The initial session (of 10) of the ONEplace Nonprofit Leadership Academy (ONLA) got underway on January 20th, with twenty of Kalamazoo County’s best and brightest nonprofit managers. After welcoming comments from KPL Director of Libraries Ann Rohrbaugh, an overview of the Academy syllabus and expectations, the participants received the results of their 360-degree feedback process. We used a great tool called the Mangement-Leadership Practices Inventory to gather feedback from their manager, their employees, and their peers.
Honest feedback is often hard to come by for most managers. When we manage a team or a department in a larger nonprofit the person we report to may not have much opportunity see how you work with your employees and may have limited chances to see how you interact with your peers. For day-to-day, get-the-job-done managing, your employees will have a much better perspective on what kind of job you are doing at that level. And in most organizations, employees have very little chance to provide feedback anonymously. That’s where a tool like the MLPI can provide supervisors and managers with feedback you can use right now to help you grow, develop, and improve as a manager and leader.
As you would expect, the ONLA group’s scores were generally above average on the MLPI Factors. And yet, in most cases, a bit of digging into the data (and there is lots of data!) reveals some surprises, some “ah-ha’s” and some good ideas about what to work on right now. I’m sure the ONLA folks wished they didn’t have to sit through my briefing on what the instrument measures, how it works, and how to understand the data. But I know from past experience that without that briefing, the wealth of data can be a bit daunting.
After nearly an hour to work with their data and start to build the framework of their professional action plan for 2012, it was time to hand off to Janice Maatman, Director of WMU’s award-winning Nonprofit Education Program . She lead a great session on Ethics that got everyone thinking and discussing ethical issues with a nonprofit focus.
With reading assignments and a discussion with their mentor ONLA participants are going to be busy folks between now and their next session on February 3rd. This is going to be a great Academy, there is no doubt about it. Stay tuned.
Leave a comment
No comments yet.
The 8 Essential Skills 
Leave a comment