Leadership Fort Wayne is preparing for our 27^th year! I can’t believe how fast this past year has gone.  As we get ready to welcome our newest cohort of community leaders we will continue to build on our past success and introduce a new emphasis on specific leadership skills to benefit each LFW participant personally and professionally. 

These changes are the direct result of discussions with our corporate sponsors, grantors, participants, board members and alumni who all agree that LFW is an important component of bringing about positive community change through leadership engagement and community service, but that it also must continue to provide relevant and useful programming for all stakeholders.  

As such we spent our summer vacation evaluating and researching the skills that will be must useful for LFW participants and their communities in the 21^st Century.

Please take a minute to review and if you are interested in participating in a personal assessment of these skills you are invited to contact Ellen or me.

Becoming 21^st Century Leader –

• Accountability to stakeholders & constituencies
• Trust Building: Ethics, Integrity, Humility
• Transformational Leadership vs Transactional Leadership

Visionary Leadership Skills (Being a Pioneer for Change) –

• Creating and communicating the vision
• Planning (Resources)  and goal setting
• Applying the vision (Implementation)

Critical Thinking and Decision Making Skills

• Anatomy of Decision Making
• Appreciative Inquiry
• Emotional Intelligence
• Problem Solving
• Collaboration Skills Group process techniques
• Team building and project management Negotiating, consensus and team management 

Conflict Management Skills -  

• What causes conflict? (Diversity, Experiences, Beliefs, Sensitivities)
• Listening, collaborating and yielding
• The leaders role In conflict resolution

 Communication and Connection Skills

• Clear articulation of issues, problems and viewpoint
• Storytelling
• Listening and giving feedback
• Networking

 Research and consultation with pother premier leadership development programs indicate that these are the skills that transcend both personally and professionally. It is a focus that is intended to provide rigorous and relevant information that will serve our leadership development participants well who in turn will serve our communities well in return. 

 For LFW Alums, as always you are invited to join us on any class day or for any presentation. All we ask is that you send us an e-mail or call to let us know what day you plan to attend. Mark your calendar to join us at the Fort Wayne Country Club on September 16, 2010 at 5:45 PM to welcome the LFW Class of 2011. (Be sure to RSVP to wilheljk@ipfw.edu  when you get your e-mail invitation. 

Enjoy these last few weeks of summer!

– Cheri Becker

Oh those lazy hazy days of summer! Rosie pictured here, is our rescued Golden Doodle. She is giving her best “lazy lake day, enjoying a cruise” in the boat look. However, here at LFW it is anything but lazy! All of our programs have held their graduation events and we extend our best wishes to all who participated and made this past program year so successful. We are especially grateful to our corporate sponsors, grantors, supporters and alumni contributors for making these programs possible. 

By the way it is through this support that we are able to offer program scholarships and all of our Youth Leadership Fort Wayne Programs free to all participants! Another not well publicized fact of YLFW and our Youth As Resources programming is that over the past 16 years there have been 208 Youth Community Service Projects completed with an investment in our community of over $200,000! These kids rock!

With the year coming to a close, we are wrapping up the year with reports to the board, corporate sponsors and grantors and getting ready to roll out our twenty-seventh year of community leadership development! Programmatically there are some subtle changes in the LFW adult program that will provide more skill development to participants. In addition we plan to introduce more detailed pre and post evaluations that will allow LFW to measure skill development and overall program impact more effectively.

Our LFW NINA program recently wrapped up the Emerging Leaders class with 21 one individuals completing the six-month program which utilized Peter C. Brinckerhoff, Mission-based Management book as the curriculum’s foundational guide. Participant s for the Emerging Leaders program are nominated for participation by their executive director. It was an honor to hear their success stories and learn why they were selected for participation during the graduation ceremony. Our non-profit community is in good hands, believe me.

Moving forward we continue to look for opportunities to keep our alums engaged, energized and involved! I personally believe that LFW Alums are or should be a strike-force for positive community change and engagement. By the way did you know that over 1,000 individuals have been through the signature LFW program and that over 700 of us live right here in Fort Wayne, Allen County and that virtually every board, committee and task force in our community is likely to have at least one LFW alumni serving on it? That’s good stuff! Thank you for your commitment and service to our community and to Leadership Fort Wayne.

I hope you will watch for more details on Alumni Programming in the coming months, but also would like to hear ideas from you. E-mail me at beckerc@ipfw.edu

Another reminder is to send notifications of your community involvement so we can share with the community and as always, alums are encouraged each year to refer individuals for the signature program. Applications are due by June 30, 2010!

Ian Rolland, one of Fort Wayne’s premier leaders and a founding father of Leadership Fort Wayne, greeted the 2010 NINA Emerging Leaders graduating class with his thoughts on the “Principles of Leadership” on Friday, June 18. 

The twenty class members, each selected by his/her nonprofit organization’s executive director, have spent six months studying the issues surrounding leading nonprofit agencies. Their leadership textbook was Peter Brinckerhoff’s Mission-Based Management; presenters and consultants showcased different aspects of the book through experiential learning, examples, small group discussion and practice sessions.

This 2010 class is the fourth group to graduate from the NINA program. This year’s class members are:

Kathy Baer of Turnstone,

Tiffany Bailey of United Way,

Brad Davis or CTN,

Sherry Early-Aden  and Lisa Kipker of CANI,

Shannon Gage of Early Childhood Alliance,

Kela Guy  and Lisa Young of Catholic Charities,

Andrew Hoffman of NeighborLink,

Christine Kelty of Park Center,

Jennifer Kimpel of the Embassy Theatre,

Marcia Lew of Mad Anthony Children’s Hope House,

Amie Loubier of Vincent Village,

Erin McDonald of the American Red Cross,

Angie Moellering of Lutheran Social Services,

Mary Jo Raffety of the YWCA of Northeast Indiana,

Amy Schmucker of Martin Luther King Montessori School,

Shelley Schwab of Big Brothers Big Sisters,

Garth Sponseller of the League for the Blind & Disabled,

Casey Weimer of the YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne.

 Current participants of Leadership Fort Wayne and the NINA programs along with alumni, board members, YLNI, Regional Marketing Partnership and other regional leaders met together April 14th at Sweetwater Sound to participate in a VISION 2020 Leadership Input Session. About 130 leaders facilitated by Gianni Longo and Dave Kolzow came together to brainstorm “OUTRAGEOUS” ideas to transform our region by 2020.

Here is a brief summary of feedback after the event & some more ideas:

 Please rate your experience at the Vision 2020 Breakfast:

• 55% selected Excellent
• 35% selected  Good
• 10% selected Fair

Comments Included…

“Very Well Organized”

“Idea Generating”

“Great time to reflect upon economic development within FW and the region.” 

Ideas you had at the session not brought forth?

-       What ‘Sustainability’ means for the future of NE Indiana.

-      Farming projects involving the international community to increase employment and take advantage of the skills brought from foreign countries

-       Focusing on manufacturing of green alternative-energy technology, by using this area’s engineering expertise. Also, promoting the arts by having a First Night celebration on New Year’s Eve, which would connect families and young people with the performing arts and provide something to do other than dining and drinking. Think how much fun it was to celebrate the city’s bicentennial as a community event. A first Night event (celebrated at cities around the country) would add in performing arts.

-      Though it was mentioned, I was surprised that not in any of the previous lists of ideas and information gathered was there a mention of our amazing diversity of cultures found in the northeast Indiana sector. I am concerned that instead of celebrating this fact, that we are just not talking about it or understanding the positive ramifications of this reality. South Side High School has one of the most diverse student bodies in the nation; in Fort Wayne, we speak over 80 foreign languages. Though this was never in the city fathers’ strategic plans, it needs now to be faced with a positive attitude.Need to get suburbanites and residents of town around Fort Wayne, downtown. Many in both these groups seldom, if ever, get downtown. Parkview Field is a fantastic start. Also, the need to add living quarters and studios for artists and musicians downtown, to create an arts community. Can there be artists’ apartments near Art Link? Also, why not have local colleges and universities coordinate activities downtown. Invite IPFW, Manchester and St. Francis students to Indiana Tech’s movie theater and student center for a music festival, and tie in downtown venues as well.

 As you reflected on the event over this past day, what ideas did you have afterwards?  

-      Although I was not on educational panel, I wanted to suggest that NEIRP looks at the Starfish model in Indianapolis. The Starfish model provides the brightest students within IPS to attend private schools on scholarship.

The Leadership Fort Wayne Alumni are in the process of considering how they can continue this type of constructive brainstorming and idea generating for other community issues.  If you have a community issue we should consider convening about, please contact us!

Thank you to our partner the Northeast Indiana Fund!

Click here for YAR Grant application  Do you work with youth?  Do you know someone who works with youth?  A teacher, scout leader, youth pastor, youth center director…if you work with youth or know someone who does, why not engage your youth in a community service project?  YAR (Youth as Resources) awards youth groups up to $750 in grant money for youth to do a community service project.  The project should all be youth initiated, planned and completed by youth, ages 6-18, with the guidance of a caring adult.  Grant should stress being drug-free or show how alternative activities can provide youth other things to do than drugs.  Applications are due on January 31.  Youth must prepare a 5 minute presentation for Wednesday, February 17, in front of the Youth as Resources Grants Council.