Inclusive Leadership: Equity and Belonging in Our Communities: Volume 9

This chapter describes a new leadership model called shared equity leadership (SEL). The goal of SEL is to create culture change that embeds shared values of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into the core of an organization. SEL emerged from a qualitative multiple-case study of leaders who were committed to establishing an equitable organization at eight colleges and universities that had seen success in their equity efforts. We reviewed over 1,000 pages of documents and interviewed 126 leaders, including cabinet-level executives, mid-level leaders, and group-level leaders. While we identified this model on college campuses, it has relevance for any organizational context. SEL entails three elements: (1) a personal journey toward critical consciousness in which leaders solidify their commitment to equity, (2) a set of values that center equity and guide the work, and (3) a set of practices that leaders enact collectively to change inequitable structures. Distinct from traditional leadership models, SEL encompasses both personal and organizational processes of leadership and emphasizes collaborative, relational, personal, and emotional aspects of leadership. This change starts with transforming awareness and behaviors of individuals, who engage in personal journeys toward critical consciousness and develop an urgent sense of responsibility for creating change. Organizations can facilitate their personal journeys and begin structuring SEL by forming a diverse team and socializing them into SEL expectations. With a concerted effort of leaders committed to SEL values and practices, an organization can be transformed so that equity is everyone’s work.

The study of power is essential to any study of leadership, as power is fundamental to human organization and is understood to be a driving force of leadership. Power is typically thought of in terms of having dominance over others from a hierarchically higher position. In this chapter, we explore how power is typically defined in the literature and propose that mutualism represents an expanded definition of power and one that more closely aligns with the concept of inclusive leadership. We make a case for viewing power as a capacity that can be developed in others rather than a commodity that can be obtained, horded, or doled out. With this in mind, we explore how these two phenomena intersect from the perspectives of powerdistance, hierarchy, and empowerment. We argue that power expressed as dominance creates distance between leaders and employees, while mutualistic expressions reduce such distance, and that hierarchy and power have been erroneously conflated and when disaggregated can serve a useful purpose in a low-power-distance culture. Finally, through empowerment, we consider approaches to the development of power in others, which is a topic that is rarely considered in the leadership literature. Inclusive leadership offers an important pathway for moving organizations and society toward justice through the creation of cultures characterized by cooperation, unity, and diversity where greater numbers of people step into their capacity for power and begin to address the challenges facing humanity. This is realizable in cultures that promote mutualistic power.

In a world that represents a diverse genre of individuals ranging from age to sexual orientation and beyond, organizations struggle to create a culture of belonging. A culture where an individual feels comfortable and empowered to bring her authentic self to the workplace. We argue that a culture of belonging happens when leaders practice cultural humility and inclusion competencies and work together with their diverse populations to transform the existing culture. Creating a culture of belonging requires all leaders of the organization to assess their inclusion competencies, understand power dynamics that exist within the organization, and be constantly aware that belonging is a continual process. We found that when leaders of an organization engage in cultural humility training, inclusion competencies assessments, and personal development plans (PDPs), the outcome resulted in a greater awareness of self and others along with a recognition of the existing power dynamics that can result in employees feeling they are a part of the organization. We opined that cultures of belonging exist when organizational leaders ensure each members’ psychological well-being and safety. We conclude that transparency in today’s organization consists of leaders finding practical ways to connect diverse groups of members. Transparency is also about having open doors where people of all ethnic, racial, sexual, and religious statuses are welcome to enter. Our study supports the findings of Katz and Miller (2016) that a culture of belonging is where trust is built, the thoughts and ideas of others are respected, and safety exists for all members.

While diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) in the workplace means making space for all employees, it has unique implications for Indigenous employees who live and work in countries built on colonialism. Indigenous peoples represent diverse groups with unique and rich cultures that in general share values that are more holistic, spiritual, traditional, egalitarian, and other-oriented than non-Indigenous populations. Such distinct worldviews help explain why non-Indigenous organizations struggle to understand and accommodate Indigenous employees’ priorities and goal-oriented behavior. Creating equity, inclusivity, and belonging in the workplace for Indigenous employees requires more than implementing existing organizational practices with a new cultural awareness, it requires rethinking, reframing, and recreating organizational to facilitate a culture of trust. Re-examining organizational norms and assumptions with the ideas of relationship and responsibility that allow collaborative approaches to collective well-being and inclusivity is required. Creating inclusive workspaces requires that attention must be paid to both organizational (group-level) factors, such as organizational cultures of trust, and interpersonal (individual-level) factors, such as interpersonal trust. However, to build foundations of high-functioning and supportive organizational cultures and interpersonal trust that are sustainable, time and resources are necessary. Without this, the ability to reach the crucial result of engaging Indigenous employees and creating safe workplaces serves only to be performative and not meaningful in terms of action, longevity, and the overall well-being of Indigenous people in the workplace.

The development of upcoming inclusive leaders requires not just knowledge of inclusion competencies but also knowledge of how to develop them and when to use them. This chapter examines the effectiveness of combining a psychometric assessment tool – the Inclusion Competencies Inventory (ICI) – and an improvement approach that places developmental responsibility in the hands of the student, not the instructor. The increased need for inclusivity in organizations requires business school graduates, who will soon be taking on the role of organizational leaders, to develop inclusion competencies. We seek to enhance inclusion competencies through a model based on reflective development and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). There are several implications for academicians and practitioners who may choose to adopt this unique, participant-driven approach to developing inclusion leadership competencies.

Change in higher education across the globe is taking place at an unprecedented pace. Various groups, especially women, are impacted differently by these changes. Women remain underrepresented in leadership at universities across the globe, and South African higher education is no different. For women to take up senior leadership roles more potently in universities, particularly in the Global South, it is essential that they not only cope with and compete in the patriarchal systems that characterize this sector but are also emboldened to contribute to changing patriarchal hegemony. There are shifts needed in prevailing management styles and leadership discourses toward a pluralistic and inclusive culture, where transformational and equitable leadership cultures become the norm and praxis. Given this context, we assessed the needs of women leaders in the South African higher education sector and designed a program to help shift their experience of themselves and their contexts. This chapter discusses this national executive development program – the Women in Leadership (WiL) program – which was developed and implemented with the aim to advance gender equality and inclusivity in higher education leadership in South Africa. This program aimed to embolden the women leaders in their ability to recognize, address, and impact barriers to gender equality.

Diversification of faculty within higher education has been a topic of focus within the academy for decades. Further, there has been a call to create academic departments composed of faculty teams which are more representative of gender, racial, and ethnic diversity, often with the ideal of representing student and community demographics. Though challenges remain in recruiting, hiring, and retaining diverse faculty, higher education institutions (HEIs) rarely represent the racial and ethnic diversity of the communities that they serve, and benchmarks or definitions of success have been vague at best. However, evidence does support the notion that both student and community outcomes are strengthened by the skills, talents, perspectives, and contributions offered by diverse faculty and leadership teams. First, a review of the current obstacles and challenges of creating diverse and inclusive faculty teams is covered. Second, the Five I’s of Inclusive Leadership Practices in Higher Education, lessons and successes from building diverse and representative faculty teams are shared. This model includes Intentionality, Invitation, Influence, Investment, and Innovation. Finally, recommendations for future practice, as well as application across institutional type, setting, and location, are included. Building diverse and inclusive faculty teams is important, urgent, and rewarding work. Diversification gives birth to lively classroom conversations, thriving campus environments, enhanced growth in the personal and professional lives of students and faculty, establishment of equitable and affirming cross-racial and gender relationships, population and financial growth of the HEI, and more equitable service to communities.

Organizational initiatives to address diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) have multiplied with many different courses and training programs in the last three decades. Despite these efforts, some recent studies have pointed out that disadvantages among minoritized social groups continue to persist, and thus far, organizations have failed to address them. University graduate leadership programs are, at least theoretically, able to respond in a way that better prepares future formal and informal organizational leaders with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to be inclusive individuals in the 21st century committed to social change and social justice. This study aimed to understand how some graduate programs were currently teaching DEIB issues; more specifically, to understand if universities implementing DEIB programs were using a critical lens in their program design and to assess if these programs were indeed intended to be transformative. The review of 40 graduate programs in the United States indicated that the majority of them view diversity training and the work of DEIB leadership as “managing diversity” to keep the status quo and for economic profit contributing to the commoditization and tokenism of people; there was no mention of power in terms of asymmetries but rather a legitimizing of the accumulation of power with the leader at the top; and, finally, except for five programs, there was little attention given to DEIB as a transformative project committed to social justice.

In this chapter, the author argues that in order to meet the United Nations’ sustainable development goal 4 which calls for education to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030,” transformative leadership may be key. Transformative leadership goes well beyond traditional technical and rational approaches to leadership; it includes but extends theories such as social justice leadership and transformational leadership and involves two general principles and eight interconnected tenets. These include knowing oneself, one’s community and organization; deconstructing frameworks that perpetuate inequity and reconstructing them in more equitable ways; addressing the inequitable distribution of power; emphasizing individual and collective good; focusing on democracy emancipation, equity, and justice as well as interconnectedness and global awareness; and offering both critique and promise. Transformative leadership theory is a critical, holistic, and normative approach that focuses on values, and on beliefs and mindsets as well as knowledge and action. It is characterized by its activist agenda and its overriding commitment to social justice, equity, and democratic society. Thus, it is an approach to leadership that is anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-xenophobic, etc.; it calls for rejection of deficit thinking and for inclusive and equitable practices that require moral courage. It is such a holistic and critical theory that would help to promote the United Nations’ education goal by the target of 2030.

Historically, learners labeled with disabilities have been denied equal access to and opportunities in mainstream classrooms. Globally, the task of addressing marginalization entails two main approaches. Firstly, there is a need to prevent stigmatization, discrimination, and neglect. Secondly, efforts must be directed toward establishing structures and systems that enable complete and meaningful involvement within educational institutions and various sectors. Educational inequality is associated with various aspects of identity beyond disability status. Factors such as culture, language, race, and gender impact the classroom experiences of children. Consequently, schools must adopt an intersectional approach in their quest to deliver effective, accessible, and inclusive education to all children. Building from the work of UNESCO, we define inclusivity as a transformative process of educators ensuring that all children experience high-quality learning opportunities that respect and value multiple dimensions of diversity. This chapter describes an emerging research–practice partnership focused on organizational learning advancing inclusivity. The partnership is premised on supporting central office administrators and the school-based inclusion planning teams (IPTs) in a public school district implementing a comprehensive reform of their service delivery model for students labeled with disabilities. It involves supporting administrators in Boston Public Schools (BPS) in fine-tuning a theory of action (ToA), designing organizational learning processes to enact this ToA, and evaluating the efficacy of the initiative in advancing effective, inclusive education for students labeled with disabilities.

In this chapter, I present a concept named Diversity Icebreaker® where the participants in a seminar are categorized along red, blue, and green dimensions based on a psychological assessment. The participants co-create the meaning of the dimensions in mono-colored groups due to their dominant scores where they describe themselves and others from inside and outside perspectives. Blue is more task and detail oriented. Green is more holistic and future oriented. Red is more social and communicative oriented. The language as a metaphorical structure as well as the seminar builds a culture of inclusivity. The simplicity and easiness of mastery of the categories make it easy for everyone to apply the categories. The social co-creation of the categories makes every participant at an even level. The colors are defined reciprocally strengthening the needs of the others. Everyone has all colors which makes it easier to connect and see commonalities that build cohesion. In the seminar, participants experience uncertainty followed by dialogues with others. Positive emotions and insight reinforce the script of “dialoguing with others when uncertainties arise.” The positivity and humor in the seminar reinforce the behavior of being together. The closure is a collective reflexivity process where all participants have even possibility to contribute due to their unique perspectives on their shared experience. I end this chapter with reflections and questions on leadership models in this seminar that has evolved in a Norwegian context and their relevance in a global context.

Groups once marginalized by culture, ethnicity, class, sexuality, age, and physical ability have entered and impacted business, service, and educational institutions. To unify their widening communities, leaders must pursue inclusivity, which demands more than equitable demographics. Inclusivity integrates each individual’s perspective, regardless of group – the tougher goal of equitable belonging. Most diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging programs agree that inclusivity starts with leaders’ acknowledging their own biases and committing to organizational reform. Yet few apply leadership principles to gain crucial team collaboration in the project. This chapter explicitly shows public- and private-sector executives and instructors how to guide staffers and students to understand and welcome unfamiliar cultural, social, and personal variances so they themselves create an inclusive cohort. Experiential activities, games, performance arts, and focused, reflective debriefings help make inclusivity the norm by playfully but persistently uncovering even unconscious exclusionist assumptions and replacing them with informed, diversity-positive interactions. These emotionally engaging exercises reveal that exclusionism emerges most bluntly in casual conversation, which both displays and perpetuates preconceptions. Fortunately, self-corrected speech can become the avatar and instrument of inclusivity. So the gentle unearthing and disproving of biases about cultural, social, and personal differences allow participants to construct a diversity-enhanced unity deeper than uniformity. Albeit temporary and simulated, such visceral learning experiences dramatically immerse players in the hurtful disregard caused by microaggressions of privilege and prejudice about cultures, ethnicities, classes, sexualities, ages, and abilities. These exercises and leaders’ modeling grow collegiality despite – indeed, through – human variety, letting all celebrate their individuality while greeting new views and voices.

Treating team members fairly, valuing different voices, and celebrating uniqueness are the behaviors that successful inclusive leaders exhibit and role models within the workplace. Actions such as these can impact how engaged (the active and intentional use of physical, cognitive, and emotional energies put into job responsibilities) employees are in their relationships with colleagues and how they feel about their work. Research revealed that when leaders act in ways that demonstrate inclusivity (such as treating others fairly, being open to differences, valuing unique perspectives, and authenticity), women, people of color, and those individuals at small or midsized companies feel stronger connections with their colleagues. This is valuable as engaged employees positively affect the organization’s success. We know that perceived or actual commonalities can cause individuals to feel a sense of connection to others based solely on that perception, so it should only follow that the level of engagement should be impacted when team members and managers feel a sense of connection based upon actual or perceived identity similarities. This provides a unique opportunity for leaders to create spaces of bravery and safety through inclusive leadership actions that allow all individuals to share the aspects of their identity that allow these connections to occur. This chapter identifies behaviors and actions of inclusive leaders, explores original research on the connection between perceptions of identity and employee engagement, and provides practical advice on how leaders can support and encourage employee engagement regardless of the perception of identity.

Leaders need diverse talent to leverage organizational success; however, leaders must also develop inclusive working environments that meet the diverse needs of their employees. This chapter seeks to support organizational leaders in using storytelling to foster a culture of inclusivity and drive inclusive leadership practices throughout their organizations. Dimensions of the inclusive leadership compass (ILC) model (embrace, empower, enable, and embed) are used to highlight organizational areas that are rich with opportunities to facilitate mindset shifts at the individual, team, and system levels. This chapter explores strategies and highlights methods leaders can use to effectively implement the powerful learning and communication technique of storytelling in each of the critical areas of the inclusive leadership model. Starting with self-knowledge, leaders can devise ways to embrace difference and expand their understanding of inclusivity to inspire others to do the same. The authors propose a phenomenological approach to advancing efforts toward an inclusive organization in a way that honors the lived experience of others. This chapter includes methods for developing psychologically safe environments and other storytelling criteria that amplify the power of storytelling in a healthy approach that will be received and reverberate throughout the organization and enhance the benefits of inclusive leadership practices.

Leadership diversity promotes inclusive decision-making, innovation, and sustainable performance. This chapter examines the relationship between corporate board diversity and social criteria under the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) framework, emphasizing gender parity on boards. ESG data are linked to one-fourth of the world’s professionally managed assets, worth $20 trillion (Eccles et al., 2019). Despite progress, less than 20% of corporate boards worldwide include women (Deloitte, 2021). Social psychology’s conformity theory describes how group dynamics affect individual behavior. Minority views are not easily expressed or heard in groups as social constraints favor conformity with the majority’s viewpoint (Asch, 1955; Glass & Cook, 2017; Yarram & Adapa, 2021). When a group encounters persistent minority viewpoints from multiple individuals, it is more likely to consider and learn from the minority voice (Asch, 1955). Decision-making and problem-solving increase when a board has diverse perspectives and critical mass can contribute to normalizing diversity on boards removing communication impediments. In the context of corporate board diversity, this theory can be applied to address diversity challenges, improving decision-making and problem-solving. To promote board diversity and inclusion, we developed BOARDS, a six-step process to assist current boards on increasing their capacity for inclusion. Our four-step process SKIM can be used to prepare potential board members for future opportunities. This chapter underlines the necessity to eliminate diversity gaps on corporate boards to develop a sustainable model of social equality to build inclusive corporate boards. Future research should consider other diversity variables including age, sexual orientation, and cultural and language diversity.

Minnesota’s rural communities are becoming increasingly more racially, ethnically, and culturally diverse. The state shares territory with 11 Sovereign Nations and one in five Minnesotans identifies as Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) today, compared with just 1% in 1960. In collaboration with communities, University of Minnesota’s Extension Department of Community Development works to develop leadership capacity for residents to address inclusiveness, belonging, community climate and culture. The Welcoming and Inclusive Communities Program (WICP) focuses on measurement of community readiness within seven sectors combined with an educational stakeholder cohort experience leading to identification of challenges and best practices happening across a community. Curriculum includes exploring concepts of race and intersectionality and emphasizes the growth of leadership as participants work to promote equity and inclusion. Growing Local, another program in our community toolkit, is an intentional cohort series for BIPOC growth into leadership, more specifically, into decision-making arenas and positions of leadership, like their town/city/county committees, boards, and commissions. From learning the language of the oppressor (e.g., Robert’s Rules of Order) to understanding the dynamics and nuances of power-mapping and social capital, participants address the barriers facing BIPOC. This chapter highlights program design elements, assessments and evaluation, and lessons learned from program implementation to date. Scholars, researchers, practitioners, and leaders will find globally relevant and replicable tools to support the development of leaders who can shape their communities through the lens of inclusive leadership, increase and strengthen capacity to lead, build networks, and facilitate community-owned change.

This chapter is based on the experiences of lieutenant general Cornelis Johannes (Kees) Matthijssen in his period as the Force Commander of the UN Mission in Mali. His military Force consisted of men and women from 60 nationalities. The authors clearly explain what has been done to turn this diversity into a strength that benefits effectiveness. In the first part, they address the challenges like differences in cultural and doctrinal backgrounds that every nationality brings, as well as the language and the interoperability challenges. Part of the latter is the human aspect, which is mainly about understanding and respecting other cultures and how to bridge differences for the benefit of effective cooperation. The authors conclude with the importance of having a good understanding of the challenges. The second and main part of this chapter brings a wealth of practical experiences when the authors discuss how they turned diversity into a strength. Overarching they stress the importance of the tone at the top since it sets the example. Thereafter, they discuss five elements in their ways of working: continuously showing respect and understanding, exploiting all perspectives, encouraging unit cohesion, utilizing collaborative planning to enhance a common focus and teamwork, and finally continuously appreciating everyone’s efforts equally. Intersecting with the diverse nationalities is the critical issue of gender equality. A final paragraph in this chapter explains how this was an essential theme within the responsibility of the Force Commander. As a conclusion, the authors again stress the importance of leadership.

This chapter explores the many dynamics of diversity initiatives and presents a central argument that diversity initiatives are most effective when organizational leaders create and strategically implement them to form an inclusive organizational culture. This chapter addresses diversity from a global perspective in three ways. First, it defines diversity and emphasizes one goal: diversity of perspectives. Second, it advocates for creating an organizational culture to overcome conflicting aspects of traditional, demographic-centered, or individual-centered diversity initiatives. Third, it introduces the DURCI Diversity Model, which stands for Define, Understand, Review, Communicate, and Implement, as a five-step method to foster a diverse, inclusive organizational culture. This chapter begins with a definition of diversity as efforts to synchronize unique demographic groups. It emphasizes the importance of defining diversity as it applies to an organization and ultimately creating an organizational culture that transcends individual demographics and defines diversity by what it means explicitly to the organization, including what diversity the organization already possesses. This chapter proceeds to use nonprofit, private, and public organizations, such as the US Department of Health and Human Services, Google, the American Red Cross, Cisco Systems, Americans for the Arts, the National Diversity Council, and the Gates Foundation, to illustrate the wide applicability of the DURCI Diversity Model to frame successful organizational diversity initiatives.

This chapter is a conversation between the three authors, an Indigenous person, a multigenerational White settler, and a White immigrant, about how equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) connects with the history and pervasive practices of colonialism, White supremacy, and embedded racism, and what might be done to create a new future that is individually and collectively just. EDI has become increasingly embraced by organizations and governments to overcome bias, to increase representation of underrepresented groups, and to revise discriminatory policies across almost all areas of intersectionality. But EDI has no answers for the issues of Indigenous reconciliation and decolonization that seem to exist in a parallel world. A deeper understanding is needed about the individual rights roots of “equity,” as well as knowledge of Indigenous history, since Indigenous communities are not simply additional cultural groups in Canada. The British Royal Proclamation of 1763 initially codified a “nation to nation” relationship, but subsequent broken treaties, and the 1876 Indian Act, imposed a White supremist relationship on Indigenous populations, stole lands, and attempted to eliminate traditional cultures. Since 1970, Indigenous organizations have sought a “citizenship plus” relationship with Canadian federal and provincial governments, a direction supported by more recent court decisions. This chapter includes examples of how these ideas have been applied by some organizations and concludes with a model for developing personal stamina and resilience for learning, reconsidering, and interacting with others about identity issues given the complexities of personal learning and system change.

Muslimophobia, or prejudice toward Muslims, results in employment discrimination, social exclusion of Muslims, anti-Muslim hate crimes, and physical and verbal assaults, in the United States and globally. Moreover, anti-Muslim incidents are on the rise in many countries. In this chapter, we provide a review of Muslimophobia and its dynamics and consequences in the workplace. We also make suggestions for reducing prejudice toward Muslim employees, using social psychological perspectives, particularly intergroup contact theory, and research on prejudice reduction. It is also argued that leaders play an important role in the combating of Muslimophobia, including creating opportunities for personalized interactions with Muslim employees and disseminating more information about Muslims and Islam. This chapter concludes with practical implications and suggestions for future research directions. Although there is much work to be done in reducing Muslimophobia and discrimination against Muslims, social psychological research emanating from intergroup contact theory suggests that it is a viable path for researchers and practitioners to pursue.

People who are “othered” confront an epistemic injustice that silences and discards their knowledge. Rather than being actors in their own future, people in positions of authority dictate prescriptive procedures, removing marginalized individuals – and often the communities that care about them – from participating in what could be real and sustainable solutions to harmful social conditions. These injustices create us/them narratives, which can become social landmines that may explode under pressure. Restorative practices prize shared learning and decision-making to harness collective energies around a common purpose to repair relationships. Dialogue facilitated in a circle format ritualizes acts of inclusion and utilizes the power of followership – those without formal authority – to create a shared understanding. Revealing complexities beyond a myopic us/them perspective expands cognitive empathy and refocuses participants on unmet needs to help defuse social landmines. This chapter illustrates three inclusive circle processes that can be employed to uphold human dignity by affirming belonging within a diverse community and honoring all people’s voice and agency. Dialogue circles respond to the injustice of being othered by granting people the right to interpret their own lives. In Detroit, Guatemala, and Singapore, facilitated circles create space for reciprocal storytelling and foster social connections among neighbors, police, and migrants. Most significantly, people become stewards of their future, not problems to be managed, kindling life-affirming resolve collectively supported within their communities.

This chapter draws upon the leadership and work of two social entrepreneurs who believe that inclusion of community members in project/venture planning and design is key to accelerate equitable system change. The social justice leaders featured, through their actions in diverse, marginalized communities, will provide a model of leadership behaviors that utilize a repertoire of styles framed in the Connective Leadership Model™. They are system-changing champions driven by their social justice passion which requires that they provide leadership through planning and design processes to achieve equity in communities and influence policy. Short case studies will define the venture’s mission, processes, and social change outcomes with examples of the type of leadership necessary for building inclusive and equitable community-based initiatives. Their words and actions will illustrate how leaders can innovate to create system impacts not by a single intervention but through multilayered processes with a broad range of benefits – for infrastructure, education, social, economic, and environmental justice programs. The results described will emphasize the critical elements of process, the insight and power of community input and involvement, and the influential cross-sector shaping of programs and policy to achieve sustainable change. This chapter concludes with a more detailed description of the Connective Leadership Model™ and how the model enables a leader to “consciously and systematically utilize a variety of behaviors,” effectively reacting to the leadership needs of a particular situation as well as using the achieving style behaviors most valued for a community-based system change venture (Lipman-Blumen, 2000, pp. 113–114).

On September 16, 2022, Mahsa a 22-year-old Kurdish girl was killed in Tehran by so-called morality police due to wearing her hijab improperly. After that, thousands of Iranians, led mainly by Gen Z women, poured into the streets protesting the Islamic Republic’s police actions. Named after the protesters’ main rally cry, the Woman, Life, Freedom (WLF) movement swept across Iran very soon and covered other aspects of Iranians’ frustration with the government. The rallies have been confronted with a violent crackdown by the regime, which denied all the accusations and blamed Western countries for sponsoring the protesters. In the lack of dialogic space, Iranians have created their own spaces of autonomy. Calling these spaces the third spaces of engagement, the authors shed light on the protesters’ disruptive daily activities on social media as well as physical spaces as leadership activities through the lens of leadership-as-practice theory. This chapter reframes the issue of hijab as an issue of authority which WLF as a youth-led movement is challenging. Observing protesters’ practices via video clips, news, photos, and social media posts, the authors give an analysis of the movement’s practices based on Harro’s cycle of liberation. The authors argue that while the movement made a huge breakthrough in building a public community around its main slogan, it is suffering from a lack of unity and inclusive collaborative dialogue. Finally, the authors offer suggestions for the movement’s future actions.