Blog

By: Chris Matter, ClearWay Minnesota

An invitation was received to attend the LLC Funders/Evaluators Learning Circle Meeting held in Minneapolis. I looked at the meeting objectives and thought, was this going to be another daylong session where we all share our experiences and then I never see or communicate with these folks again? The meeting objectives were aligned with my work as a Program Manager involved in funding a Leadership Institute designed to build the capacity of priority populations in Minnesota to more effectively respond to tobacco issues and to help reduce commercial tobacco and other health-related disparities.  All three objectives had direct relevance for me and included:  “to harvest lessons about leadership strategies for investing in and evaluating leadership and leadership development; to share investment and evaluation approaches to better understand community results; and to create connections and learning partnerships among leadership funders and evaluators committed to learning about how best to grow community impact.” However, the reason I hit send on the registration button was that there was an objective supporting the development of my partnerships. As a funder, we strive to create spaces for grantees to develop relationships, but we don’t always take the time to do this amongst ourselves as funders and to include our evaluation colleagues in the discussion. This meeting was an opportunity for me to meet new colleagues and hopefully create new relationships.

 read more »

How fitting, in the spirit of collective impact, that this month we would like to shine a light -- not on one partnership -- but on a mighty group of collaborators who pulled together to help produce our new report, “Leadership and Networks.”  It was truly a group endeavor, and as you might imagine. The process of collaboratively writing on a public wiki can be messy and requires patience, wisdom, endurance and trust.  Our team demonstrated all of these qualities and more. 

 read more »

Last month, in my post "Passing the Baton," I talked about my intention to transition from my current role at LLC.  I also explained that I am committed to sharing what we are learning along the way.  After all, transition and succession planning are widely recognized as big leadership issues.  So this month I want to share 3 lessons from month one of transition planning:

1. Know what resources you will need to accomplish your goals

2. Be true to who you are

3. Innovate when it’s called for

 read more »

By: Jolie Bain Pillsbury of Sherbrooke Consulting, Inc

I wanted to follow up on two related issues touched on during the webinar: “Going After Big Results: A Different Take on Leadership Development”.  The two related issues are that of the development of sustainable collaborative relationships and the development of collaborative leadership.  The two are related in the following way: collaborative leadership is not a solitary act.  It only exists in the context of a group of leaders in relationship with each other and is an “emergent” property of the group. Collaborative leadership skills create the capacity for the leaders to form relationships across boundaries for the purpose of making a difference. read more »