Sustainable Food Laboratory Leadership Track

Goal: to increase individual, organizational, and SFL capacities to lead change toward sustainability

Core disciplines: personal mastery, vision, and systems thinking

Activities

  • A kick-off workshop with Peter Senge,
  • U-Process retreats,
  • Time in one another’s workplaces, mentoring and coaching, and
  • Dialogue interviews with important people in our work

First workshop proposed for October 3-5 near Boston dependent upon schedules

Background

While leadership and connections among sectors are essential to everything in the Sustainable Food Lab, several SFL leaders have asked for a program focused on further development of their effectiveness as change agents within their organizations, so that those organizations will be change agents within their sphere of influence.

Member organizations of SFL will have the opportunity for one or more Lab member to participate in a SFL Leadership Program. Each potential participant must have a track record of accomplishment, a commitment to deepening their capacities, and a curiosity to learn from and support the development of others. The final group will be selected for geographic and sectoral diversity.

The program will use U-Process methods and include:

  • “Shadowing” of one another in actual work situations;
  • Systems thinking tools for sensing and articulating forces at play in complex situations and areas of high- and low-leverage change;
  • Reflection and group exploration of what it means to be an effective change leader and the responsibilities and gifts of leadership; and
  • Anchoring one’s work in an ever deepening awareness of aspirations, sense of purpose, and what it means to grow.

The SFL Leadership Program will use tools and methods developed in the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL) network, including Generon Consulting and Sustainability Institute. It would be designed by a team of SFL members with Adam Kahane, Otto Scharmer and Peter Senge and draw on aspects of the curriculum of the new ELIAS Program.

Prerequisite: interest from at least 12-15 diverse SFL leaders