Aladdin’s Cave at the LEA Sessions

Had a great experience at the August virtual Leadership Education Academy, part of the International Leadership Association! This outstanding programme with over 60 participants from all over the world (mostly USA) in how to design and develop leadership programmes is organised by Co-Chairs Dan Jenkins and Rian Satterwhite and runs every two years.  Key elements are

• pre-readings (which are well-written summaries of themes e.g. assessment) as well as references to useful articles
• reflection and discussion on the main themes of what is leadership and the various theories, situational factors in designing courses, learning goals, content and assessment, and instructional strategies
• affinity groups of about six people led by one of the facilitators and where each person gets a chance to get feedback on a leadership development project we are currently working on
• opportunity for One-to-One coaching with leadership education leading experts
• great opportunities both formal and informal to virtually network with experienced leadership educators from college, corporate, community and other worlds.
• brilliant facilitation by leading experts in the field such as Dan Jenkins Rian Satterwhite Corey Seemiller Azedeh Davari Nathan Eva Nyasha M. GuramatunhuCooper, Marc Hurwitz Francesca Lo Kerry Priest

The programme was delivered over two weeks in six sessions, and has completion certification. LEA itself was an excellent example of delivering a online programme with great concept summaries, short discussions panels, and well-structured and paced!  

My takeaways were

• introduction to instructional strategies such as role-play/simulation and problem-led learning ( Kathy L. Guthrie, Daniel M. Jenkins(2018) “The Role of Leadership Educators: Transforming Learning”)
• insight into assessment framework addressing the question of how do we know leadership programmes work (Seemiller, C. & Whitney, R. (2020). Creating a taxonomy of leadership competency development. Journal of Leadership Education, 19(1), 119-132)
• an interesting integrated framework for course design (L.D.  Fink (2003) Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses)Top of FormBottom of Form
• some really helpful ideas and suggestions on how to develop our Leadership Community of Practice in Ireland
• some great link-ups and connections that definitely will follow up on!!!

This was a great experience, and thanks to Dan, Rian, Corey and the rest of the team at ILA for organising such a professional, rich in content and well delivered programme.

If you want to find out what is the leading edge in leadership education and training in the world today, you have to go along to the International Leadership Association Conference (https://ilaglobalconference.org/) for insights into business leadership, sustainability, women and leadership, leadership and the public realm, and much more. This really is the global Aladdin’s Cave for leadership education and training!