We look forward to sharing and dissecting the process of this powerful tool with Leadership Development Practitioners in the Bay Area!
Bay Area Learning Circle: Star Power
July 13, 2017 | 12pm-5pm
Oakland, California
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To celebrate the publication of the how-to series on leadership and collective impact (bit.ly/LeadershipGuides2012), we are convening Bay Area and Boston funders, practitioners and evaluators to focus learning on how to invest in, design, implement and assess leadership development processes that build relationships, catalyze networks, and benefit communities.
Registration Links Below |
Over the last couple of weeks we have been hosting a series of meetings – both face-to-face and online – to engage leadership programs, funders and researchers with the Leadership for a New Era work, a collaborative research initiative focused on promoting a leadership model that is more inclusive, networked and collective. As we collectively discussed ideas and questions around Leadership and Race and Leadership and Networks with over 50 participants, a couple of trends and areas of interest came up. Here are some of the more interesting ideas we discussed:
At a recent Bay Area Learning Circle facilitated by Claire Reinelt, LLC’s Evaluation and Research Director, we convened a group of local LLC members to discuss some of the challenges and successes they have seen in their areas of work, in relationship to collective and networked leadership. As I listened closely to the participants, I was struck by the various struggles they face, particularly around defining and articulating ‘successes’, and evaluating the impact of their efforts – not only to respond to funders’ demands but also to internal demands.
Quite truthfully, we are struggling with an important tension. We have learned a lot in our 7 years of experience looking deeply into a number of programs and looking broadly across the leadership development field. What we have not yet done is synthesize the learning into a more definitive analysis of where we think the leadership development field needs to be heading and the implications for leadership development. We frequently get calls from folks asking for more direction, e.g. “What are the most important innovations we see?” The tension for us is one of how to put out a point of view based on what we are learning in a way the continues to invite learning and contributions from individuals and programs that have a different idea. We have very intentionally attempted to cultivate an environment in which there was a comfortable, safe and free marketplace of ideas. We still value a rigorous exchange that encourages all ideas and provides stronger leadership to the field. The costs of operating from old paradigms demand a shift in our thinking at a field level and we feel called to help. This is the juncture between learning and leadership and the “so what” of our learning. We want to provide leadership to the leadership field in a way that generates even deeper learning. We hope to engage you in the synthesis project and look forward to your input and involvement.