Organizational Leadership Development in Ethiopia Among NGOs

Update from Steadman Harrison

The CCL Leadership Essentials Workshop content begins with an individual leader focus and moves quickly to broaden an organizational leadership development lens. In prototype workshops conducted in East Africa from November 2006 through January 2008, experiential exercises were used to draw out the lessons and best practices regarding working with others. Trust Walks, Move the Mindset/Money, and Visual/Metaphor Explorer are a few of the tools we thread together in the Assessment/Challenge/Support (ACS) framework to address organizational leadership development. Participants are asked to think beyond their own personality and learning styles to consider the organizational culture and community context where they work.

In a recent workshop with nearly 100 participants from Ethiopian NGOs, CBOs, and FBOs a group of 10 volunteers took on the role of managers, 10 blind-folded participants took on the role of employees, 25 observers shared the perspective of the rest of the organization, 25 observers shared the perspective of the local community in need, and 25 observers played the role of the local, province and regional government ministries. As the managers and employees worked through a simple task to move a physical object representing NGO funding out from a fixed point to a nearby circle representing the community in need, the observers noted in the debrief how easy it was for those focused on the task to lose sight of their purpose and to literally forget about the community they were serving. Managers missed opportunities to engage with the rest of the organization available for support and complained about the challenge of working with government representatives when new rules and regulations were being communicated. During the debrief of experiential exercises and appreciative inquiry tools participants routinely draw the parallels to their everyday work and see the analogies and metaphors of these simulations come to life. Participants report that their understanding of their impact on others, their appreciation for the complex cultural context within which they work, and the importance of building clear direction, alignment, and commitment through their leadership influence increases throughout the course of their workshop experience.