What is the Friendship Place Emerging Leaders Program?
The Emerging Leaders Program is a 9-month program designed to provide participants with tangible knowledge and resources in the areas of leadership, communication, diversity, management practices, self- awareness and development. In addition, participants will build a strong network among their peers, community members, colleagues, mentors and/or coaches. Upon completion of the program, participants will be able to demonstrate what they have learned to their work environment to enhance their overall career, the careers of their colleagues and people that they serve.
The Program is divided into 3 sections:
- Leading Self: understanding individual core purpose & strengths, how you show up to others, envisioning the future you, fears and barriers that hold you back
- Leading Others: team, peer and relationship management, managing execution, managing growth and development
- Leading in the Organization: strategy and visioning, making difficult decisions, modeling core values, public speaking, general communications, imaging, positioning and branding
Each participant will be matched with a coach or mentor who will partner with the participant on learning objectives and goals.
FP Emerging Leaders is designed to:
- Create a purposeful opportunity for development
- Create a pipeline of potential diverse leadership candidates from among Friendship Place staff
- Increase engagement of key staff
Application Process
- Program and application details will be announced on September 26th
- The application will be open from Oct 2nd – October 16th.
- Application Materials
- Responses to application questions
- Three Letter of Support, one of each from a community leader, peer, former or current supervisor or department head
- Resume
- Selected participants will be announced on or before October 29th
- A panel who comprises of staff, board and community members will select up to 12 participants. Up to 2 staff from each division will be selected. Staff who do not apply can be part of the selection panel.
- Orientation will be held on Nov 7th
Application Questions
The application includes four short-answer questions. Each question requires a 200 – 400-word answer OR a 1- 3 min. voice OR video recording. Be aware that your responses are a significant part of the selection process and very important to making admissions decisions. Submissions will be accepted via Google forms, including voice and video uploads. The questions on the Emerging Leaders Program application are as follows:
- Describe your recent leadership activities. What do you consider to be your highest leadership achievement so far?
- What academic, community, governmental, political, professional or other activity are you most proud of? What barriers have you encountered while pursuing this activity and how did you overcome them?
- What would you like to change about the systems that affect homelessness and how would you go about impacting this change?
- What specific skills, knowledge or resources do you hope to acquire as a result of participating in the Emerging Leaders Program?
Selection Criteria
- Commitment to Growth – Showing a commitment to their own professional development, and a readiness to invest in growing in their leadership abilities and participating fully in all aspects of the program
- Commitment to FP Core Values – Demonstrating FP values by allowing them to guide and align your interactions with co-workers, peers, community members and participants
- Add to Diversity and Richness of the class– Helping us to build a diverse group (including job function, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, thought etc.)
- Commitment to Sector – Demonstrating a commitment to the DMV nonprofit / social sector, and a strong intention to continue your career in the field
- Potential for Advancement – Having a sense of how they want to grow their impact as an individual, organizational and community level, matched with the willingness to do so
- Ability to Put Learning to Work – Actively begin to apply the leadership and management concepts, tools and lessons learned
- Support of Organizational Leadership – Having the support of their manager or Division Head in growing in their leadership and participating fully in the program
It is likely that we will receive more applications then we have space for. In addition to assessing each applicant’s strengthens, impact, commitment and experience we will give preference to candidates in the following categories, including:
- Serves as a Full-time Advocate, Case Manager, Specialist, Coordinator or equivalent for 8 months or more with Friendship Place
- Staff who have 3 or more years of relevant not for profit experience
Commitment & Dates
We ask that participants, managers and division heads be fully committed to the program, including:
- Reviewing the dates of the program and promising to do everything possible to make sure that class participants are available for those dates. Participation in every session is required. Only 1 excused absence is allowed (illness or emergency). The 1st 2 dates are set. The remaining meeting dates will be determined by the facilitator and class participates (majority voting).
- Understanding that there will be approximately three – five hours of coursework between monthly in-person sessions which might include meetings with people within in the organization or with community members, coaching and /or mentoring, reading articles, or exploring the organization in greater depth within the context of the program.
- We ask that participants commit to remaining with the organization a minimum of 1 year after program completion (this is non-binding).
2019- 2020 PROGRAM DATES
Program sessions run from November 2019 – July 2020. Monthly classroom sessions run from 9:30 am – 12:30 pm.
Session Dates:
Orientation and Leading Self Session #1 – November 7, 2019
Evening Event – Early December TBD- Networking with the mentors and coaches
Leading Self Session #2 – January 14, 2020
The following dates will be determined by majority voting.
Leading Others Session #1 – February
Leading Others Session #2 – March
Team Building Event – April
Leading Others Session #3 – April
Leading the Organization Session #1 – May
Leading the Organization Session #2 – June
Evening Event – Presentations and Culminating Event- July
*Coaching and Mentoring occurs for an additional 3 months- 6 months.
Possible Class Projects:
- Speak/Present in the external environment
- Purposeful networking to cultivate a relationship with a key stakeholder (internally and externally)
- Develop a plan of action to address a gap or make an something existing better
- Group or Individual – Analysis of a current organizational or department challenge and present possible solutions (ie. increase collaboration between departments, a change management plan, communication strategies)
- Attend and participate in a systems-level meeting that will help inform the organization to create a lasting impact (Measure for Change, DHS, COC)
- Create or join a workgroup/committee and take on a leadership role in that committee
Our Sponsors
Taproot Foundation: specifically, Lisa Collie and Katie Sheketoff
The Lauterbach Foundation
The Clark Foundation
To learn more and apply: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfGc0Viyin730mYNbB21UkYjA1GPToMuI5lwgASe2tTtBRsSA/viewform