To get things started all members of the new community are expected to attend this Reception, learn about the program, and meet alums and faculty. The location of this session has changed. It will be held at the Sheraton Hotel in Newton, MA.

For directions please visit: http://www.starwoodhotels.com/sheraton/property/overview/index.html?prop...

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Purpose: This session provides participants with an orientation to the overall program vision and goals. By basing the program in the challenges of today’s health care system for the low income and uninsured, and by asking participants: “who are you now; who do you want to be in the face of these challenges,” this session encourages participants to examine their assumptions about leadership. In this session they begin laying the groundwork of trust and respect for their unique community. This community will become a laboratory and support team to all of its members. The focus of this program is on helping those with leadership potential to take a step forward and increase their personal impact, their impact in their organization, and the impact of the organization on the health care system.

Learning Objectives: Through completion of this module participants will:

• Gain an understanding of the program’s purpose in addition to the challenges and opportunities facing future leaders serving the low income and uninsured.
• Build working relationships of trust and respect.
• Develop an understanding for the types of personal growth this program will afford each of them.
• Establish their community’s charter for working together as a community.
• Learn about their personal style and that of their colleagues through completion of and feedback on the MBTI.

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Purpose: When people understand a broad range of possibilities
for leadership they can better identify their own strengths as leaders while
developing complementary roles for others. In this module, participants will
develop an understanding of the traditional and evolving paradigms of leadership. During this session participants will examine how various leadership models evolved over time and some inherent assumptions about leadership. On Friday, we will begin to explore some of the basic tools of Facilitative Leadership.

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Purpose: Facilitative leaders pace the work, balancing the
needs of those who want to move to solutions quickly with those who prefer more
time to reflect on and modify information. They create an environment in which
all can participate, precluding dominance by any one individual, and thus generate
the synergy necessary for resourceful thought and action. Many of us are trained
as experts in specific fields. Frequently back in the work place, participants’
roles are to analyze and define problems and provide answers. Facilitating the
work of others requires different skills and leadership capacities. Facilitative
leaders must know when to go beyond getting input from others and, instead,
engage them deeply in the hard work of defining both problems and solutions.
Strong leaders focus as much on process as on content to create safe environments
for diverse groups of people to come together. They build skills and relationships
that change the norms of engagement. This module provides the basic skills for
working with others at the group level within the participants’ organizations.
In subsequent modules, participants will learn how to apply these foundational
skills to working with other organizations, other not-for-profit sectors, and
with the community. Additionally it begins to provide a framework for developing
an Action Learning Practicum, a key tool to skill development in this program.

Learning Objectives: Upon completion of this module participants
will be able to:

• Describe the principles and practices of facilitative leadership for tapping
  the creativity, diversity, and experience of others at the group level within
  the organization.
• Understand and apply a range of tools and skills for working with others
  to solve problems and create a shared vision.
• Describe the key components for conceptualizing the Action Learning Practicum.

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Purpose: As Massachusetts' demographics change and the population becomes more culturally and linguistically diverse, there is an increasingly critical need to effectively deliver health care services in multi-cultural environments. The participants of this program are professionals working in health care settings across the Commonwealth where their low-income and uninsured clients represent a broad range of ethnic and racial groups, with differing religious and sexual orientations, faced with a range of medical needs, disabilities and/or homelessness. Given the context, the focus of this module is to help emerging leaders fully understand the characteristics of culturally competent health care organizations, and learn how to enhance and promote excellence within their agencies. Health care organizations that are considered “centers of excellence” in delivering culturally competent care* have achieved this status and reputation because of full and continuous engagement of senior leadership including the board of directors. Participants in this program will learn how to increase their own personal influence and impact to help their organizations become and remain more culturally competent for their ever-changing patients and communities.

Learning Objectives: Through completion of this module participants will:

• Understand the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health Care (CLAS).
• Examine the importance and need for ongoing organizational self assessment.
• Learn tools for effectively conducting a self-assessment.
• Understand how to institutionalize cultural competence in day-to-day practices.
• Learn the impact of cultural competence on quality of care and patient safety.
• Identify ways to create a culturally competent organizational framework that effectively serves all patients as well as staff and clinicians.

* HRSA designation for organizations in compliance with all CLAS standards.

Faculty for this module: Tawara Goode, M.A. Jose Diaz, M.D.

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Purpose: The challenges and opportunities inherent in health
care take place within a particular context. Most of these challenges share
two common characteristics: layers of complexity, and multiple stakeholders.
Because of the lack of complete knowledge or agreement about what to do, and
the multiplicity of constituents and stakeholders, sustained and real progress
occurs when individuals learn together and engage collaboratively. Collaborative
leaders help others build a shared understanding of those challenges and the
larger context in which they are embedded; define problems and create shared
visions; develop solutions and strategies; lay out a plan for moving to action,
and monitor and evaluate progress. In this module participants will learn how
to identify, involve, and work with stakeholders, as well as learn to analyze,
understand and work with the layers of complexity embedded in systems.

Learning Objectives: Upon completion of this module participants
will be able to:

• Understand and apply a range of planning approaches and tools to health
  care challenges.
• Identify and describe the health care challenges facing non-profits and
  communities, and analyze the larger context in which they are embedded.
• Create a systemic map of health care reflecting the perspectives and experiences of the particpants in this community.
• Experientially understand how systems effect our behaviors and attitudes.
• Design and initiate a partnership or collaborative planning initiative to
  address a particular concern health care concern in the community, region
  or state.

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Purpose: Collaboration is more than simply bringing people together. The process of engagement demands careful thought and conscious attention to provide a safe and constructive environment. Collaborative leaders rely on facilitative leadership behaviors and practices to engage others in facing and dealing with the challenges and responsibilities of health care. They work with others to create a collective sense of responsibility for the whole, and therefore become stewards of their organizations and communities. Careful planning and involvement moves collaboration from concept to practice. Planning a collaborative process must be done with others to build the collective credibility to convince more people to work together. This module provides the tools for planning, catalyzing and convening a collaborative endeavor.

Learning Objectives: Upon completion of this module participants will be able to:

• Use the Adaptive Learning Model (Ron Heifetz), and articulate the value and importance of working with others to define an issue as well as determine potential solutions to a problem.
• Describe the principles that inform collaborative engagement and the implications they hold for their role as a leader.
• Define and describe the key tasks for initiating and designing a collaborative initiative (e.g., who participates, what kind of engagement, how to inform, etc.) and apply these concepts to health care concerns in the community, region or state.

Faculty for this Module: Thomas Rice, David Chrislip

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Purpose: Being a leader is not only about what one knows,
it very much depends on how one sees him or herself in the role of a leader.
Combining intensive personal and group experiences with time for reflection
and learning forever changes how a person sees him or her self and how they
perceive and engage with others. The lessons in this module will be viscerally
grounded in experience rather than learned only through didactic teaching. Becoming
more aware of how to value and benefit from differences enables leaders to tap
into the richness of diversity in their everyday experiences. This understanding
builds a more supportive and involved community, while providing new lenses
for working with others in their communities back home. Shared learning experiences
transform how participants perceive themselves, their relationships with others
and their ability to work together as diverse individuals. Having the opportunity
to lead and receive feedback about one’s leadership style is a unique
learning opportunity.
Learning Objectives: Through completion of this module participants
will:

• Gain new perspectives and awareness of their personal strengths and impact
  on others by receiving feedback from their peers about their leadership skills.
• Practice giving feedback to peers about their leadership strengths and opportunities
  for improvement.
• Develop an experiential understanding of the principles for building strong
  working relationships, the skills for working together as a team and the leadership
  capacities necessary for working with others as peers, and the strength of
  their skills for these capacities.
• Deepen their leadership network to address shared concerns in the health
  care arena.

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Purpose: When people understand a broad range of possibilities for leadership they can better identify their own strengths as leaders while developing complementary roles for others. In this module, participants will develop an understanding of the traditional and evolving paradigms of leadership. Considering leadership as a field of knowledge offers the opportunity to re-imagine the role of leader for themselves, and this community. Using this framework, they will reflect on their own development as a leader throughout the course of the Institute. Each individual will create his/her own theory of leadership that responds to health care challenges of leaders serving the low income and uninsured, to their own deeply held goals.

Learning Objectives: Upon completion of this module participants will be able to:

• Reflect on and analyze past experience as a guide to future development of self as leader, incorporating new conceptions of leadership with awareness of personal strengths, desires, and level of commitment.
• Develop a vision of leadership for self and an action plan for achieving it.

Faculty for this Module: Cynthia Parker, Michael McCormack

Action Learning Practicum: As part of the Institute, participants will apply the principles and practices learned during this program to real issue in health care through a practicum. The practicum experience provides a chance for participants to exercise their skills in facilitating dialogue and reaching consensus within their group and with other organizations and/or the community they serve. These experiences provide a laboratory for participants to incorporate the collaborative leadership tools they have learned with an opportunity to creatively respond to a real and challenging health care issue affecting the low income and uninsured in Massachusetts. The practicum will include:

• Working in small teams with peers in the Institute and choosing a focus for the practicum;
• Conducting an analysis of the organizational and community context and the challenges it presents;
• Developing a working hypothesis of the scope and purpose of the intervention, along with an analysis of who to engage (stakeholders);
• Defining a process for engaging and involving stakeholders;
• Convening the stakeholders to confirm or disconfirm the hypothesis and capture the learnings from the experience;
• Determining whether the ground work laid in the practicum is sustainable by their group and/or others after the completion of the practicum;
• Throughout the practicum experience participants will receive and provide feedback and support for one another as part of the laboratory experience.

Participants can expect to work on their practica approximately 4 – 6 hours per month between sessions. In additition, during the program there are opportunities to apply specific learnings to their practica. Depending on the project chosen, participants may wish to extend work on their practicum beyond the time parameters of this program. If this step is considered, it must be with the approval of their sponsoring organization.

• Understand and apply a range of planning approaches and tools to health care challenges.
• Identify and describe the health care challenges facing non-profits and communities, and analyze the larger context in which they are embedded.
• Through the practicum, practice the tools learned about leadership, feedback, diversity, dialogue, problem analysis, and identifying and involving a variety of stakeholders.

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