QUESTION:
My organization is considering sponsoring a leadership program in our tri-county service area. Do you have any suggestions about how to start and what should be in it?

Milan Wall
Co-Director

A good beginning topic is self-assessment of leadership skills. We like to suggest that participants rate their skills at the beginning and the end of a program so you can evaluate the impact of the training. This is also a way to help participants see that their experience is really useful even if they’ve never thought of themselves as a leader before.

Leon Sharpe
Program Associate

Do you have a good, representative core group to help you design the program? If you have a diverse group to begin with, recruiting emerging leaders will be easier. Your core group should look like your community and represent all aspects of the population.

Stephanie Luther
Research Associate

You might want to look at other leadership programs. If you check the Kellogg Foundation Collection at www.unl.edu/kellogg/ you can do a key word search on leadership development that will give you information on how to contact other programs and ask for sample materials.

Vicki Luther
Co-Director

Community leaders should know how to organize a group, help set goals, develop action plans and put accountability into place. Those all sound simple, don’t they? But there is a body of techniques for running meetings, making decisions, delegating and evaluating that leaders can learn through programs like yours.

Reggi Carlson
Development Specialist

Of course you should read “Building Local Leaders,” one of our best publications! I think co-sponsorship with other organizations is really important when you’re starting a program. It’s the best way to share costs and to recruit from networks other than your own. That way you don’t have just the usual suspects in the first class.