Designing and Delivering Leadership Programs: Challenges and Prospects

Abstract

The question addressed in this chapter is how to design and deliver leadership training programs that have impact not only on the participants but also on the communities they serve and the organizations they lead. The transformation of the public sector calls for growing leaders who can thrive in ambiguity and work across the public, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors to lead effective change. This question of how to grow leaders is addressed by drawing on my personal experience designing and delivering leadership programs at the national, state, regional, county, and municipal government levels, as well as for a foundation in the nonprofit health sector. Over 2,000 participants have engaged in this leadership training over the past five years. Participants have been from a wide range of professional fields. Design and delivery lessons are drawn from a rich set of observations, including formal program evaluations, focus group interviews with program graduates, pre- and post-leadership assessment tests, narrative inquiry, end of program interviews, alumni observations and interviews, daily feedback forms (thousands), debriefing of presenters, individual conversations with participants during and after programs, and discussion with program sponsors. This data collection occurred over the past seven years.