019. Politics, power and feminist leadership within NGOs - Lisa Veneklasen's take on things

Organizational leaders have to balance competing values. What kind of worthy values and interests might ‘compete’ with those called for by Feminist Leadership (FL) and how should leaders resolve those?

What to do when we need to hold individual staff or teams to account for underperformance, given FL’s emphasis on being developmental, its focus on staff care, etc.?

When do leaders decide that they cannot consult everybody but need to make certain decisions within a small circle? Is this in conflict with the feminist leadership principles?

I discussed these topics during an interview with Lisa Veneklaassen, Founder & Advisor, Just Associates (JASS)

Lisa's Bio

• Over 30 years of experience as Educator, Strategist, and organization-builder with a variety of social justice and women’s rights efforts worldwide.
•  Assistant Director of the Global Women in Politics program of the Asia Foundation.
• Lisa's work on integrating power and political analysis into development influenced and is used by many international organizations including Plan International, Oxfam International, and Action Aid International.
• Founder and now advisor of Just Associates, a global women-led human rights network of activists, popular educators, and scholars in 31 countries.
• In 2017 Lisa was named one of 200 Women Who Will Change the Way You See the World.

Quotes

"Feminist leadership poses that we come to work as whole persons, as political beings, shaped by race, gender, sexuality, ability and class"

"Feminist leadership is ideally suited for crisis situations such as currently with the pandemic given its focus on communications, transparency, the sharing of anxieties instead of 'let's all be soldiers'"

We discussed:

• To what extent is there a tension between the felt need by some social sector organizations to move to leaner and more agile organizations and the practices of feminist leadership?
• How feminist leaders use a lens in understanding internal organizational politics
• How well has FL served organization during the past year of the pandemic related crisis, or during other periods of crisis?

Lisa’s book 'A New Weave of Power, People and Politics' is available at several online booksellers, including this one.

Contact Lisa at lvk@justassociates.org 

Twitter: @LisaVeneKlasen

Lisa’s LinkedIn profile

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