Rockwood Leadership Institute is proud to announce the launch of a new Fellowship for Upper Midwest Leaders, thanks to the generous support of the Fetzer Institute, the Baptized Phoenix Fund and the Katz and Krantz Family Fund.

The Fellowship provides leaders with tools to:

• Deal more effectively with leadership and organizational challenges,
• Create and sustain compelling visions for their organization, and
• Engage in a learning community of social change leaders in the Upper Midwest, with a primary focus on leaders in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The Program

This six-month intensive leadership program is designed to teach powerful visioning, listening, speaking, presentation, coaching, team-building and feedback skills to social change leaders from a cross-section of movements in the Upper Midwest. The program includes one 5-day and one 3-day residential retreat, professional and peer coaching sessions, and additional leadership support.

Session One: Art of Collaborative Leadership

October 11-15, 2011 | Riverwood Inn, Otsego, MN

The Art of Collaborative Leadership is an intensive retreat workshop in which participants will hone skills related to articulating vision, managing difficult conversations, and identifying personal leadership strengths and challenges. Each participant receives a 360-degree leadership evaluation from peers. The training includes time for participant-driven dialogue aimed at strengthening collaborative work within the learning community.

Session Two

March 5-7, 2012 | Techny Towers, IL

This second Fellowship retreat builds off the tools and experience of the Art of Collaborative Leadership, with continued opportunity for field dialogue. It is designed to enhance participants’ skills in the areas of both leadership and collaboration.

Professional Coaching Sessions & Peer Coaching Circles

Coaching is both an important leadership skill and resource for social change leaders. In the Fellowship, leaders each have access to 1 hour of professional coaching, and will be partnered with other Fellows to engage in a peer coaching relationship over the course of the six months.

Leadership Practices

To reinforce the tools of the training, Rockwood has designed leadership practices opportunities we invite Fellows to participate in. These opportunities involve “practicing” with the tools from the trainings. As an example, the Art of Collaborative Leadership offers some strategies to engage with difficult conversations. One Leadership Practice assignment invites Fellows identifying an actual conversation that they can use the training tools for and implementing the tools.

The Trainers

Helen S. Kim, who is an organizational development consultant, facilitator and executive coach with 18 years of experience working with social change organizations and leaders in the U.S. and internationally.

John Poore specializes in leadership training and coaching for nonprofit leaders, and has worked in environmental and leadership education for the past 16 years. His approach to leadership development emphasizes one’s ability to choose life-affirming behaviors and actions while achieving desired objectives and results.

Key Skills

• Deal more effectively with leadership challenges
• Manage relationships to increase personal and organizational effectiveness
• Sharpen and sustain compelling visions for your work
• Inspire and align others to work effectively towards common goals
• Increase sustainability and engage with tools to prevent burnout
• Build partnerships inside and outside your organization

Criteria for Fellows

Ideal candidates will be leaders who:

• Are diverse in terms of race and ethnicity, sexuality, gender identity, organizational strategy, issue focus, and location within the region.
• Are current or primed to be ‘key influencers’ who are positioned to demonstrate new and better ways to lead and work together.
• Have a willingness and desire for deep self-examination, and to collaborate with social change leaders from a broad range of communities and movements/sectors.
• Lead social change organizations in the Upper Midwest region. We will prioritize folks working in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. We will also consider leaders from neighboring states whose work includes substantial cross-regional partnership with leaders in these three primary states—our goal is to maximize the potential for collaboration among participating leaders.