Courageous Leadership: Walking Your Talk from Wherever You Are

Abstract

In a Vision Session at the 34th annual NASIG conference, DeEtta Jones related her belief that our profession needs leaders at every level, including those who do not see themselves in that role. Leaders must be culturally competent, able to engage and encourage new voices to speak out while taking courageous action in the service of shared value. Today’s leaders need more than the traditional attributes of the past; mere passion and holding fast to values are not sufficient in the present time. To demonstrate how courageous leadership could be applied, Jones organized her talk around six themes and attributes: anchored to aspiration, values driven, in the service of, emotional intelligence and cultural competence, trustworthiness, and equity oriented.