Community Impact Leadership Program

How can you make a difference in your community?

As a community leader, you want to bring about measurable change that improves life for people in your community. You may want to work to ensure that:

  • Children who enter school are ready to learn,
  • More people in your community are at a healthy weight,
  • Fewer children are placed in foster care, or
  • The quality of your environment—air or water–improves.

In the past, your community may have struggled to make changes happen. Maybe separate groups—parents, mental health workers, government agencies—were working redundantly, which made it difficult for them to accomplish their goals. The Community Impact Leadership Program will help your community develop leaders, identify results and indicators, and cause real change that improves lives. The Leadership Program uses real-life community data, results-oriented leadership skills, and the “Turn the Curve” process to help community leaders achieve measurable community results.

Our Leadership Program Customers

Smart Beginnings Western Tidewater

Montgomery Parks

US Department of Health & Human Services University

 

What’s different about the Community Impact Leadership Program?

Most leadership programs attempt to improve individual leaders’ skills by changing their behaviors within their own organizations. In contrast, the Community Impact Leadership Program goes beyond the individual to strengthen the community by:

  • Focusing on specific community indicators of well-being. The Leadership Program brings leaders together and makes them jointly responsible for improving the indicators.
  • Building collaborative leadership skills. Leaders develop their own skills and assist in developing other community leaders’ capacity. Leaders are collectively responsible for community improvements, and they establish guidelines that assist them in this process.
  • Collecting three types of data. The Program measures:
    • Improvements in individual collaborative leadership skills
    • Headline performance measures
    • Indicators of community well-being
  • Using the Clear Impact Scorecard, web-based software that enables teams to minimize paper and improve collaboration.

Program Overview

This Leadership Program, based on the Results–Based Accountability™ (RBA) framework, brings key leaders together, from multiple organizations and sectors, to address community challenges. The Program is action-oriented and flexible. It builds collaborative leadership skills through focus on real work.  In this Program, a collaborative leader from the community shares responsibility for contributing to specific outcomes with other community leaders.  By working together, leaders develop each other’s capacities.

Participants in the Community Impact Leadership Program will:

  • Gain leadership skills
    • Communicate effectively with key stakeholders
    • Facilitate decision making
    • Manage differences
    • Listen effectively
    • Provide useful feedback to others
    • Assess and manage leadership paradoxes
    • Persuade key individuals and groups
  • Develop a Leadership Plan
    • Identify up to four leadership competencies for development using a 360-degree survey
    • Design a long-term leadership development plan
    • Begin to implement the plan during the Leadership Program
    • Gauge progress through informal peer feedback and through a repeat of the 360-degree survey within 18 to 24 months of the Program
  • Develop a Results-Based Community Action Plan to “Turn the Curve” on the most important community results and the most powerful indicators.
    • Identify specific results and indicators to improve
    • Build a Community Clear Impact Scorecard to identify issues
    • Analyze the factors that contribute to the results and indicators
    • Identify what is currently working in the community and any gaps in resources
    • Identify duplication of effort within the community
    • Develop and track headline performance measures for each agency or organization that contributes to the Action Plan
    • Use the Clear Impact Scorecard to track results over time
    • Revise Action Plans as indicated by the data

Details & Frequently Asked Questions

If your community has a sense of urgency and a desire make change through a simple but rigorous process, you can succeed with the Leadership Program. Even a small group of passionate, action-oriented leaders who are committed to measurable results will have success with the Community Impact Leadership Program.

The Program takes between six and eight months. Each month, you’ll attend a one-day or two-day meeting.

Most successful projects take about eight months to establish and will continue over several years. The Leadership Program builds in four phases:

  • PHASE 1 – Build the Leadership team (months 1 – 2)
    • Identify the members of the community Leadership team. Ensure diversity; represent community constituents.
    • Assess leadership strengths using a 360-degree survey. With Clear Impact’s expert coaching, prepare individual development plans.
    • Understand essential leadership skills:
      • Results-Based Accountability
      • Interest-Based Negotiation
      • Collaborative Leadership
  • PHASE 2 – Develop your Community Action Plan (months 3, 4, and 5)
    • Organize community meetings where you can find additional partners.
    • Identify the results and indicators you will work to improve.
    • Identify actions your team will take that will work to “Turn the Curve.”
    • Analyze the forces influencing the data.
  • PHASE 3 – Implement your Community Action Plan (months 5, 6, and 7)
    • Use the Clear Impact Scorecard to track progress on your Action Plan.
    • Use data from the Results Scorecard® to refine actions in the Plan.
    • Work within your own organizations to identify three to five headline performance measures and create a plan to improve them.
  • PHASE 4 – Continue to improve your Community Action Plan (month 8 and beyond)
    • Apply the skills you learned in the Leadership Program to new projects.
    • Facilitate your own “Turn the Curve” meetings
    • Use data from the Clear Impact Scorecard to coordinate strategies and make progress on the actions in your Plan.

Each community has unique needs, so we customize the Program for each one. The cost of the Program depends on several factors, which include:

  • How many meetings are needed to help you meet your goals
  • The range of skills your community wants to learn
  • The number of users of our Results Scorecard® or 360-degree survey your community needs
  • The amount of coaching individual leaders in your community want

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