Leadership Learning Community

More information on the Leadership Learning Community can be found at www.leadershiplearning.org and leadershiplearning.pbwiki.com.

The Building Sustainable Networks learning laboratory aims to strengthen leadership development that transforms individuals and society by building and maintaining a learning community that creates vibrant networks of leaders, fosters collaboration and encourages sharing of ideas, resources, lessons learned and innovative practices.

Participants (skip to Notes)

Kim Ammann Howard, PhD

Director of Evaluation-Organizational Learning

BTW informing change

kahoward@btw.informingchange.com

Paul Davis

buzdavis@mac.com

Mercedes Martin (+ Michael Bell)

InPartnership Consulting, Inc,

willisen@earthlink.net

Maureen A. Sedonaen

President and CEO

Youth Leadership Institute

msedonaen@yli.org

Carol Woltring,

Executive Director

Center for Health Leadership and Practice

Public Health Institute

cwoltring@cfhl.org

Shelia H. Claverie

Community Health Councils, Inc.

LA Access to Health Coverage Initiative

sheliac@chc-inc.org

Heather McLeod Grant

Research Fellow, Duke University

& Consultant to Nonprofits

heather@mcleod-grant.com

Roger C. Mills, Ph.D. President

Health Realization Institute Inc.

President , Center for Sustainable Change

roger@healthrealization.com

Kristine Maltrud

Healthy Native Communities Fellowship

Shiprock, NM

kmalt@unm.edu

Yomi Noibi

Environmental Community Action, Inc.

Atlanta, GA

yomi@eco-act.org

Kathia Castro Laszlo, Ph.D.

kathia@syntonyquest.org

Janet Carter

Annie E. Casey Foundation Fellow

janetcart@gmail.com

Caroline D. Avery

President

The Durfee Foundation

carrie@durfee.org

Perviz Randeria

pervera@sbcglobal.net

Judy Chang

judy_p_chang@yahoo.com

Kenoli Oleari and Marc Tognotti

Neighborhood Assemblies Network

kenoli@sfnan.org

marc@sfnan.org

http://www.sfnan.org

http://www.horizonsofchange.com

Adande Washington

Siyavula Community Resources

adandew@earthlink.net

Martha Lee

Executive Director,

Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance

mlee@kelloggfellows.org

(leaving at 12 PM)

Uchenna Egwuonwu

ngocami@yahoo.com

www.ngocami.org

Wendy C. Horikoshi, MS

WendyChiyo@alamedanet.net

Lawrence Ellis

Founding Principal

Lawrence Ellis & Associates

lte@pathstochange.net

Perry Chen

Consultant

LeaderSpring Alumni Board Chair

pear-e@juno.com

Notes

Desired Outcomes

• Honor learning and interests of group while building on lessons learned.

• Provide a reflective space to hold diverse interests and make connections

• To explore tools and develop learning regarding building sustainable networks

• To serve as a crucible where ongoing dialogue and learning can emerge

Purpose (group additions in italics)

To strengthen (people) leadership development (servant, service leadership; community; look to wisdom traditions and claim it!) that transforms individuals and society (power; explicit purpose of transforming) by building a learning community that explores creating vibrant (inclusive) networks (sustainable networks - community) of leaders, fosters collaboration, and encourages sharing of ideas, resources, lessons learned, and innovative practices.

Roving Conversations Activity

Promising Practices: What exists or is emerging that helps create and sustain connection in leadership development programs?

• Tapping the initiative and self organizing ability of participants

• Having a role in planning the agenda

• Continuous peer learning

• Following the energy/emergent agenda

• Provide space and support (a container as opposed to an agenda)

• Don’t be too attached to outcomes: practice non-attachment

• Experiment with open space technology for alumni

• Include diverse cultural practices to open and connect people

• Other ways of bonding and knowing

• Resources get put in for convening sustainable alumni networks

• Inspirational projects to connect people→compelling for participation and to communicate to others

• Inviting, welcoming and egalitarian practices, consciously engaged to identifying barriers to participation

• Create empowered leadership support strategies

• Clearer definitions

• Have flexible funds to support ideas alumni come up with

• Large group self-organizing processes are emerging: Open Space, World Café, Futuresearch

• Clear the mind of existing practices

• Get the right people in the room: the whole system

• Invite irreverence: no sacred cows

• Make room for every voice to be heard and celebrate participation

• End U.S. dominance

• Diversity

• More women in leadership

• Try anything—nothing really works anyway!

• Failure is the best teacher

• More recognition and support for people to have conversations

• Defining people differently—you are not “done” with the program, but always in it and connected

• It takes decades

• Recognize people for who they are as a person, not just the role they occupy

• Team-based approach—recognize the team

• Good to have an ED leave for awhile (both for the organization and the individual)

• Look at models for collective, rotating leadership

• Select leadership teams, not just individuals—teams must be diverse

• Within leadership teams, expect change

• The depth and intensity of program experience can predict later alumni involvement

• People need to connect on a personal level first to build trust before you can access the professional support

• Personal connections are what sustains

Lessons and Linkages: What are we learning from leadership, community building, social movements and other arenas about what helps to build sustainable networks?

• Empirical learning—everyone has innate wisdom, but how to access it? “wisdom precedes content”

• Universal, foundational truths

• Do this before taking on work or building a program (asset-based psychology)

• Mindset is the missing link: can find resources and technical skills

• Book recommendations: Wisdom Within, Wisdom For Life, Prevention from the Inside Out

• Relationships and feeling help create sustainable networks

• Grassroots leadership program: importance of participatory process in evaluation and selection, involving previous fellows, asking ‘what do you want to learn?’: part of creating a ‘learning team’

• Metaphor of blind men and the elephant→perceiving pieces of the whole: how to integrate multiple disciplines, transcend boundaries and avoid getting trapped in our own models

• Stanford Center for Social Innovation/Social Innovation Review @ Stanford Business School: trying to bridge theory and practice

• Terminology: referring to the same thing—social network theory, social entrepreneurship, social change?

• There is a need for translators/interpreters to navigate the different terms

• Important to look at context and issues of trust to support sustainable networks

• All inclusive is hard work and the heart and guts

• Do you sometimes have to be less inclusive to be effective?

• Who decides what is effective?

• Is building sustainable networks the goal?

• Don’t minimize or discount resistance as blocked energy

• Being in the “groan zone” is OK

• How do we develop relationships of interdependence that foster social change?

• Don’t confuse ‘sustainable’ with ‘static’

• What connects the learning and taking action

• What about analyzing energy in networks and putting resources into supporting them as a leadership support strategy?

• The group always knows more than the individual

• If you want to do it your way, keep away from the funders

• Sometimes we hold on too long: something can serve its purpose and it’s done

• Commitment to institutions sometimes overshadows commitments to people (lifecycle is different)

• Leaders share responsibility: different situations call for different leadership styles

• You never know who might step up

• Every construct both reveals and obscures: be aware of your construct, be alert that other constructs might be present

• Don’t just include friends, neighbors and familiars

• Honor complexity

What If and Why Not?: How do we defy convention, throw off limitation, think outside/smash the box and get wildly creative about what is possible?

• Exchange limitation for new perspectives

• Get to the big stuff through the small stuff (get more ordinary with folks)

• Screw measurement

• Let us tell the foundations what’s what

• Turn the hierarchy upside down

• Don’t be so smart, be human

• Tell the white males to shut up

• If it’s not fun, it’s not worth it

• Let the community decide who gets the grant

• Stop thinking, start acting

• Follow the lead of the younger generation and turn things over to them

• We’re sorry for saying these things: NOT

• Stop thinking, start acting

• Get to basic human core—transcend models

• Wisdom of “and” not “or”

• Use better, organic metaphor (complexity, interdependence)

• Wisdom of starfish model v. spider (regenerating limbs as opposed to losing them: decentralized networks)

• No one in charge

• Get messy, out of the box

• Love as basic principle

• Honor all beings—including taking care of yourself

• Put women and children in charge: “who has time for world domination?”

• Radical empathy: help men access this, bring the feminine forward

• Fun is sustainable, grim is not; redefining accomplishment

• Stop being so busy: UNPLUG and TALK to SOMEONE!

• Stop defining success as growth/consumerism

• Act randomly

• Act mindfully

• Focus on unleashing energy

• Be authentic

• Pay attention to language, tone, body language, approach as we work together

• Be present

• Hold a space that welcomes creativity

• Don’t just do something, stand there!

• Identify things to remove, kill off, stop doing

• Breathe

• Stop, look, listen

• Value and honor story as transformation

• Be daring: don’t listen to fear

• See every interaction as an opportunity

• Grow herbs, daydream and walk

• Move toward that which is healing

• Heal (root is hal, for wholeness, becoming whole)

• Witness: sit in the fire with others

What we are learning at this point

• Leadership from an ‘energy’ perspective

• How do we do better, rather than more?

• More sustainable, or different?

• Slowing down, importance of reflection

• What are the criteria for success?

o Role of interdependence

• What can we learn from social network theory?

• Difference between skill and theory: how to translate into action

• Is there a ‘human’ dimension we can identify: importance of face-to-face v. technology

• Generational leadership questions (work of Casey, Center for Creative Leadership, Movement Strategy Center)

• Recognizing different needs and desires: not trying to be all things…

• Self-organizing, participation, co-design of purpose and agenda

• Don’t forget what can be learned from other fields and approaches

• If we can’t sustain something, does it need to be?

• Trust importance of getting people in the room

• Spirit of “what if and why not?”

• Sustainable network is not the same people, but about the nature of the relationship, dynamics of the system, process of change

• How do you institutionalize this kind of experience

• Network is not the people alone

Evaluation of Experience

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