Dede and Willam are associate deans in the College of Liberal Arts. As a side project to their management responsibilities, they decide to co-author an article on culturally responsive academic leadership. They both recognize the need for more information on culturally responsive leadership in their context and take it upon themselves to fill the gap in the literature.
Dede and Willam explore the literature and begin acquiring insights from various academic and professional resources. The research process instigates their own self-reflection, and they begin to gain insights from their leadership histories. Their most salient conclusion is that their leadership values and behaviors are a strong reflection of the leadership ethics and strategies modeled to them – and they are a product of their leadership ecosystems. Dede and Willam examine deeper to consider how their leadership experiences were informed by race, class and gender norms and the various ways these norms may manifest and reproduce.
Together, they consider the decisions they have made, the priorities they have raised, and how certain practices and approaches gave them privilege over others. They speculate as to how these decisions and priorities reflected raced, classed, and gendered ways of knowing – and how these beliefs and practices became institutionalized and enshrined in policy. Dede and Willam discuss a number of places where their leadership values express themselves, including timeliness and deadlines; budget priorities and transparency; decision making; and internal and external communications.
Their dialogue expands to consider the implications of their leadership style and how it may influence who joins their organization, who stays in their organizations and who thrives in their organization, and more broadly, how their approaches do or do not contribute to realizing a diverse organization.
Through their shared writing process, they discover the significance of self-reflection in developing culturally responsive leadership, as well as for uncovering the influences of their own socialization on others. Dede and Willam commit to maintaining their dialogue beyond the completion of their publication.
- The Issue: Dede and Willam are unable to find adequate resources that explore culturally responsive leadership in their academic context.
- The Deliberation: The pair commit to research and co-author an article that explores culturally responsive academic leadership and serve as reflective partners as they explore the development of their own leadership styles.
- The Growth: Dede and Willam recognize the influence of their early leadership examples in the formation of their own leadership style, and how their leadership decisions and behaviors reproduce race, class and gender norms. They commit to further reflection and exploration.