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GUEST BLOG | Women's History: Not A Month - A Movement By Juana Bordas

Submitted by LLC Staff on Thu, 03/31/2016 - 15:56
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Women in the Wild West - Leadership Pioneers

Wyoming was the first state to pass women's suffrage. It was an attempt to attract brave pioneer women to move west. This was quickly followed by Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, California, Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, and South Dakota. Out of the 15 states that passed women's suffrage before the 19th Amendment - 11 were from the west.

Women boarded wagon trains and headed to the frontier. They showed tremendous courage, risk-taking, inner fortitude, and a sense of adventure - traits that are greatly needed by women today. Women in the West had a pioneer spirit - defined as "a willingness to endure hardships in order to explore new places or try new things."

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GUEST BLOG | Leading Culture Change At The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation By Charles Palus & John McGuire

Submitted by LLC Staff on Thu, 03/31/2016 - 15:31
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This article was originally published by the Center for Creative Leadership and is shared with permission from our partner Chuck Palus. He highlights the work being done in part by Chris Ernst who appeared recently in one of our joint webinars.
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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is focusing on culture development as a lever for progress because when culture and strategy are aligned, organizations achieve goals, amplify successes, and have greater impact. 
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Leadership and Trust

Submitted by Deborah Meehan on Thu, 03/31/2016 - 15:22
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Trust comes up a lot these days in conversations about leadership, and especially in conversations about networks.  Recently I heard it mentioned numerous times in a recent SSIR webinar, The Network Leader Roadmap, definitely worth a listen. Webinar presenters David Sawyer and David Ehrlichman from Converge for Impact introduced the concept of ‘trust for impact.’  They explain the idea in an article they wrote called “The Tactics of Trust” and share tools for establishing trust in a time frame based on the premise that we don’t have the luxury of years to cultivate trust relationships.   Their article and other speakers on the webinar addressed the importance of having authentic conversations about difference as an important ingredient for building trust. 

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GUEST BLOG: Mindful Leadership: Aligning Brain and Body By Madeline McNeely

Submitted by LLC Staff on Mon, 02/29/2016 - 14:22
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What do you do with the rush of adrenalin and cortisol that courses through the body when you get triggered? How do you move, mentally and physically, from an amygdala hijacked state (the reptilian brain) to a centered place where you’re thinking from the neo- and pre-frontal cortex?  As a leadership coach, I see my clients struggling with the unknown. I see their brains and bodies contract both physically and emotionally. Big-picture thinking and inspiration vanish in the face of stress and anxiety – too much to do and not enough time or resources to get it all done. Learning to recover “center” quickly and with mastery is a critical competency for any 21st–century social-change leader.

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Leadership and Systems: Identity, Purpose and Interconnectedness

Submitted by Deborah Meehan on Mon, 02/29/2016 - 14:07
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This past week I found myself in one of those conversations that takes you somewhere you would not have anticipated. It started as a discussion about how the work of a professional development committee might be reframed with a network lens as an opportunity to activate peer driven learning.  The person I was speaking with was part of an emerging network of environmental centers and he wondered aloud whether this newly forming network could actually develop a shared identity that would bind them. Given the importance of diversity to networks, I asked if he might not instead mean a shared purpose.  He countered that environmental stewardship is a pretty big umbrella that does not necessarily help people working in different regions, with different populations, offering different kinds of programming to find the points of connection in their work.  I found myself thinking that this was not an issue of identity or purpose but a questions of systems and how people and organizations understand their interconnectedness within a larger system.

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GUEST BLOG: The Secret Every Successful Nonprofit Leader Knows About Being Productive By Beth Kanter

Submitted by LLC Staff on Fri, 01/29/2016 - 17:58
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I’m facilitating a peer learning project on practical networked leadership skills for emerging nonprofit leaders. As we all know, living in a networked world creates opportunities for abundance. But having many choices and opportunities requires developing a special set of skills in order to be successful. These skills are: self-management and attention training. That’s the focus of one of the sessions – so I have been reflecting a lot on this topic to come up with some useful exercises, discussion questions, and session content.

Over the past few years, people often say to me, “I don’t know how you get it all done.” To tell you the truth, I no longer think in terms of “getting it all done.” I don’t bother with time management techniques because in a networked world, they don’t work – that is industrial age thinking. What is more important is managing your attention and energy. That translates to redesigning the way you work. A day that translates to 10 or 12 hour non-stop multi-tasking marathon is not a formula for success, but for burnout. Some workplace cultures in nonprofits encourage this approach.

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Leadership and Equity

Submitted by Deborah Meehan on Fri, 01/29/2016 - 17:43
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First, a huge shout out to Interaction Institute for Social Change and thank you for a great New Year gift, “As a gift to the world of equity practitioners, IISC engaged artist Angus Maguire to draw a new version of an old favorite (since we could only find pixelated versions of the original). Please feel free to download the high-resolution image and use in your presentations.”  I like this graphic a lot and I believe it raises interesting questions for leadership development programs.

 

Most leadership programs would likely say that they treat participants equally.  For example, cohort based programs generally provide the same leadership development modules/curriculum to all participants.  The components are also pretty standard when it comes to design elements like compensating travel, mentoring/coaching, action/learning projects, the size of award funds, etc. 

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Urgent Call From Michigan: Non-Traditional Leadership In Action

Submitted by Miriam Persley on Fri, 01/29/2016 - 17:36
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This month, I’d like to highlight some of the urgent work happening right now in Michigan where our social justice colleagues and friends are dealing with an environmental crisis and add my voice to their call for collective action. For a few weeks so much attention has been given to a  little town in Michigan. All major news channels are talking about Flint and the ongoing water crisis; finally. Though this has been a reality for many residents in Michigan. My first thought was for our Michigan friendships forged at Creating Space last year, where we heard directly from We The People of Detroit who are a part of The People’s Water Board Coalition.
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Networks and Leadership Webinar Series: "Unpacking Goal-Directed Networks" with Angel Saz-Carranza

Submitted by LLC Staff on Tue, 01/12/2016 - 12:38
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Join us for the third session of the Networks and Leadership Webinar Series on "Unpacking Goal-Directed Networks" with Angel Saz-Carrenza (Director of ESADE Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics)

Monday February 8, 2016

9:00-10:00 am Pacific | 12:00 - 1:00 pm Eastern

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A Leadership Tribute to Kindness, and my Dad

Submitted by Deborah Meehan on Tue, 12/29/2015 - 10:58
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I have been thinking about kindness a lot this season, partly because it’s a season for thinking about such things and mostly because my dear dad who was 98 died peacefully in his sleep on December 18th.  My dad was the kindest man I know, unflinchingly so.  I described him to friends as a ‘salt of the earth’ kind of guy, and they all agreed.  I know my dad did not have an easy life.  At 98 he experienced the great depression, and great recession, and lost buddies in World War II as the commander of a ship (at the age of 24 which itself is shocking).  As a testament to his leadership he continued to get together annually with a group of guys from his ship for over 50 years while the group dwindled from 60 to two guys who were alive and could travel.  It would certainly have been the appropriate context for ‘command and control’ leadership and yet having been to more than a few of the tin can (the type of ship) reunions, I saw the deep affection among the men of all ranks and races and learned that my dad understood a lot about connected and adaptive leadership. I wish I had asked him more about that now and hope that I will continue to grow and be influenced by his leadership, and his kindness. 

As a tribute to my dad I would like to share one of my favorite poems about kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye:

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