Leadership Case Study: Examining Racism in Executive Decision Making
Context
We worked with a fully white executive leadership team leading a mission-driven organization serving a racially diverse community. The organization was experiencing internal tension, stalled progress on equity commitments, and a growing gap between stated values and lived leadership practice.
The Challenge
Although the leadership team expressed a commitment to equity, patterns in decision making, communication, and organizational culture suggested that unexamined bias was shaping outcomes in unexamined ways. These dynamics were not overt or intentional, but they were often influencing priorities, responses to conflict, and how harm was understood and addressed.
Leaders struggled to name these patterns clearly, and conversations about race often stalled or became confusing. Without intervention, the organization risked reinforcing inequitable systems while believing it was acting in good faith.
Our Work
We partnered with the senior leadership team in a focused, strategic engagement to examine how racism was operating within leadership structures and decisions. The work centered on collective responsibility rather than individual blame and emphasized clarity, reflection, and accountability.
This included:
Facilitating structured conversations with the full leadership team to surface patterns in decision making and leadership behavior
Examining how whiteness and unexamined bias were shaping risk tolerance, urgency, and responses to harm
Supporting leaders in naming where equity commitments were misaligned with actual practice
Helping the team identify specific leadership behaviors and decisions that needed to change
Creating shared language and understanding to support more accountable, equity-centered leadership moving forward
The work focused on “peeling the onion,” allowing leaders to move beyond surface-level commitments toward a deeper understanding of how racism was shaping organizational outcomes.
The Outcome
As a result of this work, the leadership team developed greater clarity about how implicit bias was operating within their leadership practices and decision-making processes. Leaders were better equipped to interrupt harmful patterns, take responsibility for impact, and make more intentional, equity-centered decisions.
Perhaps most importantly, the team shifted from avoidance toward shared accountability and sustained engagement with equity work as a leadership responsibility, not a separate initiative.