case study
Engaging Stakeholders
Through Collaborative Leadership Training
Client Portrait
The community leadership arm of a large Jewish non-profit, tasked with running leadership training programs that build relationships with rising leaders of governmental, non-profit, private sector, and educational organizations.
Client Challenge
Coalition building is key to the success of this non-profit’s mission. They needed to explore ways of keeping the alumni of their leadership training programs connected to the organization, as well as support the professional development of their own pool of young program directors.
Could a new approach to their leadership training program help foster relationships with program alumni and create meaningful connections among an ethnically, racially, and economically diverse group of stakeholders?
Collaborative Changemakers' Solution
Collaborative Changemakers created and facilitated the pilot of a new professional development program, Fellowship 2.0, for a select group of alumni and organizational staff.
The solution entailed
- collecting input from organizational leadership and reviewing existing training materials for the community-based leadership programs;
- using our framework for facilitating transformative change to create a curriculum that integrates theories on change leadership, organizational dynamics, and communication strategies with concrete skill development and experiential learning;
- drawing on examples from participants’ real life experience, as well as challenges faced by the host organization to explore strategies for managing conflict, enhancing team effectiveness, and communicating across differences;
- showcasing a range of methods for increasing self-awareness, self-management, and personal development;
- providing tools to improve communication, prioritize relationships, lead difficult conversations, support organizational learning, and navigate power differentials within coalitions; and
- evaluating the effectiveness of a training program approach as a way to engage program alumni with the organization.
Benefits & Impacts
Collaborative Changemakers' solution allowed this organization to clarify their approach to alumni engagement, while increasing key skills for the participants. Key effects were as follows:
- alumni participants deepened relationships with one another, creating a wider network for themselves and their respective organizations;
- both organizational staff and alumni participants increased their ability to lead collaborative change by understanding key theories around: conflict management, communication across diverse worldviews, and distinct sources of power within community coalitions;
- all participants acquired concrete skills that they have since applied in their various work contexts to improve communication, enhance their organization’s capacity for learning, and improve difficult work relationships; and
- the organization gained a deeper understanding of the topics and skills of greatest relevance to their highly diverse alumni population.