2013 Year of Appreciation

2013 was a year of appreciation, both in the sense of gratitude for the gifts our volunteers, sponsors, and participants have contributed to make the School for Leadership such a success and in the sense of the growing value that comes with each year of work invested and each new person connected to or touched by the transformation and leadership the School makes available.

Below are some of our major accomplishments in 2013:

• Each Regional Learning Group continued to deepen their work together as a community and strengthening their ability to use the distinctions they are learning about working as a community in their own work.


• Held the second Three-Day Leadership Clinics for participants at a residential facility in each region. These clinics are designed to reinforce the learnings of the Five-Day Fundamentals in Transformational Leadership and address how to deal with challenges and breakdowns in the field.


• Held the third and final five-day residential program, Fundamentals of Transformational Leadership, for the second cohort. This year the emphasis was on the participants’ development and practice as program leaders.


• Produced two, three-hour Leadership Dialogues for the participants, one on authenticity and one on listening. These international conference calls are part of the curriculum of the school and are held during those quarters of the academic year when there is no residential offering.


• Presented two professionally-recorded audio offerings, one on transformational leadership and one on community. These audio offerings are part of the curriculum and become part of the library of more than 50 distinctions of the School that are being developed by the faculty.


• Held two School Builder meetings – one in January and one in July – to do the reporting and planning necessary to keep the School moving forward.


• Continued to build the Apprentice Leader Program, which includes 13 of the original 18 participants in the first cohort of the School. During 2013 each of them had at least one major opportunity to advance their program leadership skills. This is a significant level of commitment from an all-volunteer group.


• Continued to develop the Coaching Program as one of the core elements of the three-year curriculum. Each participant has a new coach assigned for the academic year, and each coach has access to a mentor to support their coaching of participants. The Coaching Element also worked to revise and update the Practicum Guide and began to develop an online Coaching Handbook.


• Continued the Apprentice Coaching program with 11 participants (eight of them from the first cohort). These apprentices learn the basics by coaching each other and are mentored by a senior coach. Developing these apprentices as coaches will allow us to have more participants in the Third Cohort, which will begin in the spring of 2015.


• Continued the groundwork for pre-enrollment into the Third Cohort. This included holding Mastery programs that serve as prerequisites for the School in each region. We continued to identify, qualify, and communicate with future candidates.


• Cross-trained volunteers and School Builders in different roles and jobs, particularly around program production. This not only makes more experience and skill available to the School, it enlivens those learning new jobs and accountabilities.


• Created a library of “How Do I…?” articles on the wiki to support cohort members and school builders in using the tools and technologies that make the school accessible and affordable.


• Continued to build, maintain, and improve the structures – such as checklists, calendars, manuals, and other records – that are part of the foundation of the School. This work is critical to the stability and sustainability of the School and its expansion.


• Began the design of a series of gatherings for Mastery Foundation program graduates that can be led entirely or in part by apprentices. These gatherings both keep the conversation for transformation alive for all who participate in them and forward the training of apprentice program leaders.