Group items tagged

Really wonderful article on nonprofit leadership development and how the lack of it leads to much external executive hiring and high turnover in these roles

Blog by Penny Scott at Info Career Trends website, 5/4/2009 See excerpt on five year goals and being proactive in PD and career development. When I began my current position at the University of San Francisco in 2003, I knew that five years down the road I would need to apply for a promotion. This involved showing my professional development and service by creating a promotion binder that traced my career development - and seemed a daunting task to my new librarian's eyes, because I was worried that I wouldn't be able to find enough professional opportunities with which to fill my binder. I've found, though, that the promotion process is a model for the art of being proactive about career development, both in thought and in deed. Being proactive requires an active, open, seeking attitude, as well as reliable, high-quality action. This combination is very powerful, and can help you get beyond the constraints of time, funding, geography, or your current job description - giving you a career path of which to be proud."

great blog post by Scandinavian Posted by ingvihrannar | February 26, 2014 on obsolete practices including 13. One-Professional development-workshop-fits-all A school that just sends the entire staff to a workshop once a month where everyone get the same are obsolete. Professional development is usually top down instead of the ground up where everyone get what they want and need. This is because giving everyone (including students) what they need and want takes time & money. With things like Twitter, Pinterest, articles online, books, videos, co-operation & conversations employees can personalize their professional development. (Read about my article on Personalized Professional Development here)

Post by Katie Salen, July 26, 2012, Leveling Up project at Connected Learning Research Network. I like this emphasis on individual and collective gains in connected learning networks. And how connected learning is "value additive." Excerpts: "Further, because connected learning, as a model, advocates for experiences that offer low barriers to entry and information, social supports for learning, and diverse opportunities for the development of interest and expertise, it must also advocate for outcomes that are both individual and collective in nature. It is no longer enough to develop metrics and pathways for individual outcomes; we must also find ways to recognize outcomes produced by groups or communities and provide pathways for collective participation. Or so our hypothesis goes." As a community, the members of Ravelry produce knowledge and expertise, projects and products with academic, civic, and peer value. The welcoming nature of the site and the mere existence of the thousands of groups it hosts are mechanisms inviting participation and the development of shared knowledge. Conversely, the environment provides individuals with opportunities to acquire social, economic, and cultural capital, to learn domain-specific content and skills, and develop metacognitive skills and learning dispositions. Unlike models of learning that center solely on individual outcomes and competition for zero-sum resources and rewards, like those seen in most schools, Ravelry exemplifies how connected learning is value-additive, elevating individuals and collectives in an integrated way. High-functioning connected learning environments are characterized not only by engaged learning at an individual level, but by high quality content and standards and collective purpose that is shared by all participants.

As I was reviewing Nancy White's blogs, one included a link to this page on virtual leadership development. Knowing Nancy, I was confident that it would be good and it is. What I like about it is the emphasis on developing leadership skills within an organization for a bunch of people, not just a few named leaders at the top. Plus the integration of the online work with an onsite team that chooses and collaborates on a critical issue in the workplace--this is real world leadership to solve problems facing the organization or environment, etc.

Blog by Shana Montesol Johnson, Development Crossroads, on career development for international development professionals; offers self-diagnostics and blog

Blog by Matthew forti on Measuring Leadership Development, November 28, 2011 Neighborhood Builders by Bank of America builds high performing community-based nonprofits and gives them multiple three-day sessions of leadership training for the ED and emerging leader. Excerpts: "1. Develop a detailed theory of change. It isn't worth spending a dime on measurement until you've carefully defined which leaders you intend to target, what specific training and other programming they need, what they will gain, how those gains will be applied, and what should ultimately result." 2. Measure with mixed methods. 3. Continuously measure to improve impact. 4.Build rigor over time. Leadership programs don't need to build a full-scale measurement system right from the start. The best programs are intentional about whether and how to improve the rigor of their measurement over time, based partly on what they want to do with the results.

Great talk on the new management, putting employees first so they can do the best job they can for customers. This includes employees rating their managers up to their CEO's, being able to outsource the boring aspects of their work, make decisions about how to do better. Knowledge technology and the web has changed the competitive nature of business, and a new model of competition is developing and will develop. The web has democratized and made management structures obsolete.

Great talk on the new management, putting employees first so they can do the best job they can for customers. This includes employees rating their managers up to their CEO's, being able to outsource the boring aspects of their work, make decisions about how to do better. Knowledge technology and the web has changed the competitive nature of business, and a new model of competition is developing and will develop. The web has democratized and made management structures obsolete.

blog by Harold Jarche, March 2012 on importance of networking to seek, sense, and share. Excerpt: "Professionals immersed in communities of practice, or those continuously pushing their informal learning opportunities, may have a larger zone of proximal development (the gap between a person's current development level and the potential level of development). They are more open to learning and to expanding their knowledge. Active involvement in informal learning, particularly through web-based communities, is key to remaining professional and creative in any field."

A number of great quotes offered by Tom Peters on leading in the 21st century, September 2014. Tom Peters: Today's technology tools give you great opportunities to do 73 things at a time or to at least delude yourself that you are. I see managers who look like 12-year-olds with attention deficit disorder, running around from one thing to the next, constantly barraged with information, constantly chasing the next shiny thing. The only thing on earth that never lies to you is your calendar. That's why I'm a fanatic on the topic of time management. But when you use that term, people think, "Here's an adult with a brain. And he's teaching time management. Find something more important, please." But something more important doesn't exist. Tom Peters: Unless you were born with a very, very silver spoon, you're going to spend the majority of adult life at work. Why shouldn't this be a joyful experience or an energetic experience or a vivid experience? If you're a leader, your whole reason for living is to help human beings develop-to really develop people and make work a place that's energetic and exciting and a growth opportunity, whether you're running a Housekeeping Department or Google. I mean, this is not rocket science. It's not even a shadow of rocket science. You're in the people-development business. If you take a leadership job, you do people. Period. It's what you do. It's what you're paid to do. People, period. Should you have a great strategy? Yes, you should. How do you get a great strategy? By finding the world's greatest strategist, not by being the world's greatest strategist. You do people. Not my fault. You chose it. And if you don't get off on it, do the world a favor and get the hell out before dawn, preferably without a gilded parachute. But if you want the gilded parachute, it's worth it to get rid of you.

Volume XI, Number 4, Winter 2005/2006, Evaluation Exchange newsletter, Harvard Family Research Project, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

A series of slideshares that explores issues in leadership on both a national and international stage. According to the report, most leadership development programs are stagnant, and leadership development both on the organizational and academic levels are not keeping up with needs to develop competent, confident, and committed workers.

Interesting approach to conveying information that we should think about for our work. Great use of Slideshare to disseminate report findings.

article by Joseph Folkman, March 31, 2016, Forbes, on why IDP plans fail: because they are not driven by the individual. 

Another global initiative to help women become leaders, advocate for rights, democracy and peace as well as economic development. Interesting to us is the use of stories as the core of some trainings.

Story telling as an integral part of some of the training described to develop leadership skills.

blog by Martin Davies for Wiley.com on value of eLearning programs for professional membership groups

article by Bryant Nielson on how to develop new skills--online courses, study LinkedIn for certifications held by people in youer field. 

Bascuas on workers' desire for training and development

article by Jessica N. Abraham-Hogan on trends in mobile app development by Appery.io, a development platform. More mobility, speed, integration of tools, etc. 

nonprofit leadership development by Bridgespan, Executive Summary

Blog post by Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner on leadership groups within communities as act of service to lead group process. September 14, 2012 Need to do something like this in setting up Studio leadership roles that could be period specific, event specific, etc. See excerpt: The practice goes like this: everyone at a meeting belongs to a leadership group - and each group stewards one part of the learning process of the whole group. In this way leadership of the community meeting is distributed over the entire event. Leadership here is seen as an act of service, that is, not leadership in terms of telling others what to do, but helping the group develop itself as a learning partnership. We've seen these groups lead to some transformational turn-arounds in group dynamics and the learning potential. (Notwithstanding the times they flopped - which led us to learn a great deal!) We gave playful names to the groups in the spirit of making it a fun and inventive way of leading the process: agenda activists, community keepers, critical friends, social reporters, external messengers, value detectives. Over the years we've come to see that these groups can work well in lots of different contexts including group meetings, conferences, and long-term community development. Anywhere, that is, where there is an intention for collective learning.