Organizations within the community that want to develop leaders have a new, more coordinated option for doing so.
Leadership Bartholomew County and CivicLab have announced the creation of the Columbus Leadership Development System. It’s intended as a comprehensive approach for developing individual, organizational and collective leadership skills.
Previously, different leadership development programs existed separately and were loosely connected within the community, said Jack Hess, executive director of CivicLab, a program of the Community Education Coalition that advances the practice of civic collaboration.
For example, Leadership Bartholomew County, which offers an eight-month course to develop local leaders, and Youth Leadership Bartholomew County have provided training for adults and students. But, they have operated independently and with their own boards, said Abbie Bush, president of Leadership Bartholomew County, which has operated for 37 years.
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Now, the two programs and other leadership training programs will work within a system that’s based on the values, practices and collaborative principles known as “The Columbus Way.”
The idea is to provide a leadership training pathway for participants, said Amber Fischvogt, CivicLab’s director.
“Those that go through LBC, sometimes there wasn’t the natural ‘what’s next?’ This gives participants, no matter where they enter the system, an opportunity to continue,” Fischvogt said.
For example, an LBC graduate could then participate in the Board Bootcamp, offered by United Way of Bartholomew County with help from Cummins Inc., and then serve on a board of directors for a nonprofit, community organization or a local government board, Fischvogt said.
Programs will be organized in a way so their schedules allow an easy transition from one to another for participants, Hess said.
The system will offer training in the three traits of leadership, Hess said, which are: individual, organizational and collective.
Individual training will focus on building the capacity of residents to contribute to their community, be effective in their jobs and serve in leadership roles. Leadership Bartholomew County and Youth LBC are programs that will teach those skills, as will Discover Columbus, a one-day course that teaches individuals the story of Columbus and the values that make it unique.
Organizational training will focus on teaching individuals to lead organizations and build the capacity of organizations to meet their stated missions. Programs will focus on board governance, director development, community support and new employee integration, and using a common approach to address challenges.
Collective training teaches individuals to collaborate with others, and builds the capacity of organizations and the community to work toward common goals. The Stakeholder Engagement Process, Systems Building Lab and Equity Lab will be used to teach the collective leadership trait. The programs will teach community collaboration, how to think and lead systematically, and how to ensure equitable access to opportunities.
The Columbus Leadership Development System will launch in the fall, in time for the next LBC class, which starts Sept. 10.
Hess said workshops will be conducted over the summer to educate local organizations about the new leadership training system and its opportunities.
The idea for creating a comprehensive leadership training system started in two ways, with Leadership Bartholomew County re-examining how it operates, and Hess and Fischvogt seizing upon a different model in a research paper they read.
LBC’s board has looked for ways over the past three years to strengthen its training, Bush said. A self-assessment program offered through the United Way of Bartholomew County allowed the board to evaluate LBC’s strengths and opportunities for improvement, she added.
“At LBC, we wanted to do more, and there’s more to leadership than we offer in a single program,” Bush said.
Feedback from LBC participants about what their next leadership training opportunities were also helped the board understand that it needed to do more, Bush said.
CivicLab, which has existed for seven years, teaches civic collaboration locally and to about 250 communities across the nation. But, it wanted to be more proactive about building a leadership system locally, Hess said.
The three-pillar model (individual, organizational and collective) came from “Investing in Leadership,” published by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, he said.
“It’s more about being able to drive impact,” Hess said. “We felt it was time to get collective impact in training.”
CivicLab will lead the day-to-day operations of the Columbus Leadership Development System. Leadership Bartholomew County’s board will integrate into the LDS governance panel.
The governance panel will include 12 to 15 members, two of which will be current LBC board members, Hess said. Additional members will represent a mixture of the public, private and social sectors, he added.
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"The Columbus Way" is a set of standards considered important in life and in the Columbus community, and are based on the writings of industrialist and philanthropist J. Irwin Miller. They are:
1. Nothing is more expensive than mediocrity (the importance of high aspirations)
2. We want to be different by design (the value of good design)
3. We want to be not the cheapest, but they very best community of our size (best value)
4. The process is more important than the product (public-private partnerships, collaboration)
5. A good life is one lived in praiseworthy competition with one’s ancestors (forward-thinking)
6. The most important service to others is service to those who are not like yourself (service to others, welcoming community)
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To learn more about the Columbus Leadership Development System, send an email to [email protected].
[sc:pullout-text-end][sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”About the system” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
The Columbus Leadership Development System is a new, coordinated training process that teaches individual, organizational and collective leadership traits. It’s intended to provide a leadership advancement pathway for individuals as they gain training.
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