Leadership in Action: Intersectional Leadership Advantage
Posted on August 30, 2024 by Kayla Stajkovic, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.
Research explains how gender and race come together to inform a leadership style that can be especially advantageous during turbulent times.
In the Summer of 2020, the United States witnessed significant social unrest. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement surged after George Floyd’s death at the hands of police on May 25. Some protests were peaceful, but others were not, and city police chiefs were tasked with mitigating street violence.
Chief Thompson, a Black female police chief in North Carolina, chose dialogue over force. Addressing protestors, she voiced outrage over George Floyd’s murder and conveyed solidarity with the cause, but she also affirmed that peaceful protests can spur change without destroying the city. Rather than using force and armored vehicles, she instructed her officers to facilitate peaceful marches by accompanying activists on bicycles. This approach stands in contrast with the approach of police chief Brian Manely of Austin, TX, where officers fired beanbag rounds into the crowd, striking a pregnant woman and leaving another protestor in critical condition.
Amid a nationwide reckoning with police reform and racial justice, our recent study, “A Summer Of Protest: Using Event System Theory To Test an Intersectional Leadership Advantage,” published in the Journal of Management, unearthed a compelling discovery: cities led by Black women police chiefs were associated with significantly less violence at Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. This insight challenges traditional views of qualities related to effective leadership and sheds light on the positive downstream impact of diversity in leadership positions.
In collaboration with my co-author, Professor Alex Stajkovic, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, we analyzed over 11,540 protests across 3,338 U.S. cities. These events required effective leadership in real time to tackle high-stakes problems when no prepackaged responses existed. What facilitates effective leadership during such high-strength, diversity-related events?
We found that under the leadership of Black women police chiefs, there were noticeably fewer violent incidents – both among protestors and police. We coined this phenomenon an “Intersectional Leadership Advantage,” highlighting the unique blend of empathy, strategy, risk-taking, and community engagement that Black women leaders bring to the forefront.
Because their journey to the top is fraught with many obstacles, Black women tend to form a distinct leadership style, among other things, that can be characterized by sensitivity to racial injustice, leaning into risk, and prioritization of community needs. These qualities enable them to reduce tension and mitigate conflict during high-strength events, such as the BLM 2020 protests.
Events, Protests, and Social Justice
Leadership qualities associated with effective outcomes depend on the event circumstances, which cab vary in terms of novelty, disruption, and criticality. The BLM protests of 2020 were novel because similar events have not occurred in recent history, where a public quest for social justice was met with health mandates to prevent the risk of deadly virus transmission. The pandemic fueled the protests because the Black community was not only disproportionally affected by police brutality but also by COVID-19-related layoffs and deaths. The protests were highly disruptive because arson, vandalism, personal injuries, and looting caused the highest recorded damage in U.S. history from unrest events. Critically, the events spurred calls for action to defund the police, marking the first time that such calls were made by public officials.
Taken together, the BLM protests during the Summer of 2020 were high-strength events that significantly affected society. To understand the complex dynamics involved in these high-strength events, we approached the study of effective leadership from an intersectional lens.
Intersectionality of Leader Gender and Race
Examining intersecting marginalized identities, such as race and gender, is called intersectional research. On the one hand, this research has found that Black women are subordinated and marginalized across work domains, and they face steep barriers to career progression; they are often denied credit for success and are disproportionally sanctioned for mistakes. On the other hand, this research has also revealed a “canceling effect” for Black women, such that sometimes Black women face fewer penalties at work than other groups because they are not prototypical members of their racial group (as are Black men) nor their gender group (as are White women). This “invisibility” can put Black women in an auspicious space that buffers them from penalties.
An Intersectional Leadership Advantage
Because different social identities are often associated with significantly different experiences, we suggest that overcoming a lifetime of both racism and sexism tends to impart Black women who reach the top with a distinct leadership style, including a heightened sensitivity to human suffering and magnified attention on issues related to inequality and social injustice. Black women police chiefs were likely to grasp the etiology of issues quickly. Because they are members of two subordinate groups, they are apt to be attuned to subtle differences among groups – such as between protestors and police. Moreover, these women navigate multiple layers of social identity and, thus, are accustomed to considering multiple, diverse, opposing perspectives. Familiarity with racial concerns and sensitivity to predilections enable Black women leaders to recognize and react to moments of difference. In an era where trust in law enforcement is waning, it becomes critical for these leaders to quickly recognize divergences, communicate, deploy resources with care, and, ultimately, prevent discord from mounting.
Implications
• The leadership of Black women offers a viable blueprint for mending and strengthening communities.
• For decision-makers and law enforcement bodies, this research emphasizes the need for diversity and inclusivity in leadership roles.
• For communities entangled in the struggles against violence and systemic racism, it signals a path to what is possible when those in power genuinely represent and understand the people that they lead and protect.
Our study calls for more research and discourse on the effects of intersectional leadership across different organizational contexts – beyond policing. It encourages us to reassess our perceptions of effective leadership. As stated by the president of the National Organization of Black Enforcement Executives and Chief of Police in Durham North Carolina:
“I think city managers are starting to pick up on the fact that women in this field provide expertise and balance, and that our approaches aren’t always about the ego or the brawn. We’re constantly thinking about how to do this work with as little harm as possible—not just harm to the community, but harm to our officers as well. (quoted in Dickey, 2020)”Embracing diversity in leadership roles is both a moral and strategic necessity. Together, we can forge a future where peace and justice aren’t mere ideals but realities for every community.
