leadership

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 »

If our leadership work is wildly successful, who will be better off and how will we know?
 

Most of us working in the leadership field are committed to having some bold and worthwhile impact in the lives of others. Based on a sampling of leadership programs in the Leadership Learning Community (LLC) directory, if just 3 leadership programs were wildly successful, we would see children entering school ready to learn, improved social and economic well-being of the Latino community, and a reduction of AIDS in a large metro area. These are high stakes. There is a lot riding on the success of leadership programs. read more »

•      "Social Analytics Meet Community Engagement" 
        Author:  Allison Fine                                                                    
        Date:  July 26,2010
        Source:  A. Fine Blog
        URL:  http://bit.ly/cZ51Dy 

Allison Fine looks at how all the social media activity related to social causes translates into the actual on-the-ground activity necessary for social change.  She explores the question:  “What, if anything, does all of the clicking, blogging, and “friending” add up to in the end?”.  This topic, the one of how to both translate online exchanges into offline actions and measure the results (the connection between online activity and veritable social change), engenders a discussion, which, as Fine describes is in its “infancy.”   read more »

Unfortunately, the media missed an important and impressive story about leadership in Oakland. Last week a jury in Los Angeles delivered an involuntary manslaughter verdict in the trial of Johannes Mehserle, a BART police officer on trial for shooting Oscar Grant, a young, African American, unarmed passenger who died on New Year’s Day. Many media outlets reported rioting in Oakland in response to the verdict. First, let’s set the record straight. Between 5PM and 9PM over 1000 people gathered peacefully in different locations around the city. After dark, 5 storefront windows were broken and Footlocker was looted. (An unreported aside, community members placed themselves in front of the store to stop the looting.) No one was hurt, 83 people were arrested, and most were young, white anarchists who did not live in Oakland. Hardly a riot, thanks to the preparation and leadership of youth organizations.
  read more »

• Powerlessness Corrupts

       Author:  Rosabeth Moss Kanter         

        Date:  July / August 2010 edition

        Source:  Harvard Business Review

        URL:  http://hbr.org/2010/07/column-powerlessness-corrupts/ar/1

In the Harvard Business Review column, Powerlessness Corrupts, Rosabeth Kanter examines the negative impact on organizational effectiveness of strictly limiting the contributions of employees of an organization, concentrating power in the hands of a few.  By spreading the power, growing the "power pie," through deep and wide involvement, organizations can avoid the pitfalls of internal rivalries and intergroup conflicts that undermine their progress and succeed even in difficult economic times. read more »

What if we are capable of more, but our low expectations or limiting models of leadership hold us back? Over the past couple of years we have used an Investment Framework tool to understand the types of results or changes that leadership programs hope to achieve. We recently asked a group of funders to identify the results they were targeting (e.g. more financially sustainable organizations, an increased level of personal confidence) and place them in the matrix. Most of their answers fall under the following categories: individual and organization levels – the upper left hand corner of the matrix: 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 »

By Claire Reinelt

(Article originally posted on Stanford Social Innovation Review Opinion Blog)

Whether we seek to eliminate health disparities or prepare all children to enter school ready to learn, we do not have the leadership we need.  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: read more »

Last week I had a fascinating conversation with my seat mate on a flight from Chicago to San Francisco, Matt P.d. Brown, founder of a company called Big Boing and expert in play. He left me with a number of provocative ideas (I actually pulled out a notebook and pen). Here is my favorite: acknowledging effort increases student risk taking while focusing on achievement or personal qualities actually decreases risk taking behavior. I checked it out when I got home. Researchers Mueller and Dweck found that “children who were praised for their effort showed more interest in learning, demonstrated greater persistence and more enjoyment, attributed their failure to lack of effort (which they believed they could change), and performed well in subsequent achievement activities. Rewarding effort also encouraged them to work harder and to seek new challenges.” read more »