Leadership and Learning

This past week was the first ever Leadership Summit in Wichita, Kansas, sponsored by The Kansas Leadership Center.

It was an opportunity to bring over 200 Community Leadership Program staff and board members, from across the state, to learn about the programs of the Center and share learnings in adaptive challenges and leadership.

While training on most of the strategies and tools had been provided to program facilitators last spring, new case studies and learnings from the participants were illuminating and challenging.

Since my return, I am beginning work on improving recruitment for and researching evaluation methods for community leadership programs.

and we're off...

Starting up a program which has been in hiatus is not an easy thing to accomplish, but this is proving to be a lot of fun...and certainly seems to be something that is receiving a lot of positive attention from the universities being contacted. The Coro program is a leadership development program designed to train tomorrow’s leaders. It was created in San Francisco in 1942, by two businessmen who saw a need for community leaders to have broader experience. The name Coro is not an acronym; but a word invented by the founders, intending it to have its own meaning. Civic leaders brought Coro to Kansas City in 1975.

Coro currently offers programs in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Saint Louis, New York, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, in addition to the Kansas City Summer Internship. Coro is a private nonprofit and non-partisan, for- credit, educational program offered in partnership with The Center for Leadership at Park University’s Hauptmann School for Public Affairs. Kansas City’s program is a “mini-version” of the Coro Fellows program which has received national recognition, and is named by the Princeton Review as one of America’s top ten internships. The Princeton Review notes: “Whiz kids have the Odyssey of the Mind competition and aspiring public servants have the Coro Fellows Program.”

The purpose of the internship is to develop future community leaders through exposure to community issues, leadership development, civic leaders and organizations. The program is demanding, full time, and requires an interest in public affairs. Each intern completes 5 weeks of classroom skill instruction and is assigned week-long individual internships in business, government, labor, media, and nonprofit organizations.

Coro is funded by corporations, foundations, labor unions, the Coro board of directors, alumni, alumni parents, selection day judges and civic organizations. No government funds or United Way money is involved.

The twelve interns are each paid a stipend of $1,000 for the ten week program and Park University awards 3 hours academic credit for completing the program, including course assignments.

New Beginnings

Greetings!

This has been an interesting period of transition from serving as Executive Director at The Civic Leadership Training Council (CLTC) to Facilitator (pending) for the Leadership 2000 program there and starting as Co-Director of the Coro Program at The Center for Leadership at Park University.

I've been fortunate to have had strong contracts with several area organizations during the past several months. This has provided a consistent focus for me and has given me a sense of continuity in a community I love, while helping me expand my involvement in a new exciting initiative on the other side of the state line, in Missouri.

By STAFF REPORTS
Kansas City Kansan
Posted Aug 25, 2009 @ 09:41 AM
Kansas City, Kan. —

The governing body of Leadership 2000, The Civic Leadership Training Council, is announcing the resignation of Don Wise, former Executive Director of the program. Don has accepted a position with Park University’s Center for Leadership and will be working with former Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, The Honorable Kay Barnes at that university’s Hauptmann School for Public Affairs. The Leadership 2000 program will continue the nationally respected leadership development program for which it is known and the efforts will be directed by the Board of Directors, as always.
Work has begun on the search for a contract facilitator for the 10 month program. Applications are now being accepted for Class XXIV and the forms may be found on the Leadership Web site at http://www.leadershipwyco.org/ Now in its 24th year, Leadership 2000 is a civic leadership training program designed to identify, motivate and develop new and emerging community leaders for shaping our community’s future.

Congratulations to Don Wise on accepting this new challenge.

I love Kansas City, Kansas.

I'm beginning to see

The questions are finally being asked, options identified and ownership claimed.

It's a relief and a difficult thing to experience as I discover small pieces being parceled out, learning second-hand of actions taken, but feeling the weight of these decisions being lifted from me.

It's heartening to finally have company in this process, even though it doesn't necessarily seem that everyone understands we're on the same team.

I'm looking forward now...

Focus on the Opportunities

It has been a summer of risk, loss and opportunity.

While the economy continues to challenge most (if not all) of us, I am moving among a variety of people who are testing new waters, pushing personal boundaries and struggling with a renewed (or new) sense of ownership of the circumstances in which they find themselves.

I have been, in turn, heartened by the actions of these people and saddened by the losses each of us has faced.

Reya Mellicker, in her blog The Gold Puppy, is moving through the grief brought on by the loss of her boxer/pitbull Jake. She stumbles publicly, unashamed and in real-time, offering herself as an example for each of us to recognize, discover and remember.

The Center for Leadership at Park University is moving steadily forward to identify resources and partners to redefine the distribution/delivery of content to better prepare leaders for an unscripted future. They are moving through change, aware of the funding challenges and associated risk, but undeterred by temporary funding shortfalls...planning and adapting their goals to continue moving forward incrementally.

The Civic Leadership Training Council board is struggling to gain a sense of control and ownership of a program which is in transition, longstanding but fragile...susceptible to the vagaries of an uneven economy with new volunteer leadership, unfamiliar with the operational/fiscal details for a new program year with only 1/3 of a new class of leadership candidates and, as yet, (from my perspective) not asking the right questions.

I think the key to success for each of us is to remember there are no easy answers to the challenges we face. We each struggle, individually and collectively, to fight the fear and design solutions to move us forward, as individuals and organizations.

Each of us needs to assume a level of responsibility and risk as we progress toward our respective goals.

Off Line

Hello,

I am on hiatus through the summer and will keep you apprised regarding my return. Thank you.

Engage

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
..Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924), 28th U.S. President