Is Calling for Their Death the Path to Fixing Museums?: A Leadership Agenda 2021
Leadership Revolution AgendaFor Individuals:
Accept this year's uncertainty as the grounding for change. If you're white, recognize your own whiteness and the walls it builds around you and your organization. Pledge to knock those walls down.
Know what you don't know. Pledge to recognize and fight against your own biases.
Develop your own leadership practice.
Figure out if you are an active listener. If not, learn.
Practice self-care.
Assist with or take responsibility for leadership training and development activities for your team, your department, your volunteers, or if you’re the lone professional, for yourself.
Stand up for your colleagues when they become targets. Be a voice for the voiceless. Be an ally and an accomplice.
Speak up for the counter-narrative whenever it's absent.For Organizations:
Accept this year's uncertainty as the grounding for change. Recognize your own whiteness and the walls it builds around you and your organization. Pledge to knock those walls down. Apologize and own your organization's past behavior.
Acknowledge the importance of all your staff. Pledge to make yours a human-centered museum.
Build something new. Complete an equity wage review. Pledge to resolve issues of wage imbalance based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, gender identity, and sexual orientation), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information.
Give staff a voice. Create space, virtual or otherwise, where staff can bring issues of inequity to the fore without fear of punishment. Pledge to listen and make change.
Insist upon institutional support of the emerging leader and lone professional, and the diversification of governing boards.
Don't maintain the status quo; instead make a difference. Use this moment and make change. I want to conclude by honoring and thanking again this weekend's speakers. They are the future and as complex as it's clearly going to be, they are a courageous and awe-inspiring group. Joan Baldwin
