Leadership requires more than the confidence to stand up and offer to lead. In fact, there are three skill areas that must be built or honed for someone to truly claim the mantle of leadership.

1. Self-Awareness.

You must have an understanding and appreciation of who you are as a person, and how you manage yourself. This includes:
•   Knowing skills, limits, strengths, and competencies through realistic self-appraisal
•   Developing control, self-regulation, and an ability to “live in the response, not the stimulus,”
•   Understanding time vs. energy management
•   Maintaining a deep commitment to personal and professional growth
•   Having the ability to monitor and regulate self-efficacy

2. Understanding of Others.

Another key element of leadership requires your ability to connect and influence others.  These skills include your:
•    Capacity for deep listening
•    Development of personal voice and an ability to influence others
•    Aptitude to affirm, connect with, and correct others
•    Ability to have difficult conversations
•    High level of cultural competency
•    Ability to forge and deepen interpersonal relationships
•    Improvisational skills

3. Organizational Impact.

Leaders need to understand how to create and direct an organization beyond standard operations.  These skills include:
•    Understanding how organizations work
•    Creating organizational engagement and alignment
•    Building and directing teams
•    Thinking strategically

Given these key elements above, leadership development programs require a combination of:

Self-reflection: participants must be given an opportunity to see themselves as others see them in order to build their strengths and minimize any weaknesses in their self-presentation, communication style, or other behaviors.

Peer learning and networking:  sessions must include time for participants to connect as peers through both structured activities and exercises and through open discussion.

Hard skill development: participants must learn something new and useful during each session, such as how to manage a troublesome staff member, develop a personal performance plan, or more effectively run a board meeting.

Through research and practice, we have found that there are 5 essential program elements to build multi-dimensional leaders in a setting that builds hard skills, creates a strong peer network, and allows for self-reflection and personal growth.

The 5 essential elements of a leadership development program are:

1. Community. Both seasoned organizational leaders and emerging leaders achieve transformative learning when part of a community of peers.  The shared experience of self-examination and skill development creates a sense of shared identity for moving forward together and a mutually supportive community to draw on once the formal program ends.

2. Context. The individuals in the program must be able to leave behind for the moment their organizational context in order to explore issues, solutions, and new skills that will help them to address their work challenges. In this way they will return to their organizational home ready to practice what they have learned.  The workplace then becomes a real-life learning laboratory where new skills and confidence can be applied.

3. Clinic. Each time the learning community gathers “the clinic” provides a vital connection between practice and learning.  Based upon case study methodology borrowed from the social science/educational/  disciplines, individuals have the opportunity to present a current issue or problem they find challenging.  The community becomes a problem solving resource that sheds light on the underlying issues and provides an opportunity for problem-solving engagement for all participants.

4.  Coaching. Strong leadership programs include assessment tools as well as qualitative feedback to build self-knowledge.  Incorporating individual executive coaching allows each participant to translate data and feedback into actions to address weaknesses and reinforce strengths.

5. Curriculum. The curriculum must choose from among the wide array of topics and sub-topics related to leadership and management.  Topics must inform and build upon each other while integrating solid, proven nonprofit management and leadership practices.  The curriculum must also be applicable and understandable from a range of diverse perspectives and delivered in a manner that connects with adult learners.

We have used this holistic approach towards leadership development programs and learning communities from Honolulu Hawai’i to Fargo North Dakota. What elements do you think are most critical to a leadership development program?

As Valerie Lies, President and CEO of the Donors Forum, described in her powerful opening remarks to the 600 guests of last week’s event, Chicago is struggling with many of the same economic and political challenges as the rest of the country.

I described La Piana Consulting’s NonprofitNext research and the five key trends that are converging to reshape the social sector landscape.

Joining the discussion was Mae Hong, Director of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Nicole Robinson, Director of Kraft Foods Global Community Involvement division, and Ricardo Estrada, Chicago’s First Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Family and Support Services.

The panel itself represented the future, with young and diverse leaders, whose affiliations spanned a blurring of sectors across government, philanthropic, and corporate social action.

Where will you take nonprofits next? Join the conversation today!

Nonprofits play a critical role in mobilizing campaigns for an accurate count, as do the many foundations that support them in these efforts. Last month, a New America Media news feature highlighted the importance of nonprofits’ participation in the Census when it raised concerns about the disadvantage faced by neighborhoods that lack an active local nonprofit presence. Drawing its example from two San Francisco neighborhoods with high concentrations of low-income households, significant numbers of immigrant residents, and historically low response rates, the article observes that even when there are nearby nonprofits, they are often already so strapped meeting the community’s needs that they have little additional capacity to take on Census related efforts—thus perpetuating the undercount and ensuing shortage of available resources.

Such challenges are compounded by efforts like that of Sen. David Vitter (Louisiana-R) to exclude illegal immigrants from the count. Although defeated in the Senate, this failed legislative tactic underscores the political implications of the battle over “who really counts.” At the same time, some activists like Rev. Miguel Rivera of the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders are asking undocumented Latinos to boycott the Census in order to focus visibility on the issue of immigration reform. It’s not just big money that’s at stake—it’s also conflicting ideologies.

One group that’s committed to pulling out a win from Census 2010 is the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, with its Queer the Census campaign. Like undocumented residents, whose participation in our economy and social fabric could be rendered invisible by efforts to limit their role in the Census, LGBT people are nowhere recognized as such on today’s Census forms, creating yet another “blind spot.”

As nonprofits work to boost Census participation and remedy the myopia that prevents us from truly “seeing” one another, will we also consider how we might better include those unseen faces and unheard voices in our everyday planning, decision making, leadership, and governance?

Americans over 55 are an influential force with the highest voter registration and voting rate compared to other age groups.  They hold a disproportionate amount of wealth and over 50% of those between 50 and 70 are interested in taking jobs now or in retirement that help improve the quality in their communities.

Older adults are not sitting back and letting life pass them by.  On the contrary, seniors are flexing their voting power, consumer rights and civic responsibilities.  Powerful political advocates, philanthropists, volunteers and consumers of nonprofit services, older adults are a major component of the nonprofit sector.

If older Americans are central to the nonprofit sector as policy changers, board members, volunteers, donors and employees what are we doing in the nonprofit sector to attract, educate and engage this group?  Much buzz exists around technology, electronic social networking and other new ways to reach people to various causes.  Are these approaches viable across all age cohorts?  How do we assure that in our latest rush to catch up that we don’t leave anyone behind?

Anyone working in a well run nonprofit organization understands and appreciates the fact that one size does not fit all.  As people of different genders, ethnicities, sexual orientation and religious preferences view, access and utilize services differently, so do members of contrasting age segments.

Older adults perhaps respond to a combined approach of personal contact, written resources and technology.  Technology has tremendous benefits for individuals who may have functional limitations which hamper the frequency and duration of activities outside of the home.  However, technology has challenges for those with visual impairments or decreased fine motor skills.  Cost of equipment and education and training to use technology may prevent many from attempting to join in.  Fortunately, many nonprofits are helping seniors access equipment and training and are helping connect people with needed assistive devices so that technology can be fully employed.

Innovation, true innovation, must have the capacity to impact people across all levels in order to move our communities forward.

Although the study does not delve into attendant questions, such as how diversity in leadership impacts a nonprofit’s ability to effectively serve diverse populations, or what confluence of dynamics are behind the underrepresentation of leaders of color in one of the most diverse states in the nation, it is nevertheless valuable in providing basic quantitative benchmarks that seem to be lacking in the nonprofit sector as a whole. In a recent interview for our NonprofitNext research project, Michael Watson of Girl Scouts of the USA observed the dearth of baseline data on nonprofit diversity, both in staff leadership and in the board room. Whereas the corporate sector has long made a point to share demographic information about company leadership – recognizing what this means not only in terms of image but of real impact in the marketplace – the nonprofit sector has yet to be as transparent about its own diversity…or lack thereof, as the case may be.

The Urban Institute study is one small step toward assembling objective data that may enable the sector to better answer the question “How diverse are we?” But this quantitative approach cannot stand alone – only by understanding how diversity supports mission-driven work and helps make the sector more effective, responsive, and resilient does this data become truly meaningful.

Without a broader context, the numbers alone invite oversimplified and reactionary responses the likes of which have plagued us for decades of affirmative action pro/con debates (evident in reader comments on coverage of the report’s release in both the San Jose Mercury News and the Chronicle of Philanthropy) and are even less effective in advancing the dialog today. To help us move beyond the limitations of this “representational diversity” frame, we need to share compelling stories and experiences of how more diverse nonprofits contribute to a more dynamic, successful, and high-performing sector.

Download the Podcast with Adrienne Mansanares, Paul Schmitz, and Michael Watson and tell us what you think.