48. Creating an Equity Centered Approach to Coaching & Leadership with Trudi Lebron

Stepping from a nonprofit career trajectory into a for-profit consulting practice required some adjustment on the part of my guest on this episode of What the Fundraising. Trudi Lebron had to recalibrate in some unexpected and liberating ways, changing outmoded practices that are now helping her change our world.

Today Trudi Lebron Impact Coaching serves a wide variety of leaders looking to get beyond old, harmful power structures and processes that have shaped the corporate and service sectors. She and her team are disrupting entrenched systems, the default to a “normal” that has for centuries marginalized people based on color, gender, and class. This work requires sustained, intentional, and fearless education and Trudi is here to walk us through the fundamentals.

In this episode we get to hear a lot of details of Trudi’s experience in the nonprofit sector, and what it was like to transition into running a successful consulting business. We talk about why equity-centered coaching is so critical - recognizing that coaching generally defaults to a version of success that is biased and based on a normative model that defers to white, colonial, patriarchal standards.

To move out of this, we need to redefine what success looks like in a number of ways, including how we track it and what metrics we truly value. We go deep in this conversation into the broken nature of nonprofit funding and how the system is set up in a way that often diverts the executive directors from their organizations’ core mission into a never-ending fundraising role and distracts from the organization’s primary focus and mandate.

Throughout the episode, Trudi gives so much advice for nonprofits that want to break the cycle of white supremacy in the service sector. You’ll come away from this conversation with plenty to contemplate and new perspectives to consider. Listen now to learn about how this work intersects with your organization's leadership and how you can shift your practices now!

After this episode, click here to learn more about and purchase Trudi’s new book, "The Antiracist Business Book: An Equity Centered Approach to Work, Wealth and Leadership."

Many thanks to our sponsor, www.learngrantwriting.org, an online learning experience that makes grant writing approachable and fun. Try out a free class to discover whether you’d like to become professionally trained as a grant writer!

Episode Highlights:

(00:26) – Trudi shares a bit about how she got started in the nonprofit space and ultimately decided to start her own for-profit consulting firm.

(07:43) – A necessary nonprofit paradigm shift

(11:20) – Trudi shares the psycho-social impacts of transitioning class and finding herself with her current role and influence

(15:58) – How Trudi’s practice is designed around equity-centered coaching 

(18:40) – Coaching generally defaults to a version of success that is biased and based on a normative model that defers to white, colonial, patriarchal standards.

(23:55) – The biggest metrics of success should be outcomes that go beyond “reflexive impacts” 

(28:26) – Trudi explains the iterative nature of her process.

(34:06) – Why the nonprofit model (particularly around funding) is broken 

(41:00) – Advice for nonprofits that want to break the cycle of white supremacy in the service sector

(44:19) - Where to learn more about Trudi Lebron and her work

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