Session Type: Panel Discussion Accepted by MIG(s): Public Time Allotted: 60 Description: The Kansas Leadership Center, a first of its kind organization charged with fostering civic leadership on a large scale for stronger and healthier communities, has engaged scholars and practitioners to change the civic culture in the state and beyond. Immersed in this intense experiment in civic leadership development, the panelists will share theories, guiding principles, programs, and competencies of civic leadership to meet the needs of this changing civic landscape. Abstract: Civic leadership is re-examined and challenged to shed mindsets and practices no longer helpful to the next generation by a new player in the field of public leadership in Kansas. The Kansas Leadership Center, a first of its kind organization charged with fostering civic leadership on a large scale for stronger and healthier communities, has engaged scholars and practitioners to develop faculty and programs aimed at changing the civic culture in the state and beyond. Panelists include the president and CEO of the Kansas Leadership Center, former state legislator; author, seasoned facilitator of community collaboration, and now Senior Fellow at the Kansas Leadership Center; 20-year journalist and now KLC Director of Communications; and Sr. Associate Director of Kansas State University’s School of Leadership Studies and participant in KLC’s faculty development program, The Art and Practice of Civic Leadership Development.
The Kansas Leadership Center is unique among leadership development organizations because of its statewide scope, focus on civic leadership and significant financial support.
Founded in 2007, the KLC is funded through an initial 10-year, $30 million investment from the Kansas Health Foundation. The KLC president and CEO faces adaptive challenges of organizational development in addition to those posed by a changing civic landscape. The co-presenter joined KLC as Senior Fellow doing what he calls “culminating work” in a career where he has facilitated deep community process work and civic leadership development experiences throughout America as well as in Canada and Eastern Europe.
Immersed for the past three years in this intense experiment in civic leadership development, the Presenters keep coming back to three key questions:
1. Why aren’t communities making enough progress on the issues they say they care about?
2. Why has broader engagement – an imperative for progress from our perspective – on civic issues been so slow?
3. What kind of leadership – consistent with the imperative for engagement – does it take to make progress on civic challenges?
The Kansas Leadership Center aspires to take the pulse of Kansas’ civic landscape, identifying areas where better civic leadership and Center initiatives could make a difference. It aspires to create and deliver specific initiatives that strengthen and expand the state’s civic leadership – across generations, political aisles, geographic expanse and other divides. It aspires to promote, incorporate and model a philosophy of leadership as an activity, rather than a position.
Serving these aspirations, KLC has spent its formative time listening, theorizing, creating and crafting. In this panel presentation, the KLC CEO will share experiences of organizational development, stepping into a very different leadership role from his time in the statehouse. The KLC Senior Fellow will discuss how his career-long efforts in community collaboration have taken new shape with this next-generation model of developing civic leadership. A third presenter will share experiences communicating the aspirations and activities of this new player on the civic scene in Kansas. Finally, a participant in the KLC faculty development program offers the perspective of a leadership educator challenged to reframe and re-engage in the adaptive work of civic leadership.
The Kansas Leadership Center is engaging hundreds of Kansans in a great experiment to foster more civic leadership. Its efforts are grounded in the adaptive leadership concepts pioneered by Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky (and further developed by their colleagues at Cambridge Leadership Associates), and build on previous work on civic collaboration by David Chrislip and Carl Larson. Upon this foundation, KLC has developed a theory, guiding principles, and competencies of civic leadership to meet the needs of this changing civic landscape.
David Chrislip, Kansas Leadership Center
Mark McCormick, Kansas Leadership Center
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