People who are putting their time, energy and resources into supporting and cultivating leadership are for the most part doing the work to advance meaningful change and social justice. Our learning about this work is struggling to keep up with our change aspirations. It's not enough to know that participants believe they are better leaders without answering questions about the ways in which leadership development work is creating equity and contributing to concrete changes in the health, education, and wealth of all. This webinar will share findings from a collaborative research efforts between leadership Funders and Evaluators to understand what we can achieve through leadership investments, how we can know, and what we are learning about the kind of leadership we need to contribute to greater equity.

1. Webinar Series
July 12th, 2018

2. LLC anticipates the future and is a dynamic
catalyst capable of creating a link from today’s
issues in leadership development to tomorrow’s
solutions.
(Donna Stark, Vice President, The Annie E. Casey Foundation)
Network Research Application
Leadership Learning Community

3. LLC Collaborative Research Projects
The value of collective leadership networks is in their capacity
to solve problems quickly in an environment of uncertainty and complexity
(Watts, 2004)

4. Today’s Guests
LLC Webinar
Leadership and Large Scale Change: Are we
Setting our Sites High Enough?
Sally Leiderman, Claire Reinelt, Deborah Meehan

6. Why funders
invest in
leadership
development
How we do or
don’t know
what is
working
What we are
learning about
what works

8. 7
Changing motivations for leadership investments
Top Three Reasons:
• A belief that people are at
the heart of all change
• To diversify leadership in
response to demographic
changes
• To address a changing
environment creating new
leadership challenges
“ No one organization is going to be able to
advance the level and depth of change that
needs to happen on any issues that we deal
with.”
“People need to learn how to
work more collaboratively”

11. “People want to see short-term change so you have to track that and
make that visible. At the same time we cannot allow ourselves to fall
into a linear short-term view. The main problem of foundation
initiatives is that the timeframe is far too short.”
-- Foundation V.P. of Learning

12. Collect sufficient data to disaggregate by each racial/ethnic group of interest to
the issue (e.g. urban Native Americans and Native Americans on the
reservation)
● Collect sufficient data to disaggregate by areas of intersectionality
● Acknowledge the limitations and controversies of Census definitions -
where possible, ask people open-ended questions about identity. For
example, “How do you define yourself in terms of…”
● Check the algorithms of any “summarized data” or administrative data that
has consequences (e.g. reported incidences of interpersonal violence) and
lay out clearly the limitations of the data
● Frame findings in terms of systemic issues; i.e., if you report differential
rates of high school graduation by race/ethnicity or language spoken in the
home, also show availability of AP classes in the school

13. Source: https://participationdictionary.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/figure2.jpg

14. • What they were
trying to achieve
• How they went
about it
• How they assessed
their results

16. National Domestic Workers’ Alliance:
Strategy-Organizing-Leadership (SOL)
Evaluation
•
•
•
•
•
•

17. National Domestic Workers’ Alliance:
Movement and Policy Results
•
•
•

18. 17
Results-Based Leadership Development

19. Sample Assessment Tools Built into LAP
•
•

20. 19

21. • Partnership between the Levi-Strauss Foundation and Albuquerque, NM;
El Paso, TX; Knoxville, TN; Valdosta, GA
• From 1991-2005
• Four Explicit Goals:
○ Dismantle institutional policies and practices that promote racial
discrimination;
○ Ease tensions between minority and majority groups and reduce
inter-ethnic conflict;
○ Promote fair representation of diversity in the leadership of
community institutions; and
○ Stop overt or violent acts of racial or cultural prejudice.

22. • Major Elements:
○ Long-term (10+ years)
○ Formative evaluation - 1994-1998
○ Outcome evaluation continued through 2002, with look back at
accomplishments in 2005
○ Capacity building of evaluators
○ Acknowledgement of racism in evaluation practices and explicit efforts
to mitigate or address them
● Specific Challenges
○ Non linear results (resistance, retrenchment)
○ Multiple ideas about what constitutes success

23. …
The leadership environment is changing

24. •
•
•

25. Leader to Leadership

26. 25
Leader Model
• Leader of followers
• Setting vision and directing
• Control and planning
• Exercising power
• Leadership hierarchy
• Centralized decision making
• Personal claim or blame
• Individual responsibility
Leadership as a Process
• Self agency
• Aligning purpose and actions
• Experimentation/Innovation
• Transparent power sharing
• Relational shared leadership
• Collective input and process
• Group reflection/learning
• Group accountability
• Group creativity and wisdom
Collaborative leadership requires different behaviors

27. Elements of Programs Supporting Large Scale Results
26
Systems
Relationships
Self
• Understanding System
• Using Data
• Learning By Doing
• Focus on Real Problems
• Collaboration
• Boundary Crossing
• Building Networks
• Personal Agency
• Reflective & Adaptive

28. Critical Gaps and Opportunities
27

29. Edge Questions for Leadership Investments
28

30. Take our Poll
Poll

31. Get Involved
Register for the LLC
Newsletter, then contribute
your writing to our blog!
Blog info@LeadershipLearning.orgblog
Register LeadershipLearning.org

32. Support The Webinar Series
The suggested donation for this webinar is $30.
http://bit.ly/llcdonatenowDonate Today!
LLC THANKS YOU!