Working with Thought Leaders to Deliver Value to the Leadership Field

By: Natalia Castaneda

Over the past few years, we have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with some of the thought leaders in the leadership field as part of our consulting services.  We partner with foundations and other organizations to help them evaluate leadership initiatives, research the field to identify challenges and opportunities, conduct social network analysis of alumni, and design leadership programs.  We want to highlight some of the thought leaders that have added their expertise to our projects and helped us deliver cutting-edge project for our clients and for the leadership field.

• Kenny and Lori Lobenstine from the Design Studio for Social Intervention became our partners for a Boston Innovation Lab in 2011. Their ability to create spaces to play with new ideas, and encourage experimentation and learning was marvelous and refreshing.  Here’s how one person described the experience:

“What we experienced today shifted the conversation about leadership, and it shifted the entry point. Not how do we as individuals develop, but instead it was how do we come together to solve these real social issues, and what space and what process can we create to engage 1000s of people in solving these problems. That is a very different approach to leadership development. It’s not about “I want to be a better leader”, but I want to be a part of this creative process; that becomes the new standard for leadership. We’ve known that shared leadership is important, but we don’t really know how to do it. Today’s examples felt like they were moving in that direction.”

Lori wrote a blogpost on Tricks for Innovation which describes the lab process.

The Design Studio for Social Intervention (ds4i) is an artistic research and development organization that seeks creative ways to improve civil society and everyday life. 

• June Holley, an expert in network weaving, and Valdis Krebs, an expert in Social Network Analysis, partnered with LLC to conduct a Social Network Analysis of the Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance. We conducted a survey that enabled us to map the different types of relationships among the participants in KFLA that helped us to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the networks.  As part of this project we have recruited a team of network weavers from KFLA and are coaching them in how to weave the network to catalyze action.
   
• Marc Smith, who leads the Connected Action consulting group, and is a co-founder of the Social Media Research Foundation, partnered with LLC for a Social Network Analysis project with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Marc helped us to leverage NodeXL and his expertise in the area to help analyze Twitter networks.  According to Marc, “Using NodeXL, we collected data from Twitter and mapped the ways people connected to one another while tweeting about "Food desert", "SmartGrowth", "RWJF", and related topics like "Healthrankings".  The resulting maps were like aerial photos of crowds that had gathered for a rally.  The size and shape of the crowd, along with the key people within it became visible when we applied this technique.  We mapped these topics daily for weeks to learn more about the key people and sub-groups that formed around these topics over time.

Maps are useful for many things, from finding a distant location to planning a route to travel there.  With these maps in hand we were able to plan a journey to connect with key people, identify core ideas and topics, and measure the influence of certain events.  The release of the County Health Rankings report, for example, allowed us to map these crowds before, during and after the event to see the impact of the publication.  Vivid network visualization images led our group to gain better insights into the structure and rhythm of these topic communities.”

• Bruce Hoppe, formerly of Connective Associates, has pioneered the use social network analysis in the leadership development field.  At Creating Space VII in Durham, NC, Bruce introduced the LLC community to a social network mapping tool that used real-time data from the participants to map their relationships with each other.  These maps enabled the group to analyze the patterns of their connections and consider when network maps are useful in leadership development work. Bruce also partnered with us for a Social Network Analysis with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, helping map action networks.
   
• Rebecca Aced-Molina, who recently started her own company, The Next Stage Coaching and Consulting, has been a trusted evaluation consulting partner with LLC since 2006.  She was an early proponent of the EvaluLEAD evaluation framework, and helped to pioneer its implementation through her work at the Public Health Institute.  Rebecca worked with us on a TCE supported project to build the capacity of eight boundary-crossing leadership programs to develop results maps to guide their evaluation work.  She also partnered with us on a portfolio assessment for the Global Fund for Women to understand the impact of their funding on reproductive health and reproductive rights work around the world.  Rebecca has a keen mind, a warm spirit, and abiding commitment to social justice and social change.
   
• Jean Burkhardt has been a long time active contributor, collaborator and thought partner who has participated in many of the Leadership Learning Community convening’s. We recently partnered with Jean to design and facilitate a learning community in Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota, as part of a project for the Bush Foundation. 
   
• Kim Ammann Howard, who works at BTW informing change, is a long time collaborator and supporter of the Leadership Learning Community. In 2002, LLC was commissioned by The California Wellness Foundation to conduct an evaluation assessing the overall impact of the Leadership and Professional Development Program of their Violence Prevention Initiative. Kim played a key role on the Design Team and was one of the evaluators and collaborative writers of the in-depth report. She also was one of the collaborators, along with LLC, on the Packard-Gates evaluation of their Population Leadership Program. Kim and Claire Reinelt (LLC’s Research and Evaluation Director) collaborated to write a chapter, Evaluating Leadership Development for Social Change, which was published in the Handbook of Leadership Development Evaluation. 
   
• Hanh Cao Yu, Vice President and Senior Social Scientist at Social Policy Research Associates (SPR), has been an active member of LLC since 2005. In November of 2005, Hanh participated in and played a co-facilitative role at LLC’s joint Funders and Evaluation Circle meeting on Multi-Cultural Evaluation of Leadership Development at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in Baltimore. We are also partnering with Hanh and the Social Policy Research Associates to conduct an evaluation of the Community Leadership Project, which is an innovative, collaborative effort to build the capacity of small organizations serving low-income people and people of color. We are working on identifying strategies for supporting organizations and leaders to building their capacity and extend their networks.
   
• Sally Leiderman, who is the President of the Center for Assessment and Policy Development (CAPD), has been a staunch supporter, participant, partner and collaborator with LLC on many levels.  Sally contributed a chapter, “From the Inside Out: Evaluating Personal Transformation Leadership Efforts,” in The Handbook of Leadership Development edited by Kelly Hannum, Jennifer W. Martineau, and Claire Reinelt (LLC Research and Evaluation Director). 

We are also partnering Sally and the Center for Assessment and Policy Development (CAPD) to assist in the development of a network survey, and analysis and reporting of network data for an evaluation of the Berrie Fellows program. The Berrie Fellows Leadership Program was developed in 2004 by the Russell Berrie Foundation, in partnership with the UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey. The program is designed to develop the next generation of Jewish leaders in the community.

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