No matter what you do, you know that a key to your group being effective includes good leadership. Leaders who find ways to operate using renewable practices, help people see what they have in new ways, and actually get something done are rarer than they could be. Some assume that leaders are born and wish more leaders showed up with certain traits in place. But we are seeing that leadership can be caught/taught and that everyone can increase his or her effectiveness as a leader.
One group the A.R.E. team is working with is the Transforming Leaders Initiative. It is an example of a committed group of people within an organization trying to work alongside the core but apart from it to some degree. In this way they are hoping to lift up an entrepreneurial group that can train leaders and change the culture of their organization – in this case the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
What they are doing could be worth considering in other organizations as well – gathering effective and committed leaders to create vehicles for mentoring, coaching and training outside of the traditional learning institutions. You may want to check out their web site to see a bit about them. You may want to see their petition to a key funder (and even sign it if you see something you’d like to support). And you may learn from their petition about a web strategy to mobilize hundreds of people quickly and make a single voice be heard. The Obama campaign used tactics like this with great effectiveness and you and your organization can to. How are you generating ways to lift up and equip leaders in your organization? How do you mobilize people for change in order to lobby your own group(s) for more effective practices? While TLI may not be directly impacting the group you are part of, it may have a few ideas you can learn from and inspire you to try something new, too.
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