Leadership Learning Community [beta]

At Creating Space VII, the Evaluation Learning Circle hosted three sessions. Click on the links below for more information and resources.  read more »

Networks and communities of practice are often terms that are used interchangeably. Is there a difference?  read more »

Three LLC circles (Sustaining Networks/Alumni, Social Media and Leadership, and Health Leadership) convened for a conference call and web-based meeting using the WebEx platform to discuss creating and sustaining leadership networks. Twenty people explored the following questions:  read more »

• What forms of collaboration and network creation are we seeing in the leadership development arena?
• What tools or processes do we find strengthen leadership networks?
• What are the biggest challenges to sustaining network participation?

The power of social media for change is being talked about and leveraged all over the place.

• John Fontana's recent post on Network World highlights the value of "citizen" engagement, social media and web-based networking in the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans.
• Clay Shirky's recent book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations talks about how social media has removed or lessened many of the barriers to self-organizing (and in my thinking lessened the relevance of the nonprofit model so that many things can be accomplished with "adhocracies"). The book itself has a blog too, where readers are active commenters.
• The Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network (NTEN) and Beth Kanter are facilitating a wiki project to develop a social media curriculum specifically for nonprofits and change initiatives called Be the Media: The Social Media Empowerment Guide for Nonprofits.
• And, over at NetSquared - Remixing the Web for Social Change, there's a veritable cornucopia of stories, examples and how-to's regarding social media and geared for nonprofits and change initiatives.

  Indeed, social media is changing how change happens. So what does this mean for leadership development - how programs are structured and supported, how are people recruited and selected, what's included in curriculum and how do we evaluate? My general instinct is that the term "leader" will be thought of as a fixed definition of a singular individual less and less. And we will talk more and more about leadership as a context-specific process exercised both by people and groups of people at different points in time. What is nonprofit leadership for 2020? What do you think?

LLC recently funded two Community Seed Fund projects that will explore and assess different learning approaches about how to cultivate and support learning communities.  read more »