In our work we often talk about having the right person at the table. But who IS the right person?
First and foremost, this question is subjective. In our work we use this phrase in two different ways:
- Result Based Facilitation
- Adapative Leadership
The Annie E. Casey Foundation defines Results Based Facilitation (RBF) as “… facilitation which helps leaders design, lead, and contribute in meetings that effectively move groups from talk to action and hold participants accountable for advancing the work.”
The backbone staff use this approach to convening and neutral facilitation to support the partnership in moving the collective work. From this framework the term “right person” refers to leaders with specific skills to align and contribute to population level results; formal authority.
This formal authority ensure that organizations can make the critical modifications to their current practices, policies, and procedures. This also ensures that leaders with equilateral authority take up equilateral responsibility to the results; ultimately outcomes for kids. In contrast Adaptive Leadership focuses on leveraging multiple perspectives, irrespective of formal authority or influences, to evaluate and re-imagine the current state.
In organizations this often looks like distributed leadership, disrupting the top down decision-making approach, activating folks at all levels. This places an emphasis on “those who are impacted” having a formal role through the whole process from design, discovery, evaluation, deconstruction, re-imaging and implementation. As we use this language interchangeable it is critical to understand when and how we leverage these measures. Especially, as we engage in racial equity adaptive leadership.
Understanding the role that power dynamics, historically and present day, impact people, groups and systems is essential.
~ Kalika Curry, Community Impact Manager at Eastside Pathways