Leadership Beyond Boundaries

In April, Bill Burke (our fantastic LBB intern from High Point University) completed the initial evaluation of LBB’s Early Leadership Toolkit (ELT).  It has been exciting for our team to comb through this data and explore how the Toolkit and the ELT Train the Trainer program has been beneficial for participants and what we can do to improve both.

The feedback received was overwhelmingly positive; some highlights include:

• 100% of those interviewed said that the ELT Train the Trainer Program was helpful
• 70% of those interviewed said the ELT content has helped them and their organization gain a deeper understanding of leadership development
• Over 90% of those interviewed felt that the ELT could be used for a variety of audiences and purposes
• 100% would recommend the Early Leadership Toolkit to others

Interviewees were excited about how flexible the different activities in the Toolkit were, which allowed them to be easily adapted to different audiences.  Some of the ways interviewees have used the Toolkit with include:

• Leadership seminars with college students
• Working with business school students
• Creating a week long summer leadership camp for middle school students
• Sports teams
• Working with non-profit organizations
• Teen health workshops
• Training volunteers at a YMCA
• Board meetings
• Consulting

Interviewees valued the in-depth conversations that the Toolkit modules and its tools enabled their participants to have.  Additionally, interviewees commented on how the Toolkit and the Train the Trainer program had helped them in their own personal development – to take other people’s considerations more seriously and to become a better listener.

Interviewees also had some great suggestions for us to improve the user experience, which we are currently working to implement.  These included hosting webinars about how other users are implementing the Toolkit content and refresher courses on how to facilitate certain modules.

If you are interested in learning more about the Toolkit and how youth leadership development practitioners around the world are using it, please contact Sarah Miller at millers@ccl.org.

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Addis Ababa, 19 April 2012: The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), ranked among the world’s Top 10 providers of leadership education by the Financial Times and BusinessWeek, will launch its first Africa office with an event on May 10, 2012 at the Radisson Blue Hotel Addis Ababa. This event will coincide with the 22nd World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa, where strengthening Africa’s leadership will be a central theme.

Located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, home to both the African Union and the United Nations, CCL’s new office enjoys a strategic position for advancing the understanding, practice and development of leadership across the continent.

“CCL has been in Africa for many years, allowing us to grasp the special nature of this region’s cultures and aspirations,” says Rudi Plettinx, Vice President and Managing Director, CCL Africa, Europe and the Middle East (EMEA). “However, this is CCL’s first base in Africa, a major step to better serving leaders throughout the region. This office will help us meet the rising demand for African leadership development and we look forward to helping Africa embrace its leadership potential.”

Unprecedented economic development and the continent’s increasing geo-political importance intensify demand for effective leadership in Africa. Other challenges, such as youth unemployment, resource price volatility and food insecurity add to the need for strong leadership capable of translating Africa’s growth into greater opportunities for future generations.

“CCL is helping to redefine leader and leadership by focusing on a systems approach that begins with the individual, moves to group and organization, and ultimately focuses on leading society,” says Steadman Harrison III, CCL’s Africa Regional Director. “Leadership development can be used as a lever to address the most important challenges of our generation. It is fitting that we are more accessible to the leaders who will impact these pressing issues in the season ahead.”

Africa is widely acknowledged as “the continent of the future.” The WEF describes it as ‘poised for a growth spurt’ and predicts that seven out of the ten fastest growing economies over the next five years will in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“We believe CCL’s Addis Ababa office will play a pivotal role in helping Africans hone their leadership skills at every level of society,” adds Plettinx. “It will act as a base for CCL’s Leadership Beyond Boundaries (LBB) work: an initiative launched in 2006 to democratize leadership development and unlock human potential in an affordable and accessible way.” CCL has been involved in projects in 16 African countries, including Liberia, Nigeria and Ethiopia, working together with, amongst others, the Marrow Foundation, which funded leadership development for street children to reform education in Africa.

“Many leadership development programs currently offered in Africa are expensive and available almost exclusively to professional elites,” adds Harrison. “The Center for Creative Leadership has a different approach in Africa that is a good fit for social sector organizations and NGOs, as well as organizations, such as UNDP, Peace Corps and World Learning.”

More information at: http://www.ccl.org/africa/

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Bill Burke, a junior from High Point University, has been intering with the Leadership Beyond Boundaries team for the past semester.  Conducting interviews with our Early Leadership Toolkit Train the Trainer program alumni, Bill has learned a lot about leadership development and evaluation.  Check out the story that High Point University wrote about his experience here at CCL.

And let us know if you’re doing something awesome with the toolkit and would like to share your story!

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Mark your calendars!  The Leadership Beyond Boundaries team has an upcoming Early Leadership Toolkit Train the Trainer Program.  The dates are as follows:

Greensboro, NC, USA:  April 25, 26, 27 – The program will run for 2.5 days.  For more information on the Train the Trainer Program, download the flier here.

This program is being run in conjunction with the Guilford Coalition for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention, which is funded by Cone Health Foundation.

For information on how to register, please contact Joan Bello at belloj@ccl.org or 336.286.4438.

To read about some of our past Train the Trainer programs and how the Early Leadership Toolkit is being used, check out these blog posts:

• It does take a village:  The Early Leadership Toolkit Progam in Singapore
• Early Leadership Training at Loyola Jesuit College: Abuja, Nigeria
• Drawing New Futures with Street Kids in Addis
• Moments of Connection – Early Leadership Toolkit Train the Trainer Program
• Youth Leadership Development for Reforms – A case study from Kenya
• Early Leadership Toolkit – Notes from London
• Unlocking India’s Demographic Dividend with the Early Leadership Toolkit
• Youth Leadership in Kenya
• Early Leadership Toolkit Pilot Program
• Early Leadership Toolkit Updates – Notes from Greensboro

We hope to see you in Greensboro.  And, as a bonus,  April is a beautiful month in North Carolina!

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What do a retired Xerox sales manager, former restaurant owner, and an executive coach all have in common?  A desire to empower Singapore youth to expand their leadership abilities and global perspective.

Leadership Beyond Boundaries just wrapped up our first Early Leadership Toolkit Train the Trainer Program in Southeast Asia and the energy and excitement about figuring out new ways to engage students and build community in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia was palpable.

With a diverse group of youth leadership development practitioners – from adventure-based experiential education to service learning and social innovation programs – we spent two and a half days exploring effective ways to facilitate with young people and make leadership development relevant and engaging.

Youth Leadership Development Panel Discussion

We were fortunate to be able to convene a panel to discuss major challenges facing youth leadership development practitioners in the region.  On the panel were representatives from the following organizations:  Pour un Sourire d’Enfant from Cambodia, the YMCA of Singapore,  Youreka  and QUEST Alliance  from India, Voice of the Children from Malaysia, and the Gender and Development Initiative  from Myanmar.

Working with a range of young people, from the very affluent to the severely impoverished, these organizations still struggle with many of the same challenges in working with young people to reach their potential and focus on similar content areas.

Some of the themes that emerged were:

-Leading Self:   From the slums in Cambodia to well-off private schools in India, a key need expressed was the importance of helping young people build self-confidence and take ownership of their lives. Like other educational systems from around the world, schools across the region are seen as not doing enough to help young people develop competence in their own capabilities, internal resources, and problem solving abilities.  Some of this is an outcome of schools’ focus on rote memorization.  Practitioners also cited community challenges; for example, PSE faces serious challenges as a result of the destitute environments their students grow up in.  However, staff there have realized that when students learn key strategies for leading their own lives, their parents often follow suit, creating healthier and more economically stable environments for everyone.  For Nikita of QUEST Alliance, teaching a young woman tailoring skills means nothing if she does not also have the confidence and initiative to pursue business opportunities for herself.  Clearly, self-leadership is the foundation for other forms of leadership to occur.

-Leading with Others:  Practitioners also spoke of a need for young people to learn leadership skills that will be useful in working with others in local and global economies.  Victor, of the YMCA of Singapore, spoke of the need for young people to learn effective group leadership skills so as they become the ‘leaders of tomorrow,’ they will have the capacity to and recognition of the importance of volunteering and serving on social sector boards.  Without effective group leadership skills like communication, feedback, and listening, these young people will not get where they want to go and where society needs them to go.  Work-related leadership skills are also important to teach because they are what youth leadership program funders – parents, companies, foundations – want to see taught and securing adequate funding is always a challenge for youth programs.  Finally, they are important to teach because they equip young people with the skills necessary to work for personal or social change.

-Leading Change:  One of the major themes of the training program and the panel was the need to involve young people in service learning projects as a way to develop leadership skills and gain empathy.  STEP, a new NGO based in Singapore, is creating programs to serve this need in tandem with PSE of Cambodia.  Sway, of GDI rom Myanmar, spoke of the need for young women to gain self confidence and life leadership skills in order to become agents for change within their local and national communities.  Noting that women in her country are often relegated to the home, she is hopeful that through leadership training and education of men and women, positive social change for women will occur.  Odie Abdul, from Voice of the Children, related that her organization is seeing more and more young people anxious to volunteer and make a difference in their society, particularly on behalf of their peers.  She suggested that parents and grandparents should volunteer with their children to encourage this trend and highlight the importance of giving back.

It does take a village…

One of the most salient themes arising from this Early Leadership Toolkit Train the Trainer program was the importance of working intergenerationally.  With an age range of 22 to 74, our participants were one of the most diverse groups to attend one of our programs.  It is clear from this diversity and from the organizations present, that youth leadership development needs support from across different sectors of society.  Whether it is PSE’s new community development initiative aimed at helping young students succeed or a retired accountant working to make service learning leadership programs possible, effective youth leadership development should involve more than just youth serving organizations and their staff.

Part of doing this work effectively, however, is ensuring that the adults involved understand what is needed to work with young people in positive ways.  This conversation arose repeatedly in our two and a half days and prompted lively discussions.  Ultimately, we concluded, the most important aspect of working with youth is respect.  And the second most important thing is to trust the process.  When you develop a relationship with a young person based out of respect for their capabilities and your own ability to work with young people, the results are often amazing and inspiring.

-Sarah Miller

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By Teresa Nwachukwu

Gidan Mangoro (literarily meaning 'home of mangoes') is a sprawling village on the outskirts of the Federal Capital City, Abuja, Nigeria. This village however hosts one of the best high schools in Nigeria. The sight of the serene campus of the Loyola Jesuit College (LJC), Gidan Mangoro,   is enough to calm the most frayed nerves.  The opportunity to spend a day with the student leaders was one we couldn't pass up.

Prefects are elected after a keen contest, complete with debates and final screening by the faculty. The School offers an intensive well rounded education that prepares the students to meet any Challenges in life. Leadership training is one of LJC's top priorities, so it was a perfect fit when we approached the principal to request he send staff to the training program we were organizing on youth leadership development using CCL’s Early Leadership Development Toolkit.  He not only sent 2, but suggested we put up a leadership workshop for the prefects who were to be elected in a short while.

Obviously committed to training excellent students, he was excited at the contents of the toolkit and was well involved in the process of preparing for the workshop, making pertinent input, giving us insight to the peculiar challenges of student leaders; a process that helped us fashion out a 'tailor-made' workshop for his students.

Before the workshop, the 32 student leaders were given a pre workshop exercise of setting individual and group goals for the year. These goals were pinned up on the board as they arrived for the training.

Student leaders putting up their goals for the Leadership Year 2011-2012

The workshop itself was an amazing experience. Students were taken through the leadership concepts of Direction, Alignment and Commitment and lead to explore their identity through the Social Identity map.

It was an excitingly intensive but fun day as we worked on modules like Values and Actions, Leadership 101, Communication, Challenges and Team work.  The toolkit exposed them to concepts of leadership previously unknown, built their self confidence as leaders, started them thinking on creative ways of achieving cooperation from other students, building and leading an outstanding team, communicating effectively and creating opportunities out of challenges. They got a chance to use the DAC model to converse about how they could deal with the challenges they expected in the days ahead.

Using fun and creative activities, these exceptional young men and women were encouraged to engage in meaningful conversations. By incorporating their special school lingo,  in-house jokes, rap music, spirited small group discussions, outdoor activities, both facilitators and participants spent a fun-filled day learning new things. One of the students commented 'I like the way practical and exciting activities were used to make us understand these concepts.

To the post-workshop evaluation question, 'What did you learn today that you anticipate using in your role as a prefect?' one student wrote ' I learnt that effective communication is important in the leadership process and I plan to communicate well as a prefect of LJC to ensure that there is order and organization, rather than confusion'. Another student commented 'this program changed my mind set about leadership a bit. It has shown me the essence of some of the things I previously disregarded. I believe it has helped me prepare adequately for the task ahead'.

At the end of the workshop, the school principal again came to motivate the students. He told them he was looking forward to working with leaders who could think independently, suggest innovative ideas and be willing to work at them. He enjoined them to run with these new ideas and concepts and pledged to give them all the support they needed as emerging leaders.

Facilitators were drawn from a pool of 14 new trainers who participated in a training program 3 weeks previously. Already experienced trainers, they acknowledged the unique and special concepts in the Early/Youth Leadership Toolkit.

We have all grown as leaders, simply from sharing these strategies with young people. We look forward to more extensive engagement of more young people in these conversations. Hopefully as we contribute towards building a large pool of committed leaders, our country will attain the great height it is capable of attaining. We are grateful to CCL for being a part of that dream. We thank the principal of LJC for the wonderful opportunity to work with such an amazing bunch of students. We were the better for it.  We hope to bring this training to more students at LJC and other high schools in Abuja in the coming year.

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Mark your calendars!  The Leadership Beyond Boundaries team has an upcoming Early Leadership Toolkit Train the Trainer Program.  The dates are as follows:

Singapore:  February 27, 28, and 29 - The program will run for 2.5 days.  For more information on the Train the Trainer Program, download the flier here.

For information on how to register, please contact Joan Bello at belloj@ccl.org or 336.286.4438.

This Train the Trainer Program will be co-sponsored by STEP/GKHi.  Gawad Kalinga Hope Initiative (GKHi) is an International Charity Organization, committed to poverty eradication. GKHi also serves as a regional hub for partnership, innovation, education and research for GK.

To read about some of our past Train the Trainer programs and how the Early Leadership Toolkit is being used, check out these blog posts:

• Drawing New Futures with Street Kids in Addis
• Moments of Connection – Early Leadership Toolkit Train the Trainer Program
• Youth Leadership Development for Reforms – A case study from Kenya
• Early Leadership Toolkit – Notes from London
• Unlocking India’s Demographic Dividend with the Early Leadership Toolkit
• Youth Leadership in Kenya
• Early Leadership Toolkit Pilot Program
• Early Leadership Toolkit Updates – Notes from Greensboro

We hope to see you in Singapore!

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Cheri Baker spent a few months with us in Ethiopia as a LBB Summer Fellow. She writes this account of her experience.

Within a few short weeks of arrival to beautiful Ethiopia, I was already comfortable exploring the vast labyrinths of the city, walking through clouds of diesel fumes, weaving around puddles of donkey urine, and greeting everyone I passed in Amharic. In one of the most impoverished countries in the world (Ethiopia currently ranks 174 out of 183 on UNDP’s Human Development Index), I was surprised to see how bustling and metropolitan Addis Ababa was. As the seat of the African Union and recognized as the most peaceful country in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia was certainly an ideal place to work on African leadership development.

I excitedly arrived in mid-September 2011 to mountainous, rainy Addis Ababa as the Center for Creative Leadership’s first Summer Fellow. I settled in quickly and was ready to learn as much as possible. While serving as a Health/Water and Sanitation Peace Corps Volunteer in Northern Ghana, I created and implemented the first girls’ development workshop for junior high level girls in the region. With that learning experience under my belt, I quickly jumped at the offer to help facilitate the first youth development workshop in Ethiopia. Teaming up with two local NGOs who support street youth, Retrak and Onesimus, we spent three full days facilitating the personal growth of about 50 children from both these organizations,. The combination of lessons about social identity, goal-setting, and how they view the world combined with experiential activities to test how they function as a team member and lead in a multitude of situations was an incredible learning experience for each individual involved. On the last day, the children left the program with heartwarming smiles, speaking of their newfound goals, what they hoped to accomplish in their lives, and with the realization that they can do accomplish what they put their minds to. The tremendous and motivating learning that occurred, and will thus continue to occur, will leave an indelible and lasting impact on their country.

CCL’s Leadership Beyond Initiative also received a significant grant from USAID’s World Learning Project. The main goal of the year-long grant is to develop the leadership capacity of the healthcare workforce in Gambella region, the most impoverished region of Ethiopia. As part of the grant, CCL would create an innovative “Team-In-A-Box” toolkit, an easily transportable toolkit of experiential learning activities that could be facilitated deep in the African Bush.  Using my critical thinking skills and academic research background in qualitative and quantitative research honed as a Master of Arts candidate at University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies; Habtamu, Sisay, and I worked together to run a series of focus groups to determine the applicability of a multitude of leadership activities. We facilitated the activities for groups of very cooperative university student volunteers, working to sort out which introductory stories, activities, and meanings were the strongest and most evocative for them. Using open discussion forums and active listening, techniques and activities were chosen as those that would be facilitated to reach every person in the healthcare workforce in Gambella. Once the activities were chosen for inclusion, I set out to create a clearly laid-out 35-page manual that would be translated into local languages to reach as many individuals as possible. Instead of using Western values to implement leadership development programs, CCL works tirelessly to develop African leaders using African values. Specifically by contextualizing these leadership development tools, CCL worked to find the best way to communicate with Ethiopian within their own cultural paradigm.

A second goal of the grant from USAID is to empower young women and girls. Gambella has the second highest HIV/AIDS rate in the country, with Addis Ababa ranking at the top of that list. By empowering young girls, raising their awareness, and building their self-esteem, we hope to increase their positive self-image and help them make healthier decisions. In using a cascade approach to reach as many young women and girls in the region as possible, an inspired and imaginative book to encourage dynamic and momentous meetings between young girls and their mentors was designed.

My time as the Center for Creative Leadership’s first Summer Fellow was a great learning experience, both personally and professionally. I had the chance to hone my field research skills, work in a professional international development environment, write proposals, and facilitate workshops. In addition, I had the incredible chance to play soccer with children on multiple occasions, hike up beautiful mountains, eat raw beef (an Ethiopian delicacy), get carried across a raging river that popped up after a heavy rainstorm, and sleep on cow skin in a local chief’s mud hut for a couple nights.

The Center for Creative Leadership’s Leadership Beyond Boundaries Initiative is indeed making significant strides to “making leadership development affordable accessible and scalable for people everywhere.” Their innovative, groundbreaking work continues to make an impact on every community with whom they work, in every corner of the globe. By collaborating with myriad stakeholders and partners, CCL is the acting force behind the integration of development workers all striving towards the same end goal: to improve the quality of life for everyone. Their lasting impact will be felt for generations to come.

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Over the past year, CCL has engaged with Grameen Foundation, CoCoon and Continuum to address a critical need – the development of talent in microfinance organizations. As microfinance organizations have emerged as a solution to addressing poverty, the sector has boomed in countries like India. With growth has come the awareness of the lack of organizational capacity especially at the middle manager ranks. These managers represent the backbone of microfinance institutions (MFIs) and are the point where microfinance’s lofty mission must be translated into a sustainable and scalable operation. The middle managers are often poorly equipped to deal with this challenge. They are often young and have modest educational backgrounds. The pace of change and the complexity of their work requires high level of leadership skills. In addressing this challenge, we decided that what may be the most important capability we could develop in these managers was not a set of technical skills but mindfulness. This would enable them to pause in the face of unfamiliar challenges and. Rather than feel helpless or react automatically, they might consider their options including reaching out to others for alternate perspectives.

Working with CoCoon, a HR consultancy in Bangalore, we used the design thinking process of rapid prototyping to experiment with a series of interventions that coupled classroom learning with a mobile app, developmental assignments and peer mentoring, workbooks and a simulation. Over the course of three months we moved the group of participants from Ujjivan (a microfinance organization recently named as India’s best MFI) through a sequenced leadership experience that flowed across the dimensions of leading self, leading others, and leading the organization. We used a process that challenged them to learn, apply the learning, and teach others what they’d learned.

When we wrapped up the program in December, we had the participants interview each-other about their learning and the impact. Here’s some of what we heard:

“I feel enriched.  Usually we have training programs for only 2-3 days, but this one covered over 3 months and allowed me to learn concepts and then go back and try them in the field.”

“I could definitely a change in my personality.  My team is looking differently at me, but it’s too early to say. They’ve said I’m giving more feedback. And I have encouraged my team to use these techniques. I’ve helped them to see how they can better present changes to the teams in the field.”

“Most of what I’ve learned here is very new to me because I’m a new leader. Earlier, I would assume that I knew the situation, but now I spend time with my people to listen and really try to understand the situation.”

“When someone didn’t accomplish the work in the past and I got angry and shouted at them. Now, I call them and explain why it’s important and listen to them.”

“At every meeting we start with a new idea. Initially people start with “sir, it’s not possible”. But I challenged them to have a broader mindset.”

“Our way of thinking is now totally different.  Instead of focusing on what went wrong, we approach things differently. We ask people rather than tell.”

Overall, participants indicated that they felt more confident and now approach challenges in a more collaborative way. This has eased the pressure for the managers to have the answers from the get-go and bear the sole burden for results. Their teams also increasingly operate with a “growth mindset” – focusing on how they can solve problems versus the reasons why the problem is hard to solve.   The outcomes from the 3-month program also included impact on financial metrics. This is heartening as it encourages organizations to invest in development.

As we look to the future and scaling out the program, we will focus on out how to reduce training costs. Our next round of experimentation will explore using a mobile app as a primary delivery platform. The growing use of smart phones in developing countries allows rich media transfer as well as portable and bite-sized learning options.

Microfinance has pioneered a scalable path to financial inclusion. Through this work with microfinance managers, we hope we might also develop a way to scale leadership development to those who haven’t been traditionally served.

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As we head into the New Year, one thing that is certain is that things will continue to change in unexpected ways. Learning agility is a key competence for us all, especially in many developing countries where the pace of change is especially dramatic. Lyndon Rego wrote about how we can increase our ability to learn in Businessworld, an Indian business magazine:

http://businessworld.in/businessworld/businessworld/content/Expanding-Learning-Curve.html

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