Looking Back on Four Years at Woods Fund Chicago

President Michelle Morales on Reflecting, Recalibrating, and Reimagining —

This month marks my fourth year at Woods Fund Chicago. What a whirlwind these last four years have been! In those four years, we all experienced a global pandemic, a nationwide movement decrying the continued killings of Black Americans at the hands of police, a national recommitment to racial justice, followed by a backlash, the continued and systematic erasure of our rights and liberties, and a renegotiation with our relationship to work and workplaces. What a time to be living in! Internally at Woods Fund Chicago, we experienced a significant board turnover, expanded our team, implemented a new grants management system, steadily grew the foundation’s payout percentage, and focused on embedding a trust-based philanthropy framework with a racial justice lens to our internal organizational culture and our core organizational values. 

Centering racial justice requires us as leaders to unlearn toxic, white-centered management and leadership styles that we have absorbed over the years. Often this responsibility is placed on the shoulders of white leaders, and while they most certainly have much work to do to decenter themselves and to wrestle with their contribution to white supremacy and white privilege, leaders of color also bear a responsibility to identify those management and leadership traits that do not serve racial justice, our staff (especially staff of color), and our communities. This is crucial for those of us aligned with social justice values. We should take the time to ask ourselves — in the struggle for racial justice and systemic change, what will it take to recalibrate our leadership?

If we do not recalibrate, one thing will become true — those who come to work with us and who are inspired by our commitment to social and racial justice will experience a cognitive dissonance if our management and actions do not match what we are espousing. In her blog, Martha Cecilia Ovadia coined the phrase “phantom impact syndrome.” She describes this as “the disillusionment and burnout so many of us have experienced at the hands of leadership who outwardly promise something different but behind closed doors perpetuate the same harm their mission statements disavowed. The same harm they publicly decry.” We are all aware of charismatic leaders who talk the talk, but if you were to speak to their team, you would hear a whole different story. This is what I had to contend with when I examined myself — that my “walk” wasn’t living up to my “talk.”

Many of you know that for the past two plus years, I have been living with metastatic breast cancer. During my health journey, I have spent quite a bit of time reflecting on myself, my struggles, and my leadership. I had always considered myself an authentic leader, one that brought her full self to work. I believed that it was because of my authenticity and hard work that led to my success. What I learned about myself while I reflected privately and with an executive coach is that much of the leadership I had been exposed to as a child, a young adult, and throughout my career was autocratic in nature and one where I was micromanaged. This leadership style centered a very traditional, white male approach which often looked like valuing outcomes over people (even in progressive, social justice-oriented organizations and even in organizations purporting to support racial equity). I was raised throughout my career to value outcomes, quick decision-making, and organizational success before staff wellbeing. I was taught that the organization needed to be protected from its staff and the staff from each other, and that at the end of the day it was the success and the longevity of not only the organization but the leader and their legacy that mattered above all else. And so, as one can imagine, even though I was successful under this leadership style I sacrificed quite a bit of myself and experienced workplace trauma. What did that trauma look like? Being micromanaged, not having any sort of agency or autonomy even as I rose through the ranks, having my decisions second-guessed and overturned, no feedback or coaching, no encouragement of my growth or development, working in environments where belittling was common, where distrust of leadership and of colleagues was the norm, and where competition reigned - and just a reminder that this occurred in spaces that boasted a progressive work environment. And that’s how it was during most of my career. I craved something that would speak to a reimagining of what leadership could be, could look like, a leadership style that centered women and women of color. I wanted to embody a different leadership style, to lead differently than I was led.

There’s nothing like a personal health crisis that forces you to take the time to reflect and to turn your lens inward. And what I saw shocked me. I realized, with the help of an executive coach and my executive team, that I wasn’t as progressive as I thought I was, and that I had internalized many of the harmful management practices of my former supervisors/leaders/managers. I tend to micromanage my staff. I don’t readily empower them. I’m a perfectionist that produces at a high level and I have pressured my team to do the same. I struggle with work/life balance and feel guilty when I take time off. Often, I react instead of responding, and struggle to work interdependently. And I struggle profoundly with issues of distrust. All of this was a difficult pill to swallow. I thought I was leading differently, when in fact I was saying I was leading differently, but my actions showed something else. This internal work, this self-reflection, is one that we all must go through and that we must commit to. We must examine our leadership, our practices, and how past workplace trauma might show up in how we lead and how we interact with others. We must examine our proximity to power (especially power that perpetuates inequities), how we choose to wield that power, and the elitism that creeps up on us in these elevated roles. Leaders of color must interrogate how we are leading and if we are using the same practices and mindsets that contribute and uphold white supremacy in this country. 

Look, this work is HARD. It’s hard because it’s countercultural. It’s hard because we can be shocked by what we see. And it’s not perfect. I still make mistakes. I still default to traditional management practices (it’s hard not to when it’s all around us), but I have made a commitment to be open to feedback (and thankfully I have a team that will give me the feedback I need to continuously grow) and to consistently question traditional management practices. These are practices that we should collectively engage in and collectively hold each other accountable. In the philanthropic sector, we have the incredible privilege of having access to resources to create workplaces that don’t exist — workplaces that center our teams’ humanity, their dignity, and that value trust and relationship building. System change is not just an external process, but an internal exercise. It can start with us as foundation leaders, with how we choose to lead the workplaces we create and maintain. Let’s work together to ensure that philanthropy is modeling that radical reimagining and to ensure that philanthropy is a safe sector for professionals of color to thrive.

In solidarity,

Michelle Morales,
President, Woods Fund Chicago