Shared Leadership
Within Ostara, we are reimagining health and justice to end prison birth in America. Just as we strive for radical changes to improve health and justice, we strive for radical changes within our doula programming, our decision making processes and our leadership model.
We acknowledge the thinking of adrienne marie brown (Emergent Strategy, 2017) and Frederic Laloux (Reinventing Organizations, 2014) as important influences in our developing processes and practices.
We now embrace a Teal Model of leadership, rooted deeply in three fundamental values: Self-Managing Teams, Wholeness of Self, and Evolutionary Purpose. These values support Ostara Initiative's innovative, non-hierarchical structure with distributed authority and collaboration.
We acknowledge the thinking of adrienne marie brown (Emergent Strategy, 2017) and Frederic Laloux (Reinventing Organizations, 2014) as important influences in our developing processes and practices.
We now embrace a Teal Model of leadership, rooted deeply in three fundamental values: Self-Managing Teams, Wholeness of Self, and Evolutionary Purpose. These values support Ostara Initiative's innovative, non-hierarchical structure with distributed authority and collaboration.
Self-Management
Peer relationships anchor Teal organizations. Team members have autonomy in their domain and are accountable for coordinating with others. Power and control are deeply embedded throughout the organization, not a select few.
Wholeness of Self
Unlike organizations where only "professional" selves are welcome, Teal organizations invite people to bring their full authentic selves to work. We encourage team members to reclaim inner wholeness because this brings unprecedented levels of energy, passion and creativity to work.
Evolutionary Purpose
Teal organizations take cues from what they sense the world is asking from them. The machinery of plans, targets and incentives is replaced by carefully scanning the environments we operate in and sharing our observations among the entire team.
Emergent Strategies
We find Wholeness, Self-Management and Evolutionary Purpose reflected in the principles adrienne maree brown discusses in her book Emergent Strategy. Brown explains, "Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions".
Why?
You may be asking why an organization that works with traditionally structured organizations all over the nation would shift to an innovative leadership model. It’s simple: Our work requires more than what bureaucracies allow. We have learned that there is no one right way to do our work because needs and requirements vary by location, institution, community, and client. For these reasons, we are evolving toward collaboration and self-managing teams, problem-solving outside the bureaucratic box and cultivating an alertness to opportunities.
When power is shared, people feel needed and valued. We know that our work is strengthened with the collective intelligence of self-managing employees and a team that represents the individuals, families and communities we serve. We recognize that change is a constant–internally and externally–so current leaders will step away and new leaders will emerge.
With new leaders will come fresh ideas, anchored in a diversity of lived experiences. We believe that as Ostara evolves with the external environment, we will thrive no matter who makes up our team. Each past, present, and future member of our team was, is, and will be a powerful agent for change.
When power is shared, people feel needed and valued. We know that our work is strengthened with the collective intelligence of self-managing employees and a team that represents the individuals, families and communities we serve. We recognize that change is a constant–internally and externally–so current leaders will step away and new leaders will emerge.
With new leaders will come fresh ideas, anchored in a diversity of lived experiences. We believe that as Ostara evolves with the external environment, we will thrive no matter who makes up our team. Each past, present, and future member of our team was, is, and will be a powerful agent for change.
“I have always thought that what is needed is the development of people who are interested not in being leaders as much as in developing leadership in others.”
-Ella Baker
-Ella Baker
