Leadership Development
The effective management of your NGO depends on leaders who continually develop and grow to be the best that they can be. At Five Oaks, organizational change leadership and management is one of our specializations.
We have expertise in organizational level leadership training tailored to fit your needs. We can also provide coaching for on-the-job leadership development, and can help you design other in-house leadership growth approaches.
Our training is research based with proven training design, content, and delivery practices that fit your organization.
Executive coaching to improve your effectiveness
Our executive coaching facilitates self-directed learning for NGO leadership designed to further individual, as well as organizational performance goals. Recently, Tosca senior leaders at a major research-oriented US NGO to further increase their capacity. After our involvement, the coaches reported greater self-awareness as well as effectiveness in team, as well as organizational level leadership.
CASE STUDY 1
Helping make the leadership leap
A group of top NGO leaders noted the lack of a healthy and diverse pool of NGO leaders who were ready to take the leadership leap to top-level organizational leadership positions. They urged Tosca and her team at a well-known university to offer high-quality, residential senior leadership training programs to cross-regional, cross-sectoral cohorts of NGO leaders.
Tosca’s team designed and delivered a total of 22 senior leadership training programs for 7 consecutive years. This included open enrollment programs as well as tailor-made programs for a consortium of 5 global campaigning NGOs. Some NGOs emulated part of the content to shape mid-level management development programs.
The NGO sector now has a larger pool of well-trained leaders ready to take on top leadership. A number of alumni of the Institute have ascended to top leadership.
CASE STUDY 2
Team coaching for better team cohesion, decision making and performance
A large faith based organization’s program leadership team was tasked with driving a paradigm shift in program strategy. This shift had implications for all other parts of the NGO. This pivotal team, however, lacked good decision making modes, mutual accountability practices and foundational team operating norms
As part of a broader coaching team effort, led by collaborative partners Revol LLC and the Corentus Group, Tosca offered team facilitation and team coaching support to strengthen the team so that it could play its pivotal role
The leadership team’s cohesion, quality of deliberation and decision making, and its performance went up, thus increasing the efficacy as well as speed with which this large program strategy change was implemented.
CASE STUDY 3
Developing a strategy for leadership training
Tosca directed the Senior Leadership Development Program (SLDP) from 2012 to 2018, and co-created and co-taught the training during that entire period. She updated the training content each year to align with the NGOs’ strategic and change management related needs. This included, among other things, the design of training content on gender and leadership, feminist leadership, as well as organizational diversity and inclusion strategies.
The alumni of SLDP have been able to drive significant performance improvements in their respective NGOs and have stimulated further necessary organizational change.
CASE STUDY 4
Gaining leadership momentum with Humentum
NGOs lack access to high quality, yet affordable and geographically accessible forms of leadership training for broader segments of their leaders.
Humentum, the network of NGOs that is focused on NGO operational excellence capacity building, and the Maxwell School partnered to design and deliver e-courses on Leadership Development. Tosca designed and delivered a pilot e-course on Agile Leadership Behaviors.
The pilot course was well received by NGO users and is available as an accessible and affordable means of leadership training to a broad range of NGOs. Tosca continues to facilitate the course from time to time.
CASE STUDY 5
Leadership development, tailored to your needs & tailored to our social sector
A senior INGO leader needed to prepare herself for top leadership and chose to invest in executive coaching
Tosca offered content, assessments and conversations that were highly individualized to the client’s specific needs and career trajectory and reflected Tosca’s deep familiarity with the NGO context.
The client developed important insights into her own behavior, challenges, and how to overcome these, and was soon promoted to an even more senior leadership position.
CASE STUDY 6
Preparing team leaders to adjust their leadership modes to virtual or hybrid way of working
Tosca and Ahmed and Piyali in Five Oaks Consulting’s small team of collaborators designed and delivered a new online course on virtual and hybrid team leadership skill building. Course participants consistently evaluated the course content highly.
NGOs who undertook the training were able to maximize their virtual or hybrid team’s happiness, satisfaction and productivity
CASE STUDY 7
Leadership coaching
The sustainability and desirability of single leader-led nonprofit leadership is being questioned. Two top leaders of an NGO who need to guide their organization from a start up to a ramp up phase of growth chose to do so through a co-leadership model. Their alignment of roles, responsibilities and decision rights, however, was insufficient, and this was causing avoidable confusion and transaction costs throughout the organization. Moreover, the leaders needed to modify conflict averse leadership behaviors.
Tosca engaged in ‘duo-coaching’ with the two co-leaders to help them develop clearer division of their respective realms of work, better mutual alignment and accountability, and to model a greater capability to engage in constructive conflict.
Coaches reported a greater self-awareness as well as capability to try out, test and model new leadership actions, practices and behaviors that helped the organization move successfully to a much needed next level of development.