Steward Leadership and Centering Care
It was 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, when Denizen (Dent at the time) came unexpectedly into being. I moved the small salons I’d been hosting on Zoom to a new social audio app called Clubhouse where anyone could join and listen. Suddenly hundreds of people were signing up for my emails and attending my events. I sensed something greater wanted to emerge.
It was very palpable that it wasn’t me who was envisioning something; Dent was a thing in and of itself. It truly felt like a dance with the universe as I incorporated years of strategy and study into defining what it was. At first, I gave myself the title of Curator. But as it became clear that Dent wanted to be not just a place for discourse but a source of inspiration for collective action, I changed my title to Steward. “Dent gave me a promotion,” I joked. From the very beginning, I have always been in service to something greater than myself in this role.
Since then, leading from a frame of stewardship has taken on deep meaning for me. It incorporates a vision I had for myself in 2018, as I transitioned back to my career after years of focusing on motherhood. I saw myself as a different kind of leader, who unapologetically embraces and integrates her maternal instincts.
This means I maintain an orientation of support for the Denizen community, not just for the work that they do in the world, but for them holistically as individuals.
In those fateful early days, a few dozen of us collaborated on description of what Dent was:
Dent is a community that recognizes the need to redesign the incentives and social contract underpinning modern society. In both our professional and personal capacities, we are committed to addressing the fundamental challenges facing humanity today.
Dent builds collective wisdom via shared learning. Through thoughtful civic discourse, we make sense of the current times and develop a shared vision for a more equitable, caring, regenerative future. Opportunities for collective action naturally arise, spurring action. Together, we empower each other to be the change we wish to see in the world.
“Shared vision for a more equitable, caring, and regenerative future.” We spent a significant amount of time choosing those words. Equitable and regenerative were obvious adjectives to me at the time. Care, less so. Rosie von Lila was insistent, and she was right. In retrospect, I’d argue that care is the most important adjective of the three. Just and regenerative naturally follow when we care for one another.
“It’s just business.” We’ve all heard this ridiculous statement far too many times, a justification for decisions that prioritize profit over things we inherently care far more about. Fascinatingly, research indicates that our economy induces us to relate in transactional ways. Motivation crowding theory is a concept in psychology and microeconomics, based on studies that show how pricing things can crowd out intrinsic and altruistic motivation. Where we might otherwise consider others, financial transactions shift our mindsets to focus on what we get in return for the dollars exchanged.
Distance between economic actors also serves to reinforce the disassociation between business decisions and their impact on people and the planet. This pervasive distance is not just physical, which is inherent in a global economy. It’s also emotional. Being “professional” entails putting on a persona that reduces us to our roles in the organization and checks the rest of who we are at the door. Through this disconnection from ourselves, each other, and the environment, we forget our inherent interconnectedness. Alongside this, we forget that we care.
What would it look like if we lived in a society that centers care for one another? Since Denizens share a vision of a caring future, I seek to create it in my roles as a content creator and as a community builder. A critical way in which I embody this ethos is that I prioritize relationships first and foremost. Care naturally follows from there.
When it comes to the podcast, this means I ask my guests to take the time to connect with me before we record a conversation. In advance of recording this week’s episode with Ashanti Kunene, we met for an hour and connected deeply on a personal level. We subsequently had to reschedule the recording twice because of things going on in our respective personal lives. Whereas in the default world rescheduling twice would be considered unprofessional and an inconvenience, to me giving ourselves permission to do so is as much the work as producing the content itself. I think it’s imperative we see the work as not just what we do, but how we do it. In this case, it was not pushing ourselves to record when what we really needed was a friend to witness our distress and give us permission to take a bath instead. In these small acts, we are creating a radically different culture with care at the center.
In Denizen meetings and community events, we always start with a standard protocol. First, we take five to ten breaths to ground ourselves in the present moment. Then, we share how we are feeling. By starting our meetings this way, we establish norms where our emotions aren’t checked at the door, they are welcomed into the room. This realness fosters connection, or dare I say it, love. It turns out when people are vulnerable and share themselves with each other, the natural outcome is that we feel love for one another. This practice at the onset of every meeting serves to deepen our connections to one another in tandem with the agenda at hand. Donnie Maclurcan, co-founder of the Post Growth Institute, shares how he employs similar practices at PGI in our Embodied Leadership episode.
At the Denizen retreat, the focus is on relationships. I’ve thought deeply about how to design the experience to build community first and foremost. Most critically, the event itself is co-created. I ask attendees to submit experiences to offer one another. The program then becomes the community sharing their gifts and passions, leading things like breathwork sessions, yoga classes, nature hikes, workshops, and design sprints. The experience feels radically different than a typical conference where there is a clear distinction between producer and consumers. The vast majority of the program is optional, so everyone feels they have permission to connect with a fellow Denizen 1:1 rather than attend a session. At the opening circle, I remind participants to talk about their personal lives rather than jump straight into focusing on what they do for work.
Children are welcome at our retreats, to enabling us to build ties across our families. We also take a regenerative orientation with the venues where our retreats take place, our programs always include opportunities to be of service to the property.
Denizens clearing the hillside for a controlled burn at our first annual retreat.
As a steward leader within the movement for systemic change, I believe how you do something is even more important than what you do. If we don’t orient holistically in this way, we unwittingly perpetuate far more problems than the ones we’re trying to solve. The analogy I often use is that of a foundation that invests 95% of its funds to maximize returns while giving away 5% to charitable causes. The net benefit of that foundation is likely to be negative, despite good intentions.
For me, the work starts with building authentic relationships with one another. From there, we can do what we’d traditionally consider the work from a foundation of relationality and care. If we don’t do this, we will unwittingly recreate the transactional culture that is so problematic across the economy today.
When we do, we foster a society with love at the center.
