leadership development

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.

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:

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.

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.

Presenters: Deborah Meehan & Claire Reinelt

Topic: Strengthening the Collective Impact of Leadership Development

Date: Tuesday September 25, 2012, 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. PDT
 

The Arab Spring and the massive mobilization of people and resources in the 2008 elections have captured the imagination of leadership development programs impressed by network strategies with the potential to magnify the social impact of individuals and groups.   Many leadership programs are interested in how they might incorporate a network approach to catalyze action among their graduates.  LLC would like to share five lessons from conversations about program design approaches could be at odds with nurturing emergent networks:

• Leadership models introduced in many leadership programs are in conflict with the leadership behaviors that are needed for network leadership.
• Few existing leadership programs are helping participants learn to use social technologies or to gain skills with network strategies that would help to ensure the success of the network.
• The top down, expert driven design of many leadership programs undermines self-organizing and peer learning opportunities that would help nurture an emergent network.
• Leadership program graduates will not automatically connect as a network simply because they have graduated from the same leadership program: there has to be a compelling purpose and the impact of the network could be amplified by being open.
• Supporting a network requires an investment in platforms and network coordination.