Natalia Castaneda's blog

Author: Raquel Gutierrez

Date: 08.16.10

Source: 22nd Century Leadership

A new paradigm for leading social change is emerging; a worldview acknowledging the importance of leadership that is life-affirming, inclusive, and sustainable. The transformation of social change leadership culture is a response to beliefs, practices, and teachings that are passed on from one generation of social change workers to the next; beliefs which ultimately determine the quality of life, leadership practices, organizational practices, and efforts of professionals working for social change. Leadership paradigms and approaches by nonprofit leaders often reflect the lack of possibilities for action that are bound by old ways of thinking and being in the sector. (1) Today, practitioners and scholars have a better understanding that “leadership development is not about filling a gap but about igniting a field of inspired connection and action.” (2) read more »

A couple of weeks ago we posted an article about the need to change our leadership approach in order to achieve greater impact and results in the nonprofit sector. The main premise of the article, written by Claire Reinelt, was that the heroic model of leadership blinds us to the fact that untapped leadership potential exists everywhere. The dominant leadership model assumes that training individuals will better prepare them to lead strong organizations; and in turn strong organizations will produce better community-level results, but this model falls well short. Reaching the scale and scope of leadership needed to address complex issues requires new approaches to leadership development. Our focus should be on finding, cultivating, and connecting leadership everywhere it exists; across all generations, races, communities, and organizational levels. To activate this untapped leadership potential, leadership thinking and practice need to shift in three fundamental directions: from Individuals to Groups, Organizations to Networks and Silos to Partnerships. (Claire Reinelt, 2010)

We received positive feedback in response to that post, so we wanted to follow it up with some helpful resources for each category. read more »

In 2009, the Hunt Alternatives Fund hired the Leadership Learning Community (LLC) to conduct a retrospective evaluation of its social movement leadership program, Prime Movers. The Fund selects promising national movement leaders and provides them with resources for their personal and professional development, and convenes them in retreats and seminars over multiple years. The Fund decided to undertake an evaluation of the program to inform its decision-­making process about the future of the program, and identify areas of improvement to make it more effective.

We employed a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to explore how to support leadership that expands the scale, reach, and impact of movement work. The evaluation goals included:

• Gather data about the program design and implementation
• Determine the extent to which the Prime Movers program has supported social movement leaders to take a “decisive” step in their development
• Develop benchmarks that the organization may use to assess progress towards national movement leadership

Click here to download the case study read more »

Author: Gibrán Rivera, Interaction Institute for Social Change

Original Post: http://interactioninstitute.org/blog/2010/08/02/transcend-organizational-constraints/

This is a very exciting time for those of us who are working to apply the logic of networks to the work of social change. Our ideas are gaining traction as more and more experiments start to point towards success. Life online, the viral nature of meaningful stories and our human desire for deeper connection all serve to confirm our intuitive understanding of life in a network. However, as we step into this paradigm shift, as we start to approve of these ideas, we still have to contend with the constraints of the organizational and funding structures within which we currently work.

A few years ago, my hardest challenge was in persuading my peers in this work that networks made more sense than the more familiar organizational and coalitional structures with which we were working. Today more and more people “get” that it’s about networks, but we have not figured out how to arrange our work together so that we can more easily step into this paradigm. read more »

Guest Blog Post by Deborah Meehan on the Rosetta Thurman Blog

Link to original post: http://www.rosettathurman.com/2010/07/young-people-leading-the-way-towards-collective-leadership/

Working in the field of leadership I have heard many Executive Directors talk about the loneliness of leadership or ‘loneliness at the top’. How curious. Leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum – it’s all about working with other people, so why the loneliness? I heard Executive Directors talk a lot about being the ones who worry about everything. Is this what it means to be a leader? It’s not so farfetched that our ideas of leadership would take on rather heroic proportions when you consider common leadership role models like Martin Luther King, Jr. read more »

By Natalia Castaneda and Claire Reinelt

We recently had a call with some of the individuals who are partnering with us to develop the Leadership and Networks publication, which is part of the Leadership for a New Era Series. The participants included Gibran Rivera, Interaction Institute for Social Change; Eugene Kim, Blue Oxen Associates; Kendra Harris, East Carolina University; Grady McGonagill, McGonagill Associates; Diana Scearce, Monitor Institute; Patti Anklam, independent consultant, and the Leadership Learning Community team. This was a unique opportunity to engage such a diverse group of thought leaders in reflecting about the most crucial questions and ideas related to network leadership.

The group is using the following framework to guide the exploration of the intersection between leadership and networks: read more »

Author: Beth Tener, www.ndcollaborative.com

Consider these scenarios:

• Every hotel could adopt greener practices, such as saving water, reducing energy use, serving food from local farms in its restaurants – and many leaders already have. How do we get the rest of the hotels to learn from the leaders and adopt these innovations?
• Buildings are responsible for about one-third of energy use in the US and their construction consumes large amounts of resources and generates considerable waste. How could we redesign how buildings are built and operated to greatly reduce these impacts? This is not an easy task when you consider how many ‘players’ are involved, such as architects, building owners, builders, and construction material suppliers to name a few.
• In the non-profit sector, thousands of organizations are working on various aspects of environmental protection and social justice. How could their work be aligned to enhance their impact?

These scenarios represent the type of actions needed to achieve sustainability. In each case, to make progress, we need to work across organizational boundaries. Collaborating in networks is imperative to achieve the scale of transformation required to make our organizations, communities, and ecosystems sustainable.

  read more »

Author: Bruce Hoppe

Source: http://connectedness.blogspot.com

Date: 6/4/2010

The Leadership Learning Community is hosting an interesting conversation on network leadership. As part of that dialogue, Claire Reinelt put to me the question, "What does leadership look like in a healthy network?"

In response, I turn to The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu. This ancient Chinese book of wisdom has inspired many translators to describe leaders and leadership of healthy networks. A few examples are below. read more »

Networks are effective ways of sharing information, communicating and collaborating.  They are flexible and adaptable, morphing in response to the people involved and the task at hand.  They are dynamic by nature and have the potential to produce lasting effects.   We believe that if we focus the energy of networks, and spark connections, we can accomplish unprecedented results in the social sector.  Technology elevates the potential and impact of networks, making it an intrinsic element of our discussion on network leadership.

Increasingly, groups of people are using technology to go beyond connection and information sharing into collaborative action, typically in response to crises.  These are some examples of how technology is bringing down barriers of location and time, optimizing the communication flow, and nurturing innovation and creativity.  read more »

As part as the Leadership for a New Era collaborative research initiative, we are currently working with our partners to produce some content for the Leadership and Networks publication.  We have a great series of blog articles planned over the next couple of weeks:

• Patti Anklam (Net Work) is reflecting on how to prepare organizational leaders to work in a networked world.
• Gibran Rivera (Interaction Institute for Social Change) is reflecting on what some of the organizational barriers are that get in the way of supporting network leadership, and how organizations can create the space for network leadership to emerge.
• Diana Scearce (Monitor Institute) is reflecting on when and how to invest in network leadership and what forms this type of investment might take.
• Bruce Hoppe (Connective Associates) is reflecting on what leadership looks like in a healthy network.
• Beth Tener (New Directions Collaborative) is reflecting on why working through networked approaches is a core strategy for pursuing sustainability.

As we post the articles, we encourage you to suggest additional ideas and questions that you want to explore though this initiative.  Check out the site and share your ideas!