Leadership Development happens in many ways...training, on the job learning, mentoring and increasingly, through a personalized style of learning called executive or leadership coaching. Coaching is a tool that helps leaders develop and hone their ability to learn. It is about meta-learning or learning about our own ability to learn.
Learning refers to the concerted activity that increases the capacity and willingness of individuals, teams, organizations, and communities to acquire and productively apply new knowledge and skills. The ability to learn increases our capacity as individuals to grow and mature and to adapt successfully to change. Learning empowers individuals and organizations to make wise choices about the world around them, to solve problems, and to innovate. It is this kind of learning that is a sustainable, lifelong, renewable process for people, for organizations, and for the communities they serve.
Learning about our own learning requires the active collaboration of both the coach and the leader. The coach’s role is to listen deeply, to encourage, to inquire and to empower leaders to reach their fullest level of capability. The leader’s role is to bring all of their experience and knowledge to the relationship, to be open, and to be willing to make change through deliberate and planned action. Coaching is a powerful tool for people who want to take their leadership to another level...
The Community of the Future - Editors F. Hesselbein, M. Goldsmith, R. Beckhard, R. Schubert. The Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, 1998.
Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges - C. Otto Scharmer. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2009.
Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People - P. Senge, C.O. Scharmer, J. Jaworski, B.S.Flowers. Doubleday, 2004.
There is a plethora of leadership resources available on the web. These are a few of the sites that inspire and excite us as we explore new ideas to inform our own leadership.
http://www.ccl.org/leadership/index.aspx The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) offers what no one else can: an exclusive focus on leadership education and research and unparalleled expertise in solving the leadership challenges of individuals and organizations everywhere. We equip clients around the world with the skills and insight to achieve more than they thought possible through creative leadership.
http://www.solonline.org SoL, the Society for Organizational Learning, is an intentional learning community composed of organizations, individuals, and local SoL communities around the world. A not-for-profit, member-governed corporation, SoL is devoted to the interdependent development of people and their institutions in service of inspired performance and meaningful results. SoL serves as a space in which individuals and institutions can create together that which they cannot create alone.
http://www.artofhosting.org/home/ The Art of Hosting and Convening Conversations that matter is a powerful leadership practicum as well as a daily pattern and practice for many individuals, communities, families, businesses and organizations.
http://www.berkana.org/ The Berkana Institue works in partnership with a rich diversity of people around the world who strengthen their communities by working with the wisdom and wealth already present in their people, traditions and environment. As pioneers, we do not deny or flee from our global crisis. We respond by moving courageously into the future now, experimenting with many different solutions.
http://www.leadertoleader.org/ Established in 1990 as the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Nonprofit Management, the Leader to Leader Institute furthers its mission—to strengthen the leadership of the social sector—by providing social sector leaders with essential leadership wisdom, inspiration and resources to lead for innovation and to build vibrant social sector organizations.
