On Thursday, June 23 and Friday, June 24th, Human Resources partnered with the Ignatian Center to provide leadership training with some of our Arrupe Community Partners. Matthew Duncan (Student Life), Jackie Schmidt-Posner, and Cheryl Johnson (Human Resources) facilitated the two day retreat.
The retreat, The Challenge To Lead, brought together 15 Arrupe Community Partners and 3 staff from University of San Francisco. The agencies represented ranged from Sacred Heart Community Services, Catholic Charities, Inn Vision, Santa Clara Adult Education, River Glen School, BUILD, Bachrodt Academy, and HOPE Rehabilitation Services, as well as USF. The retreat was offered to the participants at no cost.
The retreat was the culmination of two months of planning, preparation, and pre-work by the participants. The Challenge To Lead is based on the writings of The Leadership Challenge, by our own Barry Posner and Jim Kouzes (both from Leavey School of Business). The Challenge to Lead examines how leaders mobilize others to want to get extraordinary things done. It's about the practices leaders use to transform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, separateness into solidarity, and risks into rewards. It's about a climate in which people turn challenging opportunities into remarkable successes. Participants had an opportunity to understand how others view them in regard to five important practices; model the way; inspire a shared vision; challenge the process; enable others to act; and encourage the heart. Participants had the opportunity to learn about the five practices of exemplary leadership and how they can begin to lead others to accomplish things never thought possible. Participants were able to assess the degree to which they currently exercise the five practices and develop a plan for moving from the leader they are into the leader they want to become.
Human Resources has collaborated with the Arrupe Partnerships of the Ignatian Center, to offer a variety of professional development workshops for the community partners over the past three years. These lunchtime workshops have been well received. This is the first time that a full two day retreat has been offered for the Arrupe Community Partners. HR looks forward to partnering again with Ignatian Center for future offerings of The Challenge To Lead for our Community Partners.
