The Care and Cultivation of Authentic Leadership, Part 2: What is Executive Cultivation?
In Part 1 of this series, I started unpacking SageD Consulting’s centric ideology that underpins the care and cultivation of authentic leadership. Leveraging the symbiotic relationship between individual and collective liberation helps develop the full potential of the women leaders that we support, and these two dynamics are constantly in community with each other – meaning, we truly cannot maximize our work’s impact without systemic community support providing necessary cushioning around us as we navigate historically inequitable spaces.
In this part of the series, we will hone in on how I’ve developed programs that use a multi-dimensional approach to engage systemic community support in meaningful ways that do make tangible impact.
Why Executive Cultivation Matters
Executive coaching and executive cultivation play distinct yet complementary roles in nurturing leadership growth. While coaching focuses on refining existing skills and guiding individual development, cultivation takes a broader approach, fostering a community-oriented learning environment and developing well-rounded leaders.
And as I’ve emphasized, as women leaders, we truly need community support around us in order to thrive. In the pursuit of the American Dream, Black women in particular have unfailingly adhered to the prescribed roadmap to success. We have embraced the ethos of bootstrapping, dedicated ourselves to attaining higher education, and sought after stable jobs with determination and resilience.
“Solidarity is not the same as support. To experience solidarity, we must have a community of interests, shared beliefs and goals around which to unite, to build Sisterhood. Support can be occasional. It can be given and just as easily withdrawn. Solidarity requires sustained, ongoing commitment”
Did you know that “Black women hold 70% of all master’s degrees and 60% of all doctorate degrees earned by Black men and women. And in proportion to their share of the overall population, the rate of Black women getting degrees exceeds that of Latinas, Native Americans, Asian/Pacific Islanders, and white women”? (Source)
Yet, despite our tireless efforts, the fruits of our labor remain unjustly sparse. Despite being among the most educated subgroups in America's workforce, a staggering wage gap persists, silently undermining our hard-won achievements. This wage disparity is not just a number, but a stark reminder of the systemic inequities that continue to shadow our journey – and one that also deeply impacts our quality of life and the opportunity to build generational wealth.
Black women are typically paid only 67 cents for every dollar paid to white men, and the wage gap actually widens to 65 cents on the dollar for Black women who hold doctorate degrees compared to white men with the same education. This adds up to a loss of $53,334 a year, and more than $2.1 million over the course of a 40-year career. – Source
These hurdles, often overlooked or obscured by mainstream narratives, add extra layers of difficulty to our paths, underscoring the crucial need for advocates, co-conspirators, co-creators, disruptors, volunteers, and Upstanders within our communities to help us achieve atonement.
And that is where Executive Cultivation as approached through my programs at SageD Consulting comes into play.
Embracing a Community of Practice
A Community of Practice is a magical tool for social transformation in which a group of individuals who share a common passion or concern come together regularly to learn, collaborate, and elevate their skills. It's an environment where expertise meets community and where individuals from diverse backgrounds share in the pursuit of growth.
Whether we are talking about Legacy Leadership or my work with the Anti Racist Farmers Market Toolkit, I start all of my authentic leadership work by first creating a community of practice.
Before we even think about individual Executive Coaching, we embrace this broad approach of nurturing leaders by activating a support system within their sphere of influence.
If you missed our blog on the Summer Community of Practice highlights, you can read it here, but in short, these six sessions are designed to build intentional community and create a safe space to explore the unique needs of Black women Executives and foster growth by providing Executives with opportunities to learn, experiment, and develop new capabilities.
At SageD Consulting and through our communities of practice, we uphold the African principle of Sankofa, a call to recall the past to enhance our future. In these gatherings, each member's expertise and experiences enrich our collective wisdom through a mutual exchange that accelerates personal and professional development. Our CoPs hinge on these principles:
Collaborative Learning: Our learning journey thrives on engaging discussions, group activities, and shared projects. This process allows us to challenge assumptions, broaden perspectives, and foster a culture of continuous learning.
Reflective Practice: We celebrate reflection within our CoP. By integrating new learnings and cultivating self-awareness, we refine our skills and embrace constant improvement.
Skill Development and Mastery: Our CoP creates a nurturing space for members to learn, practice, and excel at their chosen skills. Together, we push boundaries in culturally-relevant, trauma-informed ways.
Networking and Relationship Building: Intentional community thrives on connection. By sharing experiences, providing support, and integrating Upstander relationships, we foster a sense of belonging that transcends our program's boundaries.
Shared Resources: Our CoP is a repository of shared knowledge and resources. Members contribute to toolkits, guidelines, and databases that benefit the entire community.
Engaging and Training Upstanders
Termed in opposition to “bystanders” and within the context of Legacy Leadership, Upstanders are non-Black women who purposely develop the necessary skills to position themselves to increase access to resources and opportunities for BIPOC people – a critical part of this conversation we are having about Executive Cultivation and atonement.
We explain more about how this works in this comprehensive blog post in this blog post we co-authored with our place-based partner, The Lola:
In our 2022 cohort, each Executive worked with her Upstander to identify her most pressing professional development need. Upstanders then exercised their commitment to allyship at work by providing direct access to their network and resource bases in order to assist the Executive in achieving that goal. Goals fell within the following focus areas:
Fundraising and organizational development
Organization and process development
Networking and resource development
Board development
Communications and marketing
Additionally, Executives and Upstanders were given complimentary access to leadership development programming. Executives completed program modules ahead of Upstanders and provided feedback and advice on the Upstander’s leadership development journey. Executives gave a fresh perspective on leadership development for Upstanders, with Upstanders repeatedly stating that Executives helped them think about topics in ways that they had never experienced.
It’s important to understand that this is not a “mentor system” as much as it is a “buddy system” in which we are acknowledging that incredibly brilliant leaders like our Legacy Leadership Executives are of service to the community despite the issues they are facing (like the wage gap), and we need to be implementing as much support around them as possible.
And it’s highly effective!
These layers of multi-dimensional support through the Community of Practice and the Upstander relationship provide the scaffolding that the leaders truly need in order to increase their capacity and maximize their impact – and it’s exactly why we have designed our programs to focus on community cultivation before jumping into individual coaching.
How is Executive Coaching Approached?
After the Community of Practice and other executive cultivation measures are well-integrated, we then move into 1:1 Executive Coaching with the leaders who we support. Black women in the social impact space are rarely given the opportunity to assess and hone their leadership with strategic, individualized, culturally-relevant coaching support. Through our innovative partnership with Atlanta Leadership Consulting, we are able to provide them with the resources they need to confidently step into their subject matter expertise. Stay tuned for the next part in this series, when we’ll discuss exactly how we do this!
