Activities and Approach
Our Leadership Institute strengthens legal aid programs' leadership capacity by creating broader, more experienced and more diverse pools of leaders in both managerial and advocacy roles. The result of extensive design, reflection, delivery, evaluation and redesign, it has four central components, all of which aim to make leadership development a transparently obtainable goal.
1. CORE CURRICULUM
Leadership through the lens of seven core competencies (as outlined here) – each explored conceptually and also the basis for a wide range of concrete practical tools.
2. ONE-TO-ONE MENTORING
Every fellow is carefully paired with an experienced mentor – from a different legal services program and with interests and expertise that fit fellow’s aspirations.
3. LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE
In partnership with their program, each fellow plans, implements and evaluates a project that expressly benefits their program and clients - a ‘live’ laboratory for active experimentation, using new skills learned and the guidance of a mentor.
4. LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PLAN
Longer-term planning setting out the additional training, experience and opportunities needed to further enhance leadership goals – a plan followed both during and after the Institute.
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The Institute also includes four three-day in-person retreats, web-based activities during the intervening months, and specialized programming to support mentors in fulfilling their roles.
“ The skills I learned from the Leadership Institute have made me a much more capable leader in my legal services community. I learned … that leadership can be taught and that support and encouragement are essential to the development of new leaders. ”
- Astrid Lebron, 2006-7 New England Leadership Fellow
Facilitative Leadership
Our Leadership Institute is premised on important assumptions about what leadership means and should mean in our community. In particular, underpinning the four Institute components outlined above is an overriding commitment to the practice of facilitative leadership - leadership that:
- Is not based on positional power and absolute authority but rather on mutual respect and commitment;
- Involves people wanting to participate in the leader's initiatives, not having to;
- Is characterized by meaningful engagement and involvement of the entire team responsible for an initiative, with power, authority, responsibility and accountability broadly and fairly shared;
- Includes effectively communicating a vision in a fashion that motivates others, captures their imagination and inspires hope, and then letting that vision be further shaped by others;
- Ensures maximum, appropriate stakeholder involvement in problem-solving, strategy development and decision-making;
- Increases the likelihood of success by developing concrete project plans;
- Leaves participants in the effort with the ultimate feeling that they responsible for the positive result achieved and that the initiative was theirs.