Lewin’s Influence on Leadership

This recorded talk is the first of a four part series from a great evening I had a few weeks ago at a forum pulled together by the Lewin Center for Research and Social Justice. About 25 individuals came together at the home of Lennox Joseph, Ph.D. to hear a talk given by Earl Braxton, Ph.D. and facilitated by Brenda Jones, Ph.D. The food, the company, and the conversation was just what I needed as I moved into the New Year.

Kurt Lewin (1890-1947) was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, and was the first person to use the term group dynamics. His work has a wide ranging impact on everything from psychology to social justice movements. For instance, Michael Jacoby Brown, in his book points out that the field of community organizing draws heavily on Lewin’s work, “who revolutionized the theory and practices of building groups…and had a wide interest in racial and ethnic justice.”

In this first installment, you will hear Earl talking about Lewin’s interest in unions, understanding systems and systemic change approaches, and field theory. Earl then touches on organizations in trauma, an issue he has written about and says is sometimes kept “quiet.” Influenced by Lewin, Earl sees these broken systems not in terms of their fallacies and dysfunction, but rather as entities with a temporary wound.