217 New Power Leadership Lessons from the Movement for Freedom in Iran: Woman Life Freedom: Zan Zendegi Azadi| Mahan Tavakoli Partnering Leadership Insight

 Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm really excited to have you along with me on this journey of learning and growth. Tuesday, conversations with magnificent change makers from the Greater Washington dc, DMV region, and Thursday, conversations with brilliant global thought leaders. I love hearing from you.

Keep your comments coming. Mahan at MahanTavakoli.com. There's also a microphone icon on partnering leadership.com. You can leave voice messages for me there. The first Tuesday of every. I take some time to talk about the leadership principles and practices that I believe are important for us as we want to have a greater impact in our organizations, our community, and our.

Countries, and this month I want to talk about the leadership lessons from the women-led Movement for Freedom in Iran, the Woman Life Freedom Zen Zenge Azadi movement.  As many of you know, I am proud of my Iranian heritage. That and the Persian culture play a big role in my identity. That's why I find it so inspiring to see the bravery of the people of Iran led by the lion-hearted Iranian women and young girls, the history of Iranian women's leadership in Persian society.

Back to the early days of the Persian Empire. Some might be surprised to know that even the powerful, Achaemenid army was commanded by a woman named Artis, and of course, the father of modern-day Iran, Zaha pushed back the theocracy that wanted to keep the women down, ensuring opportunities in all areas, most especially Educat.

Which is why even to this day, after more than 40 years of suppression by a brutal regime of the Molas, more than 60% of college graduates in Iran are women. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, the mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions. As I see the courage of the people pushing back against.

Brutal theocracy of Molas. I see parallels with the brave women, men, and children of Ukraine as they fight for their country against and unjust war waged against them.  By Vladimir Putin. There are many leadership lessons about the changing role of power in society that impact countries, communities, and organizations.

That's why it's important for us to understand these shifts in power dynamics. As we want to lead for greater impact, and while in this episode, I will be using the example of social movements, most specifically the fight of Iranians for their freedom. The concepts also align with organizational purpose and change.

To better understand the application in leading organizations and teams. I will link in the show notes to an episode I did with Greg Sitel on his book Cascades and with Chip Walker on Activate brand purpose. So here are two key lessons from what we are seeing. One power and how we think about it has.

power comes from movements rather than hierarchies. The second is that in all changes and struggles, it's important to maintain hope over the many ups and downs rather than naive optimism. First, let's focus on how power has. Jeremy Hymans and Henry Tims in their book, new Power, how Power Works in Our Hyper-Connected World, and how to make it work for you.

Talk about two distinct forces old power and new power. They say that all power works like a currency. It is held by a few, and it's zero-sum. Once they gain it, they jealously guard it, and the powerful have a substantial source of it it is closed, it's inaccessible,   it's hierarchical and leader driven. New power, on the other hand, operates differently. It's like a current it is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer. So like water and electricity,  it's most forceful when it surges.

The goal with new power is not to hoard it, but to channel it. So all power models are hierarchical. They operate with controls. While new power models are enabled by peer coordination. And the agency of the crowd. So, for example, when people with an old power mindset, look at the woman life freedom movement of Iran, they ask who is the leader of the opposition?

They are looking for a hierarchy. While new power gets its energy from diffused sources, even think about Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Putin has an old power mindset with all the controls. While Zelinsky is primarily inspiring his people,  he is turbocharging and supporting a movement through his.

Rather than directing it, even the way the two militaries are approaching the conflict is drastically different Ukraine using new power models, while Russia is still stuck in the old power mindset. Actually, general standing McChrystal, who was in charge of the special forces in Iraq, also realized this shift in the old power of hierarchies to the new, more dispersed power of movements.

So he totally shifted. Did the mindset and operations of Special Forces, which he outlines in his outstanding book, Team of Teams, one of my top recommendations for leaders of all types of organizations.  Focusing on channeling the new power of movements rather than attempts at hierarchical control.

This is the kind of thinking that the most innovative organizations that I work with are also embracing one focused on new power models rather than all power models. So the Iranian woman life freedom movement is not leaderless; it's leader. It's a new power movement rather than old power hierarchical approach.

And I know it takes a little while for us to shift our mindset as we are looking for the single leader. There can be value in those single leaders like Zelinsky, but all they would do is channel energy to the purpose of the movement rather than.  In my partnering leadership conversation with Greg Satel on his book Cascades, how to Create a Movement that drives transformational Change.

Greg said it all starts with small groups. Loosely connected united by a shared purpose, and Greg gave many examples, including companies that use this mindset to align with purpose and drive change. I would highly encourage you to listen to that conversation to see how this movement thinking applies.

To organizational and team change and alignment with purpose. Also, in my partnering leadership conversation with Chip Walker on his book Activate Brand Purpose, how to Harness the Power of Movements to Transform Your Company. Chip said all movements start with a grievance and a change you want to see in the world.

There's a vision of the world where that grievance has gone away. There's also an. That the movement has to overcome to get to the desired change. So these are descriptions of how movements add energy and power, whether it's in society, in countries, or can also channel energies in organizations. Another key strength of movements.

It is that movement thinking enables much greater agility. So, movement thinking enables organizations.  To be shapeshifting and be able to overcome these hierarchical structures. In his book, David and Goliath, underdogs, misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants, Malcolm Gladwell said most people get the story of David and Goliath all wrong because they misunderstand who really had the upper.

It is because of, and not despite, David's size and his unorthodox choice of weapon that he was able to slay the giant. In other words, Gladwell says that most people underestimate the importance of agility and speed. Movement thinking provides this shapeshifting agility, which is confusing to those who only see the world through hierarchy.

So one of the biggest takeaways from the woman Life Freedom Movement is that power and how we think about it has changed. Power comes from movements rather than hierarchies. The other key lesson is that all change and struggles require us to maintain. Over the many ups and downs rather than naive optimism.

And to that end, I think the story of Admiral Stockdale and the Stockdale Paradox serves as a great reminder of the difference between hope and naive optimism.  For those of you who might not be familiar with Admiral Stockdale, he was held as a prisoner of war in Hanoi Hilton for seven and a half years.

Not only that, he was routinely tortured and denied medical attention for his legs, that were severely damaged,  during capture. Also, Admiral Stockdale, when he was told by his cap, is that he was going to be paraded in public. He split his scalp with a razor to purposely disfigure himself so that his captors couldn't use him as propaganda.

Think about what this man was going through for these seven and a half years during the course of his captivity; because of the torture, his leg was broken twice. So this man went through seven and a half years of brutal treatment and torture in Hanoi Hilton, and Jim Collins interviewed him and wrote about him in his book Good To Great.

In the Conversation, Jim Collins asked Admiral Stockdale, which prisoners didn't make it out of Vietnam, and Admiral Stockdale replied. Oh, that's easy. The optimists, they were the ones who said we're going to be out by Christmas, and Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they would say, we're going to be out by Easter.

And Easter would come, and Easter would go, and then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again, and they died of a broken. This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end, which you can never afford to lose with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

So for movements to prevail, they require persistence and hope rather than naive optimism. I have in mind the quote from Dr. Martin Luther King. That the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. And movements with hope are the way to do that, whether in countries, communities, or organizations.

And since I've been talking about the courage of the Iranian people fighting an oppressive regime, I want to end this episode with a song that has become an anthem of the resistance movement in Iran. In addition to ending with a song in the show notes, I will link to a YouTube version of the song, which also has the translated subtitles.

The song is called Barye by Shervin Hajipoor. Baraye means because in Fari, after the death of Masini and the start of the protests and internet meme was spread through social media and Twitter in particular, by which through phrases, starting with the word baraye  (for) where people explain their personal reasons for protesting and wishing for regime change in.

Trying to capture the essence of these sentiments. Hajipoor wrote each verse of the lyrics based on a separate tweet. The song goes:  

for dancing in the streets 

for the fear when kissing. 

For my sister. Your sister. Our sisters 

for changing the Rotten Minds, 

for the shame of inability to provide, 

for being penniless, 

for yearning of just the normal life. 

For the Dumpster Diving Boy and his dreams 

for this planned economy, 

for this polluted air 

for Valley Ash Street, and its. Tired dying trees  

for Piu and his possible extinction.

For the massacre of the innocent dogs, 

for these never-ending tears. 

For the dream of a moment that will never happen again. 

For the smiling faces, 

for the students, 

for future, 

for this heaven being forced on you, 

for the imprisoned intellectual.

For the discriminated Afghan children, 

for each and everyone of all of these fours, 

for all these empty propaganda chants.

For the houses in rubble, collapsing like a house of cards 

for the feel of peace for the sun. After long nights for all the pills, 

for nerves and insomnia for men, homeland and prosperity 

for the girls wishing they were boys.

 For woman life freedom,

for freedom, 

for freedom, 

for freedom.