Case Study

Skill-Building
for Effective Change Leadership

Client Portrait

Program fellows, as current employees in diverse roles in a range of non-profit institutions, have vastly different levels of change leadership experience and decision making authority within their respective institutions. In addition, each organization has varying degrees of receptivity to greening efforts.

Client Challenge

Program fellows have vastly different levels of change leadership experience and decision making authority within their respective institutions. In addition, each organization has varying degrees of receptivity to greening efforts.

How could the program provide participants with the tools to access multiple levels of power and influence within their home organizations and how could they cultivate a shared language that would help fellows support one another and increase the success of the sustainability efforts they lead?

Collaborative Changemakers' Solution

In consultation with the fellowship staff, Rally Point developed and led experiential workshops to support fellows’ understanding of the change process and how to create effective coalitions of unlikely bedfellows in service of their greening initiatives.

The solution entailed

• a workshop included in the fellowship’s kickoff retreat that introduced research-based models for leading organizational change and helped identify key strategies to address challenges fellows would face;
• another workshop halfway through the 18-month fellowship, to evaluate the effectiveness of their change initiatives and strategize approaches to handling their most pressing challenges; and
• use of our framework as a touchstone throughout the fellowship process. It remains a touchstone in their ongoing leadership. The framework is both prescriptive (identifying what fellows need to learn) and descriptive (reflecting back what they experience). It refines their understanding of the change process and strengthens their ability to facilitate it.

Benefits & Impacts

With regard to our framework, the founding director of the fellowship said: “This is exactly what I am trying to teach my fellows but never had the names for it!”

Key effects were as follows:

• fellows gained a deeper understanding of the change process and the ability to address challenges in more precise and constructive ways;
• fellows prioritized relationships as key to better collaboration, allowing them to maintain commitment of coalition members and accelerate change; and
• fellows improved skills for working across difference and increased their ability to create unexpected and unlikely collaborations using communication techniques taught in the workshops.