A Practical Guide to Liberatory Leadership: Rooting Our Actions in Our Collective Transformation

This is the fourth and final article in NPQ’s series Liberatory Leadership.

We are living at an inflection point where the old rules no longer hold. Democratic institutions are unraveling, and our collective attention is shattered by a “brain fog machine” of misinformation, compounded by the advance of authoritarianism. No longer can we assume the guardrails will hold. We must reevaluate how power operates in today’s world and fundamentally rethink our strategies and relationships to contend for a future worth fighting for.

How the work is done—the process of learning, growing, and caring for ourselves and others while building new structures—is just as important as the desired transformation itself.

Throughout this series, we have explored what Leadership Learning Community has learned on liberatory leadership, defining the practice as we take responsibility for collectively transforming our freedom dreams into reality. Amidst a political landscape quickening widespread burnout, disproportionately affecting BIPOC leaders in the social justice sector, we established the imperative of pursuing concrete outcomes that actually free us while consciously leading in liberatory ways to “fight the monsters without becoming monstrous.” We laid the foundation for practice by detailing some of the core tenets. We then explored how to operationalize this vision by implementing practices, such as building in grace periods to counter the culture of urgency and fostering collective trust through “Third Places.”

As we conclude this series, we turn to the practical application of the Liberatory Leadership Framework, which views the work as an iterative process. To help leaders today create the world we want to see tomorrow, the framework offers ten Liberatory Leadership Strategies and Supporting Practices. These strategies emphasize that how the work is done—the process of learning, growing, and caring for ourselves and others while building new structures—is just as important as the desired transformation itself.

Here, we organized these strategies into three essential applications—Cultivating a Visionary Mindset and Self-Anchoring, Fostering Relational and Collective Power, and Driving Transformative Impact and Wellbeing—designed for leaders to integrate liberatory values across their practice.

Grounding Ourselves

Before we delve into the details of these three applications, let’s take a moment to ground ourselves in the cyclical nature of time, which informs our sustainable practice. This moment of crisis is more accurately viewed as an inevitable season. We have been through these periods before, and we will get through them again.

Our sustainable response must be rooted in the deeper, Indigenous belief that time is cyclical. The very air we breathe acts as a tangible connection across this cycle, linking us to our ancestors and to our descendants.

This perspective transforms the exhausting struggle against the prevailing political and social climate into an intentional, sustainable journey. We must prioritize building the liberated world we want to see emerge—a vision that is not a restoration of the past but a new creation entirely.

We use the awareness of this cycle to ground ourselves in the present, channeling ancestral wisdom and core values to build a future rooted in collective care. As adrienne maree brown has noted, “Our visions are ropes through the devastation. look further ahead, like our ancestors did, look further. extend, hold on, pull, evolve.”

To center ourselves in this moment and prepare for the work ahead, let’s take a grounding breath: Soften your gaze and drop your shoulders, inhale deeply for a count of four, hold the breath for four, and exhale slowly for a count of six. As you inhale, center on the lessons you need from the past; as you exhale, release something you are letting go of to create space for the future.

A Practical Path Forward: Three Core Liberatory Leadership Applications

1. Cultivating a Visionary Mindset and Self-Anchoring

Focus: The inner and structural work of the leader/organization.

Liberatory leadership requires maintaining an inquisitive and grounded mindset, which drives the intellectual and creative openness necessary to imagine new paths and continuously learn and experiment. This approach hinges on the profound connection between personal integrity, self-reflection, and the consistent expression of liberatory values in every action, focusing on prefigurative and imaginative work unbound by previous practice.

Supporting practices and actions within this application include:

• Prepare the ground/operationalizing values

Articulate a shared definition of values so that everyone has a collective understanding of what those values mean in practice.

Routinely ask: “How can this policy or practice be more liberatory?”

• Commit to learning and experimenting

Frame new policies or strategies as experiments. Identify learning questions to assess what to retain or change. Cultivate curiosity, adopt an evaluative mindset, and incorporate reflection into your work. This approach acknowledges that, while mistakes can be deeply consequential, they are often inevitable and valuable for learning and refocusing efforts.

• Dedicate time and resources to unrestrained imagining and dreaming

Establish intentional dream spaces to envision futures full of possibility and liberation. Routinely ask: “How can this policy or practice be more liberatory?” Use reflection questions to inspire vision, such as, “Your liberatory dreams are realized, what do you see and feel?”

• Incorporate play to cultivate a culture of joy and facilitate innovation

Integrate play and levity by adding games to meetings and gatherings. Play introduces breathing space and relief into routines, stimulates curiosity, helps recapture the joy that oppressive systems try to diminish, and offers a container for experimentation and exploration.

• Commit to both internal and external alignment of values and practices

Set liberatory values as a metric when developing policies by asking: “How will x policy allow us to do just work in just and joyous ways?” Speak up against oppressive actions and refuse to be silent observers, especially in times of rising authoritarianism.

• Do the inner work

Nurture health, vitality, clarity, and wholeness in yourself and in your group. Model vulnerability and make space for feelings. Incorporate reflection into your work and your leadership practices. Explore liberatory coaching for you and your team members. Utilize mind-body practices, such as Courageous Practice, in your work.

2. Fostering Relational and Collective Power  

Focus: The dynamics and infrastructure of relationships.

This category focuses on the interconnectedness of power dynamics, relationships, and constructive engagement with conflict, all of which are essential for building collective agency and community. It explores how power is understood, distributed, and exercised within and between groups.

The following practices support this application:

• Build, shift, and share power

Achieving a liberated reality requires leaders to reflect on their own relationship with power, to build individual and collective power, recognize the power they hold, and reimagine how power is exercised. This involves learning about power mapping and assessment, as well as incorporating collective and distributed leadership models. The ultimate aim is to exercise “liberatory power”—the ability to create what you want to see in the world.

• Invest in trust and relationship-building

Collaborate deeply and often, intentionally embedding collaboration into various aspects of work. Create liberatory spaces, experiment with deep transparency, and try on interdependence by partnering with values-aligned entities (e.g., collective fundraising). Ask for and offer help to normalize vulnerability as a core attribute to collaboration.

• Embrace conflict

Practice generative conflict, viewing it not as something to be avoided, but as an opportunity for learning, growth, and reconnection. Develop conflict transformation capacity via skill training and by hiring external support.

3. Driving Transformative Impact and Wellbeing  

Focus: The outcomes, sustainability, and resulting health of the broader ecosystem.

This final category integrates the ultimate goal of liberatory leadership—achieving tangible justice and liberation in the world—with the essential condition of well-being and care for all those involved. It acknowledges that sustainable transformation requires both focused action and intentional nurturing.

Practices that support this goal include:

• Focus on liberatory impact

Liberatory leaders must focus on the transformation they seek in the world. This includes aligning their Theory of Change and Strategic Agenda with liberatory values and principles. In assessing risk, explicitly include the risk of inaction. Reflect on impact by asking: “How do our actions undermine racism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression?”

• Adopt a culture of care

Liberatory leaders prioritize care and connection, valuing pleasure, and thriving for themselves and others. This manifests in practices such as: modeling vulnerability, making space for feelings, offering and receiving grace, and celebrating progress and wins. Prioritize well-being with retreats, sabbaticals, and slowing down. Actively examine and counter “grind culture” incursions and the culture of urgency. Reframe accountability to be loving and non-punitive, providing opportunities to align with shared values.

• Harvest and compost

Celebrate success (harvest) by honoring achievements and sharing learnings. Gather learnings and release what doesn’t serve us (compost), to create more space, new resources, or unexpected opportunities.

Liberatory leadership is a dynamic and continuous process that demands a commitment to ongoing learning and iterative action. By cultivating a learning and visionary mindset, anchoring in values and self-awareness, fostering relational and collective power, and driving transformative impact and well-being, leaders can shift how they do change work and move closer to operationalizing our freedom dreams.

This cyclical journey—one that will almost always prompt the question “Is this liberatory?”—ensures a sustained commitment to realizing collective freedom and transforming our world. As leaders continuously engage in this process of preparing, assessing, acting, learning, unlearning, and refining, they contribute to a more just and liberated future.

For More on This Topic:

Liberatory Leadership: A Transformative Model for a Changing World

A Liberatory Approach to Centering Race in Leadership

Design Thinking: Learnings from Holding Space with Liberatory Leaders