Lesson 4: Envisioning your leadership

What Is A Leader?

Indigenous leaders have a collective responsibility for both their people and community, placing greater importance on group needs over individual needs. They are held in high regard for their knowledge of Indigenous language, histories, ceremonies, rituals, and stories. Effective Indigenous leaders use past experiences to address current issues while planning for the future of their communities.

Effective leaders collaborate with their people, gather insights, and make informed decisions with their support. The traits that make an Indigenous leader effective are similar to the qualities of effective managers. Both types of leaders listen actively and utilize the wisdom of those around them to guide their decision-making processes.

Character traits of effective Indigenous leaders and managers:
– Effective listener and communicator
– Strong in cultural and spiritual identity
– Respectful in all relationships with people and the natural world
– Puts community first before individual needs
– Builds community by being inclusive, welcoming and valuing the perspectives of others
– Makes decisions for future generations of those yet unborn
– Is guided by ancestors, elders and advisors
– Makes decisions by consensus
– Charismatic – the people respect them and want to follow their lead
– Encouraging and supportive, helps others find their gifts
– Visionary
– Family oriented
– Continuously works to fulfills their responsibility to the people and community
– Knowledgeable on many fronts and willingly shares knowledge
– Accountable to the people

Knowledge and a self-assured identity are very important. This includes knowing the history of the land and community. Good leaders are also confident in their Indigenous identity. Understanding and following traditional practices are a part of this, as well as having respect for others, Indigenous culture, and self-respect. Good relationships within the community and outside of it support the leader’s role as a bridge-builder. To facilitate strong communication and mentorship, good leaders are available. Gratitude, humility, and bravery are important traits, as well. ^[1]

The transformational leadership style has the ability to inspire positive change among followers. Transformational leaders are typically energetic, enthusiastic, and passionate, showing both involvement in and concern for the group’s progress, while also focusing on the success of each individual member. The benefits of transformational leadership are abundant and include increased group morale, faster innovation, better conflict resolution, lower staff turnover rates, and stronger team ownership.

Creating a Vision

As a leader, having a vision for your team is important. It provides direction and helps the team to understand the morals and values that are tied to the organization. When thinking about your vision, you want to focus on the vision being specific, measurable and oriented towards the bigger goal or objective.

Four important qualities for creating a strong vision as a leader include trust, connection, empowerment and navigation.

Leaders must always remember that trust forms the foundation of effective leadership. When your team trusts you, they will be more forgiving of occasional errors; however, if you betray their trust, you will lose your ability to lead. Demonstrating traits such as integrity, humility, authenticity and selflessness allows you to gain your team’s respect.

Furthermore, it is essential for leaders to believe in their team first before their team believes in them. This belief can motivate team members to achieve goals beyond what they believed was possible and helps build a strong foundation of mutual trust and respect.

Developing a connection with your team is crucial for effective leadership, and it begins by winning them over before asking for their help. As a leader, you hold the responsibility to initiate this connection with your people. Never underestimate the power of building relationships with them before requesting their followship.

As a leader, utilizing group exercises to brainstorm ideas and seeking sincere input from your team can lead to a stronger commitment to collaboratively made decisions. This allows for a deeper understanding of the proposed actions.

Additionally, when employees are empowered to be involved in the creation and planning stages of decision-making, they take pride in the achievement of decisions that help advance the team towards their vision or dream. This sense of ownership leads to an increased sense of motivation and collaboration.

When a leader uses group exercises to foster brainstorming and sincerely seeks input from their team, it can result in a stronger commitment to decisions made collaboratively. This helps everyone gain a comprehensive understanding of the proposed actions. Moreover, involving employees in the creation and planning stages of decision-making leads to a sense of pride in the achievements that help bring the team closer to their shared vision or dream. Being invested in this way leads to increased motivation and productive teamwork.

Using the exercise below, start to craft your vision for your team.

Where Do I Want To Lead My Community

The concept of community visioning encompasses both a process and a statement. The initial process involves discovering what the community envisions for its future by giving residents a forum to candidly express their goals, objectives, and values. This process allows community members to discuss and agree on what they want their community to look like and feel like within a five to ten-year span.

However, forming a vision is not enough on its own. The second part of the process involves formalizing the vision in a statement. For instance, the City of Lakewood in Washington’s vision statement is “Our vision is a thriving, urban, South Puget Sound city, possessing the core values of family, community, education and economic prosperity. We will advance these values by recognizing our past, taking action in the present, and pursuing a dynamic future.” This statement articulates the community’s objectives and comprises an agreement on the community’s desired shape in the future. The vision statement serves as a guide for strategic planning, decision making, and government officials who will direct the future of the city.

Community infrastructure plays a crucial role in ensuring the fundamental requirements of residents are met. Infrastructure such as water and sewage systems in residential areas, and roads are typical examples. Additionally, some First Nations require infrastructure geared towards supporting economic development projects. As a leader, you want to ensure that your vision for your community clearly ties back to the bigger goals and needs for the individuals that you work with on a daily basis.

(N.d.). Community Vision Capital & Consulting. Retrieved July 18, 2023,.

Why build a strong community vision?

Beyond creating stronger connections with your community through the visioning process, engaging your residents from day one leads to diversity, aligned goals, trust and belonging.

How to Share Your Vision

Sharing your community vision is important for four reasons:

(1) it clarifies decisions

(2) it decentralizes decisions

(3) it makes decisions easier, and

(4) it can be the greatest source of motivation for your team.

Clarifying Decisions

Many members strongly emphasized the importance of sharing vision as the ultimate tool for decision making. When the vision is clear, you give your community something explicitly to point to in decision making. The vision is the compass that all decisions are oriented around.

Decentralizes Decisions

When the vision is shared across the community, each team member can have greater autonomy. Your community now has a shared destination on the map, so you don’t need to be ordering a series of coordinates instructing everyone how to get there. No more micromanaging.

Easier Decisions

A shared vision also helps a community make decisions amidst disagreement. When people argue over how to create sustainable housing or whether to pursue a project, this shared vision is a uniting force that can override seemingly irreconcilable differences in opinion. It can also give your coworkers the courage to speak up and offer dissenting opinions since they know what the ultimate vision of the community is that they’re trying to achieve.

Team Motivator

When shared, a community vision is the most powerful way to motivate a group of people. It gives your community a common place to strive for. When each person clearly sees that same picture of a better place in their own minds’ eye, each person connects to it and feels that pull of motivation to want to create that place.

The Inner Workings of Your Team

As a team, you want to focus on the unique qualities that can help build sustainability and promote a larger goal to the community. As a leader, you want to elevate the role of Indigenization through restoring to rebuild and reorganizing the priorities within your community. You also want to ensure that your team has the space and places to reflect on Indigenous social cohesion, political autonomy, and cultural protection. Finally, as a team you want to ensure that the diverse Indigenous community relations, promote equity, invest in increasing access to local, national, and international leaders and stories.

Indigenous Leadership emphasizes the significance of community input in determining priorities. There is no singular leader, no overriding influence controlling activities and relationships. The Indigenous advisors who shared their guidance, knowledge, and wisdom regarding the future of the community, for the organization and the larger institution have created a strong inner team. Indigenous leadership also necessitates attentive community listening to shape and embrace shared values, vision, and knowledge. Recovering Indigenous leadership entails spotlighting and reaffirming decision-making based on consensus.

The hallmark of Indigenous leaders is their commitment to their community, which involves actively listening to and learning from their wisdom, teachings, guidance, and direction. Community voices are fundamental to driving progress, innovation, success, and sustainability within all contexts. A revitalization of Indigenous voices within any institution serves as a reminder to Indigenous and non-Indigenous members alike that building and strengthening relationships are critical components in ensuring forward momentum. To embed restoring and indigenization through storytelling, robust reciprocal relationships are necessary.

The Four Phases of Team Development

The Forming Stage

When groups first come together, their primary focus is on orientation, which is often achieved through testing. These tests help establish the boundaries of both interpersonal and task-related behaviors. At the same time, individuals may form dependency relationships with leaders, other members of the group, or pre-existing standards. Together, the processes of orientation, testing, and dependence comprise the group-forming process.

The Storming Stage

The second stage of group development is characterized by conflict and polarization on interpersonal issues, often leading to emotional reactions in the task realm. These behaviors can be seen as a form of resistance to group influence and task demands and are commonly referred to as “storming.”

The Norming Stage

The third stage of group development is marked by the development of in-group feelings, cohesiveness, and the establishment of new standards and roles. Personal opinions about the task at hand are openly shared, leading to a sense of intimacy. This stage is referred to as “norming.” During this stage, the resistance observed in the previous stage is overcome.

The Performing Stage

In the fourth and final stage of group development, the interpersonal structure is utilized to achieve task objectives. Roles become more flexible and functional, allowing the group to direct its energy towards the task at hand. Structural issues that may have previously hindered performance have been effectively addressed, and the structure can now be relied upon to support task execution. This stage can be referred to as “performing.”

There is also another or last stage called the Mourning stage. This stage outlines the process of ending group roles, completing tasks, and reducing dependencies. It is sometimes referred to as “mourning,” especially if the dissolution of the team is unexpected. The first four stages are the most frequently used components of this process.