leadership development

Creating Space 2015 has the potential to change the conversation about leadership development if we listen deeply to the voices and experiences of people on the ground doing heavy lifting change work in their schools, neighborhoods, and communities. There were several important questions that surfaced during Creating Space 2015:

• What is leadership (or who is a leader)?

• What is leadership development?

• What are the problems with these concepts and language?

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When Hurricane Sandy hit, a self organized network quickly emerged from pre-existing networks and new volunteers that resoundingly out performed traditional relief agencies.  Why and how was this network able to do this?  What does leadership look like in situations such as this that are complex and ever shifting? In our webinar we explored the nuts and bolts of self organizing, strategies for supporting such networks and how self organized strategies and leadership can be applied to your work on complex problems. However, some questions remained for participants. Below are the answers to your pending questions.

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Thursday November 12th, 2015 at 11:00am Pacific

Most leadership programs today train leaders to be effective in the world we currently live in - the same world that is not working for all the humanity and its ecological systems. This makes leaders to consciously or unconsciously reinforce established cultures and institutions even if they have best intentions and are truly concerned about the people and the planet. This traps leaders in always leading from the past rather than from the highest possibility for all stakeholders. Evolutionary Leadership addresses this leadership trap of our time by enabling leaders to be effective in redesigning the world.

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In the early 1990s, I had an inspiring mentor, Dr. Norm Brown, then-President of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Dr. Brown was a great believer in the value of nonprofit leadership development. He encouraged me to participate in a variety of such national programs. Dr. Brown also enthusiastically introduced me to the concept of place-based leadership development. His excitement was contagious: for 15 years now, I have been at the helm of LeaderSpring, an Oakland, California-based organization that explores the power and promise of leadership development within a place-based strategy.

Cultivating Nonprofit Leadership: A (Missed?) Philanthropic Opportunity, the new report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), invites further exploration into the impacts of place-based leadership development strategies. The growing interest in place-based initiatives complements what we’ve realized for some time – that place-based approaches offer effective strategies to boost impact, especially in addressing issues like poverty. The field also has accumulated a critical mass of experience and informed insight on such initiatives. LeaderSpring’s 18 years of combining a place-based strategy with a peer-based cohort leadership development model yields some core reflections:
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Over three years ago, LLC published an important thought piece, “A New Leadership Mindset.”  In the article, we point out that most of our thinking about leadership has focused almost exclusively on leadership as the behavior on an individual influencing others.  We believe that our culture of individualism has permeated our leadership thinking causing us to look for and elevate the role of individuals in the change process missing another important dimension of leadership, i.e. leadership as the process by which many people align their efforts to take collective action on behalf of a common purpose.  We don’t negate the role of individuals in the leadership process; in fact, we believe that even more is required of individuals to take successful action with others. read more »

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Presenter: Leslie Medine, Alissa Gentille and Nick Challed of On The Move

Topic: Raising Up the Next Generation of Public Sector Leaders

Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2013 | 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PDT

Hear from two alumni of On The Move’s leadership development program, about the organization’s innovative model to support emerging leaders within schools, public institutions, non-profit organizations and the health field. The webinar provides key principles, practices and strategies of implementation. Specifically, we explore the model’s approach of bringing together multi-generational communities of emerging and veteran leaders, who learn together to remove the barriers that prevent our collective success.

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Call for Papers: Volume 5, Issue 3

Abstracts of up to 250 words are being solicited for Volume 5, Issue 3 of The Foundation Review.  This issue will be a themed issue on Leadership Development. Foundations have supported nonprofit leadership development for many years through a variety of mechanisms, such as operated programs, general capacity development grants, targeted grants and sabbatical programs. Leadership programs may focus on general leadership development or be targeted to developing leaders within a specific content area, such as environmental leadership, arts leadership, etc.  More recently, programs have aimed to foster community leadership.

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