A new path to heal the Divided States of America: cultivate equity leadership

Evocative questions (in bold below) challenge people's mindsets to view complex problems in new ways and to think of, and test the impact of innovative solutions on improving equity. The pursuit of equity includes addressing the isms of pseudo (fake) patriotism, the impact and aftermath of the Covid crisis and global warming, to name a few mega-problems of the 21st century.

What are isms and fake patriotism?

Isms are micro-exclusions, micro-aggressions, negative oppressive biases and prejudices embedded in our attitudes, beliefs, everyday language, metaphors, behaviors and actions that discriminate, hurt, stigmatize and traumatize others.

The intersectionality of isms includes racism, sexism, LGBTQQIAAP-ism, economism, classism, faithism, wealthism (prejudice against the rich), pauperism (prejudice against the poor), ageism, ableism, sizism and public healthism/primary care-ism (marginalization and underfunding of public health and primary care sectors in healthcare) and more.

Fake patriotism is rigid fundamentalist (either/or) thinking. It is the self-righteous, closed-minded, power game: you are either "with us or against us." Fake patriotism is driven by the authoritarianism of megalomania, narcissism and sociopathy.

The divisiveness of fake patriotism is toxic to personal, population and planetary health. Fake patriot leaders con people into believing that they are acting in their best interests when they are only serving their own needs. In the cult trance of blind unconditional loyalty, people are in states of denial about this grand deception and the manipulations of their political identities.

What is needed is open-mindedness, compassion, peace-making radical honesty and transparent accountability to make amends about the injustices of isms and inequities.

How hopeful are you in this time of despair?

People are wary about the current state of political disrepair.

How can we:

• Heal the Divided States of America?
• Reduce the dysfunctional polarizations, find middle ground and unite for the common good?
• Navigate a path to hope, healing and healthy well-being for the greater good?

What is your overall hope score in addressing all of the questions listed above, using this scale.

• Minus 10 is extremely pessimistic
• 0 neither pessimistic or optimistic
• Plus 10 is extremely optimistic

And what is the basis for your score? Add your opinion to this blog. Better still, explain the rationale for justifying your score in discussion groups. (If you are not American, you can also give a score for your own country.)

Hope is inspiration for vision and innovation. But without a plan, strategies and execution, hope is a false dream.

Who is the enemy?

If we cannot unite together to address the common enemy of the Covid virus, what will unite us?

We are not fighting the right enemy. The enemy is us. We are fighting so much internally within ourselves that we are unable to unite together in facing a common external enemy.

We are the American dysfunctional family in an uncivil war. It is a war between the smear campaigns of fake patriotism and the integrity of true patriotism. The playbook of fake patriotism is winning. It is spiraling us down into the vortex of the amoral abyss.

How can we peacefully:

• Reverse this spiral into the vortex of fake patriotism?
• Ascend the upward virtuous spiral toward true patriotism?

We need to move beyond the win-lose, zero-sum game of sports and war metaphors to win/win/win collaborative garden metaphors of regenerative agriculture.

How can we:

• Transform from inequity mindsets to equity mindsets?
• Become gardeners and cultivate equity peacemakers, whisperers (thought leadership developers) and leaders to save ourselves and our planet?

Equity leaders develop systems, structures and policies to cultivate cultures that give everyone fair opportunities to reach their highest potential of developing healthy well-being, human flourishing and virtues for the greater good of all.

Equity is the spearhead strategy to design an inclusive, just and sustainable future.

In addition, equity leaders concurrently redress the isms that causes inequities. To make amends, they can adopt complexity principles, simple rules and virtuous guidelines to influence interpersonal interactions. These interactions co-create cultures of equity from the bottom-up. Equity cultures are more bottom-up than top-down. The converse is true for authoritarian cultures.

Equity leadership is the highest order of servant leadership.

Equity leadership is based on the virtues of true patriotism (watch video below). It is a distributive model of leadership with a coordinating hub, and not a top-down hierarchal model with siloed command-and-control management.

How can equity leaders: 

• Level the uneven playing field of disadvantages in education, health and work opportunities?
• Amplify the fair plays of equity and the virtues of true patriotism?
• Call out the foul plays of isms and the flaws of fake patriotism?

Launch a equity leadership learning revolution 

Our leaders are struggling to address how to solve the complex problems revealed by the Covid Crisis. Our leaders are understandably preoccupied with dealing with the acute crisis.

But we all need to raise our heads up and look ahead at the long-term big picture. We desperately need a leadership learning revolution on how we unite together in addressing the mega-problems of the 21st century. 

The proposed netinar series (described in the video) is designed to create ongoing community-building, interactive ongoing learning experiences for cultivating equity thought leadership and equity leaders.

Use designed to cultivate free-thinking

This is not a 3-minute video with an enticing message of simple clear communication that has a transient manipulative effect of capturing your attention with little potential of having a long-term impact.

This is a shortcoming of the click-bait social media culture that can do more harm than good by merely reaffirming biases and perpetuating antiquated ways of thinking, learning and doing. Complex problems do not have any fast thinking, marketing hook solutions.

The purpose of this video is to begin a learning process about understanding the limitations our mindsets that constraint our capabilities and capacities of working together on solving complex problems.

How can we:

• Liberate ourselves from the limitations of closed mindsets and become free-thinkers?
• Open mindsets to collaborate in unprecedented ways?

The solutions to complex problem will arise from our collaborative dialogues that require all of our inputs. In other words, the outcome of these equity dialogues is more impactful than the content of this blog.

This 10-minute video aims to evoke self-reflection, slow thinking and deep learning about how to generate dialogues on cultivating equity thought leadership developers and equity leaders.

This information-rich resource takes time to digest. The purpose of this video is to prepare people for engaging in meaningful dialogues about how to cultivate equity leadership during and after netinars: community-building interactive learning experiences over time.

Watch the video through once without stopping to get a feel of its overall purpose. This video violates the traditional methods of education. It may feel like a fire hydrant at times.

Then re-watch the video and pause it at any point where you need to take your time to make reflection notes about any question, idea, concept, principle or rule. Use your notes as a guide for group discussion. Also think of any questions that this video evoked for you. Save your questions for group discussion.

In the post-Covid era, we need to develop new methods for using the flipped classroom technique of helping people become free-thinkers and equity leaders.

Equity is a lifelong learning journey, and not a utopian destination.

Video purpose

The aim of this video is to help people initiate sense-making learning journeys together about how to cultivate equity leaders and free-thinking.

Vision: Inspire the true patriotism of equity leadership to design an inclusive, just and sustainable future for the greater good of all

Mission: Develop learning networks, communities and organizations for aligning network power to strive and thrive toward greater equity.

Strategy: Cultivate free-thinking and equity thought leadership development

This calls for creating a global open innovation learning platform of transparent accountability for equity.

This video is directed to those involved in higher education, leadership development and executive coaching. Using the KSSS principle (Keep Sophistication this Side of Simplicity), this video and blog series will be re-purposed for different levels of education.

This sense-making learning journey begins by understanding the common pathways for addressing complex problem and evolving into an iterative process of increasing simplification for people of all educational levels.

This process of developing and converting complexity principles into simple and virtuous for action (as described in the video) is essential for building an equity movement. This calls for aligning the vision, mission, and strategy (as described above) into a meticulous plan of distributive leadership of developing local eco-systems of execution that are coordinated by a network of guiding hubs to exchange best practices.

In an era of anti-science and anti-intellectual elitism, we need egalitarian new ways of learning how to help people seek truth in communion with one another, starting with the learning lessons of Covid and extending them to how we address other complex problems.

Candor and feedback appreciated

Read this blog for an even deeper dive.