Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 - (Page 32)

IN PRACTICE DEVELOPING LEADERS AT AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL mnesty International USA (AIUSA) faces many of the challenges that are common to nonproﬁt and for-proﬁt organizations. One particular challenge is the on-boarding of volunteer leaders in a decentralized organization. According to Sarah Clark, managing director of outreach and training at AIUSA, developing leaders is part of a greater challenge of balancing between training for current program needs and building capacity for the future. In the past, each regional ofﬁce was charged with the training and development of these volunteer leaders. This often led to inconsistent results and a lack of focus on the national level. At another time, AIUSA offered training developed by the central ofﬁce with minimal regional participation. This led to a lack of buy-in and spotty use and implementation of the programs. But AIUSA recently hit upon a collaborative development process that works well. It gathered key leaders and staff from each regional ofﬁce and held a strategic planning session where they developed consensus on needs, outcomes and solutions for on-boarding leaders. As a result, AIUSA came up with a blended approach that includes an online component and readings followed by regional workshops. Cedar Interactive was contracted to develop the online orientation program that provides core knowledge about AIUSA. Instead of just presenting a large amount of information, which can be stultifying to get through, the online orientation A keeps the participants engaged in the learning, as the program poses a series of scenarios and questions that set up “teachable moments.” At these decision points, participants are motivated to actively seek the key information in an online Reference Guide. An added beneﬁt of this approach is that the Reference Guide can be used as needed after the online training is completed. This e-learning orientation was used as a prerequisite to provide a common base of knowledge for new leaders and was followed by a four-hour workshop that focused on building the leadership skills necessary to carry out AIUSA’s human rights programs and campaigns. The next step is to follow up with coaching and program-speciﬁc training. Clark commented that “by collaborating from the start in identifying needs and objectives. The regional staff realized that their differences [were] not as great as they had thought.” This process resulted in buy-in and active participation from all the regions. Most importantly, according to Clark, “it set up a model of collaborative training development, where the central ofﬁce plays [a] facilitative role that we will apply to future training needs.” AIUSA’s investment in capacity building paved the way for more speciﬁc training and implementation on current program needs. CLO – Roy Strauss organizational mission and goals, and/or the competencies related to speciﬁc roles, so that training leads to speciﬁc results that can be tracked and assessed. Most study participants looked to their organizations’ strategic plans to help keep training in line with organizational missions. As one respondent put it, “We’re making our campaigns and campaign goals more clear, and we’re trying to build leaders to achieve those goals.” Best Practice: Put a process in place that periodically prioritizes training efforts in relation to the mission and strategic plans of the organization. • Gather input about the organization’s current goals and priorities. • Identify the current state of the organization. • Form a small decision-making body that considers resources, determines priorities and creates a plan with accountability and budget allocations. Challenge 2: Motivating People to Learn and Perform Nonproﬁts need to develop volunteers who can choose whether or not to partake in a training offering. The challenge is to make training engaging, relevant and useful in enabling people to achieve their goals, so they want to attend. Even though for-proﬁts can require employees to take training, they would be well-served to design training as if it were for volunteers — so that employees are intrinsically motivated to engage in and apply the training offered. When skills are integrated with relevant 32 Chief Learning Ofﬁcer • October 2008 • www.clomedia.com job tasks, scenarios or cases, not only are people more motivated to learn the skills, but they are more likely to apply them on the job. Best Practice: Teach skills within the context of the organizational mission and key job tasks. Challenge 3: Developing Effective Leaders Most of the organizations in the nonproﬁt training study see the development of effective leaders as a key challenge. Nonproﬁts depend on the personal leadership of a core group to motivate larger numbers of staff and volunteers. The issues they encounter are similar to those that for-proﬁts deal with, including selecting those with leadership potential and developing key leadership and management skills targeted to roles and responsibilities. The development of these leaders may involve new training methods and motivation such as intense group retreats, mentoring programs and personal development coaching, distance learning and social networking tools, as well as more traditional leadership training and organizational development methods. Best Practice: Develop a comprehensive curriculum based on roles and competencies for key volunteer leadership positions. Use e-learning and other methods to cultivate skills for activists and leaders to do their jobs more effectively. Make sure the training offerings are clearly perceived to support them. One organization in the study develops leaders through a combination of intense retreats and up to two years of working with leaders in the ﬁeld. In addition to leadership and organizing skills, they focus on personal development as a core aspect. http://www.clomedia.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008 Editor’s Letter Connections Business Impact Best Practices Effectiveness Guest Editorial How Fast Is Your ‘B’ Team? Hampton Hotels CLO Profile Save the World, Make a Buck: Seven Ideas From the Nonprofit Sector Developing Leaders at Amnesty International Learning Measurements: It’s Time to Align Aligning Measurement to Business Success Training Employees With Special Needs How to Reach Disabled Learners Hands Off: Facilitating Informal Learning Who Owns Informal Learning? Case Study Business Intelligence Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources In Conclusion

Chief Learning Officer - October 2008

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