alumni of a program leveraged one another’s positions and connections to catalyze and fuel actions and changes to promote RESJ. It would be especially useful to conduct this analysis at least one year after each cohort graduates from the program to provide sufficient time for opportunities to emerge and relationships to mature. Most traditional network analyses focus on the density, reciprocity, and centrality, and while they provide some insight into the network, such analysis tends to miss the nature and quality of the relationships and the outcomes of these relationships. Also, the outcomes may not necessarily be correlated to the three attributes mentioned above; instead, it could be the shared experience from being part of the program, a common agenda that some of the leaders share, and the opportune timing for leveraging one another’s power or relationships—all this can occur one or more years after leaders graduated from the leadership program. Community Science 10

5. Conclusion and Future Directions

In conclusion, the model and key considerations for program implementation and evaluation described in this paper provide a starting point for assessing programs aimed at strengthening leaders with an RESJ lens; retrospectively studying older programs that are no longer operating but have generated cohorts of leaders; and informing the design of new programs aimed at developing, strengthening, and supporting leaders with an RESJ lens.

Our effort to organize the existing theoretical and practical knowledge about leadership development programs in support of RESJ also highlighted the following areas—among many—where additional inquiry is necessary to inform public and private investments in leadership development:

 What has been tried in leadership development programs that did not work as hypothesized and why?

 What has been the added value of a place-based leadership development program for efforts aimed at effecting community and systems change?

 What are the paths that leaders have taken to inspire and mobilize a group of people to express, defend, and act towards achieving equity and social justice, and what are the common and unique factors, forces, and circumstances that shaped their paths?

 What are the key “aha” moments or turning points for leaders when they are in a program designed to build their capacity to lead with an RESJ lens?

 What types of disappointments, setbacks, and backlash have they experienced that they feel ill-prepared for even after participating in one or more leadership development programs?

Community Science 11

References

Avolio, B. (2016). Introduction: The golden triangle for examining leadership developmental readiness. New Directions for Student Leadership, 149, 7–14.

Avolio, B., Bass, B., & Jung, D. (1999). Re-examining the components of transformational and transactional leadership using the Multifactorial Leadership Questionnaire. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 72, 441–462.

Avolio, B., Walumbwa, F., & Weber, T. (2009). Current theories, research, and future directions. Management Department Faculty Publications, 37. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/managementfacpub/37

Bass, B. M. (2003). Face to face — Power to change: A conversation with Bernard M. Bass. Leadership in Action, 23(2), 9-11.

Bass, B. M. & Riggio, R. E. (2015). The transformational model of leadership. In G. R. Hickman (3rd Ed.), Leading organizations: Perspectives for a new era (pp. 76-86). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. (Reprinted from Transformational Leadership, pp. 3-16, by B. M. Bass & R. E. Riggio, 2006, Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates)

Black, A. (2009). Measuring the outcomes of leadership development programs. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 16(2), 184-196.

Bordas, J. (2007). Salsa, soul, and spirit. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Brown, K. (2006). Leadership for social justice and equity: Evaluating a transformative framework and andragogy. Education Administration Quarterly, 42(5), 700–745.

Carman, J. (2007). Evaluation practice among community-based organizations: Research into reality. American Journal of Evaluation, 28, 60-75.

deMatthews, D. E., Mungal, A. S., & Carrola, P. A. (2015). Despite best intentions: A critical analysis of social justice leadership and decisionmaking. Administrative Issues Journal: Connecting Education, Practice, and Research, 5(2), 17–37.

Etuk, L., Rahe, M., Candrall, M., Sektnan, M., & Bowman, S. (2012). Rural leadership development: Pathway. Community Development Journal, 44(4), 411–425.

Fluker, W. E. (2015). Now we must cross a sea: Remarks on transformational leadership and the civil rights movement. Boston University Law Review, 95(3), 1225-1232.

Greene, M.P. (Summer 2017). Vulnerable populations: People of color in leadership roles. Behavioral Health News, 38.

Heifetz, R., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press. Community Science 12

Hernández Cárdenas, A. M., & Tello Mendez, N. G. (2017). Self-Care as a political strategy. SUR-Int’l J. on Hum Rts., 26, p. 171.

Kim, H., & Kunreuther, F. (2012). Vision for Change: A New Wave of Social Justice Leadership. New York: Building Movement Project.

Komives, S., Lucas, N., & McMahon, T. R. (1998). Exploring Leadership: For College Students Who Want To Make A Difference. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco.

Larson, C., & Murtadha, K. (2002). Leadership for social justice. In J. Murphy (Ed.), The Educational Leadership Challenge: Redefining Leadership for the 21st Century Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Learning for Action. (2016). Rockwood Leadership Institute’s Cohort-based Programs: 2016 Third Party Evaluation. San Francisco, CA: Author.

Learning for Action. (May 2017). Developing Leaders To Advance The Movement: A Look at Corealign’s Key Contributions, Opportunities, And the Path Forward in the Reproductive Health, Rights, and Justice Movement. San Francisco, CA: Author.

Littlefield, D., Robison, C. C., Engelbrecht, L., Gonzalez, B., & Hutcheson, H. (2002). Mobilizing women for minority health and social justice in California. American Journal of Public Health, 92(4), 576–580.

McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117-130. Retrieved from http://login.proxy.seattleu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/1548766781?accountid =28598

Petrie, N. (2014). Future trends in leadership development. Center for Creative Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/futureTrends.pdf

Pigg, K. (2013). Community leadership development: The effects on community development.

Community Development Journal, 44(4), 408–410.

Pour-Khorshid, F. (2016). HELLA: Collective testimonio that speak to the healing, empowerment, love, liberation, and action embodied by social justice educators of color. Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, 10(2).

Raffo, D. (2012). Blogging as a reflective tool for leadership development: An exploratory study of a leadership practicum grounded in the relational leadership model. Delta Pi Epsilon Journal, 54(2), 39-51.

Riggio, R. E. (2008). Leadership development: The current state and future expectations. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 60(4), 383-392.

Rimmer, J. (2016). Developing principals as equity-centered instructional leaders. In S. Petty & S. Shaffer, Equity Centered Capacity Building. Equity-Center Capacity Building Network.

Uhl-Bien, M., & Marion, R (2011). Complexity leadership theory. In G. R. Hickman (3rd Ed.), Leading Organizations: Perspectives for A New Era (pp. 228-245). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. (Reprinted from The Sage Handbook of Leadership, pp. 468-483, by Bryman, Collison, Grint, Jackson & Uhl-Bein, 2011, SAGE Publications.) Community Science 13

Wassenaar, C., & Pearce, C. (2012). The nature of shared leadership. In G. R. Hickman (3rd Ed.), Leading Organizations: Perspectives for A New Era (pp. 177-196). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. (Reprinted from The Nature of Leadership, pp. 363-389, by David V. Day & John Antonakis, 2012, SAGE Publications.)

Watkins, K., Hybertsen Lyso, I., & deMarrais, K. (2011). Evaluating executive leadership programs: A theory of change approach. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 13, 208-239.

W.K. Kellogg Foundation. (2001). Leadership Scan: The Legacy of the Ag Leadership Development Program: Rich Heritage Cultivate Future Opportunities. Battle Creek, MI: Author.