At CRE, we build resilient leaders. In 2021, we trained over 60 nonprofit leaders to be confident and brave in the face of crises through three Leadership & Professional Development Cohort programs – Leadership Caucus, High Performing Managers Initiative, and Community Response Cohort Program.
Each cohort, comprised of Issue Discussions (experiential workshops), Action Learning (peer-sharing and peer-learning), and Individual Coaching, provided real-time support to nonprofit leaders as they adapted to their new realities. CRE consultants created courageous spaces for participants to share, motivate, and reflect with each other.
Leadership Caucus is a well-respected seven-month leadership development program for early-career Executive Directors and highly qualified senior leaders. Since 2005, it has nurtured hundreds of social sector leaders and provided foundational tools to build their leadership skills. Although held virtually this year, the indelible impact of the Caucus was no different from years prior. Participants rated their overall satisfaction with the program at 94% and provided glowing feedback: “I LOVED the Leadership Caucus. There's nothing I'd change. There was a great mix of learning concrete skills and opportunities to work out specific challenges or issues we're encountering in our work.”
High Performing Managers Initiative is a seven-month leadership development program for mid-career managers. It offers leadership tools and frameworks for these emerging leaders to leverage their individual strengths to effectively navigate their positionality in their respective organizations. Topics covered included: Leading and Managing for Success; Managing for High Performance; Identity and Situational Leadership; and Maximizing Influence and Impact. When using a 360° evaluation tool to assess leadership skills, participants noted that the “360° evaluation was an eye opener to see what [they] should be doing, stop doing, or doing more of.”
Community Response Cohort Program is a three-month, pandemic-specific training program for youth service organizations that pivoted to provide childcare and enrichment options for public school students. It provided participants with a firm grounding in best practices, core competencies, and skills needed to understand and use outcomes for program planning and management during a challenging year. Participants appreciated learning the different styles of leadership and sharing space with fellow service providers -- one of whom noted that "The overall training was supportive and informative. I loved the 1:1 coaching aspect and space to talk to peers."
What makes CRE unique is that we approach all of our services from a Coaching mindset. Through Coaching, we guide and support leaders to strengthen their leadership and management skills by activating their inner wisdom and experience. This year, we supported over 100 executive directors and managers to strengthen their abilities to shape organizational culture, inspire direct reports towards higher performance, and increase teamwork and collaboration. Coachees have noted that "The coaching opportunity was extraordinary…it served me well. I was able to run certain situations by the coach and process my way of thinking about such situations."
This webinar openly shared CRE's DEIA practice and lessons from our own internal racial equity journey. It helped participants increase confidence, motivation and capacity to move toward anti-racism and racial equity.
This series of three interactive sessions held over two months provided 25 participants with a firm understanding of CRE’s ECHO framework that is intended to support the facilitation of dialogue related to DEIA (diversity, equity, inclusion, and access) within and across teams.