Learning and growing your leadership, like leadership itself, demands entering unknown territory. It requires a willingness to experiment, improvise, and take smart risks. Our workshops, consulting, coaching, and professional development programs for individuals and organizations provide a safe space to explore the art and craft of leadership.
OUR PROGRAMS AND SERVICES
LEADERSHIP FOR UNCERTAIN TIMES
If ever there were a time for better public sector leadership, this is that time. Leadership for Uncertain Times is Beacon Leadership Collaborative’s flagship program, a participatory multi-day workshop on the art and craft of leadership, exploring the qualities needed for a systemic and holistic approach to leading and transforming community. Building on empowering teachings about the art and craft of leadership, you will have the opportunity to unleash and deepen your own leadership skills even as you come to better understand leadership in general.
During the program, we will conduct exercises and have discussions that explore roadblocks to truly effective leadership: the roles of your values, purpose and goal setting, the distinction between authority and leadership, the difference between technical and adaptive challenges, the inherent conflicts and difficulties attendant to any effort to effect change, and enhancing skills of observation, interpretation, intervention, and agility in the face of uncertainty. Workshop participants identify a personal leadership challenge and and learn about unconscious barriers to change. They follow a structured protocol to create a strategic plan to address their leadership challenge.
Leadership for Uncertain Times includes a preliminary orientation and baseline assessment, two days in a comfortable retreat setting (although the workshop may not always make you comfortable and will be more of an advance than a retreat), three evening follow-up sessions over a four-month period, ongoing coaching and peer support, and online exercises. Of necessity and for the foreseeable future, the two-day advance will be replaced by online interactive meetings.
IMMUNITY TO CHANGE
Mark Twain famously offered that “I’m all for progress; it’s change I can’t stand.” For all the talk of change, it’s hard to achieve! Through the powerful, experiential Immunity to Change workshop, you’ll have the chance to find out what stands in the way of your efforts to change and to effect change. You’ll identify a plan and a support team to address your newly-discovered “immunity.” This exercise can also serve teams and organizations facing a collective resistance to change.
CONSEQUENTIAL CONVERSATIONS
Important things left unsaid can be toxic. We tend to avoid difficult topics and conversations because they are uncomfortable and risky. Think about the country’s original sins of violence and exploitation of Indigenous peoples and of African peoples stolen from their homelands and forced into chattel slavery. Think about the social, economic, health, and opportunity disparities that the global pandemic has brought into sharp relief. Consequential conversations are a necessary step in freeing up energy and generating alignment and new possibility for you, your team, your organization and our society. Having and encouraging consequential conversations is a critical leadership competency, allowing organizations to survive and thrive. Our team can help you frame important consequential conversations, guide them as needed, and train you and your team in this essential leadership skill.
YOUR TEAM: VITALITY, AGILITY, RENEWAL
Our experienced faculty consults to teams, organizations and institutions. We work with you to assess and diagnose challenges and opportunities, to undertake strategic planning, and to support you to effect change, undertake succession planning, or launch new initiatives.
INITIATIVE FOR DIVERSITY IN CIVIC LEADERSHIP
IDCL is a program that was launched in 2007 to encourage and empower the next generation of leaders of color and other underrepresented and/or marginalized communities committed to public service in Greater Boston. Over 150 participants graduated from the program between 2007 and 2011. These leaders are now having a strong impact in the political community in Massachusetts and across the country. IDCL graduates include current and past city councilors, heads of state agencies and leaders of community organizations, and senior staff of both candidate and issue campaigns. Beacon Leadership Collaborative's founding president Jay Kaufman was one of the founders and faculty for IDCL. Senior Associate Manisha Bewtra is a 2011 graduate of the program. IDCL has been on hiatus since 2011 but Beacon Leadership Collaborative recognizes the continued need for IDCL and is working to reimagine and reinvigorate the program. We welcome interested community members to contact us as we anticipate offering another class!
TRAIN THE TRAINERS
The Collaborative’s central goal is to build leadership capacity. Among the challenges we face is the relative scarcity of those prepared to lead the kind of workshops the Collaborative offers. If you have the desire and commitment to be a leadership trainer, we invite you to apply for this intensive, nine-month program that includes course work, a personal development plan, coaching, and an apprenticeship.
CUSTOM PROGRAMMING
We are eager to work with you to develop a workshop tailored to your team and needs. We have worked with legislative leaders and their leadership teams, majority and minority caucuses, school superintendents and their senior staff, civil society, non-profit, and advocacy organizations, religious organizations, school committees, governors, mayors and city councilors, and many more, here in the U.S. as well as in many countries in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Let's dream up something powerful and empowering.