Here’s how The Center for Social Leadership’s experiential, hands-on philosophy will translate into your classroom experience:

Breakout Sessions:  You will have opportunities to work through some of the specific leadership and managerial challenges you are currently facing in the office through Breakout Sessions where 3-4 other senior nonprofit executives and roving consultants/resource people will dedicate themselves entirely to consulting with you and helping you to find solutions to the challenges you’ve identified.

Sharing of Best Practices:  Through facilitated discussions with panels of Nonprofit Leaders (you will have the opportunity to be on a panel to discuss one of your strength areas) you will distill what truly are the Best Practices in nonprofit leadership. A renowned Best Practices Leader – author, academic, noted speaker – will lead part of each session and will participate in panels, discussions,
and Breakout Sessions.

Facilitated Group Discussions: In addition to learning concrete skills crucial to nonprofit management, there will be facilitated group discussions on nonprofit leadership focusing on such key questions as:

• What are the characteristics of an
  effective nonprofit leader?
• How can a nonprofit leader align the organization’s mission, vision and core values with its everyday practices?
• How do nonprofit leaders maintain balance between
  their social visions and the other facets of their lives
  and avoid burn-out?

The nonprofit practitioners who visit our classes will not participate using a traditional lecture/’talking heads’ model, but a circular discussion that includes you and the other nonprofit directors.

Case Studies: Many of the Best Practices Leaders will use case studies of real nonprofit organizations in crisis designed to address common nonprofit organizational issues. The class will first read Part A of the case study – the organization’s history and the current crisis; second, participants will discuss the pro’s and con’s of the options available to the Nonprofit Director and will share their recommendations for how she or he should move forward. Finally, the Best Practices Leader will share Part B of the case study: what course of action the Nonprofit Director actually took – and what the consequences were.

Funder Panels: Do you ever wonder what donors are looking for when approached by Nonprofit Directors – and what turns them off? Now you can ask them! There will be Funder Panels where 4-5 program officers from major Washington-area foundations and corporate-giving programs will visit us to have candid discussions about Best and Worst practices in Fundraising.

Strategy Paper:  The Strategy Paper is a key requirement of Transform - Certificate of Executive Nonprofit Leadership. You will write a paper that highlights a specific challenge your organization is facing and offer your strategic recommendations for how the organization can move forward. The Strategy Paper will be related to a key operational area (e.g. fundraising or human resource management) or leadership responsibility (e.g. succession planning or the Board-ED relationship) required for the healthy functioning of a high-performance nonprofit. The Center for Social Leadership will give you written feedback on your Strategy Paper based on our experience providing organizational development consulting to hundreds of nonprofits.

Leadership Laboratory:  You have internal mental archives (imagine a reel-to-reel tape playing in your head) that store how you define this nebulous concept called ‘leadership’. These mental ‘leadership files’ have formed and ossified in your mind over many years based on how the people you looked up to as leaders – teachers, coaches, politicians, bosses, parents – acted. You simply play this reel-to-reel tape over and over again when you are put into a leadership role – and act out what it dictates. Daniel Goleman’s research on ‘emotionally resonant leadership’ documents research that indicates the most highly impactful leadership training programs facilitate a process of ‘rewiring’ of brain circuits that store your perceptions of how a leader should act.

Transform ‘Leadership Laboratory’ (think: improvisational theater) is one of CSL’s most transformative teaching methodologies because you don’t have much time to rehearse before you act out a leadership scenario with a small group of other Nonprofit Directors – so your mental leadership wiring comes out automatically. The consistent feedback you will receive from your peers and the program facilitators will ignite a rewiring process that will enable you to question and refine your perceptions of effective leadership.