Leadership Challenge

Co-op Leading: Not as easy as it sounds.

I recently had the pleasure of conducting an LPI workshop for the board of a cooperative preschool. I went in with a lot of assumptions about the simplicity of the issues they faced. Leading in a preschool environment, simple right? Leading with lots of help, it's a co-op after all, easy right? Wrong! I was humbled by the challenges they face and impressed by the way in which they embraced leadership as a means to address those challenges. They are all parents of small children. This is a high maintenance time of life: schedules are packed and plans change, a lot. Their time is limited and yet they made leadership development a priority. They share a core value of wanting to have their kids in a place that is safe and nurturing while they are at work. What they struggle with is a vision for how they can successfullyimpact change because they are so caught in the challenges of the day to day. In order to create and support such a place they do a lot. They are all expected to serve on the board at some point while their child attend the school. This means they are often placed into roles they feel unprepared for. This board rotates completely every year. The positive of this is there is limited time they have to dedicate to the board, the negative is they feel there is limited time to make substantive change and little opportunity to mentor future parents so they can benefit form experience. The other challenge is the co-op system itself. They are all equals, they are all "owners", so who's the leader?

This was a perfect example of the concept "Leadership is Everyone's Business" and they recognized that. They embraced the LPI as a way to show them how they could be more effective individually and therefore have more impact collectively. They used the LPI results to dig into opportunities for them to individually stretch so they could have impact and the school could flourish. It spoke volumes to me on the power of shared values. It also reinforced for me that being an exemplary leader is never easy. In the small little world of preschool, the challenges in effective leadership are not small. What I witnessed was a group of leaders with shared values who seized the initiative to be more effective individually so they could be more effective collectively. I also saw parents who were modeling the way for their children by stretching, learning, and leading.
posted by
Beth High

Skip the debates. Let's use LPIs.

I was listening to National Public Radios program "All Things Considered"tonight and there was an interesting piece on the importance placed on “experience” in the increasingly cantankerous debates among the candidates. In the segment the question was raised as to whether one can really prepare for the role of leader of Commander in Chief. One expert said, “There is no school for becoming president.” Each candidate claims vast experience, but each defines it in a slightly different way that usually links to their history. It made me think about what kind of experience I was looking for in our next president. Was it experience in foreign policy? Was it working with congress? Yes, absolutely. However, what I look for even more than time spent in these different arenas is how effective they have been as leaders. What do those who have worked with them say? Wouldn’t it be great if we could administer the LPI to all the candidates and ask them to share their takeaways with us? It might create a common language we could all use to help us with this most important choice.
posted by Beth High

Framing LPI feedback

I'm working with a new client in Atlanta. This is a small group of people who have started an independent preschool. They have decided as a group to focus on their leadership development to support the headmaster and build their capacity as a board. As we talked about launching the LPI the idea of transparency came up. How could the group best inform the people they are asking to be observers about their commitment to becoming stronger leaders? How could they ask for meaningful feedback and avoid the assumption that they are just seeking positive reinforcement. After playing around with several ideas, we landed on having the group work in teams to come up with a metaphor they felt captured their intent. They will bring those back to the group, find one they all feel comfortable with, and draft a letter to their observers together. It struck me as a very cool exercise for the group that will get them the feedback they are looking for and deepen their own commitment to their leadership development. Since commitment is so key to the success of any leadership development activity, I think they are off to a great start.
-Beth High