THE
JOURNAL
OF KANSAS CIVIC LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
VOLUME 1 - ISSUE 2 - FALL 2009
WELCOME TO THE JOURNAL, a conversation catalyst in Kansas (and perhaps beyond). Where is the future intersection between religion and civic leadership? Why do Kansas kids leave rural areas and what can civic leadership do about it? What role does creativity play in leadership? How can social media be leveraged for civic leadership? How can you experiment with civic leadership? What are the core principles and competencies of civic leadership? Conversations around those questions and others are here, in The Journal. Just one of many different initiatives of the Kansas Leadership Center and only in its second issue, The Journal is already making a place in the hearts and minds of KLC program participants, stakeholders and other Kansans engaged in civic life. It is not an academic publication, but it does contain serious work. It is an effort to ignite conversation and fan the flames of learning about civic leadership. Since publication of the first issue, I have heard comments about The Journal such as: “Wow!” “What a great resource for Kansans.” “Inspiring and resourceful, this thing is chock full of information!” Well, The Journal is what it is because many individuals, all wrestling with civic leadership development, submitted their ideas for us all to think about, discuss, beat up, turn inside out, etc. So, just like in the exercise of civic leadership, The Journal’s authors (which include a politician, artist, college professor, community practitioner, non-profit executive director and others) have started something. Where the ideas end and what you do with them are unknown. Leadership is an improvisatory art. On behalf of the Kansas Leadership Center, co-editors Carlota Ponds, Marty Linsky, and all the contributors to this issue of The Journal, I wish you well on your civic leadership journey. There is quite a conversation happening about civic leadership in Kansas. I am glad you are a part of it, and I hope The Journal provides you inspiration to be a conversation catalyst yourself – for your family, community and state – around the idea of civic leadership for healthier Kansas communities.
Ed O’Malley President and CEO Kansas Leadership Center
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FEATURES
VOLUME 1 - ISSUE 2 - FALL 2009
CONTENTS Overheard While Learning About Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
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KLC Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
LEADERSHIP 2.0: Leveraging Social Technologies in Pursuit of Civic Engagement
BY CHRIS GREEN
Physician Access in Greeley County: A Leadership Case Study .10
BY THOMAS STANLEY
BY CHRIS GREEN
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Leadership on Boards: Understanding the Life Cycle of Directors . . . . . . . .15 BY LANCE WOODBURY
RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP IN CIVIC LIFE: AN OPPORTUNITY OR A PROBLEM?
Report on a Low-Risk Experiment: Putting KLC Theory into Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .24
BY CHERYL L. RUDE
BY KEVIN BOMHOFF & TRISHA PEASTER
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Community Tool Kit . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27 YOUTH OUTMIGRATION IN WESTERN KANSAS An Opportunity to Facilitate Intervention and Energize Others BY BRENT GOERTZEN AND NICHOLE M. BRYANT
BY CHRISTINA HOLT, JERRY SCHULTZ AND STEVE FAWCETT
Leadership Through the Lens of Evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . .38 BY SCOTT WITUK
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KLC Launches Coaching Initiative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 BY JULIA FABRIS MCBRIDE
KANSAS COUNTY HEALTH RANKINGS: A Yardstick for Communities, Roadmap for Civic Leadership
Reflections of a First Time KLC Program Participant . . . . . . . . .52
BY GIANFRANCO PEZZINO
BY MARK E. MCCORMICK
Reflections Using Classroom Teachings in Real-World Settings . . . . . . . . . . . .54
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BY JOHN NALBANDIAN
KLC AND MALCOLM GLADWELL MATCH-UP Assessing the Four Competencies Through the Lens of Popular Literature
Creative Thought and Leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 BY CINDY ZIMMERMAN
BY TONY BROWN
Tim Andersen, Photographer . . . . .71 BY CARLOTA PONDS
From Theory to Action: The KLC Curricular Underpinning . . . . . . . . . .72 BY ED O’MALLEY
KLC Program Offerings . . . . . . . . . . .74 1.
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JOURNAL
The Journal is published periodically by the Kansas Leadership Center, which is funded through an initial 10-year, $30 million investment from the Kansas Health Foundation. With a mission to foster civic leadership for healthier Kansas communities, KLC is unique in the field of leadership development due to its focus on civic leadership, statewide scope and robust funding source. KLC strives to deliver world-class leadership development experiences for Kansans by Kansans. Its initiatives are designed to inspire, educate and connect people from all areas of civic life, including business, government and nonprofit organizations. KLC MISSION
To foster civic leadership for healthier Kansas communities KLC VISION
To be the center of excellence for civic leadership development
PERMISSIONS
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER BOARD OF DIRECTORS Karen Humphreys, Chair Ed O’Malley, President/CEO Greg Musil, Vice Chair
Abstracting is permitted with credit to the source. For other reprint, copying or reproduction permission, contact Carlota Ponds at cponds@kansasleadershipcenter.org
Consuelo Sandoval David Lindstrom Bill Snyder Laura Kelly Carolyn Kennett Reggie Robinson
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Annual subscription is free. Sign up to receive The Journal at www.kansasleadershipcenter.org CO-EDITORS
Carlota Ponds
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER STAFF Ed O’Malley, President/CEO Matt Jordan, Director of Programs David Chrislip, Senior Fellow Carlota Ponds, Program Associate Shaun Rojas, Program Associate Darla Crowell, Office Manager Thomas Stanley, Program Associate Shelly Kirkpatrick, Bookkeeper Jamie Crouse, Executive Assistant Sue Dondlinger, Project Manager Julia Fabris McBride, Project Manager Ron Alexander, Project Manager Tim Steffensmeier, Project Manager
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER
300 North Main, Suite 100 Wichita, Kansas 67202 316.712.4950 www.kansasleadershipcenter.org PHOTOGRAPHY
Tim Andersen is a commercial, portrait, and landscape photographer living and working in northeast Kansas. SUBMISSIONS
Submission deadline for the next issue of The Journal is January 15, 2010. Contact Carlota Ponds at cponds@kansasleadershipcenter.org for more information.
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER FACULTY
Marty Linsky David Chrislip Kristin von Donop Peter Cohen Lynette Lacy
©2009 Kansas Leadership Center
Marty Linsky
Kevin Bomhoff Ron Alexander Ed O’Malley Seth Bate
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OVERHEARD While Learning About Leadership
The Journal is committed to the idea of capturing the many facets of leadership development in Kansas and by Kansans, its art, research, wisdom (lessons learned the hard way), application, creativity...and humor. The following is a glimpse into an ongoing e-mail dialogue between two friends who have been co-travelers scaling the mountains and plumbing the valleys of their separate, but occasionally converging, leadership journeys. David Adkins is a former Kansas state senator who participated in a 2008 KLC program, The Art and Practice of Civic Leadership Development. David is now executive director for the Council for State Governments based in Lexington, KY. Ed O’Malley is the President and CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center, also a former Kansas state representative. Remember, this is the “humor” part, so take a deep cleansing breath, place tongue firmly in cheek, now read (and be careful not to bite your tongue laughing!): DAVID ADKINS Eduardo...I need some quick help with resources that I can use to actually "teach" adaptive leadership. Can you give me an idea of what articles or books you would tell me to get that will allow me to bone up on the concept and share it with others? I need a good summary. Help me, Lord Vader. ED O'MALLEY Well Luke, we spent two years trying to figure out how to actually teach adaptive
leadership, traveled all around the country visiting with folks, but, sure, I bet all you really need is an article or two. Only kidding. Look at version 1.0 of the KLC Field Guide for facilitators on our website. Also, read chapter five of The Adaptive State published by Demos (www.demos.co.uk). — Lord Vader DAVID ADKINS Thanks for all of this. Very helpful...I'll have my assistant read it and tell me what it means. And you should be flattered that I asked for some articles. Most people assume you were just making things up as you went along. Nice to know there is some scholarship behind that little movement you are building. I love my defaults and technical fixes are so much easier. Do you realize how collaboration actually empowers people to second guess your authority? It is a threat and should be stopped.
Love you and all that you are about.You cannot know how much I hate the fact that my journey right now doesn't allow me to share the one you are on but I have hope that before long we will be hiking the same path again. You can only guess how much my staff thinks I’m crazy when I tell them we should spend some time in diagnosis before jumping to solutions. I ask for "feedback in real time" during staff meetings and they just stare. And don't even get me started on the whole balcony deal. You have ruined me for interactions with real people. Hope you are happy. Your humble servant and leadership seeker, — DJA ED O'MALLEY Your last reply is priceless. How about we print that in the next issue of The Journal?
I am serious. Any ideas on how we might start "hiking the same path again?" I miss you man! — Ted DAVID ADKINS You've got to fill that Journal with something. Just list me as a Kansan in Exile.
And make sure you don't print anything that would prevent me from being Governor...doing things that will prevent me from being Governor is my job. Thanks Eduardo.
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LEADERSHIP 2.0 Leveraging Social Technologies in Pursuit of Civic Engagement by Thomas Stanley
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No longer do we have this esoteric, online database of information. Instead, we have an infinite resource that begs us for contributions. When you shop for a product, you don’t simply read the advertisement and buy; you read the reviews, the comments, the opinions, and more importantly the complaints. After the purchase, it is now customary to give feedback on the product and rate your buying experience.
A GUY WALKS INTO A BAR... I walked into the dark, noisy bar with hints of smoke in the air and the song of clinking beer bottles in concert with the scurrying waitresses and bartenders. I sat at the back of the bar, near the window away from the smoke, and placed my order while waiting for people to show up. It occurred to me after taking a sip of the stout beer that hosting a discussion on social technologies for civic purposes was the last thing that onlookers would assume I was doing.
The internet is now a continual conversation of sorts. With the explosion of blogs, walls, comments, discussion boards, and Wikis, we now have an internet by the people for the people; it has left the tech savvy world and entered the household desktop. When you hear the term “social media,” it is simply referring to the interactive elements of the internet in which users primarily generate the content.
This happened because I tapped into the resources of Twitter by hosting this tweet-up (twitter + meet-up = tweet-up). Now, for those unfamiliar with Twitter or its lingo, Twitter is a social network in which users typically post 140-character updates (roughly two sentences) formally called ‘tweets.’ People use Twitter for a variety purposes, such as marketing, professional networking, and micro-blogging. And for a tweet-up, local users gather to build relationships beyond the brief daily updates.
Social media spans ages and cohorts. In fact, Facebook claims over 250 million users with the fastest-growing demographic being over 35 years old. The notion that social networking is an aimless pastime for youth is long gone.
So one evening after work, I hosted a discussion at a local pub in downtown Wichita to explore the uses of social technologies for civic purposes. After a couple of minutes, some familiar folks began trickling in and interestingly, a couple of them had forwarded my invite to other people who decided to join us. During the next 10 to 15 minutes, people packed the tables we’d pushed together as we casually shared our ideas. Of the 11 people who joined the conversation, half of them I had never met nor connected with on Twitter. This happens quite often on the internet. Post a question, and answers seem to crawl out of the woodwork. Throw out an opinion, and hear other ones. Learn something new, and then share your insights. What used to take hours now takes seconds in the realm of social media technologies. This concept is not new, but it is certainly more efficient than combing your Rolodex.
But with so much publicity about Twitter and Facebook, people may want to resist simply going with the flow. Although Twitter and Facebook are the current favorites, social media is here to stay. Economist and author of “Socialnomics,” Erik Qualman, proclaimed that “Social media isn’t a fad; it is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.” As with the cell phone, social media is an upgrade in communicative technologies. These advancements beg the question: why are social technologies important for civic life? I’LL BE IN THE BATHROOM Many times when I try to recruit people for Facebook or Twitter, I get the same response: “Why would anyone care if I’m tying my shoes or going to the bathroom?” But the purposes of social media are so much deeper than updates on mundane parts of your life. It is about having a presence in a world that is exponentially larger than the physical space you inhabit. This could mean being connected to what is going on outside of your house, outside your neighborhood,
THE NEW INTERNET In the years of eBay, Amazon, and Overstock, among the endless online shopping sites, people used the internet as an information source. Today, we are in a new era of the internet often referred to as Web 2.0.
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(cont.)
At the tweet-up, Jason Dilts, a local community activist, shared a story that demonstrates local social networking in action. His employer, ROKICT, an organization that supports the music arts in Wichita, had contested the proposed city ordinance banning outdoor music after 11 p.m. On the night of the vote, he sent out a Twitter update encouraging area fans of outdoor music to make their voices heard at the City Council meeting. So many people spoke in opposition to the proposed ordinance that the City Council unanimously voted it down.
outside your city, or even outside your state. It’s about expanding who you talk to and to whom you are listening. Building bonds on social media does not replace the person-to-person interaction; it expands your web of connection. Therefore, we must understand that social media is simply a tool for engaging in civic life. GETTING YOUR FEET WET Before we dive into a pool, we sometimes dip our toes in the water to check the temperature. In a similar way, some people use social media to test the waters before diving into civic life. Andy Huckaba, an elected official in Kansas City, searches his Twitter feed for opinions and complaints about local civic issues. He gave one example about the Lenexa Midnight Bike Ride, in which planners changed this year’s location of the route, and consequently caused a stir on Twitter. As a result of the comments, organizers won’t make the same mistake next year. This illustrates, in a simple way, how valuable a tool social media can be in diagnosing civic issues.
UNCONVENTIONAL ENGAGEMENT When addressing daunting problems, it is imperative to engage stakeholders from all areas of civic life. Consider how much work it would take to plan a focus group, a town hall meeting, or an advisory group without the social technology now readily available. You would have to reserve a meeting area. Buy coffee and snacks. Send out invitations and logistical information. Work the phones, and possibly come up with an appropriate stipend. To plan my tweet-up, I sent out a few tweets a couple days before with a reminder the day of the event. Now to be fair, I did buy the beer. Still, I managed to get input from 11 people from 11 different backgrounds with minimal effort. What I learned was certainly worth the $20 tab.
Social media not only entails checking the temperature, but also raising and lowering the heat in the water. Thousands of nonprofits and charities are using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and even creating interactive social websites to raise the heat on social issues.
In discussing the current uses of social media with some peers, they felt strongly that 90% of social media was pointless for civic life. I agree that reading updates from old friends and colleagues, looking at pictures of much aged and certainly heavier classmates from years back, and filling out obscure quizzes and questionnaires do not, by themselves, change or improve civic culture. However, I shared how social media could ultimately be used for the greater good; examples of Facebook groups that have hundreds of thousands of members that challenge people to stand up for their beliefs and raise awareness on heavy issues. I told them about a church in Michigan that developed thecommon.org, an interactive website for people to post their needs (like school clothes or household maintenance) and on that same website have a spot for people to agree to meet those needs or post items to donate.
Charity Water, a non-profit organization that provides clean water to Third World countries, uses Twitter to plan world-wide fundraising events on the same day. People on Twitter volunteer to host ‘twestivals’ or Twitter-festivals, and groups from more than 200 cities around the world gather and raise money to provide clean water in Africa. Last year alone, this event raised over $250,000. Social media fosters awareness and builds momentum on issues people deeply value. This includes major life-changing issues as well as smaller, local matters.
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With success stories of how social media has been used for good, I couldn’t help but imagine what Kansas would look like if we took advantage of social media’s potential. I wonder if we would have an entirely new definition of collaboration or a much deeper understanding of community.
JOIN THE CONVERSATION We invite you to join us as we discover how to integrate social media into civic life. Please continue the conversation online at our Kansas Leadership Center Facebook Group. Discussion boards are set up for some of the articles in this journal, including this one. Share your opinion, make your criticisms, or just read what everybody else has to say. Also, if you are on Twitter or decide to join, don’t forget to follow us at twitter.com/theklc to receive instant updates on the happenings at the Kansas Leadership Center. You might also begin thinking of ways to integrate social media into your personal or professional leadership activities. We’d love for you to share those stories with us as well…in a series of updates using 140 characters or less(!)
The truth is we may not know what will happen unless we allow ourselves to experiment with our current options. I believe that engaging in social media for civic purposes is an act of leadership and is a means of making progress on difficult issues. If we don’t do what is uncomfortable, then we won’t see the kind of change we envision. Whether you are a skeptic or simply apathetic, I would challenge you to participate in an experiment that could help transform Kansas civic culture.
THOMAS STANLEY is a Program Associate with the Kansas Leadership Center and a 2008 graduate of Wichita State University. He is currently exploring the various purposes of social media for the advancement of civic leadership in Kansas.
Are you on Facebook? A discussion board for this article has been created at the Kansas Leadership Center Facebook Group page. Share your thoughts and engage with fellow readers.
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KLC CASE STUDIES: Stories of Actual Civic Challenges in Kansas
by Chris Green
Universities have used the case-study method of learning for years in the teaching of subjects ranging from public policy to business. Because the exercise of learning in a case study depends so much on student participation, it's a much more demanding and engaging exercise than a traditional lecture.
Even at a very young age, I think I naturally understood the incredible power that stories have to captivate the human mind. When I think back to my earliest childhood memories, they tend to be from when I listened in bed while my mother read to me tales of far-off, imaginary lands. As I grew older, it wasn't unusual for me to become so wrapped up in a narrative that I'd stay up half the night reading, using a flashlight under the covers to keep from giving away that I was cheating on my assigned bedtime. It's this love for stories and storytelling that probably led me into a career of writing, including the decade I've spent reporting for Kansas newspapers.
The initial KLC cases focus, of course, on the activity of civic leadership. They serve as a platform for discussing and understanding the core competencies and distinguishing technical problems from the adaptive challenges. The first case that I worked on deals with the situation facing then-Lawrence Mayor David Dunfield in 2003, when his community began discussing whether to institute stricter regulations on indoor public smoking. Another looks at the challenges Dr. Robert Moser faced in helping maintain the stability of the health system in his small, western Kansas community after he became his county's only practicing physician. The final case looks at the leadership decisions behind the creation of the Kansas Health Policy Authority, a state agency created through a new law by the Kansas Legislature passed in 2005, and its efforts to help lead the state's debate on health reform in recent years.
Yet while it's more typical to think of the power that stories have to entertain and inform us, we should not forget that they also represent a profound way to help people learn. For that reason, it has been very exciting for me to research and write three case studies on civic challenges in Kansas during the past six months for the Kansas Leadership Center. At its essence, a case is simply a compelling story, told in a narrative style, that is designed to prompt deep, meaningful discussions among the students who read and engage in a dialogue about the material. A trained facilitator leads the discussion in a classroom-type setting, helping guide students in their analysis of the situation. While the case text provides a framework for discussion, it's the responsibility of students being taught the case to arrive at the conclusions about what it means.
Because the people and events described in the cases are real, it has taken considerable research to reproduce the decision-making processes used by individuals in each situation. In order to draft the cases, I have spent several hundred hours doing background research, conducting interviews with sources, writing, consulting with KLC staff and faculty and revising the case material for use in KLC programs.
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Editor’s Note: This is a new “experiment” in KLC product delivery. We are developing uniquely Kansan cases based on the Harvard Case Study method. This method relates stories of civic leadership challenges told in parts as they unfold (A, B, C, etc.) followed by an epilogue showing the resolution as it really happened. The introduction below is submitted by the author of the initial cases. Following Chris Green’s introduction, we will unveil the first two parts of a case. We encourage you to “unpack and dissect” the case using the test questions at its conclusion. The Epilogue will run in the Spring 2010 issue of the Journal. However if you have a burning interest in reading it sooner…it will be available via the KLC website after December 1st.
One of the rewards from utilizing cases that explore real-life situations is that the difficulties of engaging in the activity of leadership are made so readily apparent. Those discussing the case can gain a better understanding of what it was like to deal with the competing pressures facing a protagonist in the story. It provides a way for students of civic leadership to talk about how this individual could diagnose the situation, manage self, facilitate intervention and energize others in a concrete sense. To help encourage robust discussion, cases are generally structured to end with "cliffhangers," which are dramatic points in the story that leave students to consider the unresolved leadership dilemma facing the protagonist in a case. Although each of the three cases I have written include epilogues that tell how the story actually ended, those summaries generally are not made available to participants until after the discussion ends. In fact, the endings of the stories themselves may often not be altogether satisfying for some. In real-life situations, the main characters in stories tend to not succeed wholly and fully in accomplishing their leadership goals. In some cases, they may meet with little or no success at all. But it's this lack of storybook endings that can make cases so thought-provoking and allow for those of us who engage with them to experience meaningful learning from analyzing the situation. CHRIS GREEN is a Topeka-based writer, editor and researcher. He has spent much of the past decade covering local, state and national politics and government for Kansas newspapers.
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I am extremely grateful for the cooperation of those individuals who agreed to be interviewed for the first three case studies I prepared for KLC. I know that it is sometimes not easy to revisit or recollect situations that were difficult, uncomfortable or trying, even ones that happened years ago. I admire their courage to tell their own stories so that they can be utilized for the purpose of helping others learn about civic leadership. The first three cases will be merely a starting point for researching and telling the stories of civic leadership challenges being faced across the state of Kansas in the form of case studies. In the coming months, KLC will be working to develop a second round of case studies that will expand the catalog of material available for discussion. The process of selecting subjects for future case studies is beginning and any input from the readers of this publication would be welcome in terms of helping identify compelling situations where the demands of building healthier Kansas communities has called for the exercise of civic leadership.
In the final calculation, I see these real-life stories as being a lens through which those studying the case do more than just critique the decisions of others. As with any captivating story, those reading and discussing the case study essentially become a part of the story themselves. As a result, they also can gain a better understanding of themselves and how they might utilize the core competencies in their own lives and better engage in the activity of civic leadership.
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PHYSICIAN ACCESS IN GREELEY COUNTY A Leadership Case Study
black slacks with dark, parted hair that swoops down across his forehead. "Is this what I'm going to do for the rest of my life? I hadn't made up my mind at that point in time."
GREELEY COUNTY HEALTH SERVICES: A DOCTOR'S HOMECOMING, PART A
When Dr. Robert Moser decided to return to his western Kansas hometown of Tribune to start practicing medicine in 1988, he wasn't expecting to stay for good. As he completed his residency in Salina, Moser knew he'd be starting his career as a family physician in a small Kansas community. After all, such a move was essentially an obligation since he had accepted financial aid from the state that required him to work as a primary care doctor in a medically underserved area of the state.
One reason for concern was that Moser also knew that he didn't want to wind up being the only physician working in a small town and shouldering the constant burden that it would carry. "The two scariest words in western Kansas medicine are 'solo practice,'" Moser said. Rural communities all across Kansas and the nation have struggled to recruit and keep physicians for decades. But the challenges for a community as small and remote as Tribune can prove particularly daunting. With a population of about 700, the town is located about 16 miles from Colorado on the High Plains. It is the county seat of Greeley County, which has just one other incorporated city and a population of about 1,300 overall. Fewer people live there than in any other county in the state of Kansas.
Although both he and his wife, Dalene, had grown up in Tribune, Moser didn't know that he wanted to move back until after he made a chance visit to the town’s 18-bed community hospital. Back in Tribune for the Thanksgiving Day holiday, Moser took a tour of Greeley County Hospital. The building was newer and more up-to-date than some of the medical centers he'd seen in the other locales he was considering. He also liked that the town had another physician, Dr. Willard Werner, who had worked in the community for more than 30 years and was well-regarded.
Covered by expansive, flat fields of crops and prairie dotted by brush and, occasionally, jackrabbits, Greeley County is so sparsely populated that it's considered a "frontier county." That is a designation reserved for especially isolated rural areas with fewer than six people per square mile. The closest major city to Tribune is Denver, Colorado, and it is nearly four hours away by car. Wichita, the largest city in Kansas, is more than five hours away. The nearest Wal-Mart, an oft-cited measuring stick of rural isolation, sits more than 50 miles away.
Moser began working on his wife to convince her to move back to Tribune. That was something he was able to persuade her to do after the couple learned they were expecting their first child. But even though he was returning home, Moser wasn't planning on setting down permanent roots in Tribune just yet. "I figured after four years, I'd have my scholarship paid off and I'd look at what other opportunities were out there," said the doctor, fit-looking in a red polo and
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dictations so the medical charts would be "very neat" and "professional looking." To make those purchases, however, Moser had to take on $50,000 in debt.
Yet despite its size, Tribune's wide main street, Broadway Avenue, brimmed with life and the town continued to provide many of the services and amenities necessary for its close-knit residents to live there. In addition to the county-owned hospital, it could boast a bank, grocery store, pharmacy, convenience store and its own school system, as well as several restaurants and churches. One reason Greeley County could support its own hospital was that the neighboring county to its north, the similarly sized Wallace County, had a long-serving family practice physician but lacked its own hospital. As a result, patients from Wallace County regularly traveled south to receive hospital care.
He also found his preferred business practices in conflict with the traditions Werner had grown used to over the years. As the senior doctor, Werner owned the equipment -- from the scales to the ophthalmoscopes -- that would be used by each doctor, although the county owned the actual medical buildings. In addition, for physicians in Werner's generation, it had been traditional for the younger doctor to work directly under the employ of the senior doctor. When the older physician decided to move on or retire, the other provider would often purchase the equipment and take over the practice.
As he prepared to move to Tribune, Moser learned from Werner that the older doctor would like to slow down and reduce his workload. Werner wanted to focus on the portions of the practice he enjoyed most, delivering babies and working with the older patients in the long-term care home. But Moser said he believed that the addition of another provider in the county would significantly increase interest in the practice's services.
However, Moser told Werner that he "didn't go to medical school to work for another doctor." The two instead reached an understanding that they would share the practice's expenses based on the number of patients and procedures they were performing. The younger practitioner also decided that he couldn't afford to purchase Werner's medical equipment directly from him, in large part because of the debt he had already taken on updating the office. Moser thought it would be better for the hospital's long-term stability if the non-profit's board of directors purchased and owned the equipment instead.
Upon his arrival in July 1988, Dr. Moser saw a need for updating the practice’s operations. Werner, who was in his 60s at the time, kept difficult-to-read, abbreviated, handwritten clinical records on small cards that were kept in folders. The older doctor also used the office computer as his personal computer. Moser sought to modernize the office by purchasing a new charting system, a dictaphone for both doctors to use and a new front-office computing system. Moser also hired his wife to transcribe the doctors'
That proposal, however, eventually became a source of friction between the two men. The hospital board wanted to have Werner's equipment appraised before buying it. The instruments, some of which
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(cont.)
were 30 years old, were assessed at about half the older physician's asking price. Moser said he believes Werner expected him to purchase the inventory at the higher value and was upset that it wasn't going to happen.
Section A Discussion Questions: How did the challenges facing Dr. Moser transform between when he arrived in Tribune during July 1988 and when Dr. Werner decided to leave in 1990? How might he respond to the challenge of being the only physician in Tribune? What leadership competencies might he utilize in this situation?
"I think that was kind of the rift that developed between he and I, a little bit," Moser said. "I was the new guy, and I was doing things differently." Werner later became concerned about whether Moser was paying his fair share of the expenses, although an out-of-state company hired by Moser to asses the partnership's billing practices found the contract to be fair.
GREELEY COUNTY HEALTH SERVICES: FILLING THE VOID, PART B
The news of Dr. Werner's impending departure from Greeley County came as a shock to Dr. Moser. The announcement was particularly unexpected considering the two physicians had spent several hours together the night before and not a word about Werner's decision to move had been mentioned. The word going around town was Werner had tried to tell Moser before the newspaper article was published but hadn't been able to reach him at his house.
At one point, Moser was asked whether he would cover a couple of weekends for the sole doctor working in Atwood, another small town located about 120 miles north of Tribune in Rawlins County. But Moser was delivering 60 babies a year at that point and feared he would not be able to care for his patients if he took on the assignment. When Werner was approached with the same proposition, he agreed to help out.
Werner said he left his "wonderful" practice of 36-and-a-half years because he wanted to slow down. He also had the opportunity to obtain a salaried job close to where his youngest daughter planned to farm with her husband and sons. Werner said he felt Moser was being left in a very good situation. That's because good cooperation between the county commission, hospital board and the community at-large was helping health care flourish in Greeley County. Werner noted that the hospital had several nurses who had worked in harmony throughout his tenure. While hospitals in surrounding counties had suffered turnover, Greeley County's system had seen continuous coverage over the years, which Werner said influenced patients to transfer their records there and increased the size of the practice.
While Moser's business relationship with Werner was strained at times over their first two years working together, they cooperated well when it came to caring for patients. Yet as Moser prepared to celebrate Christmas Eve in 1990 -- after having been up most of the night delivering a baby with Werner's help -- he was in for a jolt. When he arrived at his parents' house for supper that afternoon, his wife tossed a copy of the Greeley County Republican, the town's weekly newspaper, into Moser's lap.
"You didn't tell me about this," he recalls her saying. Moser picked up the publication and read that Dr. Werner was leaving Tribune to become the physician in Atwood. That was how Moser found out that in less than a month, he would be the sole physician practicing in Greeley County.
Yet the timing of the older doctor's move was concerning to Moser. Because Werner was leaving in about three weeks, there would be no time to find a replacement prior to his January 1991 departure. Moser said he started to scramble to make sure everything was in order so he could serve as the county's sole physician. The stability of Greeley
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County's health-care system was left in doubt, since Moser had planned on exploring opportunities elsewhere after his service obligation had been met.
we could build that back up. And if we had a provider of a similar mindset, same generation, there'd be a lot less worry about conflict."
"The community could have been left high and dry by him leaving in '91 and me leaving shortly thereafter, because I didn't intend to be the only doctor in a small town for my career," Moser said.
To keep himself from becoming overloaded with work, Moser found a couple of semi-retired doctors willing to cover for him when he needed to take a break or to attend continuing medical education classes. But even with their assistance, he would still have very little respite from the constant demands of being the county's only physician.
Jan Epp, who publishes the Greeley County Republican along with her husband, Dan, said people in the community were "absolutely devastated" by Werner's departure. She remembers a huge going-away reception for the older doctor at Tribune's school. It was filled with townspeople thanking Werner for his service to the community, she said. Such an outpouring was understandable, because rural residents tend to have a close personal relationship with their physicians, particularly long-serving doctors such as Werner.
Moser also realized that the community needed to mount a recruitment effort to find a physician with the right mix of skills and outlook to work in Greeley County. That could prove to be a challenge, since far larger rural communities with more amenities and resources had plenty of trouble recruiting providers themselves. Even some doctors looking to work in a rural area were wary about working in a town as small and as isolated as Tribune. Plus, with the additional workload he'd taken on as the county's lone physician, Moser didn’t know how he would find the time to locate and woo a new colleague to join his practice. He knew he couldn't handle the entire burden of recruitment by himself.
"When people, especially in a small town, have a doctor -- have their doctor -- they don't want any changing," Epp said. "It's difficult to have a new physician come in." Because he would now be Greeley County's only physician, Moser's workload would increase significantly. He'd be forced to see about 40 patients a day, instead of the 30 he had been seeing beforehand. He would also be responsible for covering the emergency room 24 hours a day, seven days a week. When car wrecks, harvest accidents or serious illnesses occurred, Moser would be the only doctor within a short drive for more than a thousand people. Although he hadn't planned on inheriting such a heavy workload, Moser also wasn't ready to make plans to leave Tribune for greener pastures.
As a solution to the problem, Moser suggested that Greeley County Hospital's board of directors put together a community recruitment committee to help oversee the effort. Their assistance would do more than just ensure that Moser's time with patients wouldn't be interrupted by recruitment duties. He believed it would also provide a wider base of boosters to answer questions and sell Tribune and Greeley County to prospective providers. "I didn't want to bore the spouses with nothing but medical talk," Moser said. "We needed somebody else that could sell the community. The practice, the medical side, would take care of itself."
"I just felt that it was a great practice opportunity," Moser said. "Because what I told (Werner) I thought would happen, happened. When there were more providers, more patients started coming to the practice because they could be seen. They had access. So, I felt like if we could find another provider,
The hospital board members said they wanted to do whatever they could to help Moser. They agreed to form the committee, with almost all members participating in some manner. Enthusiasm for contributing to the effort spread throughout the town.
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(cont.)
"There's a physician out there that wants to live in Tribune; they just don't know it," Moser remembered thinking at the time.
"Basically, the philosophy of the board in everything is you get behind your physicians and you support whatever it is they need," said Jan Epp, the newspaper co-publisher and hospital board member. Despite the initial enthusiasm for the task in Tribune, community members spent the next year struggling to find the right partner for Moser. He said the recruitment committee discussed wooing a provider from one of the surrounding counties or finding someone with a relative in the medical field who might want to live in Tribune. Few names surfaced as possibilities and the ones that did come up already had established practices elsewhere or didn't want to move to a rural area in western Kansas.
But toward the end of 1991, Moser and other health-care officials in Greeley County found themselves facing another potential crisis. The sole physician working in Wallace County announced that he, too, would be retiring later that year. That would leave a small clinic in Sharon Springs, a town of about 800 people at the time, without a provider. The void left by the vacancy in Wallace County meant that many more residents from another county could be turning to Dr. Moser for care at a time when his responsibilities in Greeley County were already numerous.
The hospital board decided to spend more than $1,000 to purchase a list of all the second- and third-year medical residents in the United States. Despite making numerous queries, Greeley County officials were able to only generate three inquiries from the large list of potential candidates. Just one prospect, a woman from Georgia, made the trip to visit Greeley County. She ultimately decided that she was looking to practice in a much larger community, one with about 25,000 people.
Case Section 'B' Discussion Questions: How did Dr. Moser's diagnosis of the situation drive his strategy for addressing the challenge? Should the development in Wallace County prompt him to re-diagnose the situation and his challenge? How should he respond? In your view, what elements of the challenge facing Moser are technical and which are adaptive? If Moser believed this challenge to be more adaptive than technical, what options ought he consider?
Moser said many of the recruits he talked with wouldn't even hear him out on the positive aspects of practicing in Greeley County once they learned how small Tribune was. He said recruits weren't just discouraged by the size of the community. Some also feared the prospect of winding up in the very same situation that Moser found himself in, becoming an isolated, rural community's only doctor.
Does the health-care dilemma mimic any other dilemmas faced by rural communities when businesses and assets transfer to the next generation? REFERENCES American Academy of Family Physicians, "Rural Practice, Keeping Physicians In (Position Paper)," 2002, www.aafp.org/ online/en/home/policy/policies/r/ruralpracticekeep.html The estimated population of Greeley County was 1,266 in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau placed the population of Tribune at 694 in 2007.
In the face of such setbacks, Moser said he kept encouraging members of the committee to stick with their recruitment efforts. He said he believed the community would ultimately find a physician who would be right for Greeley County.
Mike Shields, "Overcoming health care problems in rural Kansas," The Kansas Health Institute News Service, Sept. 2, 2008.
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LEADERSHIP ON BOARDS Understanding the Life Cycle of Directors
by Lance Woodbury
“stages” is that directors do not necessarily fit into any one box at a particular point in time, the framework has been helpful to understand where directors see a majority of their contribution and how their future participation might be more meaningful.
Throughout their term as directors, board members make different contributions to the strategic, performance and leadership issues facing the civic, charitable or business organization. While much of the individual contribution made by a board member can be traced to their own experience and education, my own observations as a board member and facilitator suggest that a director’s contribution (or lack thereof) also relates to the stage they are in regarding their service on that particular board – what I call their board contribution “life cycle.”
ORIENTATION
This stage is characterized by the director learning the “real story” – that is, the issues, concerns and opportunities they might not have heard as an outsider.
As an example, consider a director who doesn’t fully participate in a discussion. One reason for the lack of participation may be that the person does not have good group communication skills, although one hopes the nominating committee considers such issues prior to recommendation. Another reason, however, may be that the director is in an early orientation stage, trying to get a feel for the nuances and informal protocols the board uses to discuss issues. Or, the board member may feel as if he or she has made their point on the issue a number of times over the years, and is “resigned” to not participate in further discussion as everyone should know where he or she stands. Yet another reason may be that the organization’s growth (for example, going from a small charity to later receiving a multi-million dollar grant) may have outstripped the director’s ability to participate in a meaningful way – they simply are not familiar with the types of issues now faced by the organization.
They begin to understand the roles of certain board members, and they begin to form various perceptions of management. They may learn the formal or informal ground rules by which the board operates, for example, the role, power, and effectiveness of certain committees, the use of discussions or site visits outside of board meetings, or the appropriate balance of management presentation versus board discussion. They also begin to understand the assumptions that form the outlook for the future, such as the reasoning behind a merger or alliance strategy, or the beliefs about certain funding sources or competing agencies. In short, this stage is about understanding the culture of the board and of the organization – why things happen the way they do.
EDUCATION The education stage is characterized by a director learning more about the organization itself. Grasping the organization’s role in light of demographic or industry trends, understanding how the group positions itself relative to similar groups, or understanding constituent, customer or stakeholder perceptions are a few examples of areas in which the director may focus. In short, they
To understand how directors see their contribution to the board, to more fully appreciate current board dynamics, and to help plan for better board engagement, I have presented the following director life-cycle model, asking directors to talk about where they see themselves. While the problem with characterizing
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(cont.)
are starting to really know the unique characteristics of this particular group and its impact. They also begin training, either formally or informally, on certain board topics such as governance, management succession, fundraising or historical financial performance, and they come to understand their role and responsibilities in the finance, nominating, or other committees unique to the organization. If they have some of this knowledge in hand, usually the education is taking place at the intersection between formal board topics or committees and the unique culture of the group. Informally, the director may be learning how to strategically interact with other board members, for example, by recognizing the level of detail on which to center discussion, or understanding which issues already have clear positions and which are on the table for further discussion, or even realizing how certain board members communicate their position. They may also be learning certain employee or constituent perspectives that help inform their contribution as a director.
ENGAGEMENT
In the engagement stage, directors have acquired enough experience or education on certain organizational, community and board issues that they find their voice, their ability to speak convincingly and argue their position.
only uses their own experience, but combines their experience with broader stakeholder (customer, employee, regulatory body, etc.) concerns that are relevant to the organization.
LEADERSHIP During the leadership stage, the director may be leading certain committees or helping to set the structure, agenda and tone of committee or board meetings. The director is bringing perspectives together, or reframing a number of perspectives to articulate a direction that satisfies various concerns. The director works to bring closure to certain issues and helps the group (be it a committee or the full board) summarize their input and move on to other items. Also at this stage, a director may be initiating new moves or suggesting certain initiatives that help the company. The directors may be introducing outside resources that can help the company bridge to new markets or vendors or customers. They may be helping the board get better by suggesting modifications to board operating procedures or decision making processes. In short, a director in the leadership stage may be formally addressing a necessary board function or may be informally adding value to the organization through various initiatives and introductions.
MENTOR After acquiring experience throughout the previous phases, some directors will move into the mentor phase. In this phase directors may not be highly active in committee work, but will remain on the board for their knowledge and expertise including institutional memory and organizational or professional savvy. These directors offer insight and authority at key moments and serve as trusted resources and teachers to other board members. Mentors are typically well respected individuals in whom others feel comfortable. Their opinions are valued by others and they are sought out for professional advice. This role can be a tremendous asset to help encourage and teach new directors as well as provide existing directors with wisdom and relevant industry or community expertise.
Some seasoned directors may come to the board already at this stage. For a number of directors, however, it may take a few meetings to get to a point where they understand enough about the organization to meld their experience with the company’s issues and produce a clearly articulated and relevant position. Interestingly, one of the hallmarks of this stage is that the director sees his or her own contribution or participation as providing a good or necessary perspective – that the organization will in fact be better off through the position or argument they are making. At this stage, the director is raising poignant questions that cause people to consider alternatives or rethink their own position. Furthermore, the director not
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RENEWAL/RESIGNATION
To be sure, board members may be in several stages at once, or may not follow the stages described in this article in a linear fashion. However, using the framework to talk about directors’ current or expected contributions, the individual’s overall level of engagement, and the governing body’s collective position in the life-cycle can be a good exercise in self-analysis. Candidly discussing where each director is in the cycle can point to potential leadership, knowledge or succession gaps. Finally, combining the life-cycle discussion with peer evaluations and behavioral profiles can provide real momentum for improving civic, non-profit or corporate boards.
At a certain point, beyond (and sometimes even despite) the formal board term of service, we all have thoughts about the next chapter of our lives. Sometimes, the growth of the organization and its need for directors who understand an evolving set of issues coincides with a director’s personal need for change.
When this happens, the stages of organizational growth are seen as exciting new opportunities that provide motivation to continue leadership or begin the director life cycle process again, but with an informed background.
LANCE WOODBURY lives in Garden City and consults with social sector organizations and closely held businesses. He completed his undergraduate degree at Sterling College, a MS in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University and a MBA from Purdue University.
Sometimes, however, participation in the leadership of a board, and the time it takes, may point to a conflict between the director’s personal life or other business activities and his or her current board service. Or, if the company’s evolution or current business model is not satisfying to a director, he or she may need to seek a new challenge or intellectual stimulation elsewhere. And, as mentioned earlier, the contribution required at the organization’s current stage may not match the director’s skills. For these reasons it may be time for a frank discussion about moving on.
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RELIGIOUS LEADERSHIP IN CIVIC LIFE: An Opportunity or a Problem? by Cheryl L. Rude, Ph.D.
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leadership can do its own thing, become antagonistic and always suspicious, or become a partner. Likewise civic leaders can close their doors, quietly forget to invite, or join forces.
In the world, not of the world: is there a place for religious leadership in civic leadership?
The Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) is putting forth the call to all Kansans to engage in “doing” leadership together. The KLC vision of civic leadership and the core competencies required to achieve it embrace both religious and non-religious sectors. The new calling is not for religious leaders to seek authority to run Kansas, but in service to “do leadership” with other Kansans. The new calling is not for civic leadership to, in fear, separate from religious leadership but to join forces to “do leadership” with other Kansans (KLC, 2009) including those representing community(ies) of faith.
HESITANT If this question was posed to the board of directors, staff, and faculty of the Kansas Leadership Center they might unequivocally answer – sure! Polling the religious leaders of Kansas, the response might be a confident—o.k! However, the debate and lived experience of religion in United States civic life has been and is embroiled with joy and pain, highs and lows, triumphs and tragedies, and unity and disconnects. Kansas is no different in this sense. Their hesitancy is understandable when the follow-up questions begin to unfold: Are faith-based leaders included in the discussion of civic leadership? What are some of the intersecting points with public and religious life? Is the role of religious leader in civic life a lost art? What do citizens make of faith-based initiatives? What is a reasonable interpretation of the separation of church and state?
If one is to view leadership as an activity wherein the leader is one of the role players, religious leadership must wrestle with its hierarchical structure, formal positions of leadership, and the authority messages inherent in religious life. The reconceptualization of leadership as an activity between parties stretches the comfort zone of leaders who are accustomed to terms such as: obedience, authority, messenger, moral exemplar, and commandments. Words like these are used to paint the picture of religious leadership, and rightly so when considering these leaders see themselves as accountable to the higher authority of God in all that they do. While the idea of leadership not being a position may be uncomfortable for religious leaders, the KLC core competencies of leadership: diagnose situation, manage self, facilitate intervention, and energize others (O’Malley, 2009) are leadership behaviors that fit well with the work of leadership in faith communities.
Gone are the days when the two — civic and religious leadership — were enmeshed, when many of the mosteducated community members were the religious leaders. By default, much of the civic leadership was exercised by religious leaders. Many times in the 21st century, the experience seems to be more a great chasm between civic and religious leadership.
These competencies are not new to religious leaders. For example, a United Methodist pastor must as a position of leadership: answer to God, answer to the bishop, accept appointment to a church, and function as leader of the congregation. This same pastor must share leadership by: working with church members in a committee structure, investing in a shared journey of spiritual growth, and collaborating with community members to address the needs of the world beyond church walls.
One monumental exception to this current cultural state was the great civic leadership example of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “He put one foot in the constitution and the other in scripture” (Branch, 2008). As religious and non-religious leadership try to find their ways to contribute to the common good, there exists many times hesitancy in whether or not the two should be “holding hands.” Religious
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In the United States, governmental leaders were given the authority to lead by the consent of the people and not by appointment by God. Leadership roles became separated into secular and religious ones. Religious leaders were and still are considered to have the divine right to be spiritual leaders. However, the ordination of religious leaders in the United States is no longer accepted by the general public as an automatic license to exercise leadership in secular matters.
Learning how to hold in tension and live with the paradoxical roles of positional leadership and shared leadership is essential for religious leaders and non-religious leaders alike to build Kansas’ capacity for religious leadership to share a place at the table of civic leadership. An examination of the historical progression of some of the ideas and experiences of religious leadership will help build the foundation upon which shared leadership in the civic realm can be built. HISTORICAL LENS It is not difficult to recognize that most religious organizations accept and welcome the belief that the pastor, priest, rabbi, cleric — is set apart for leadership by the authority of God. Religious leadership is not an idea of human origin. In the major monotheistic religions of the world, the leader’s authority comes from God. In leadership language, one would say the religious leader is leader by divine right.
This, coupled with the fact that some religious leaders have abdicated their leadership function in civic discussion and cocooned themselves in the halls of religion while others have tried to magnify their religious perspectives through the halls of government, contributes to the confusion of roles.
Divine right and power are beginning points in understanding the evolution of leadership as a concept. Brute strength allowed persons and families to gain control of tribes or countries and become the anointed lineage for a leadership position. To the extent that authority became a relationship between a monarch and subjects it was a relationship of gross inequality, of the ruler and the ruled. But the authority held by the stronger party did become sharply distinguished from naked power, force and coercion. Rulers must be legitimate. They must inherit or assume office through carefully established procedures; they must assume certain responsibilities under God, and for the people (Burns, J.M., 1978).
In addition to the changes in personal perceptions about the origins of a leader’s authority and the arena in which that authority is exercised, there are changes in the notion about who can be a leader. The idea that leaders only come from an elite family group is no longer accepted by the masses and in fact is not representative of the current status of top governmental leadership in the United States. Barack Obama does not hail from a political or financial or military or religious family dynasty. Particularly with easy access to information (the great power source for leaders), the perception that many have the ability to lead is growing. The concept that leaders serve in that capacity 100 percent of the time is also dissolving. There is “leadership in crisis,” “leadership of an event,” “leadership for the moment,” “startup leadership,” “family leadership,” “leadership of an organization” — to name a few (Burns, J.M. 1978; Shelton, 1997).
Local religious beliefs were closely tied to rule of the land, and in many early cases the religious leaders were the rule of the land. As kings and priests developed separate functions, the concept of divine right for both kept the governmental leader and the spiritual leader closely tied. In some places in the world it is still the same, and in other places “powerful new doctrines proclaimed the rights of individuals against rulers, set forth goals and values beyond those of simple order and security, and called for liberty, equality, fraternity, even the pursuit of happiness” (Burns, J.M., 1978).
Another point of development in the study of leadership relates to the functions of a leader. Historically, one can witness the change in the functions of leaders from the total control over all matters to an influence in the relationship between leaders and followers. The Kansas Leadership Center
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has added its voice to this conversation by advocating leadership as an activity not a position (O’Malley, 2009). As the science of management has developed in the business world, confusion has spread as to the difference between management and leadership. Management techniques emerged as a way to handle machines and industrial processes and spilled over into ways of handling people. Management functions have been and are still tied to position. At the same time, the concept of leadership is evolving from controlling to empowering people; from announcing direction to creating visions and motivating people; and from leaders commanding followers to leaders and followers working in collaboration (Burns, J.S., 2000). One of the distinguishing characteristics of leadership is this emerging model of people playing different roles in order to produce change. Leadership is alive in a system and not solely in the role of the leader. This shift of perspective from leader-in-control to leader-doing-leadership contributes to the confusion about the role of the religious leader at the table of civic leadership.
CALL TO SERVE, NOT TO CONTROL Most religious leaders would embrace the idea of service more as a higher calling than as higher control. In the leadership genre, service is seen by some as the primary activity of leadership, carried out by leaders and followers as a team while control is seen as a responsibility of a manager.
The same authors will allow that one can hold the leader title and also perform managerial tasks or that one can hold the manager title and perform the tasks of leadership (Nibley, 1997; Bass, 1990; Kouzes & Posner, 1987, Heiftz & Laurie, 1997; Zalenznik, 1992; Conger & Kanango, 1988; Cosgrove, 1988; Bennis, 1990). The local clergy person holds the leadership title and is expected to perform the functions of both leader and manager — to inspire the vision and manage the volunteers. In applying the previously discussed leadership developments to the contemporary religious leader in the United States one can come to the conclusion that the religious leader has the divine right to lead in spiritual matters; but will also be expected to work with others who lead in different ways and places. Religious leaders must take care of the business of the body, care for the people, provide a model of holy living, share responsibility, provide preaching and teaching, and carry out God’s vision with the people. However once again, how each religious leader performs these functions will be determined by the individual traits of the leader. The leader must perform these functions within the social context of the faith which authorizes his or her ministry through ordination. Each religious group will find itself at a different place on the continuum between hierarchy and collaboration. Each has developed a unique social context in which leaders are “doing leadership” and acting as the manager of the group. While most leaders, religious and secular, are given much information and possibly some training on the managerial responsibilities related to their position of leadership, the preparatory path is not so well marked for learning the behaviors one might expect from a leader “doing leadership” within a system. Two contemporary perspectives on leadership provide common ground for both religious and non-religious leadership.
Many writers in the field of leadership characterize the manager as the one who keeps the operation in motion, maintains the status quo, and implements the mission through administrative tasks. In contrast the leader is characterized as the one who conceptualizes change, develops vision, inspires followers, initiates action, and exercises foresight. Both management and leadership are necessary; they are, however, inherently different.
Burns’ transformational leadership focuses on the behavioral skills of leaders, primarily their ability to unite persons in the pursuit of collective goals: “The test of their leadership function is their contribution to change, measured by purpose drawn from collective
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To ask religious leaders to join the table of civic leadership, those at the table who do not hold positions of religious leadership must remember how delicately religious leaders are trying to hold in tension the appointment of the religious leader as a position of leadership and the religious leader as collaborative leader due to the democratic structure of shared leadership in the arena of civic life. The structural context within which religious leaders operate is more authority laden than the civic arena. The directive for leadership is obvious, but the intentional language of leadership and the meaning of leadership for religious leaders have failed to develop over time. Most of the faith communities have been unable to articulate a distinction between the role of manager and leader, but all expect their leaders to fulfill both types of functions.
motives and values” (1978.) The other contemporary model of leadership which closely parallels the religious leaders’ mandate for service over and above control is servant leadership. Greenleaf’s theory focuses on the development of the inner lives of leaders, which results in their ability to get things done, with others, through influence: “The test of the servant leader is ’do those served grow as persons; do they while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?’” (Greenleaf, 1991.) These two perspectives are representative of concepts all can embrace when considering leadership capacity building. Hopefully, this gap in skill development for leaders “doing leadership” is a gap that the KLC, statewide community leadership programs, higher education initiatives, and K-12 capacity-building curriculums can help fill for all Kansas leaders.
For those on the inside of religious life who are concerned about a better future, it is wise to be mindful, “…that the world, not the church, is the center of God’s concern” (Raines, 1968). For those on the outside of religious life who are concerned about a better future, it is wise to be mindful that “all [persons] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality” (King, 1963). Religious leaders must learn that proclaiming to speak for God, will not trump the work of the collective group in the civic realm. Civic leaders must learn to filter religious bias based on minority extremists’ positions and look for valueadded to the discussion from those who represent a faith-based perspective. In the spirit of sustainable energy, Kansans must redirect their limited energy to how things can be done well together instead of expending enormous energy in wasteful competitive rhetoric to advance a certain position at others’ expense. The invitation has been offered for all Kansans to come to the table. The question is: Do Kansas leaders from all sectors have the courage to collaborate? The common table can be a place to invest in hard dialogue and a place to strive for the achievement of workable unity (Gardner, 1979). The outcome can be that all Kansans will benefit.
HOLD IN TENSION
Something is going on in Kansas. Social capital data says there is something distinctive about Kansas when compared to the United States in the area of faith-based social capital. Kansas has more faith-based social capital than the national average (Easterling, Foy, Fothergill, Leonard, & Holtgrave, 2009). In the KLC artifact data (2009) which collected the voices of Kansans, one of the components about which Kansans feel hopeful is the sense that they have the capacity to shape the intersection of religion and civic life. Kansas’ recent history has found the intersection of religion and civic life both “divisive and polarizing” as well as “uniting and helping” (KLC Artifact, 2009). Reflecting on the struggle at the state board of education level over science standards in K-12 public schools brings to mind divisive and polarizing moments between religion and civic life and yet reflection on the collaboration of Kansas religious, government, and private sectors for adoption services seems hopeful in the capacity for uniting and helping.
Are you on Facebook? A discussion board for this article has been created at the Kansas Leadership Center Facebook Group page. Share your thoughts and engage with fellow readers.
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REFERENCES Bass, B. M. (1990). Bass & Stogdill’s handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications. New York: Free Press. Bennis, W. (1990). Managing the dream: Leadership in the 21st century. Training. May. Branch, T. (2008). The last wish of Martin Luther King. New York Times Retrieved August 8, 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/opinion/06branch.html Burns, J.M. (1978). Leadership. New York: Harper and Row. Burns, J.S. (2000). A river runs through it: A metaphor for teaching leadership theory. The Journal of Leadership Studies, 7(3), 41-55. Conger, J.A. & Kanungo, R.N. (1988). Charismatic leadership: The elusive factor in organizational effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Cosgrove, T. (1988). Cleaning up our language about leadership. Campus activities programming. September. Easterling, D., Foy, C.G., Fothergill, K., Leonard, L., & Holtgrave, D.R. (2009). Assessing social capital in Kansas: Findings from quantitative and qualitative studies. The Journal of Kansas Civic Leadership Development. Vol.1, Issue 1. Gardner, J. (1979). On leadership.
King, M.L. (1963). Letter from a Birmingham jail. Retrieved August 7, 2009 from http://www.africa.upenn/Articles_Gen/ Letter_Birmingham.html Kouzes, B. & Posner, M. (1987). The leadership challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,Inc. Nibley, H. (1997). Management versus leadership. In Shelton, K. (Ed). A new paradigm of leadership: Visions of excellence for 21st century organizations. Provo, Utah: Executive Excellence Publishing. O’Malley, E. (2009). The competencies for civic leadership: An introduction to the core curricular underpinning of the KLC. The Journal of Kansas Civic Leadership Development. Vol. 1, Issue 1. Raines, R.A. (1968). The secular congregation. New York: Harper & Row. Shelton, K. (Ed). (1997). A new paradigm of leadership: Visions of excellence for 21st century organizations. Provo, Utah: Executive Excellence Publishing. Spears, L.C. (1998). Tracing the growing impact of servant-leadership. In L.C. Spears (Ed.), Insights on Leadership: Service, Stewardship, Spirit, and Servant-leadership. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Zaleznik, A. (1992). Managers and leaders: Are they different? Harvard business review. March-April.
Heiftz, R.A. & Laurie, D.L. (1997). The work of leadership. Harvard business review. January-February. Kansas Leadership Center (2009). The artifact: Voices of Kansans and how they guide the KLC. The Journal of Kansas Civic Leadership Development. Vol.1, Issue 1.
CHERYL L. RUDE is the Associate Professor of Leadership Studies, and Chair of Social Science Division at Southwestern College. She is also the Director of Leadership Southwestern in Winfield, KS. She has special interest in youth leadership development.
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REPORT ON A LOW-RISK EXPERIMENT Putting KLC Theory Into Practice
by Kevin Bomhoff and Trisha Peaster
systems level, will more honestly address conflict such as competition for scarce resources as they consider strategies, and will move from technical to more adaptive solutions.
The Kansas Leadership Center regularly challenges us to design “low-risk experiments” based on the civic leadership competencies and concepts. This article is a brief report about one such experiment and results of a follow-up survey with participants.
To test this hypothesis, the session began by introducing the notion that as planners, participants were being asked to act in both an authority and a leadership role. Once the group presented their ideas on the differences between these roles, they were introduced to the following concepts:
DESIGNING THE EXPERIMENT
The challenge to design an experiment is primarily a call to do something different based on what has been learned while participating in KLC activities. We all naturally “default” to what we know best and what has worked for us in the past. Even a simple change in course can summon internal and external resistance. Given this, it might be best to design an experiment to modify a standard approach that is not working as well as you like or when you anticipate a new challenge.
Authority is a contractual relationship whereby the authority figure provides protection, predictability, and direction in exchange for cooperation from those under authority. Acts of leadership include making observations, creating multiple interpretations, and designing interventions. Acts of leadership may break the “authority contract” as one makes less predictable interpretations and experiments with new interventions.
Our work with the Wichita State University Center for Community Support and Research provides opportunities to facilitate strategic planning activities with community organizations and their partners. The current economic recession can easily create an atmosphere of survival or “hunkering down.” The prospect of envisioning future initiatives with a group of 20 program administrators, board members, and clients in the midst of severe budget cuts, layoffs, hiring freezes, and growing waiting lists for services presented a considerable challenge. Once this challenge was identified, a simple hypothesis can be proposed. Our hypothesis: If we frame the planning process using specific leadership concepts, participants will be more likely to view these challenges at a
When making interpretations, the leadership challenge is to view problems as adaptive rather than technical, systemic rather than personal, and to recognize conflict rather than pretend motives and actions are completely benign. More information about these concepts can be found in the Journal of Kansas Leadership Development, Volume 1, Spring 2009. Following this discussion, the group brainstormed strategic directions to be followed by the development of goals, objectives, and action steps.
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KEVIN BOMHOFF serves as Organizational Development Coordinator at Wichita State University’s Center for Community Support & Research (www.ccsr.wichita.edu). Kevin was recently selected as a Kansas Leadership Center Faculty Fellow.
TRISHA PEASTER serves as a Research Associate at Wichita State University’s Center for Community Support and Research (www.ccsr.wichita.edu). She enjoys working with Kansas nonprofits on program evaluations and strategic planning.
• The old way of thinking will likely not move us forward. We need to change our own behavior by recognizing, understanding and adapting to new ways of thinking.
DATA COLLECTION AND FINDINGS
Following the planning session, participants received an electronic survey seeking responses about their experience using leadership concepts in a planning context. Four questions were asked: 1. To what extent were these leadership concepts new to you?
• I have already used these concepts with my management team as we struggle in our agency with fiscal concerns. I think the concepts are very clear and well served for this environment.
2. How did this discussion change your perspective of leadership, if at all?
• Maybe we need to help staff with their "paradigm" of thinking rather than just say, "This is how it is.”
3. How did this discussion impact your conversations during the planning session?
• It was just powerful saying these concepts out loud and putting them out on the table. Insights gained from the discussion transferred to the planning discussion.
4. What is the impact of framing strategic planning as an "an act of leadership?"
Applying the newly introduced concepts during subsequent planning discussions presented more of a challenge (Survey Question 3). The most commonly used concept related to “adaptive challenges” and “moving to the systemic level.” Survey comments included:
Over 50% of the participants responded to the survey (Survey Question 1). One hundred percent of the respondents indicated that they were exposed to new leadership concepts. Respondents reported the following changes in perceptions of leadership (Survey Question 2):
• Some of the terminology was used, especially the systemic approach.
• This normalized the inherent nature of conflict in a meaningful change process.
• Focused us to be more global in our thinking.
• I had not thought in terms of moving from the technical to the adaptive. I recognize that is what needs to happen, but had not thought of it in this way.
• I wish we had used them more. I think we thought about them but I don't know if we were purposeful about it.
• I have not previously framed leadership in this light. I doubt I will abandon my view of the importance of interpersonal skills in leadership, but I have added these concepts to my framework.
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• It was somewhat helpful. As we planned it was easy for people to fall back to what they know. This wasn't a bad thing as the discussions were lively and informative.
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(cont.)
new leadership concepts in planning for our future. It will not be framed as an act of authority favoring concentration of one entity to command thought, opinion, and behavior.
• I was cognizant of the concept of moving from the individual to systemic. This might have escaped me that day had we not heard this concept in the opening of the meeting.
• Authority has the tendency to make people “dig their heels in.” Good leadership creates purpose and understanding.
• We must develop sustaining partnerships to survive in the future. In our session, we understood there will be conflict as we make system changes.
• This approach might make some uncomfortable if they just want to be told what to do, but in the end it will be a better process.
• All came to the planning discussion feeling more prepared and safe to address the topic at hand. • We did talk about adaptation that needs to be made. The challenge is determining what needs to happen and who will do it, which is where the conflict arises.
CONCLUSION
KLC’s encouragement to conduct low-risk experiments is an effort to integrate civic leadership concepts into real world challenges. One strategy is to apply these ideas to situations where existing tools and/or personal default behaviors may not be serving you well. Once the challenge has been identified, create a simple hypothesis stating what you believe will happen as a result of a specific intervention. Share the hypothesis with others and get their input about how to design the experiment. Collecting information about your effort, by whatever means available, will help you learn from the experiment and shape future interventions. A simple “debrief” discussion with a group may be as effective as a survey.
• Very good and in-depth discussions with a lot of examples of how collaboration and leadership worked extremely well or not well in some situations. Finally, participants were asked about the impact of framing strategic planning as “an act of leadership” (Survey Question 4). This question required the participant to integrate new leadership concepts and apply them to strategic planning. Several respondents made the connection that involving stakeholders (a critical aspect of creating adaptive solutions) was an “act of leadership.” • Makes the issues “system issues” not “turf issues,” therefore collaboration is encouraged.
In this case, we learned that introducing leadership concepts can change and improve a strategic planning process. Some concepts appeared to “take” better than others. For instance, the idea of focusing on adaptive solutions at the systems level was most often mentioned as an “act of leadership.” While less prevalent, framing planning in this way helped participants discuss inherent conflicts they and others bring to the planning process. Comments that indicated participants tended to fall back into old ways of thinking as the planning process continued can help shape future interventions. As a result of this feedback, our next experiment will be to integrate leadership concepts into each planning step rather than using these concepts primarily as an introduction to the planning process.
• Focusing on leadership rather than authority is a much more positive perspective and has greater likelihood of buy-in and success. • The inclusion and willingness to listen to stakeholders demonstrated the "act of leadership." Authority would have been for the agency to simply tell others what the strategic plan would be. • I saw them taking a leadership role in modeling agency strategic planning by including stakeholder feedback and involvement. • I think the impact of framing strategic planning as an "act of leadership" is that we will come together collectively as partners and apply the
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THE COMMUNITY TOOL BOX: Supporting Civic Engagement in Kansas by Christina Holt, M.A., Jerry Schultz, Ph.D., and Stephen Fawcett, Ph.D.
through collaborative research, teaching, and service. The Tool Box contributes to this mission by compiling, analyzing and disseminating “what works” in the field of community health and development. Because the information is presented in accessible language and a user-friendly format, it empowers people with knowledge and skills to effectively take action on problems and goals in their communities.
WE SHARE A COMMON VISION:
Engaged Kansans coming together to take action on issues that matter to them….Communities actively and effectively addressing identified problems and goals...Widespread improvement in the health and well being of all Kansans. The Kansas Leadership Center — and Kansans collectively — have important work before us. How can we make it easier — and more likely — that people will engage civically to make a difference on important issues facing our communities? The answer to this is multi-faceted and will include the engagement of many voices. It will involve people coming together in conversation, assessing the current situation, developing and galvanizing adaptive and collaborative leadership in their communities, learning what’s been done elsewhere, determining what shared values they have for moving forward in action, developing a plan for action, generating resources, and sustaining what they build.
The idea behind the Community Tool Box: no matter what issue is being addressed, there are common skills that are needed for the work (e.g., assessing community problems and goals, creating an action plan, developing leadership, conducting advocacy, writing a grant application for funding, evaluating the initiative, sustaining the work). Over the past 15 years, it has grown to contain more than 7,000 online pages of free guidance on these and many more topics for improving health and development in our communities. The Community Tool Box is practical and skills-based, and contains many real-life examples for how people have brought about change and improvement in their communities.
Kansas and its individual communities can draw from many resources in the state, such as the Kansas Leadership Center, to build skills and capabilities for leadership and change. We would like to share a capacity-building resource that was developed here in Kansas as a “common well” for this work: the Community Tool Box, http://ctb.ku.edu. The Community Tool Box (CTB) was created by the Work Group for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas (www.communityhealth.ku.edu) and its partners. The mission of the KU Work Group is promoting community health and development
A quick glance at the Guestbook of the Community Tool Box reveals a number of Kansans using its resources: • A retired soldier working as an educator with the Combined Arms Center's Center for Army Leadership (CAL) • A small-town community member working with others to revitalize the town (population 1,067)
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(cont.)
Last year, the Tool Box had visitors from 206 different countries. Responding to the rapidly changing demographics in Kansas and with a growing demand for international materials, we are pleased to announce that the Community Tool Box is now also completely available in Spanish (http://ctb.ku.edu/es), and further language translation is under way.
• A public health worker strengthening skills in core competencies • A resource librarian educating others about engaging community development work • A free-lance community health nurse and volunteer parish nurse supporting relief efforts in Chincha, Peru • A college professor using the CTB as a resource to help non-profit organizations • A community leader working on a faith-based initiative • A School Collaborative Coordinator for the Kansas City Chronic Disease Coalition gathering information for health initiatives The mission of the Community Tool Box is to promote community health and development by connecting people, ideas, and resources. By using the Community Tool Box, we envision that people can come together to more effectively address community problems and goals that matter to them. To the surprise and delight of the team that developed the Community Tool Box, it has grown to become a resource for this work not only in Kansas — but also globally. In 2008, the Community Tool Box experienced nearly 1 million user sessions from 239,542 unique visitors. Nearly one-third of the visitors to the Tool Box are international users.
The Community Tool Box contains a variety of gateways into tools, depending on the unique needs of each user. Under the “Table of Contents,” you will find over 300 practical how-to-do-it instructional modules, including a Main Section, real-life examples, and modifiable PowerPoint presentations for training in your community. The Toolkits available under "Do the Work” outline key tasks, examples, and support for 16 core competency areas of community work. “Solve a Problem” helps identify common challenges or barriers in community work and provides reflection questions with links into relevant tools. “Use Promising Approaches” provides support for implementing key processes to promote change and improvement, and provides links to databases for best practices. And, under “Connect with Others,” you can learn from others by asking a question of an advisor or linking to other online resources.
STEPHEN FAWCETT serves as Director of the KU Work Group for Community Health and Development and, as Kansas Health Foundation Distinguished Professor in the Department of Applied Behavioral Science at the University of Kansas. JERRY SCHULTZ serves as Co-Director of the KU Work Group for Community Health and Development and as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine, Courtesy Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Behavioral Science, and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. CHRISTINA HOLT serves as Associate Director for Community Tool Box Services at the KU Work Group for Community Health and Development.
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SUPPORTING CIVIC ENGAGEMENT IN KANSAS
We hope that you will find the Community Tool Box to be a helpful Kansas-based support for your important civic engagement and leadership efforts. The Tool Box has many support materials for implementing the four competencies that have been articulated by the Kansas Leadership Center. For example: KLC Competency
Related Community Toolbox Supports
DIAGNOSE SITUATION
Toolkit: Assessing Community Needs and Resources Toolkit: Analyzing Problems and Goals
MANAGE SELF
Chapter: Orienting Ideas in Leadership Toolkit: Enhancing Cultural Competence
FACILITATE INTERVENTION
Toolkit: Developing a Framework or Model of Change Toolkit: Developing Strategic and Action Plans
ENERGIZE OTHERS
Toolkit: Creating and Maintaining Coalitions and Partnerships Toolkit: Building Leadership Toolkit: Increasing Participation and Membership
These are but a few examples of the free resources that may be relevant to your work and to leadership development in Kansas. You can access the Community Tool Box online: http://ctb.ku.edu. We also invite you to pass this valuable resource along to others by helping distribute this link or linking to it from your website. You can also use the “Share” feature from the pages of the Community Tool Box to email, print, or share the free tools on the Community Tool Box with others. We hope that people in communities across Kansas will have the capacitybuilding resources available to them to enhance the leadership skills needed to bring about change and improvement. Working together, we can change our communities — and the health and well being of all those living in our state.
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YOUTH OUTMIGRATION IN WESTERN KANSAS An Opportunity to Facilitate Intervention and Energize Others Brent J. Goertzen, Ph.D. Nichole M. Bryant
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CHALLENGES OF NORTHWEST KANSAS There are any number of challenges that citizens of the northwest Kansas region face. Perhaps the most startling are those reflected in the population trends of recent decades. The total population in the state of Kansas has increased by 11.9 percent between 1990 and 2007, from 2,481,349 to 2,775,997 (Institute for Policy and Social Research, 2009) (See Figure 1). However the northwest Kansas region experienced a decline of 11.3 percent with only one county (Ellis) that experienced an increase in population. Moreover, the population of youth 18 years and under increased across Kansas between 1980 and 2000 by nearly 10 percent (9.85%), however northwest Kansas witnessed a decrease of this aged youth by 21.8 percent (from 34,462 in 1980 to 26,941 in 2000) during the same period. All counties in the northwest region experienced a decrease in youth population (See Figure 2). Similarly, enrollment in public schools increased across the State of Kansas by 5.5 percent between 1991 and 2007, while every county in northwest Kansas experienced a double-digit percent decline as total enrollment fell from a 20,960 to 16,361 during the same period. The demographic data illustrate the harsh realities of the challenges faced by rural communities, especially with regard to the youth population. NORTHWEST KANSAS MAYORS ASSOCIATION The northwest Kansas region, as defined by the (NWKMA), is comprised of a 19 county region (Ellis,
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Rush, Russell, Osborne, Smith, Phillips, Rooks, Trego, Graham, Norton, Decatur, Sheridan, Gove, Logan, Thomas, Rawlings, Cheyenne, Sherman and Wallace). As of 2007, the region was home to nearly 100,000 residents (est. 99,514) (Institute for Policy and Social Research, 2009).The NWKMA, a coalition of mayors from 82 communities in the northwest Kansas region, came together because of one primary assumption: that we can do more together than we can do alone. Wayne Billinger, former mayor of Hays, Kansas, developed the idea of connecting the regions’ mayors because of what he perceived as the interconnection of economic, social and political issues in the region. The community of Hays, the largest community in northwest Kansas, (approximate population: 20,000) has one of the greatest economic pull factors in the state of Kansas. In December 2007, Billinger contacted faculty of the Department of Leadership Studies at Fort Hays State University. Since the Department of Leadership Studies had established a reputation for being involved in community initiatives and instilling civic values among students, it was a natural partnership. The lead researcher of this project developed a proposal and received a grant from the Kansas Health Foundation to provide seed money for the NWKMA in an effort to help address issues related to youth retention in the region in hopes of creating more healthy and vibrant communities.
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Eacott and Sonn (2006) reported that the notion of belonging related to aspects such as “being known” and “being involved.” Other situational and individual factors also play a substantial part in adult migration away from communities. Situational factors include lack of education, employment and occupation opportunities (Cadwallader, 1992; Eversole, 2002). Individual factors that tend to contribute to migration are those associated with developmental processes of leaving home to establish independence (Jones, 1995), and orientations toward a desire for change (McAndrew, 1998).
The purpose of this study is to investigate one of these major challenges: factors influencing the outmigration of rural youth in northwest Kansas. It is commonly assumed that youth leave rural communities in search of educational, career, and perhaps cultural opportunities. A review of the literature indicates these, among other factors, influence the outmigration of youth population from rural communities. However, most of these studies were conducted in Australia, countries in Europe and Africa. Comparatively little is known of youth intentions of the northwest Kansas region. Understanding these motivating factors among the youth population will inform organizations such as the Northwest Kansas Mayors Association (NWKMA) to strategically address the underlying factors causing youth to leave the region.
Much like the demographic information reviewed for the state of Kansas in comparison to northwest Kansas specifically, an overall view of the Great Plains demographic information shows trends similar to those of Kansas. The northwest Kansas region experienced an 11.3 percent total population loss between 1990 and 2007 while the state of Kansas experienced an 11.9 percent increase (Institute for Policy and Social Research, 2009). Rathge (2006) reported population statistics for the Great Plains region that mirror trends in the state of Kansas. A region comprised of Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming experienced a total population increase of 98.2 percent between 1950 and 2000. A closer examination of the data indicated that metropolitan counties increased by 181.5 percent while rural counties decreased by 21.3 percent in the same time frame.
LITERATURE REVIEW Community context appears to be a major factor in determining an individual’s decision to migrate. Primary factors that influence this satisfaction level include perceived civic embeddedness; recreational or cultural access; being near friends and family; and contacts with a variety of people (Fuguitt & Zuiches, 1975). Therefore, institutions which help create and foster civic engagement (e.g. churches; longstanding, embedded economic organizations; and local gathering places) linked individuals to the larger community are important in influencing individual’s tendency to stay in their communities (Irwin, et al, 2004).
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opportunities for discovering the underlying causes for rural youth outmigration, Fort Hays State University researchers responded by conducting the primary research on youth attitudes on out-migration.
A consequence of population redistribution in the region is a changing age profile (Rathge & Highman, 1998). One of the primary underlying reasons for outmigration of residents is for employment opportunities as many leave in the early or mid stages of their careers. As a result, there has been a change in the age structures of counties in the Great Plains. Rathge and Highman (1998) stated, “nearly half of the continuously declining counties had a median age above 35 years. In contrast, the median age in more than two-thirds of the continuous-growth counties was under 29 years” (p. 21). The population decline within northwest Kansas caused similar distortions in age structures. The northwest Kansas median age increased from 31.3 to 41.8 between 1960 and 2000 while the median age in all of Kansas increased from only 26.9 to 35.2 during the same time period.
Research and statistical information illustrates the need for community leaders to evaluate the current and past population trends and the impact these trends are having on the economic functionality of their communities. Only then will we be able to design innovative solutions to address these significant challenges. METHODS Focus group interviews are among several options of data collection methods within the umbrella of qualitative inquiry. This method is a valuable means of collecting the “thick and rich” data. Many researchers believe that the most valuable benefit of focus groups is the dynamics of the discussion that occur among the participants (Greenbaum, 1998) that allows the moderator to leverage the synergistic effect of peer interaction (Stewart & Shamdsani, 1990). Furthermore, focus group interviews commonly experience a “snowballing effect” whereby a comment by one individual triggers a chain of ideas from other participants.
What are the implications of these trends and what is the importance in reference to this particular research according to Rathge and Highman?
A deficit of young adults has important ramification for the county’s ability to grow. The loss of young families results in a corresponding reduction in children. An imbalance in the age structure caused by the outmigration of young adults leads to a natural decrease (when more people die in a county than are born). Natural-decrease counties are extremely vulnerable, because population growth depends on their ability to offset natural decline with net immigration (p. 22).
This method is a valuable tool in collecting rich data in order to gain an overall picture. Qualitative design is defined by Creswell (1994) as “an inquiry process of understanding a social or human problem, based on building a complex, holistic picture, formed with words, reporting detailed views of informants, and conducted in a natural setting” (p. 2).
Eascott & Sonn (2006) reported that “it has become common practice to blame this decline on the migration of people due to structural limitations” (p. 199). Education and employment deficits are obvious reasons for the decline in the rural youth population. However scholars (e.g. Elder, King & Conger, 1996; Pretty, Chipuer, & Bramston, 2003) indicated that there are other, more complex socio-cultural factors that contribute to the decision for young people to leave their communities. Because there is such little research that goes beyond the broader structural
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The researchers identified communities/high schools from across the geographic region of northwest Kansas. High school administrators were contacted and briefed on the nature of the research project and provided permission to recruit students for participation in the study. The researchers attended a class in each of the target high schools to explain to students the purpose of the study and to ask for their participation. Since nearly all high school students are minors, they were provided with a parental consent form which was required to be signed by their parent/guardian prior to the focus group. The semi-structured focus groups were
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professions of interest by the participants aside from the agricultural industry were criminal justice/law enforcement, nursing, psychology and social work. Nonetheless, there was a commonly held perception was that there were no, or tremendously limited, job opportunities in the area.
conducted usually during evening hours outside of normal class activities. Researchers asked students to respond to questions about their positive and negative attitudes and experiences of life in their rural community. Additionally, participants were asked to consider their hopes and dreams as well as their recommendations on how to improve their community to ensure a healthy and vibrant community in the future.
Some also explained other reasons to encourage them to look elsewhere to live after graduating from high school. For instance, one student explained “we live on a farm. My parents (say) you just need to get away from the farm and not even worry about coming back.” In addition, others commented they “just want to see something different” or “try something new.”
Each session lasted no longer than 90 minutes. At the conclusion of each focus group, a reflection of the discussion was conducted and a closing statement was read. Focus groups were audio recorded for the purpose of being transcribed. The transcription removed any identifying information. All proper names and places that may have been inadvertently spoken during the focus group were removed to ensure anonymity.
Along with the perceived lack of job opportunities, participants consistently described a lack of “things to do” in their communities instead of “dragging Main Street and wasting gas.” They described wanting “more activities for the kids to do on the weekends, like a skating rink or bowling.” Other participants recognized a retirement-age community and opportunities outside their own age group. “We don’t really have a lot going on. I mean, they’ve got stuff for like the old people. You know? There’s like the AARP and the bingo, but there’s not a whole lot for kids to do.”
RESULTS In the final analysis of the transcription, axial coding was used to reveal themes, both positive and negative. Key ideas were identified and then further compiled into themes that emerged. Participants described their communities by using common words and phrases such as: close knit, small, “everybody knows everybody,” caring, supportive, quiet, gossip/rumor mill.
Despite the numerous disadvantages as perceived by rural youth, the overall perception of the community remains incredibly strong and positive. Students responded with overwhelming evidence for the uniqueness and support that each community offers.
Positive characteristics were far more frequently used than negative qualities, leading one to believe that youth have an overall positive attitude about their communities.
Largely this uniqueness revolves around the power of relationships because “it’s just a friendly atmosphere” where “everyone knows everyone.” One student described community support: “If something bad happens to another person, then people will usually send (or) make food and then they’ll give it to the family, say, if their mother is in the hospital, or something like that. It just shows that small town people usually care for one another.”
When asked if these students wanted to come back to the community, one responded, “kind of yes and no. You want to come back just because you know everybody here, and it’s a close-knit town…but there’s not much here so that makes you want to not come back.” Another student commented in response, “Because of the field I wanted to go into. It offers no jobs here.” Others acknowledged that opportunities are limited to one predominant industry: “If it weren’t for agriculture, eventually places like this would die out.” Some of the most common
One participant who lived much of his life in large metropolitan area on the West coast and recently
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moved to northwest Kansas described: “In a big city, a lot of teachers didn’t care….They didn’t care about most students. That is the kind of difference here. The teachers care.”
comments indicates an opportunity that youth want to be taken seriously as accountable members of their respective communities, but feel a certain amount of powerlessness.
Others realized the importance of their own upbringing in a small community and illustrated a want to raise their own families in a similar environment. “If I had kids, this is kind of a good place for them to grow up.”
However, participants shared stories that explained important examples of how communities sought to empower and connect generations of citizens. For instance, students at one school described their Junior Pride program: Junior Pride. It’s a program where you do things for the community. I mean that’s what you do. You take time out of your school hours to have meetings, and you have meetings with Senior Pride, which is older people, and you do things for the community. Like you might have a supper for them one night, like a pancake supper. It’s kind of a wing off Senior Pride — older people have, like the senior citizens’ center. They get us high-schoolers involved and then we just go do things for the community.
When asked to describe their attitudes and feelings if their communities did not exist anymore, participants consistently responded with negative feelings such as “sad” or it would be “hard to take” because “there are a lot of memories here.” Participants also described that it is up to them and their generation if their communities are to thrive in the future. However, they also recognized “we’re all kind of hypocrites in the fact that we don’t want to be here, (but we) don’t want to see this place go.” Participants desired to be involved in helping their communities long-term future however several barriers to their involvement emerged from the conversations. They felt disconnected from leaders and other generations of their communities. One group, when asked if they felt like they had a voice about what goes on in their community, replied with a unanimous response of no. One student described, “we have no way of telling our input.” Others were suspicious of becoming involved because they were concerned their perspective would not “truly be taken into consideration. That’s one of those things where I’d think people would be willing to do it if they knew it would actually mean something. Nobody wants to just get together, you know, and then know that their opinion doesn’t matter and they just wasted their time.” Despite describing their communities in terms of powerful relationship qualities, they still described a certain sense of isolation. For instance, one participant commented that she does not want to move back in order to change her community “because you would have to get like a band of people to agree to move back and say let’s start this community.” Others described “(As a) high school student, you’ve got sports and weekend jobs and all this stuff. So you can’t really be out saving the world.” The reflection on these and other similar
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Each focus group had stories of community support and collaboration. These translated to more than just a collaborative attitude; into things like feeling a sense of belonging and a sense of safety. The comments from the students about the uniqueness of their communities, the relationships as the foundation to their sense of safety and community, the feeling of belonging and sense of collaborative spirit served as a focal point in how they identify themselves and the world in which they live. Students have pride in their way of life and the moral and ethical foundation growing up in small town has afforded them. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR NWKMA (AND OTHER COMMUNITY LEADERS) There are several important implications for practice recommended for those leading change in our rural communities based on these findings. First and foremost is the involvement of youth in the community. Youth seek a meaningful experience whereby their “voice” can be heard and integrated as part of the overall plans and activities to build a future together within their communities. Similarly, youth need to build the leadership capacities to effect change in their communities. Participants described a reluctance to return to their community because
THE JOURNAL KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER FALL 2009
economic development in the northwest Kansas region such as local offices of economic development, the Western Kansas Rural Economic Development Association (wKREDA) and the Kansas Department of Commerce. Participants in the study recognized economic issues as a classic “chicken and egg” argument in that there are “few people because there are few jobs” and there are “few jobs because there are few people.” Through building coalitions such as those with wKREDA, economic development offices and other communities in the region, they can leverage resources to foster economic growth in the area. Additionally, the NWKMA, in partnership with these other entities aimed at promoting economic development, can influence the region’s institutions of higher education to create programs to enhance the entrepreneurial capacities of the region’s youth.
they believed they needed a substantial number of other colleagues to help effect change. We as leadership development educators need to help the youth develop the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to foster their abilities to initiate change, build coalitions and demonstrate the perseverance necessary to work with others for the purpose of bettering their communities. Another implication for practice is for rural communities to retain the advantages that make rural life an attractive place to “raise a family.” Community leaders ought to intentionally consider how their communities can hold on to the values regarding the “family atmosphere” and find opportunities to reinforce and live with integrity with regard to these values. Perhaps the most important way to ensure these values persevere within their communities is to role model the behaviors. Actively seeking opportunities to “be a good neighbor” will help be a witness to others that these are the types of desirable qualities to be instilled and retained by all who reside in the area. Conversely, and perhaps more importantly, community leaders must cease to model the negative behaviors.
The final recommended implication for practice is based upon, in the researchers’ view, the most interesting finding in the study. The current study sought to learn about underlying factors that cause youth to migrate away from rural communities. Youth outmigration is only one of numerous significant challenges that rural communities face as they seek to evolve in our changing world. The researchers presumed that issues associated with youth outmigration and the potential remedies could be treated as a discrete phenomenon. However, important stories shared by the participants challenged this preconceived assumption. Participants discussed the power of informal relationships with the senior population. For instance, one participant commented regarding his experience with an informal mentor relationship: “He wasn’t (my) grandparent…It was very beneficial for me and him at the same time. By having that, I think (it) really helped give me a completely different outlook on life.”
When we engage in leadership within our communities, “how” we engage one another in the community development process probably speaks louder than what change we are actually trying to effect. Participants cited several examples of when they perceived the “adults behaving like children while the kids were behaving like adults.” This recommendation is much easier said than done in that often the issues associated with community change are laden with deep, penetrating emotional contexts. These contexts often cut to the core identity of individuals and their communities. For instance, the potential loss of a community’s school through consolidation often means that individuals will lose important identity-instilling mechanisms that they desire to share with a future generation.
Intergenerational connections can address another major issue that rural communities must confront: retention of the senior population. As individuals age, so too, do the needs for services, particularly that of differing health-care needs. Additionally, it is widely presumed the aging population moves away from rural communities to other large communities, in part, to access desired health-care services.
A third recommendation for the Northwest Kansas Mayor’s Association is to work closely with other organizations and entities to actively promote
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Perhaps, there are common solutions to address these seemingly different challenges of youth and senior outmigration. Community leaders ought to examine their issues from a more holistic perspective in order to “see the forest for the trees.” The participants discussed the powerful effect upon their lives in the role of senior mentors who helped form them into the young adults they are today. Community leaders can help create meaningful opportunities for our senior population to continue their essential role of passing on their wisdom to future generations. Community leaders must help foster an environment that will build up the powerful relationships between our senior and youth populations.
REFERENCES Cadwallader, M. (1992). Migration and residential mobility. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Eacott, C. and Sonn C. (2006). Beyond education and employment: Exploring youth experience of their communities, place attachment and reasons for migration. Rural Society, 1(2), 199-214. Elder, G.H., King, V., & Conger, R.D. (1996). Attachment to place and migration prospects: A developmental perspective. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 6(4), 397-425. Eversole, R. (2002). Keeping youth in communities: Education and out-migration in the southwest. Rural Society, 1(2), 85-98. Fuguitt, G.V. & Zuiches, J.J. (1975). Residential preferences and population distribution. Demography, 12(3), 491-504. Greenbaum, T.L. (1998). The handbook for focus group research (2nd ed). Sage Publications: Thousand Oaks, CA.
In sum, the current research project sought to examine issues associated with the outmigration of youth from rural, northwest Kansas. There are valuable insights offered by participants of the study for the NWKMA and others who seek to influence rural communities to adapt to our dynamic world. It is the hope of these researchers that the knowledge gleaned from this study will be used to positively effect change in rural communities to help ensure they not only survive, but thrive for a future generation. Are you on Facebook? A discussion board for this article has been created at the Kansas Leadership Center Facebook Group page. Share your thoughts and engage with fellow readers.
Institute for Policy and Social Research. (2009). Kansas County Profiles. University of Kansas. Retrieved February 27, 2009 from www.ipsr.ku.edu/ksdata/kcced/profiles. Irwin, M.D., Blanchard, T., Tolbert, C., Nucci, A.,& Lyson, T. (2004). Why people stay: The impact of community context on nonmigration in the USA. Population, 59(5), 567-591. Jones, G. (1995). Leaving home. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. McAndrew, F.T. (1998). The measurement of “rootedness” and the predication of attachment to hometowns in college students. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 18, 409-417. Pretty, G.H., Chipuer, H.M., & Bramston, P. (2003). Sense of place amongst adolescents and adults in two rural Australian towns: The discriminating features of place attachment, sense of community and place dependence in relation to place identity. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 23(3), 273-287. Rathge, R. (2006). The Demographic Future of the Great Plains. Presentation at the Rural Sociological Society. Rathge, R. and Highman, P. (1998). Population Change in the Great Plains. A History of Prolonged Decline. Rural Development Perspectives 13, pp. 19-26. Stewart, D.W., & Shamdasani, P.N. (1990). Focus groups: Theory and practice. Sage Publications: Newbury Park, CA.
NICHOLE BRYANT received her Master of Liberal Studies degree with a focus in Organizational Leadership from Fort Hays State University in July of 2009. While at FHSU, Nichole has assisted non-profit organizations in Hays to tie campus academic goals to service projects for community, business and academic enhancement.
BRENT GOERTZEN has six years of experience in Leadership Studies at Fort Hays State University (FHSU) with four years of experience chairing the Department of Leadership Studies at FHSU. Dr. Goertzen also serves as the Associate Editor of the Journal of Leadership Education. He has a Doctorate of Philosophy in Community and Human Resources with a Specialization in Leadership Studies from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
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LEADERSHIP THROUGH THE LENS OF EVALUATION: How Evaluation Can Guide Leadership and Leadership Can Guide Evaluation by Scott Wituk
Given the importance of evaluation to improving programs, understanding program outcomes, and its parallels to the four civic leadership competencies (See O’Malley, 2009), it is only natural that the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) takes a very proactive approach to evaluating its programs and services. Formative evaluation efforts have started with regular feedback from KLC participants. These formative evaluation efforts have already led to a number of program modifications at KLC, including additional focus on two of the civic leadership competencies during programs: Facilitate Intervention and Energize Others. KLC has added additional follow-up sessions for many of its programs to help participants reconnect and reenergize their civic leadership efforts. In addition, over the past six months, KLC has embarked on the development of an evaluation plan to guide its future evaluation efforts. This article will describe some of the parallels between program evaluation and the four leadership competencies and review the KLC’s evaluation plan. Prior to discussing these purposes we briefly review some of the common elements and definitions from the field of program evaluation. EVALUATION OVERVIEW Program evaluation is the examination and careful judgment of a program, determining its value or worth. Program evaluation involves carefully collecting information about a program in order to make decisions and can be characterized in two ways: formative and summative. Formative evaluation is typically conducted during the development or delivery of a program and is conducted with the intent to improve (Scriven,
1991). Formative evaluations strengthen or improve the program by examining its delivery, the implementation quality, and program context. A common formative evaluation approach is to have program participants complete feedback surveys immediately or shortly after a program. Formative evaluation approaches can give program administrators and staff a better understanding of which topics need more clarification, which activities were most helpful (and least helpful), or the extent to which knowledge has increased. On the other hand, summative evaluation, in contrast, examines the effects or outcomes of a program or service, often by describing what has happened since the delivery of the program or service. Depending on how they are designed, summative evaluations can help determine whether the program or service contributed or caused a particular outcome and the associated costs/benefits of the program. For example, an approach to summative evaluation would be to contact program participants several months after the end of a program in order to assess whether they utilized the skills learned during the program. Evaluation methods of data collection for both formative and summative evaluation include surveys (i.e. electronic, written or telephone), semi-structured or in-depth interviews, and focus groups. Constituents whose input might be important for these methods include the current program participants, past program participants, staff, board members, collaborating agencies and community members.
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KLC’S EVALUATION PLAN
PARALLELS BETWEEN LEADERSHIP & EVALUATION
In order to keep its evaluation efforts focused and connected to its programs, KLC’s evaluation plan started with and continues to be guided by several primary purposes or goals:
Program evaluation is consistent with the four leadership competencies described by the Kansas Leadership Center (O’Malley, 2009) in many ways. Most notably, the concept of “Diagnose the Situation” from the leadership competencies is consistent with evaluation practices in that both focus on digging deep into the underlying meanings and/or processes that account for a particular event or activity. Similarly, evaluators often look for multiple explanations as to why a particular program succeeded or failed. Evaluators’ approach, much like that described by the four leadership competencies, is with a questioning mind, collecting data from multiple sources, recognizing that the collection of data through different methodologies and from different individuals may yield different results. These differences can be viewed as multiple interpretations and factors that contribute to a particular phenomenon.
• To improve KLC programs and services so that they meet the needs of program participants • To understand the extent to which KLC programs achieve their intended outcomes, including understanding and use of the four leadership competencies, broader social networks, and engagement in civic leadership activities • To understand the contribution of civic leadership to the health of Kansans • To inform others about the work of KLC Evaluation guiding principles. In addition to these purposes, KLC has developed a set of evaluation guiding principles that will help direct its evaluation efforts. These guiding principles include:
Evaluation is also similar to the leadership competency of “Facilitate Intervention.” Evaluation is intended to provide individuals the information they need to make decisions. Results from evaluations help contribute to determine if, when, and how to proceed based on the evaluation findings. Providing results to those who participated in the evaluation can also help “give the work back” to those who are closest to the situation, a similar approach described when “facilitating intervention.”
• Use appropriate evaluation methods to understand the issue of interest • Focus on formative and summative evaluation • Use of evaluation findings are one factor that contribute to the decisions about programs • Evaluation is a critical component to program improvement and integrated into our day-to-day work
FIGURE 1 - CHANGE AT MULTIPLE LEVELS
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FIGURE 2 - PROGRAMMATIC THEORY OF CHANGE
evaluation efforts. Participants are expected not just to learn, but take action in their local communities and organizations. The “theory of change” continues by asserting that through collective efforts of participants applying the leadership competencies in their communities and organizations, greater social capital will be created.
• Change can occur at multiple levels, including individuals, relationships, organizations, and the community (See Figure 1) KLC’S THEORY OF CHANGE A theory of change helps describe the step-by-step process by which change is expected to occur from the delivery of a program or service. It is a theory in that the causal chain (often depicted as a flow chart) is based on a series of assumptions or hypotheses about how actions or activities are intended to influence other behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, or a person’s status (e.g., employment, health).The KLC’s theory of change (See Figure 2) shows that KLC offers training and technical assistance to those interested in civic leadership. The extent to which they participate is a way to assess the amount of the participation or “dosage” of training and assistance received from KLC. Through active participation, participants are expected to (1) be inspired to take action; (2) connect with other participants, KLC, and others interested in community change; and (3) better understand the leadership competencies and how they apply to their own work and lives.
Social capital has previously been linked to health outcomes (See review by Easterling, Foy, Fothergill, Leonard, & Hotgrave, 2009) which completes the last link in the theory of change. It should be noted that most community-based programs can more readily impact short-term outcomes (i.e, individual, relationship, and organizational changes) compared to community-level outcomes due to the multiple influences at those levels of analysis. By developing a theory of change, KLC has developed a set of more-detailed evaluation questions and next steps. If you are interested in these evaluation questions or next steps, please contact Scott Wituk at (800) 445-0116. SCOTT WITUK is the director of the Center for Community Support and Research (CCSR) at Wichita State University. In his 17-year tenure with CCSR, Wituk played key roles in many local initiatives and several national research projects. He is currently coordinating program evaluation activities for the Kansas Leadership Center.
It is believed that these initial outcomes are followed by use of the leadership competencies in community and organizational settings which can be assessed through more summative
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KLC LAUNCHES COACHING INITIATIVE
by Julia Fabris McBride
In July 2009, the first cadre of KLC Coaches was matched with 20 participants in the Kansas Health Foundation Fellows program. By the time the engagement was complete in October 2009, Coach and “Client” dedicated up to 7 hours of contact time to the coaching relationship.
THE HYPOTHESIS: COACHING WORKS TO IMPROVE APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE AND THEORY
To ready itself to launch the new Coaching Initiative, KLC developed a 30-hour Coach Training Program to prepare individuals to enter into these uniquely supportive one-on-one professional relationships. All KLC Coaches are well-versed in the KLC Leadership Theory and Competencies and have themselves been through a KLC leadership development experience. As KLC continues to experiment with coaching beyond the Fellows program, president and CEO Ed O’Malley anticipates that at least 120 program participants will receive the benefit of a KLC Coach in 2010.
Studies by education researchers Bruce Joyce and Beverly Showers illustrate the increased transfer of learning when teacher training is supplemented with a coaching component (Table 1). The KLC hypothesis, then, is that a similar increase in accurate implementation of the KLC Theory and Competencies will occur when program participants are matched with coaches who are versed in both KLC and coaching competencies. The Coaching Initiative tests the hypothesis that coaching will increase development of skills associated with the leadership competencies and, more importantly, ensure effective and sustained use of the competencies in the civic arena.
TABLE 1 - TRANSFER OF LEARNING BY TYPES OF TRAINING
Training Provided
Skill Development
Acuate Use in Workplace
Theory/Knowledge
5%
0 to 5%
Theory/Modeling
50%
5%
Theory/Modeling/Practice/Feedback
90%
5%
Theory/Modeling/Practice/Feedback/Coaching
90%
75 to 90%
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(cont.)
KLC COACHES BUILD TRUST, ENCOURAGE EXPERIMENTATION
If our hypothesis is correct, coaching will reveal itself as an essential strategy for meeting KLC’s mission to enhance the ability of Kansans to choose to exercise leadership in civic life.
KLC Coach Training faculty encourage new coaches to approach each relationship with curiosity and an open mind, using initial meetings to get to know their clients, listen actively, and establish trust. In subsequent sessions, then, the coach can leverage that trust to challenge the “coachee” with direct feedback and powerful questions designed to provoke insight, knowledge and an active, experimental, adaptive approach to leadership that aligns with what they are learning in KLC workshops.
KLC PARTNERS WITH INTERNATIONAL COACH FEDERATION TO DESIGN COACHING INITIATIVE
A partnership between KLC and members of the Wichita Chapter of the International Coach Federation (www.CoachFederation.org) grounded the Initiative in the highest professional standards for coach training. Program faculty hold ICF credentials and boast training from some of the most esteemed coaching schools in the world.
KLC Coaches model the language and application of the KLC Theory of Leadership, help identify opportunities to convert theory into action, and support their clients by holding them accountable for learning and results. KLC faculty and staff encourage program participants to leverage the coaching relationship to design more meaningful leadership experiments, analyze and apply the results of those experiments, as well as feedback from self-assessments such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, clarify intentions, identify barriers and stay accountable for taking action that enhances their leadership in civic life.
Faculty member Tim Link is one of only 617 Master Certified Coaches worldwide, while KLC’s coaching ethics instructor, Jeanne Erikson, PCC., serves as chair of the ICF Global Committee on Ethics and Standards. As Coaching Project Director, I round out the faculty with training from Coach University and the Institute for Life Coach Training, and more than five years experience coaching executives in the nonprofit sector nationally. KLC Coaches engage in a 30-hour, three-part training (two in-person workshops and a series of teleclasses). These sessions provide an immersion in the ICF Core Competencies, with ample opportunity to practice applying coaching skills to KLC-style leadership development situations. (See The Journal, Spring 2009, p. 47.)
True to the spirit of the coaching profession, KLC Coaches approach their work with the assumption that each program participant is fully capable of adaptive leadership, while remaining confident in the power of coaching to inspire participants to reach beyond their comfort zone to access their full potential to “mobilize people to make progress on the hardest of problems.”
A second level of training, which will begin in 2010, further integrates coaching skills and leadership competencies, while preparing KLC Coaches to apply for the first level of ICF credential.
PARTNERING WITH A COACH TO MANAGE SELF
In the Spring 2009 issue of this Journal, I shared a scenario in which a KLC Coach helped a client apply
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Inspired by her KLC experience, this executive director knows that she needs to empower her staff to slow down and think adaptively. But she is not quite sure where to start.
the competency of Diagnose Situation to events in her organization. Delving further into the leadership competencies, I’ll conclude this article with a glimpse of Manage Self as it might come alive in a coaching situation.
The KLC Coach steps lightly into a conversation about Managing Self, asking Kimberly to identify some of her own vulnerabilities and triggers in this situation. Taking a deep breath, Kimberly acknowledges that it “sets her teeth on edge” when she sees women who have a lot of skill and ability resisting stepping into their power. She sees that trigger at work in her conversations with the two staff members whom she believes use blaming others or “rushing around taking care of everything and everyone” as barriers to their own creativity.
Typically, in working with a coach, a KLC program participant will discover that the ability to hold steady under the pressures of civic life is directly related to his or her capacity for managing self. So, let’s eavesdrop, now, on a conversation in which an executive director works with her coach to design an experiment that converts knowledge into action around the competency of Manage Self. Imagine this scenario...
With that valuable insight, the coaching conversation continues as follows:
A KLC program participant -- an executive director whom we’ll call Kimberly -- comes to her first coaching session ready to apply what she’s learned at KLC to help her direct reports integrate feedback from a recent survey of stakeholders.
COACH: “How does that belief constrain you in exercising leadership?”
She’s already developed a great deal of trust in her coach, based on reputation and on a leisurely dinner the pair enjoyed the night before, along with two of her colleagues who have been matched with the same coach. So, after affirming confidentiality and a few other details of the coaching agreement, they jump right in, agreeing that one outcome of the coaching session will be an experiment designed to stretch Kimberly beyond her default style of leadership.
KIMBERLY: “I let my annoyance prevent me from requiring them to do their best. I let them off the hook — and usually get stuck doing the real work myself — because I don’t want to deal.” COACH: “So it sounds like you really value selfrespect and an individual’s ability take criticism without losing her sense of self.” KIMBERLY: “I do. But I also value mentoring. I’m really committed to developing our staff. And we’re never going to make progress if everything ends up on my plate.”
Kimberly uses words like “perfectionist” and “controlling” and “defensive” to describe two staff members’ anxiety-filled response to feedback from a survey conducted by a consultant with a long history with her organization. True-to-form, when they first read the consultant’s report, these staff members complain about what they perceive as criticism before rushing off to start applying what Kimberly was learning to recognize as “technical fixes” for some of the “adaptive issues” raised by survey respondents.
COACH: “There are some competing values at play.” KIMBERLY: “Absolutely! And it may be time
to ease up on my judgments about self-respect so that I can sit still when I’m triggered and be a more effective mentor.”
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(cont.)
Journal. She commits to discussing the article and its implications at the next staff meeting, taking the considered risk of complaints when she encourages people to slow down long enough to identify the adaptive elements involved in addressing the expectations surfaced in the survey.
COACH: “So where do you start?” KIMBERLY: “By expressing some empathy for their feelings, for one thing. Because I do understand that it hurts to get negative feedback when you feel like you are working so hard for the organization. [Kimberly glances at the list of actions associated with Managing Self.] And then, I think I need to design some kind of experiment that moves me beyond my comfort zone and forces me to stick with these women in a way that helps them access their own power. What do you think?”
Circling back to the competency of Manage Self, the coach requests that Kimberly monitor her internal reactions during the staff meeting, perhaps even jotting down a note whenever she feels triggered, as a way of mentally separating her sense of self from her role as “mentor.” The executive director acknowledges that she will have a hard time sitting still in that meeting, and that the note taking may help curb her default tendency to wrap up the meeting early, close the door, and attempt to do all the work on her own.
COACH: “I hear a lot of energy in your voice.” KIMBERLY: “I feel a lot of energy all of a sudden.” COACH: “So how about we brainstorm some possible experiments?”
Motivated by the insights into her own triggers, and with a renewed commitment to honoring her core value of mentoring, Kimberly and her KLC Coach discuss a range of possible experiments. They search for an intervention that will get the whole staff “up on the balcony” long enough to distinguish the adaptive and technical elements of the situation and at hand. As the session draws to a close, Kimberly decides to ask her staff to read an article about adaptive work from the first issue of the KLC
Kimberly’s coach has helped her increase her tolerance for the uncertainty of not controlling her staff members’ reactions. She hopes they choose to respond to her challenge by stepping into their own power and creating the change so desperately needed by the organization. Regardless of the outcome, Kimberly has learned a lot about her ability to improve the one area she truly controls, her ability to manage self.
JULIA FABRIS MCBRIDE is a leadership coach, speaker and trainer. Her twice-monthly newsletter, Connecting, is available at www.CoachJulia.net.
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KANSAS COUNTY HEALTH RANKINGS: A yardstick for communities, a roadmap for civic leadership. by Gianfranco Pezzino
EDITORS’ NOTE: Civic leadership is about the common good, and nothing speaks of the common good more than population health. The following article is an excerpt from a report developed by the Kansas Health Institute and suggests health can be improved over time, but only if all facets of a community are engaged. The rankings are a way to diagnose the situation of population health in Kansas, exposing the factors that contribute to health and thereby giving clues to those exercising leadership in this realm about interventions that may be more or less effective. The entire report, including interactive health rankings by county, can be viewed at www.khi.org.
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INTRODUCTION
We love rankings and we use them in our everyday lives. They tell us where our favorite sports teams stand compared to the competition. They give us guidance on the best places to live and eat as well as the most reliable cars and appliances to buy. They can also tell us a lot about our health and well-being. The Kansas Health Institute hopes to stimulate an ongoing discussion about the health of Kansans and the powerful factors that influence it with this report, “Kansas County Health Rankings 2009.” In it, we rank all 105 counties based on a summary measure of the health of their residents. These rankings are displayed in Table 1 (online). This health index is calculated by analyzing two sets of indicators — health determinants and health outcomes. Health outcomes are those things that describe how healthy we are as a population at a given moment. Specific indicators include mortality rates and low birth weights. Health determinants are those things that influence health outcomes. They include socioeconomic status, education, genetics, access to health care and the physical environment in which we live. Many people do not realize that the factors that most powerfully influence our health have little to do with health care provided in doctors’ offices and hospitals. A full description of the methods used to generate the county health rankings is contained in a separate online technical document. This broad approach to measuring the health of Kansans is meant to generate discussion at the community, county and state levels about ways to improve our health. A similar methodology has been used for years by the United Health Foundation to publish “America’s Health Rankings,” which ranks each state on several health determinants and outcomes measures. At the state level, the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute has published six annual reports that rank that state’s counties in ways similar to those in this report. A handful of other states have produced
similar reports. In addition, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is supporting a project to develop countylevel indicators of health across the entire country. The goal of this report and others like it is to stimulate discussion and action by individuals, communities, policymakers, health care providers and public health officials to improve the health of their communities. The development of policies and interventions that affect health determinants is critical. That means policies capable of changing those systemic factors that influence our health.
Measuring Health HEALTH AND ITS DETERMINANTS
The question of what constitutes “good health” has been debated for a long time. Different definitions have been formulated that emphasize one aspect or another of the health domain, but two concepts appear to be well-established: • First, health is more than the absence of disease. It is the overall physical, mental and social well-being of a person or community of persons. • Second, health is the result of the interaction of a variety of factors. We are all born with our own genetic predispositions to certain diseases. But the extent to which we remain healthy is the result of our personal behaviors, the environment and communities in which we live, the social structure that we share and the clinical care that we receive. These four domains (health behaviors, physical environment, socioeconomic factors and health care) are referred to in this report as health determinants. Health determinants are agents that interact with each other in complex ways to influence both our health as individuals and that of our communities. Health (both in its outcomes and in its determinants) can be profoundly affected by public policies enacted by local, state and federal governments. For example, restrictions on smoking in public places affect behavior
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general health status. For health determinants, the four broad components of health behaviors, health care, socioeconomic factors and physical environment were further divided into several subcategories, each of which was assigned one or more measures. For example, the health care category includes two subcategories: access to care, and quality of preventive and outpatient care. The access to care subcategory has three measures and the quality of preventive and outpatient care subcategory also has three. The values of all the measures were combined to create a specific index for each component, as well as an overall index. The summary health index includes measures from all the determinants and the outcomes, and represents a comprehensive view of the health of individual counties. Finally, counties received a rank for health outcomes and for each component of the health determinants, as well as for the summary health index. Counties with a high rank (e.g., 1 or 2) are considered to be the healthiest. A full list of the measures, categories and components used to prepare the “Kansas County Heath Rankings 2009” is included in Table 5 (online).
(how much one smokes) and the environment (how much exposure one has to secondhand smoke). Health is often thought of as an individual status, but the concept of physical well-being can be expanded from individuals to communities. If we use the broad definition of health and its determinants described above, the health of a community is represented by the overall health of its members, determined by their personal behaviors, their level of access to health care, the quality of their physical environment, and the socioeconomic factors specific to their community.
HOW TO MEASURE HEALTH
Measuring health outcomes and health determinants at the local level is challenging. Each community is different and has unique factors that affect positively or negatively the health of its residents. Comprehensive community health assessment tools exist to create in-depth profiles of a community’s strengths and challenges in the health arena. These tools and the assessments they generate can be valuable for policy and planning purposes, but often require significant resources. In addition, the results of individual assessments are difficult to compare to those of other communities.
The logic model that served as the foundation for this report is illustrated in Figure 1.
The Rankings
This report uses an alternative approach of selecting a number of measures to describe health outcomes and health determinants in each county. While the scope is narrower than that of a comprehensive community health assessment, the use of a limited number of measures across all the counties makes the comparison among counties easier.
WHY THE HEALTH RANKINGS?
Creating rankings is a controversial process. Each county in the state can claim diverse populations, environments and resources, and has particular strengths, weaknesses and public health challenges. Despite this variability, we think that rankings can serve a constructive purpose. They are easy to understand for nontechnical audiences and policymakers and they help to identify high and low performers in each area. Successful counties can serve as role models for their lower-ranked peers. In addition, comparisons always stimulate discussion. We hope that our efforts to summarize and communicate this information to a broad audience will add value to the state’s public health and health policy discussions and stimulate communities to honestly assess their strengths and challenges and develop effective strategies for dealing with those challenges.
The selection of these measures was based upon the public health priorities of the state, their scientific validity, their importance to overall health, and availability of data at the county level. The relative lack of county-level data proved to be a particularly important challenge and shaped considerably the way that the report was prepared. Those limitations are discussed in more detail at the end of this report. Health outcomes measures included in this report are mortality (expressed as years of potential life lost, or YPLL), low birth weight (LBW) rate, and self-reported
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problems with its health outcomes in the future than a county that has one health determinant that ranks towards the bottom but most others in the middle or upper portions.
INTERPRETING THE RANKINGS
The measures that comprise the Kansas county health rankings are of two types — health determinants and health outcomes. Health determinants represent factors that can affect the future health of the population, meaning that they eventually produce health outcomes. Generally speaking, therefore, a county’s health determinants ranking indicates the direction in which health in that county can be expected to move in the near future. A county’s health outcomes measure, on the other hand, reflects the more current health status of its population.
Another limitation of the rankings is that while they show a comparison among counties in Kansas, they do not provide information about how the health in Kansas counties compares to national and state goals, nor do they assess the extent to which each county has achieved its full health potential. Despite the limitations, these comparisons can be used as a learning process to identify practices and potential changes likely to improve health across the state.
Since there is a delay (up to several years) between the collection of information on each measure and its availability for analysis, in reality the outcome ranking represents the health outcomes that were present some time in the recent past.
The Results As expected, we observed wide variability among counties when measuring the health determinants and outcomes included in this report. Based on the model we used, one could expect a correlation between the position of a county in the health determinants ranking and its health outcomes ranking. We found that statistically, the correlation coefficient between the two rankings was 0.47. That means that an increase of one position in the ranking of determinants is statistically linked to an increase (on average) of 0.47 positions in the ranking of outcomes. In statistical terms, the strength of this correlation is moderate, meaning that the model we used to calculate the rankings is only broadly accurate.
For a county to improve the health of its population, it must focus on changing the determinants of health. The indicators that we selected are based on similar projects done elsewhere and represent the best information available in the domains studied in this project. In some cases, particularly for the indicators related to the physical environment, these indicators may not fully represent the complexity of the interaction between health determinants and outcomes. In the absence of better measures, we decided to use the best data available today, with the hope that as new information is generated, our ability to measure the effects of health determinants also will improve.
After listing the counties based on their rank, we organized them in four groups of equal size (quartiles), based on their ranking positions (Figure 2). Counties in the top quartile exhibited the best ranking positions, while those in the bottom quartile had the least favorable positions, with those in quartiles number two and three occupying intermediate positions.
One important limitation of the rankings is that for some indicators the sample size available in each county is too small to produce stable and reliable measurements, even when information from multiple years is pooled together. In addition, some indicators are subject, by their own nature, to considerable fluctuations from year to year. For these reasons, the ranking positions should be interpreted as broad indicators, and not exact measures of health in each county. Attention should be paid more to general trends in the rankings, rather than the individual value of one measure or small differences in ranking position. For example, a county that consistently appears in the bottom part of the rankings for most health determinants is more likely to experience
LOOKING FOR TRENDS
We analyzed the rankings to see if there was any important pattern of performance in different parts of the state, based on the characteristics of the counties. In general, we found no consistent differences that could be related to population density, with one exception. The exception is represented by the degree of difference between
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outcomes. This means that urban settings may experience a worsening of their health outcomes in the near future if policies are not implemented to improve the determinants that affect health. Among the five counties classified as urban, Johnson is the only county in which the ranking for determinants is better than that for outcomes, meaning that its health outcomes in the future may improve. It should be noted that Johnson County ranks very high on all the scales that we measured (#1 for determinants, #7 for outcomes and #3 for the summary health index).
the rankings for health outcomes and health determinants. If the difference is represented by a positive number, it indicates that the ranking for determinants is better than that for outcomes. A negative number means the opposite. Generally speaking, if the determinants ranking is better than the outcomes ranking it means that the health of a county’s population is likely to improve over time. When the determinants ranking is lower than the outcomes ranking, it generally means that the health of a county’s population is likely to decline. Table 4 (online) presents an example of how the distance between rankings can be interpreted.
Aside from this trend, the outcomes and determinants ranking positions in each county appeared to be related more to the unique characteristics of that county than to its population density. A clear example is provided by a comparison of Wyandotte and Johnson counties, which occupy the two extreme positions in the rank (Wyandotte being towards the bottom and Johnson towards the top). This tells us that the socioeconomic characteristics and local policies of each county/community are more important than population density in determining ranking.
When we looked at the average distance between the two ranking positions for counties with different population densities, we found that frontier counties performed better on health determinants than on outcomes. Counties with increasing population density exhibit a progressive worsening of their ranking for health determinants compared to their ranking for health outcomes. In urban counties, the ranking for determinants was on average 15 positions worse than the ranking for
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To minimize the limitations created by a small number of observations, information from multiple years was combined and the larger pool of observations was used to calculate the value of the indicators. The advantage of this technique is that the effect of yearly variations that may be related to rare events or small sample size is counterbalanced by the events from other years. The disadvantage is that by pooling multiple years together, we may not be able to detect temporal trends until we can compare several sets of years to each other.
DATA LIMITATIONS
The “Kansas County Health Rankings 2009” is based on information available from multiple sources that was selected to describe the health of each community and the factors that can affect it. For some indicators, the number of events or the sample size in some counties is small. This may be due to the way that the information was originally collected (for example, a statewide survey aimed at measuring an indicator at the state level, rather than in individual counties) or to the fact that some events occur rarely in a small community (for example, a death from breast cancer). Regardless of the reasons, the fact that in some counties we only have a small number of observations or events makes those indicators more susceptible to random changes that may not be related to policy interventions or other determinants used in this project. For this reason, one should be cautious and not put much emphasis on one single value for any of the measures included in the report. Each measure should be interpreted in the context of other measures in the same group of indicators. The use of multiple measures in the calculation of the indexes in this report minimizes the risk that a single indicator with an unusual value in a county (because of local factors or simply by chance) would skew the ranking of that county.
Another obstacle that limits the usefulness of the county health rankings is the fact that in some instances, even when the number of events or the sample size is large, the most recent set of data available for analysis may be several years old. This is the case for some measures used for this report that were based on census data or vital statistics. There is no doubt that the value of the county health rankings could be increased if some critical data sources, such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) and the state vital statistics system, would include a sample size sufficient to avoid the need for pooling multiple years of observations and were updated in a more timely fashion.
Are you on Facebook? A discussion board for this article has been created at the Kansas Leadership Center Facebook Group page. Share your thoughts and engage with fellow readers.
GIANFRANCO PEZZINO, M.D., M.P.H., Senior Fellow at the Kansas Health Institute, oversees a wide variety of projects, including supporting local health departments in their bioterrorism and emergency preparedness activities and investigating options to improve childhood immunization coverage rates in the state. He has worked in public health in several countries for more than 20 years. Prior to joining KHI, he served as the state epidemiologist with the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Within that department, Pezzino also served as medical director for the state bioterrorism program. He obtained his medical degree magna cum laude at the University of Bologna, Italy, and his master’s degree in public health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
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REFLECTIONS OF A FIRST TIME KLC PROGRAM PARTICPANT by Mark E. McCormick
Scanning the room at my first Kansas Leadership Center seminar, I asked myself, “Do I belong here? That guy over here is a physician and a leader in cancer research? That lady over there took a small clinic that saw a handful of patients and in a few years built a medical complex serving thousands? Didn’t a couple of those other folks discover infinity?” I wanted to keep quiet lest I embarrass myself, but I resisted the urge. I’m glad I did. In 14 years at The Wichita Eagle, I attended several corporate leadership training sessions at KnightRidder’s (the newspaper’s former parent company) Miami headquarters. I also completed publisher preparatory training through the National Association of Minority Media Executives. I’m a leadership training veteran. I endured sessions where facilitators drew circles on dry erase boards encouraging us to merge the spheres representing the newspaper industry’s financial challenges with journalism’s sacred demands of ethical purity. We generated lists of ideas applicable in our supervisory lives.
But my KLC experience proved different than anything I’d experienced. It often disoriented me, and the facilitators occasionally challenged the limits of our class’ tolerance for abstract thought, provoking some to anger. I also had some deeply held beliefs challenged, too. For example, I hated disappointing people as a manager, but I learned leadership can involve distributing disappointment. It’s about building team tolerance for extended periods of creative tension or “disequilibrium.” It’s about embracing aspects of blunt-force leadership in the interests of clarity and honesty. KLC introduced me to this new leadership idea. Why a new concept? Because what we’re doing isn’t working and when asked, Kansans say a lack of leadership conspires against solutions. But don’t come to KLC expecting answers. The program begins with the sober recognition that we’re in a wilderness with little more than our intellect and a will to change things. The center attempts to prepare people to take on questions that, as of yet, have no answers. I’m not ashamed to say I struggled with the concept. Some of my classmates did, too.
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It seemed at times that facilitators weren’t there to let us get our feet wet, but to hold us under water until we came up coughing.
I met funny people who kept me laughing, whether it was the former majorette who lost her skirt yet finished her routine or the wisecracking lawyer in the snazzy suits who kept group conversations upbeat.
But as the concepts took shape, like finding a word in a word search puzzle, or discovering the spaceship floating in one of those framed, computer-generated patterns, we felt empowered and able to breathe in these new concepts.
And because all of these important people stayed tethered to work, I saw a lot of “Blackberry prayers” — people hunched over cell phones tapping text messages between sessions.
And not only that, I also met people whose passion for what they did inspired me. They spent much of the seminar fairly quiet, but I later learned how their souls shouted in their work.
The seminar not only challenged me, it inspired me. I’m happy I fought the temptation to hang back. Now, the possibilities — not the challenges — seem infinite.
I met people whose intellect astonished me, including a descendant of the man who invented Pepsi Cola as a treatment for dyspepsia.
MARK E. MCCORMICK became Executive Director of the Kansas African American Museum in April, after a 19-year journalism career in which he won more than 20 state, regional and national writing and professional awards. Mark is also a bestselling author. His 2003 book with childhood friend Barry Sanders, “Now You See Him…The Barry Sanders Story In His Own Words,” made the New York Times best-sellers list and has sold more than 100,000 copies.
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FROM THE CLASSROOM TO THE COUNCIL CHAMBERS A Professor Reflects on Civic Engagement in Government by John Nalbandian, Ph.D.
An effective facilitative mayor must act in ways that others respect sufficiently enough to alter their own attitudes or behavior, including their votes. But the position also involves acknowledging and advancing council goals, if they are not personally objectionable. For me, the word “engagement” succinctly captures the role of the effective facilitative mayor. The mayor engages issues, citizens and community groups, the professional staff, and most importantly, the mayor’s number one constituency — the other council members. My family and I came to the University of Kansas in 1976. Soon after we arrived, I remember a knock on our door at home preceding a gubernatorial election. “Hello, I’m John Carlin. I am the Democratic candidate for governor, and I would like your vote.” We had come from Los Angeles where I had completed my doctoral studies and where I had grown up, and that NEVER happened in L.A. I thought to myself, “John, you can become anything you want in this town!” It is not as if I planned from this time to run for office; in fact, it rarely entered my mind. But, I knew that if I wanted to run for office, I could — anyone could. What follows is a retelling of how I came to serve as an elected official in Lawrence, Kansas, after only 15 years of calling it home. Within the story are lessons of leadership and the importance of civic engagement. I begin this essay with some background information about the city of Lawrence. I then introduce some general comments about politics in the local governments I have worked with over the years as a trainer and consultant, but also drawing upon my academic
career and real-life experience as an elected official for perspective. Finally, I have some case examples to illustrate the way I acted as a facilitative mayor. I have included some quotes from a journal that I kept during my eight years in office.
The Context: Governance in Lawrence and a Self-Recruited Candidacy Lawrence had a population of about 72,000 in 1991. It has since grown to some 90,000. While it is home to two universities, the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University, for the most part, the students are uninvolved in local politics. Lawrence citizens, though, are highly educated with a significant number actively engaged. Thus, many well-articulated interests come to bear on the commission’s policy decisions. For thirty years, the mega-issue in Lawrence is how we can grow and yet retain our identity, which geographically is centered in an ideal college town downtown. Since the early 1950s, Lawrence has been a council-manager city. The form is very well accepted, and even though we elect our five commissioners at-large, we rarely fail to elect a politically representative commission — especially reflecting perspectives on growth. Even though we have a 12 percent minority population, we rarely if ever have had a minority member of the community on the ballot. Economically, we are in good shape; we spend money frugally,
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my five-year term as department chair, I wrote a book on professionalism in local government and, when that was completed, I thought, “I ought to run for city commission.” It was not a plan. It was not urged upon me by others. I just thought it would be an interesting thing to do. I had always been politically aware, but never really politically involved in campaigns, and I knew very few people in Lawrence outside of the university. Normally, this would be a disadvantage. But, the university is a strong political base for one of its own, and in terms of credibility within the university, being a professor of government started me off on the right foot.
the city commission reluctantly approves property tax increases when unavoidable. We swing back and forth around growth issues and, over time, there is balance. In the past thirty years, we have had only three city managers, and the last two had previously been assistant city managers in Lawrence. By tradition, mayors serve one-year terms. The mayor’s role largely is ceremonial, but as in other council-manager cities, citizens look to the mayor for leadership and the commission does not resent mayoral leadership as long as it is not high-handed. I cannot remember a time when a mayor was selected because of a specific agenda. Mayoral agendas tend to rise from the issues at hand, with the mayor attaching to a few that are consistent with campaign promises either explicit or implied. Elections for the five-member commission are held in the spring every two years. If more than six candidates formally declare their intent to run, a primary election reduces the field to six. Of the six candidates running in the general election, the top three vote getters are elected to the commission. The top two serve a fouryear term while the third-place candidate serves a two-year term. The council selects the mayor, and, by tradition, the two top vote getters each serve a one-year term as mayor. I was elected to the city commission in 1991 in second place and served as mayor from 1993 to 1994. I was reelected to the commission in 1995 as the top candidate, served as mayor from 1996 to 1997, and completed my second term as commissioner in 1999. I chose not to run again. How did I happen to run? I think I have been the president of every club, organization, or group I have belonged to since I was a kid. I have been the faculty’s choice to chair the public administration department at the University of Kansas on two different occasions for a total of twelve years. So, I am accustomed to being the center of attention and I like it. I became department chair in the mid-1980s, and, combined with my faculty responsibilities; it was more than a full-time job. The University of Kansas is known for its local government emphasis in public administration, and even though I did not come to KU as an expert in local government, one is expected to learn. So I learned. When I finished
What Makes Elective Work Different: The Politician as Bridge Builder No major issue that comes to a legislative body has a “right” answer. You can search as long as you like and you can request as much information as you like, but ultimately it is going to boil down to creating a solution or policy that engages conflicting values like representation, efficiency, equity and individual rights. The goal is working to build, maintain and preserve a sense of community that is forges over time from the way these values play themselves out. With the tremendous challenges that governing bodies face in their goal of community building and working with conflicting values, individual commissioners confront working conditions that they are unlikely to have faced before. In all of your working life, how many jobs have you had where there wasn’t a supervisor, boss, or someone in charge and responsible? On the commission, no one is in charge. No matter how much informal power the mayor may accrue, authority is limited. When commissioners disagree, the mayor cannot say, “I have heard enough, this is what we are going to do.” Couple the fundamental value conflicts in policy making with the lack of authority, and the importance of facilitative leadership becomes readily apparent. But facilitative leadership is not formulaic, even though it provides a nice conceptual lens. Because of the
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(cont.)
TABLE 1: GAPS BETWEEN MODERNIZING AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT PERSPECTIVES
Modernizing the Organization
Gaps
Civic Involvement
Professional Staff
Elected Officials
Departments
Chief Administrative Officer
Institutions
Community-Based Politics
Specialist
Citizen Focus and Community Problems
Policy
Place
goal-based performance appraisal, quality assurance, and performance budgeting, as well as the application of technology to the routinization of administration processes including uses of the geographic information system/global positioning system (GIS/GPS).
ambiguity that the value conflicts and lack of authority pose, politics is socially constructed; in other words, it is framed by largely unwritten, but understood, sets of expectations and obligations among commissioners that are developed and reinforced over time. No one knows how a complex political issue is going to turn out.
I will not discuss these five dimensions in detail. It is enough to see how there are gaps that in my judgment are growing and can be charted along the five dimensions as seen in Table 1. It is critical to bridge the gaps because the space between the two trends represents the distance between what is administratively feasible (represented by the modernization column) and what is politically acceptable (represented by the citizen involvement column). Individuals who can help bridge these gaps add value to their communities because they are connecting the spheres of politics and administration. This is the most valuable connection that the mayor can facilitate, because effective action can only result when these spheres come together effectively.
Political issues unfold like the skin of an onion where there is no middle. You just keep unfolding and unfolding, working toward a solution that will join what is politically acceptable with what is administratively feasible, all the while aiming toward nurturing and preserving community identity and vitality. The facilitative mayor works to build bridges between what is politically acceptable and administratively feasible.
My goal as a commissioner was to help make these connections and as mayor, I could take more of the lead than I could as a commissioner. The social construction comes into the picture as the mayor, in concert with the governing body, learns how to do this — how one joins others, cajoles others, learns from others, and persuades others in developing common frames, and then works toward consensus solutions so that bridges are built and the onion unfolds with implicit purpose, even if unpredictably. In retrospect, the path taken to resolve an issue
I have written elsewhere about the conflicting forces of administrative modernization and citizen involvement (Nalbandian 2005). Each of these forces is powerfully affecting governance at the local level, and they create tension that can be viewed along five dimensions. While the concept of citizen engagement is commonly understood, administrative modernization may not be. It includes adoption of innovations relating to areas such as performance management, performance measurement and benchmarking,
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makes sense, but when one is in the middle of the debate, it can feel like wandering hopelessly in a meandering stream.
JOURNAL ENTRY: MAY 18, 1993
I have been mayor now for over a month, and I cannot believe how time consuming it is. The ceremonial duties alone take up a lot of time. Trying to take some policy responsibility adds considerably to the time required because the mayor simply cannot proclaim or dictate direction. First, it takes some ideas, then you have to talk with people, and that takes a lot of time. I also realize that I have to set some priorities for myself. I can get involved in a lot of projects, and take initiative on a lot, but to see something through takes persistence and time, and that requires setting priorities. What is evolving for me is the importance of “how do we pay for our growth?” And we need to approach this issue from a joint city/county/school board perspective. I talk about this theme on many occasions, and it seems to be catching hold. The other day, Dan W., the chair elect of the chamber, and Gary T., executive director of the chamber initiated a meeting where they discussed with me the desirability of establishing a joint city/county/ school board citizens committee to review capital needs and revenue sources.
The mayor’s role is a set of expectations derived from personal expectations and from the expectations of those in various policy arenas, including the city’s staff. The sometimes complementary and sometimes conflicting expectations create the working definition of the role. In crafting and enacting the role of mayor, one’s self cannot be denied. The self initiates structure and is expressed through the structure that is created. Political ambiguity has to be reduced in order for competent work to occur. As mayor, I could see myself describing issues and ways of approaching them that were natural to me as a person, which empowered my role as mayor.
When elected officials now seek my advice, I tell them, “You have to deploy your strengths in ways that facilitate the work of the commission, and in ways that others will value.” Your strengths are key because they help reduce the ambiguity just as much as the expectations that others have of you in your role as mayor. But, you have to deploy your strengths in ways that others value. It does no good to make decisions that result in comfort for you if they make work difficult for others, including the city’s professional staff.
This is a great idea, and I sent them our city/county/school board goals statement that is very consistent with their suggestion. Their point was that the citizens committee can gain greater attention than government representatives and as the committee learns the community will learn as well.
My strengths are very clear to me. I can conceptualize, organize, and collaborate, and I am flexible. It is who I am and what I do. I did it in high school and in college, and I have gotten used to working this way. A mayor who can help define the big picture, and who can help the commission understand where it is on an issue, all the while attempting to move with purpose, holds a special place among commissioners.
This is the kind of suggestion that would never come from staff in Lawrence, and I wonder if it would come from staff in other jurisdictions as well. In any case, to carry through is going to require a lot of discussion. For example, I have to get (Commissioner) S. on board or else I think it will fail with the city governing body. We have to get W. (county administrator) on board with the county, and W. (chamber of commerce president) is going to talk with county commissioner B. I am apprehensive about the school board because they generally see things fairly narrowly.
To illustrate some of these ideas in practice, I am going to quote extensively from a journal entry I made on May 18, 1993. This would have been a little over a month into my first term as mayor. I had been on the commission a little over two years at this time.
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(cont.)
of appointments on the board so I can make two appointments during my term. Ray would be one. As a final example, Marilyn B., new president of the United Way board, called to talk with me about the broader perspective on United Way that she gained by going to a national conference. She was telling me about projects where the city and schools had cooperated. This indicates that she knows of my interest in the broader perspective. So I need to try to find a way to get her interests on the political agenda. I think what I am going to ask her to do is to make a presentation to the Parks and Recreation Board, and then to request a report from the board to the city commission on where we can take her ideas. I will also share that report with the school district and possibly our joint committee.
Another mayoral responsibility is helping others get things they want to initiate and which I favor on the political agenda. Yesterday, I called Jo A., a new commissioner, and we talked about her interest in summer parks and recreation programs for youth. She wants some things done this summer, which will probably drive the staff crazy. I told her that her best bet would be to prepare a written proposal for the city commission’s consideration that could be included in the 1994 budget that we are now discussing. Further, I told her that a written proposal could lead to a discussion of city/county/school boards cost sharing — something I favor. To further this theme, Chris M. (member of the Bert Nash board) talked with me about the needs of the Bern Nash Mental Health Center, and their facilities and my interests in developing a broader multiagency healthcare perspective that is not dominated by the hospital. He knew of my interest, and was playing to it. During our conversation, I suggested that he prepare a concept paper that would identify the mutual interests of the healthcare groups at 4th and Maine, including the hospital, and the city/country/school district interests as well. Ray D. (faculty colleague), who is also on the Bert Nash board, prepared that document in draft and it will facilitate movement of our study session away from the immediate issue of a parking lot, to the broader issue of a multiagency, multigovernment perspective on healthcare issues. Ray and Chris’ issue is to get the hospital more sensitive to the needs of the other agencies. So, all of our interests overlap. Then I sent a letter to the president of the hospital board, Bob J., Sr., inviting him and the incoming president to talk with me about where the hospital was heading. My goal here is to broaden the public’s participation on the hospital board. I was going to do it with appointments, but that would be political dynamite and would detract attention from my agenda. So, I am going slower, learning first, then I might increase the number
This is the kind of thing that I am good at — thinking broadly and inclusively and then working to strategize. It is hard to make an impact with these skills as one commissioner, but as mayor it’s a lot easier because people listen to you; they think you have more power than you actually have. Whereas, Commissioner W used to tell people as mayor that he had just one of five votes, I don’t remind anyone of that fact. I just try to move things along, focusing especially on inclusive projects.” One noticeable lesson from these vignettes is that the facilitative mayor who knows her/her strengths puts him/herself in the position of permitting others to play off them. We can see how others knew not only my interests, but also they knew my style, and they took advantage of it to advance what they wanted. I think this is an under-appreciated value of the facilitative mayor. He/she encourages similar behavior in others because that is what he/she responds to, and getting an influential mayor on your side is important to an advocate or interest group no matter how virtuous their cause.
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Two Cases of Facilitative Leadership
without the chamber’s backing. It is a progressive chamber, so that is not a great stumbling block, and they can mobilize their members as voters.
THE SALES TAX
At our lunch meeting, I asked them how we could sequence elections so that the city, county, and school district would not be proposing competing bond issues. We talked and we talked and then a light bulb flashed for Gary. He said that we should not sequence the voters, we should combine them. We should propose a countywide sales tax that would fund the city’s and county’s projects, and we should use the sales tax to reduce the property tax the equivalent amount it would take in a school district property tax increase to pay for the second high school. In effect we could get the parks and recreation master plan, the jail, the health facilities, and the high school for a one-cent sales tax and no increase in property tax. It was brilliant, and it worked.
Early in my first term, I wondered why we had put ourselves in a reactive mode when it came to recreation facilities and programs. I particularly recall the Youth Sports Incorporated (YSI) nonprofit soccer group coming in several times asking for various improvements to our soccer fields. At one point at a commission meeting I asked whether it would be desirable to have a plan — a parks and recreation master plan. I had not thought this out beforehand, it was purely contextual. The commission agreed, and the Parks and Recreation staff was overjoyed at the commission’s direction. We hired a consultant who held community meetings to supplement his expertise, and he produced a plan. The question then became, “how do we fund the plan?” At that time, I was mayor for the first time. I had in the back of my mind for some time that a dedicated sales tax might be a feasible revenue source. As events unfolded, however, there were complicating factors. The school district, which for a number of years had been trying unsuccessfully to convince the community that Lawrence should have a second high school, finally had made its case successfully, and they were ready to put a bond issue on the April ballot. The county was being lobbied heavily by the Public Health Department, Visiting Nurses Association, and the Bert Nash Mental Health Center for more room, as the hospital’s expansion was reducing available space for these agencies whose services were growing. Also, the county jail was overcrowded, and we needed new facilities. This was the financial environment we confronted as we were discussing the parks and recreation master plan.
It worked in part because I had lent my mayoral status to help those who were already supporting more city, county, and school district cooperation. I suggested some cooperation, but mostly, I was just the voice for sentiments that others desired. I think this is one role that the facilitative mayor plays: You lend your status to theirs for projects that they are pushing and with which you agree. This cooperative base provided a framework to test out Gary’s idea, which, of course, became associated with my name because I was the one who publicly pushed it. As I look back on my eight years, this sales tax vote and the creative way we combined projects was my greatest accomplishment. MUNICIPAL GOLF COURSE
“I’m not sure I’m supposed to be talking to you. Can you look yourself in the mirror with any integrity?” Said to me by Stan H. of the Lawrence Municipal Golf Course Committee
The key event occurred when I used my position as mayor to call a meeting with Gary T., the executive director of the chamber of commerce, and Dan W., the president of the chamber and my former campaign director. Gary was especially important because he was a long-range thinker — which connected the two of us — and no bond issue passes in Lawrence
Construction of Lawrence’s municipal golf course is an issue that preceded my election and spanned both of my terms as commissioner. When I ran for city commission in 1991, a local advocacy group —
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(cont.)
the Lawrence Municipal Golf Course Committee — pledged to support me in exchange for my written support of their desire for a municipal golf course. I play golf and indicated to them that I favored reviewing this proposal and bringing it to the commission for consideration. My name was in newspaper ads that they placed supporting the candidates who favored a municipal golf course.
I had lost the respect and loyalty of the Golf Course Committee.
During my tenure as a new commissioner, we did consider construction of a municipal golf course on land to be leased from the Army Corps of Engineers. The commission was in favor of the plan, but two more public golf course options became available: A private golf course offered to sell their existing course to the city; another privately owned golf complex (offering a driving range and mini golf) presented plans to build an 18-hole course. The commission chose to allow the second businessman to pursue construction of a new course instead of pursuing the new municipal course option because it would achieve the same end result— increase capacity and affordable golfing for the general public — without expenditure of public funds. I supported that option.
Eventually, none of the private initiatives panned out, and the Golf Course Association proved to be correct. It was not until 1996 when, ironically, the golf course had been included in the new parks and recreation master plan for which I received a lot of credit that we finally began construction.
I was angry that the Committee failed to acknowledge that anything had changed since the spring. In the spring, we had one option, the municipal golf course. Then we had two. I could not understand why any reasonable person would not look at both.
I was the mayor in 1996 and 1997, and because I played golf and had been an initiator of the master plan and the sales tax initiative, I became the governing body’s representative on this project. I went out with the construction team and they took me on a tour of what they were doing. My picture was in the paper, and I became reincarnated as the “father of the golf course,” ironic in light of what Stan H. said to me in 1991.
My flexibility and my desire to facilitate the work of others rather than taking a strong, consistent stand worked against me. From the perspective of the Municipal Golf Course Committee, I had sold out. The quote opening this section was made to me in commission chambers after the meeting where we endorsed the private initiative.
(When people would later call me the “father of the golf course,” I would object and say that others had a very large role to play and that I was only one of a majority vote. After a while, I learned that people do not want to hear that. They really want to believe that someone, some one, made a difference. As an elected official, it is foolish time and again to try and deflect credit that people want to give you as long as you understand that “it is really not about you.”)
I learned something from this experience. To facilitate, you have to be respected. With only six months in office, I had not earned the respect needed in order to change my mind and still be seen as a credible commissioner. Thus, even though I was trying to facilitate the building of a golf course (the ultimate goal), my facilitative methods failed because I did not have the needed resources.
In the two cases presented above, you can see how the world of administration is represented by a parks and recreation master plan. Master plans are a fundamental tool of administrative work, representing the culmination of “data, subplans and reports.” They exemplify administrative work as they create legitimized documents upon which professional analysis and recommendations can be made.
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reinforced for me the idea that if one is true to one’s beliefs and treats others respectfully, that respect will be recognized and returned.
The world of politics is messier. The neat process of starting with a goal, creating a pathway with alternatives, and then working toward the desired end is not the politics I experienced. The world of politics consisted symbolically of “passion, dreams and stories” and it proceeded in fits and starts. As a facilitative mayor, I did not always choose my partners. I relied on my connections, the connections of others, and their passion and dreams for energy and support, in order to collectively construct messages that we believed the public would find compelling.
Resources for Facilitative Leadership: Respect, Trust, Loyalty One lesson stands out for me about being a mayor and city commissioner: Respect and loyalty leading to trust count above all other elements for a facilitative mayor. Because as mayor in a council-manager government I did not have the authority of a private sector chief executive or a mayor in a strong mayor government, I had to continually cultivate informal sources of influence. This is where respect, loyalty, and trust come in. Respect is necessary so that people will listen to you, and each elected official earns respect in different ways. I was a logical, big-picture thinker who took others into consideration, and they reciprocated. One phone conversation symbolizes this. A citizen called a couple of nights after we had made a decision about downtown. The caller, with whom I was acquainted, but whom I did not count as a supporter of mine, said he had read the paper and was surprised at my vote because he considered it anti-downtown. He went on to say that he knew I was a reasonable person, and he was calling because he wanted to know why I voted the way I did. His one phone call
While citizen respect is important, I learned that the respect of the other members of the governing body is even more valued. It has to be continually earned and re-earned because it is both critical and fragile. Our commission requires three votes to pass a motion, and as mayor I always had to think, “How do we get this done?” There are all kinds of opportunities to break trust, lose respect, and trash loyalty. I remember a particularly difficult night when I became pretty visibly and vocally upset at another commissioner, and he at me. After the meeting, he came over to me, held out his hand, and said “No hard feelings?” What can you say to that? You shake his hand, and you remember his generous gift of civility — one commissioner to another — and you try to learn from it. But, in the end, good governance is not only about knowledge, it is equally about judgment. As I wrote for a city newsletter in 1999: People often ask me what it is like teaching government and being an elected official. My answer has been the same from the beginning, and it surprised me. “There is not a lot of difference.” Every Tuesday night we face the single most important question any political theorist asks: What should be the role of government? (City Newsletter, 1999)
JOHN NALBANDIAN teaches in the public adminstration department at the University of Kansas. In addition to his faculty responsibilies, he served on the Lawrence, KS, city commission for two terms, including service as the city's mayor. John's additional work is available at www.goodlocalgovernment.org
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KLC AND MALCOLM GLADWELL MATCH-UP Assessing the Four Competencies Through the Lens of Popular Literature by Tony Brown
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competency is put on taking the action(s) necessary to achieve progress in a given situation, as opposed to doing what is comfortable.
In the inaugural issue of this journal, Ed O’Malley introduced four core competencies for civic leadership. These competencies were developed from discussions with Kansas citizens and are a distillation of their statements about successful civic leadership. Because of the methodology used to develop them, the competencies have strong face validity. That is, they appear to be true and their implementation should be helpful in improving the quality of leadership in the state.
Facilitating intervention emphasizes recognition of when to intervene in situations, and how to do so in a collaborative and inclusive manner. This competency also emphasizes the need to engage diverse voices and to appreciate, and even encourage, interpersonal conflict.
The danger of accepting face validity wholly is that many ideas that appear to be true turn out not to be so. Concurrent validity based on empirical evidence provides another test of whether these competencies can or should be implemented.
Energizing others refers to empowering others to assist in designing the intervention and acknowledging the very powerful emotional components of change. Pacing intervention appropriately can help to facilitate achieving both of these goals.
My goal in this essay is to assess the four competencies for civic leadership proposed by the Kansas Leadership Center with research findings. I will structure my analysis on the work of Malcolm Gladwell, as presented in his books, Blink, Outliers, and The Tipping Point.
Taken together, these competencies are the basis for a highly pragmatic leadership paradigm and one that differs significantly from more traditional leadership theory.
Opportunites and Challenges of This Leadership Paradigm
Overview of the Competencies
Malcolm Gladwell is a science writer who has authored three books examining social change, cognition and personal success. His work provides accessible summaries of scientific research within the context of real-world examples. The applied nature of his writings makes them appropriate sources for providing concurrent validation of the four competencies.
The four core competencies proposed by the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) are: diagnosing the situation, managing self, facilitating intervention, and energizing others (O’Malley, 2009). Diagnosing the situation refers to properly identifying the problem that needs to be addressed. In particular, a distinction is drawn between technical problems, which are more logically defined, and adaptive challenges, which are driven more by emotions and personal values.
BLINK: THIN SLICES AND SNAP DECISIONS Traditional leadership models often assume that the first step in leading involves a very thorough, rational analysis of the problem being addressed. This often leads to extensive collection of background information, stakeholder opinions and other relevant data to obtain a more complete understanding of the issue. Such an approach is a very reasonable, and necessary, way to begin the leadership process. But it may be incomplete.
Managing self addresses the need to understand personal capabilities and vulnerabilities, to understand one’s role in the system, and to assess one’s tolerance for personal risk and discomfort. Emphasis in this
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not exactly the answer I was expecting, but at least he let me know where he really stood.
In Blink (2005), Malcolm Gladwell challenges the proposition that people usually make decisions in a thoughtful, rational manner. Instead, he proposes that we often make decisions very quickly, almost unconsciously. We rely on what he refers to as an adaptive unconscious — a very rapid, efficient decision-making aspect of our cognitive processing. This unconscious processing enables us to assess situations almost instantaneously, bypassing the arduous and time-consuming task of rational analysis.
I cite this example not to belittle my colleague or to suggest how hopelessly illogical he is. Rather, I use it to demonstrate how we all sometimes make decisions based on subjective beliefs rather than objective evidence. Many of us would agree we sometimes twist the context of questions to accommodate answers that we wish to accept. I would suggest our lack of objectivity goes even deeper: we often formulate responses to questions before they are even asked of us.
He proposes that we often determine something is right or wrong not because of specific reasons, but because it “feels” right or wrong. We make snap decisions based on these gut feelings, based on what Gladwell describes as “thin slices” of experience. Then, if necessary, we can collect objective data to confirm our subjective decisions.
OUTLIERS: OPPORTUNITY AND WORK Another emphasis of traditional leadership models is that analysis of one’s personal strengths and weaknesses is a necessary component of leadership. This seems simple enough: Effective leaders must understand what skills they have before they attempt to lead others. Of course, it may not be that simple.
Richard Thaler and Cass Sustein (2008) differentiate between our automatic and reflective systems of cognitive processing. Our automatic system is similar to Gladwell’s conception of the adaptive unconscious — fast, associative and effortless. In contrast, the reflective system relies on slow, deductive and highly effortful processing. Thaler and Sustein contend that due to constraints of time and cognitive energy, we tend to rely on our automatic cognitive system much more than our reflective system.
In Outliers (2008), Malcolm Gladwell proposes that success at anything, including presumably leadership, involves situational factors that are beyond an individual person’s control. While we often like to believe that personal success is the result of merit, Gladwell argues that successful people are seldom self-made through their own hard work. Rather, successful people benefit from unique opportunities to develop their skills and talents.
The difficulty is that our automatic systems can be fooled quite easily by how information is presented to us. By associating an issue with negative or positive connotations, we can be “nudged” to make a predetermined decision of our own free will, even after careful, objective consideration. So what we believe to be logical and independent analysis has really been manipulated.
Many of these situational factors are identifiable and predictable: socioeconomic status, education level and family structure might be good examples. But other situational factors may be unknown and, therefore, more difficult to predict. Gladwell cites the birthdates of hockey players and computer pioneers as examples of these hidden situational factors that have significant impact on success.
I encountered an example of this unconscious reasoning earlier this year. During an informal discussion of global climate change, I asked a colleague what evidence would be necessary to convince him that this phenomenon was actually occurring. He answered without any hesitation, “There is none. I will never believe it.” This was
One of strongest situational factors that leads to success may be success itself. Gladwell notes that, “Success is the result of what sociologists like to call ‘accumulative advantage’” (2008, p. 30). So if
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THE TIPPING POINT: LAW OF THE FEW, STICKINESS AND CONTEXT
you are a successful student, you get richer learning opportunities. If you are a successful athlete, you get more opportunities to hone your athletic skills. And if you are a successful leader, you get to lead more.
A third emphasis of traditional leadership models is that leadership is essentially a top-down enterprise, and that there is a clear distinction between leaders and followers. Change happens after winning over a majority of people through a concerted effort by individual leaders. One’s leadership is demonstrated by being able to attract significant numbers of people who follow your lead.
The cumulative nature of success leads naturally into another principle emphasized by Gladwell: Success takes time. Regardless of what the activity is, you have to work at it for a long time to become good at something.
Malcolm Gladwell challenges this perspective in The Tipping Point (2002). In this examination of social change, Gladwell comments on three aspects of how change happens: the people who bring on the change, the way the change is presented, and the context in which the change occurs. Gladwell documents how change is often initiated by a relatively few number of people who are not necessarily recognized leaders. Instead, they are people who are connected to a lot of people in a lot of different social networks. These “connectors” put people together because of their vast network of friends who occupy very different social worlds. They do not necessarily have strong friendships with all these people, but they are able to cultivate a large number of acquaintances with whom they maintain weak social ties.
Real-world examples of this time requirement are abundant — we all can identify our own favorite successful person to illustrate this principle. The common theme of these examples is that they tend to counteract the mythologies we construct about highly successful individuals being supernaturally anointed. Of course successful people have special skills and abilities. But they also work really hard. An example of this principle is the award-winning teacher and author Frank McCourt. As I was preparing this manuscript, I read the final book of McCourt’s autobiographical trilogy, Teacher Man (2005). By his own admission, he was not a very good teacher when he graduated from the education program at New York University. In fact, he was surprised that he even passed the teaching certification exam.
Ed Keller and Jon Berry have examined this social aspect of change more fully in their book, The Influentials (2003). They propose that 10 percent of any population essentially guides the other 90 percent in a vast array of everyday decisions. They don’t influence others through intentional coercion, but rather through their social connections within their communities. The “influentials” are the “connectors” to whom Gladwell refers.
But he became a successful teacher by teaching a lot. He estimated that over the course of his 33-year career he taught 12,000 students in 33,000 classes across five different high schools and one college. Clearly, McCourt was a talented storyteller and a brilliant writer, but he attributed his teaching success to practice: “Doggedness is not as glamorous as ambition or talent or intellect or charm, but still the one thing that got me through the days and nights” (2005, p. 66).
What is important to note in Keller and Berry’s analysis is that the influential persons they examine are not necessarily in official leadership positions.
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The final aspect of social change Gladwell examines is the context in which change occurs. His analysis of context emphasizes that effective social change needs to occur in the right place and time. Gladwell suggests that appropriate consideration of context is particularly important in social change because we tend to underestimate the power of environmental factors on our personal behavior, a concept that social psychologists call the “fundamental attribution error.” Social change agents underestimate environmental factors at their peril.
In fact, by their sheer number (1 in 10 persons in any social network), the odds are that the influentials are not official leaders. The authors note, “The Influentials are evidence of something that many people know intuitively, that not all opinions are created equal. Some people are better connected, better read, and better informed” (2003, p. 15).
The folks who Keller and Berry say are the leaders of society are common citizens among us, our neighbors, the people we see at the local market and gym.
Change that happens in the wrong place or at the wrong time has little chance for success, regardless of its objective merit. Conversely, proper assessment of environmental factors can greatly enhance the likelihood of success of social change, even if the change itself is not all that great. The trick seems to be coming up with the right idea at the right time.
Gladwell (2002) also examines two other aspects of social change. One has to do with the nature of the message. He proposes that effective messages need to have two characteristics: They need to be memorable and useful. The first characteristic makes logical sense — if people can’t remember the message, then it has little chance to bring about change. Cognitive science teaches us that one of the primary keys to memory is distinctiveness. We remember things best when they stand out in our minds because their physical appearance, rarity, or emotional power differentiate them from other memories.
Summary: What Research Tells Us About the Competencies
But it may be the second characteristic, the usefulness of a message, that is of more interest for the current analysis. Gladwell suggests the usefulness of a message is measured by its ability to activate others to action. Linking the memory of a change message to an action not only strengthens its retention, but also tends to increase a person’s agreement with the message through the process of cognitive dissonance. This is because we are motivated to reduce dissonance between our behavior and our beliefs. So if we do something in response to a specific message, we are more likely to agree with it.
I began this essay with a simple question of whether the four competencies proposed by the Kansas Leadership Center can be validated with empirical evidence. The answer appears to be yes — on balance, the research provides concurrent validation of the leadership paradigm. Here are some specific conclusions that can be drawn:
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research I cite. Although I deliberately chose to structure my analysis on Malcolm Gladwell’s works because of their applied nature, they are admittedly abstractions of original research, at least one step removed from the empirical data. Going back to the original studies on which Gladwell’s work is based would be a more rigorous assessment of the proposed competencies.
The importance of emphasizing adaptive challenges is confirmed by research on the prevalence of the subjective, unconscious aspects of our reasoning. Research on individual success suggests that self-analysis might be supplemented by consideration of hidden environmental factors that may significantly impact leadership. Research on individual success suggests that leadership, like any other endeavor, requires a significant amount of dedicated practice. Social change research confirms the importance of including others in the intervention process and emphasizes the importance of focusing on influential community members.
Despite these limitations, I hope this is a good start to the important process of empirically validating the four competencies on which this leadership paradigm is based. REFERENCES
The focus on energizing others is confirmed by social change research that emphasizes behavioral change. Social change research confirms the importance of the timing and pacing of interventions.
Gladwell, M. (2002). The Tipping Point. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
There are, of course, limitations to the present analysis that may weaken these conclusions. Two of these limitations seem particularly salient. The first is the small sample of empirical evidence I have cited. A more comprehensive review of the social science literature would certainly provide a much stronger test of the validity of this leadership paradigm. A second limitation is the general nature of the
McCourt, F. (2005). Teacher Man. New York: Scribner.
Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink. New York: Little, Brown and Company. Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers. New York: Little, Brown and Company. Keller, E., & Berry, J. (2003). The Influentials. New York: Free Press. O’Malley, E. (2009). The Competencies for Civic Leadership. The Journal of Kansas Civic Leadership Development, 1, 7-15. Thaler, R.H., & Sustein, C.R. (2008). Nudge. New Haven: Yale University Press.
TONY BROWN is the 10th District House Representative in the Kansas Legislature. His district includes Baldwin City, Wellsville and parts of Ottawa and Lawrence. Tony lives in Baldwin City with his wife, Becky, and daughter, Halley.
Are you on Facebook? A discussion board for this article has been created at the Kansas Leadership Center Facebook Group page. Share your thoughts and engage with fellow readers.
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CREATIVE THOUGHT AND LEADERSHIP
by Cindy Zimmerman, MFA, BFA
A core principle of our leadership practice is the belief that, in civic life, leadership work belongs to all of us, regardless of title or position. Creative thought is equally held to be a capacity we all have and something each of us will need to engage in justin the act of becoming a leader.
So then, what characterizes the creative thought that makes an expression a work of art rather than just an ordinary utterance? And what kind of audacity or courage does it take to create work that exists as a tool of inquiry into emotions and ideas that are hard to capture and pinpoint?
When we start to describe creative thought or devise strategies to induce such thought processes, we struggle to find metaphors and stories that are accessible and practical.
Conceptual artists emerging in the galleries and museums and theaters of the last midcentury said that the idea in art is more important than the medium used to express it. They took their cue from Marcel Duchamp, whose renaming of found objects was part poetry, part joke — he famously renamed a urinal to be a fountain.
IDEAS
This problem starts when we look at creative work through the frame of medium used rather than ideas expressed.
As another artist, Joseph Kosuth, put it, "The 'value' of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to how much they questioned the nature of art."
MEDIUM - He is a standup comedian IDEAS - He reinvents childhood
QUESTIONS
MEDIUM - She is a second chair in the symphony IDEAS - Her passion is for 19th century Vienna
And it is in this questioning that we find a link to the qualities of leadership that are upheld by creative thought. Questioning strategies by their very nature must be flexible and courageous, because they proceed forward in the face of insufficient information about the terrain they enter.
MEDIUM - He is a poet. IDEAS - He calls us to honor our past MEDIUM - She is a painter IDEAS - She envisions a just world
A teacher of mine, filmmaker Jean Pierre Gorin, put it this way: “As the gatherer of information, [the artist] …is always forced to approach the facts from a certain angle and always forced also to realize at one point in the process that the facts will show a fundamental reluctance to fit neatly into one’s approach. In effect one is always taken to other places than the one one intended to be taken to. The detour becomes the destination….”
While the quality of the painting matters, how much more we learn when we know the story, the ideas that animate the work. And the conceptual framework usually has a link to and animates the larger discourse of our lives.
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CINDY ZIMMERMAN, M.F.A., has over thirty years of experience providing organizational services and cultural projects to communities. She is co-facilitator of Leadership Salina and co-founder of the Zimmerman HighKin Group (www.zimkin.com).
KLC leadership competency number one is Diagnosing the Situation, a phase of leadership often cut short by the desire, the pressure to act, to just do something! Leaders recognize that when confronted with unfamiliar territory, it’s hard at first to assess the landmarks. As we know in western Kansas, a piece of limestone standing tall in the prairie may not be a signpost; it’s more likely a fencepost!
As Education Curator Ann Marie Kriss observed, “This kind of leadership rallies enthusiasm, fosters creativity, and gently guides, rather than dictates. It allows participants to flow between individual problem-solving and helpful collaboration. In the end, sixteen students transformed an entire room into an environment and work of art they were proud of.”
In honoring different perspectives and unusual voices, it is important to stay open and flexible when a detour throws us off our predetermined path. Creative thought allows us to invent new contexts and try them out prior to calibrating our compass, while at the same time reliving and reviewing the path taken until now, like a filmmaker cutting and editing the narrative line again and again, until the progression suits the desired narrative.
Creativity in art often puts the practitioner in charge of inventing the means of discourse as well as engaging in it. This is because of the nature of the act of bringing forth that which is new, fresh, and original. Words and pictures do not already exist that can describe or explain the new experience. Each new gesture may result in a temporary disequilibrium that requires another gesture to be invented and restore balance. There is risk.
When we use the timeline to help our Leadership Salina participants honor diverse perspectives and find a common ground for their experiences, we are using one of the standard tools of the creative person. Drawing as well as writing experiences, we are making a kind of storyboard of our community, the way a filmmaker or novelist might do.
TOOLS OF INQUIRY
Leaders take risks in making change on behalf of the community, and their tools of inquiry need to fit the phenomenon as it unfolds before them, not some roadmap of the past. Creative thought is as accessible to leaders as their willingness to ask questions and follow detours and ask new questions at each turn.
ADAPTATIONS
Not surprisingly, our 21st-century leadership techniques work well when adapted in an artistic context, as I recently found while teaching middle school art workshops at Salina Art Center. We made timelines that resembled growing vines, and clouds of questions that arose from our reflections. As they drew, cut and installed their creations, the students learned to appreciate each other in a more concrete way, and made art of the experience.
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TIM ANDERSEN, PHOTOGRAPHER A Portrait of Our Featured Artist
by Carlota Ponds
Artistic images in this publication are from the collection of Tim Andersen, a commercial, portrait and landscape photographer living and working in northeast Kansas. Tim strives in his work to capture the beauty and uniqueness of Kansas: Western plains, collegiate architecture, the Flint Hills and Konza Prairie, and urban venues in and around Kansas City and Topeka. What initially drew me to Tim’s work was the image Firefly Frenzy on his website (and reprinted on page 71). It reminded me of a session of my Leadership Hutchinson program in 1999. Our class was divided into groups and asked to put together a marketing campaign that would attract potential businesses to expand into Kansas. I don’t remember exactly (it has been 10 years!) but my group’s campaign slogan was something along the lines of, “Come to the land of fireflies and beautiful sunsets all year long.” Tim’s work reflects my sentiment (expressed during that class) that there really is no ugly time of year in Kansas. Growing up in Los Angeles, I looked forward to seeing fireflies during my summer visits home. Unlike in California, each season in Kansas brings its own distinct beauty: ice encrusted branches glistening with frost in the winter, redbud trees blooming in the spring, fireflies as spring melts into summer, cicadas as summer cools to fall, and an explosion of turning leaves to rake in the fall before icicles reform on the newly bare limbs. When you ask Tim what he enjoys most, he’ll tell you in a heartbeat: taking pictures. Nature pictures, specifically. Although he enjoys photographing weddings and taking on other photojournalistic assignments, nothing suits Tim better than to get out in nature and capture it in a frame.
“In general, wherever I am, I’m always on the lookout for something interesting. A lot of the art of photography is placement and timing. Finding the right light and the right time of day can really make a picture stand out. In terms of Kansas, I want to show people that Kansas is a beautiful state, contrary to what people might think, even if it’s something subtle, prairie flowers or sun setting over the Konza Prairie.” Tim’s interest in photography was born during his mid-college years on a trip to Hungary with his church. He brought along his dad’s old camera, planning to use it mostly to capture memories of his trip. When he showed his photos back home, people kept encouraging him to “do something” with them, so he entered some in a few shows and competitions, and they were well received. “I kept on buying film, eventually bought a digital camera…one thing led to another and pretty soon I was hooked.” Tim graduated from Kansas State University in 2005 with a degree in Information Systems, which he currently uses to develop websites and databases as a freelance contractor for a variety of clients. Little did Tim know that his tenure at K-State would influence his career path so profoundly in other ways. From his vantage point in Manhattan, “it was an easy getaway to be surrounded with such beauty…. Too many people never get a chance to see some of the more scenic parts of this state. I help transport that beauty to them.” Now through the pages of the Journal, he’s transporting that beauty to us. CARLOTA PONDS is a Program Associate with the Kansas Leadership Center. Her special interests are community collaboration and increasing the voice of underrepresented populations in the civic arena.
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Fireflies are a common sight here in Kansas, but to see so many in one place…not so common. I had been looking for a good place to photograph these little guys for several months without any luck. Then one night in search of a place to photograph a lightning storm I instead found these lightning bugs. — TIM ANDERSEN
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FROM THEORY TO ACTION The Kansas Leadership Center Curricular Underpinning by Ed O’Malley, on behalf of the faculty and staff of KLC, and many Kansans who contributed to this thinking
The Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) is organizationally and intellectually organic, adapting to new realities, unanticipated challenges, unforeseen opportunities, and shifting contexts. More specifically, KLC’s core conceptual underpinning continues to be refined and deepened, benefitting from the experience and feedback of our faculty, staff, board and participants. We didn’t start by importing someone else’s leadership curriculum, but rather allowed one to be created out of the insights of Kansans, knowing that it would be a living document, continuing to be informed by our experience and by changes in the external environment. Here is the current evolution of our thinking.
KLC Theory of Civic Leadership
KLC Civic Leadership Principles
What KLC observed through intense listening across Kansas:
• Leadership is an activity not position or authority.
• There is inadequate progress on issues Kansans care most about. • These issues are deep, daunting, adaptive challenges. • Our current civic culture, defined by “usual” voices dominating public discourse and “unusual” voices not participating as well as a pervasive “us” against “them” mentality, erodes social capital in our communities. • This default civic culture is a mismatch with the deep, daunting, adaptive challenges facing our communities, regions and state.
• Each of us has the opportunity to exercise leadership at any time in any situation. • The activity of leadership starts with a personal intervention. • Exercising leadership is an experimental and improvisatory art. We cannot know if an intervention will work until we try it. • Exercising leadership is inherently risky: once we intervene we lose significant control over the outcome.
KLC’S INTERPRETATION OF THE DATA A profoundly different kind of civic leadership and civic culture is needed throughout our communities. Making progress on civic challenges requires courageous collaboration that must engage “usual” and “unusual” voices. The capacity to exercise leadership must come much more from personal credibility and skill rather than from positions of authority. Furthermore, civic leadership must be focused more on process of engagement rather than the content of the issue. Finally, this different type of leadership must be pervasive across our state if Kansans are to create truly healthy communities.
• The risks of exercising leadership are both personal and professional. • To make progress, we need to be more conscious, purposeful and intentional about our leadership interventions. • Making progress requires us to do what is needed in the situation rather than what is wanted or is comfortable for others or ourselves. • To make progress, we have to be willing to raise the heat to get others and ourselves into the zone of productive work.
KLC’S INTERVENTION
• Exercising leadership involves managing losses and risking casualties.
KLC’s programs and initiatives develop this kind of civic leadership through powerful experiences that provide conceptual frameworks, skills, tools and ways of being consistent with this more purposeful and collaborative leadership approach.
• Our own defaults, how we would usually or unconsciously react or intervene in a situation, can be significant barriers to making progress on the issues we care about.
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KLC Competencies for Civic Leadership DIAGNOSE SITUATION
MANAGE SELF
Exercising civic leadership requires you to question your and others’ assumptions about what is really going on, digging deeply beneath the issue to uncover the real competing values and complexities at hand. Making observations and testing various interpretations of what is going on in the system can help you design and choose interventions that are more likely to lead to progress on the issue you care about.
Exercising civic leadership effectively requires knowing yourself enough to understand how well you are situated to intervene. This will involve challenging you assumptions about your strengths and weaknesses as well as expanding your repertoire of possible responses. • Identify you capabilities, vulnerabilities and triggers • Figure out how others perceive your role in the system • Distinguish self from role • Choose among competing values • Increase tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity and conflict • Experiment beyond your comfort zone
• Explore adaptive and systemic interpretations • Distinguish the technical and adaptive elements • Distinguish the process challenges from the content challenges • Test multiple interpretations • Read temperature in system • Identify locus of the work
FACILITATE INTERVENTION ENERGIZE OTHERS
Exercising civic leadership starts with a personal intervention. Making conscious choices about whether, when and how you intervene, and how to do so most skillfully, will help you maximize your chances for making progress.
Exercising civic leadership on adaptive challenges requires engaging others. Engaging others means connecting interests, attending to how people work together (the process) and inspiring them to make progress. • • • • • • •
• • • • • •
Engage unusual voices Work across factions Start where they are Speak to loss Infuse the work with purpose Build a trustworthy process Discover connecting interests
Make conscious choices Raise the heat Give the work back Hold relentlessly to pressure Speak from the heart Act experimentally
Realizing the Vision Some years from now, the fruits of this investment should be apparent in at least three dimensions. First, enhanced civic leadership in Kansas because of KLC’s efforts should lead to demonstrable progress on civic challenges such as health, education, economic development, environment and governance. Second, the amount of a particular kind of social capital, bridging social capital (the capacity of people to work together across boundaries), should grow significantly in the state. Third, the civic culture of Kansas towns, cities and regions should be transformed in ways that support adaptive work through collaborative civic engagement. Substantially achieving these outcomes will be the full measure and test of KLC’s Theory of Leadership.
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THE JOURNAL KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER FALL 2009
KLC 2010-11 PROGRAM OFFERINGS LOCATION
DATE
PROGRAM
Jan. 4-8
The Art and Practice of Civic Leadership Development
Wichita
Jan. 10-13 Sept. 12-14
Leadership and Faith Transforming Communities II
Topeka
Feb. 8-12 Aug. 28
Kansas Civic Leadership Context and Competencies
Wichita
Mar. 8-12 Jun. 9-11 Oct. 20-22
Community Collaboration Academy
Lawrence
Apr. 12-16 Oct. 29
Civic Leadership Lab for Community Foundations
Wichita
April 26-27 Aug. 6
KLC Leadership Coach Certification Training
Wichita
Apr. 28 Jul. 12-16 Sep. 30-Oct. 1 Nov. 18-19 Jan. 2011 TBD Mar. 2011 TBD May 2011 TBD
Kansas Health Foundation Fellows
Wichita
May 10-13
KCLI Facilitator Workshop
Wichita
June 23-25
Leadership Case Facilitation Training
Wichita
July 28-30
Past Participants Gathering
Overland Park
Aug. 8-11 Feb. 2011 TBD
Leadership and Faith Transforming Communities III
Wichita
Oct. 11-15 Apr. 2011 TBD
Kansas Civic Leadership Context and Competencies
Wichita
Nov. 8-10
KCLI Summit
Wichita
Nov. 8-10
KCLI Facilitator Workshop
Wichita
Dec. 15-17 Jun. 2011 TBD
Leadership and Legacy in the Statehouse – A New Legislators’ Program
Wichita
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THE JOURNAL KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER FALL 2009
KANSAS LEADERSHIP CENTER Signature Programs KLC program participants explore and improve their leadership ability, gain a deep understanding of the context of civic life in Kansas and are coached in small and large group settings to better align their leadership activity with creating stronger, healthier Kansas communities.
Community Focused Programs
Custom Programs
Open Enrollment Programs
Faculty Development
KANSAS COMMUNITY
THE CIVIC LEADERSHIP LAB
KANSAS CIVIC
THE ART AND PRACTICE
LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE
A specially designed leadership development experience for people who share common roles and responsibilities in civic life.
LEADERSHIP — CONTEXT
OF CIVIC LEADERSHIP
AND COMPETENCIES
DEVELOPMENT
This weeklong open enrollment experience is designed for Kansans from all walks of life.
LEADERSHIP AND LEGACY
KANSAS HEALTH
Connecting Kansans who share an interest in teaching and consulting in the field of leadership development, this program creates a strong learning community for participants.
A variety of different programs and activities for facilitators, coordinators and participants of local community leadership programs. COMMUNITY
IN THE STATEHOUSE —
FOUNDATION FELLOWS
COLLABORATION ACADEMY
A NEW LEGISLATORS’
A partnership with the University of Kansas, to expand the skills of experienced practitioners who design and facilitate community and regional collaborative efforts.
PROGRAM
A flagship program of the Kansas Health Foundation, connecting accomplished Kansans and fostering deep personal and civic understanding and leadership.
Offered to new legislators, this experience provides tools for participants to maximize their first-term effectiveness in office and gain a wider perspective of their new roles. LEADERSHIP AND FAITH TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES
A program designed to increase the civic leadership ability and community health focus of faith communities.
Visit www.kansasleadershipcenter.org or call 316.712.4950 for more information about participating in KLC programs.
1.
KLC FACULTY FELLOW PROGRAM
An intense, year-long fellowship for select leadership faculty, coaches, trainers and/or consultants.
THE
300 N. MAIN, SUITE 100 WICHITA, KANSAS 67202
JOURNAL