Leadership Development Working Group/Content/ldp summary

Summary to the Leadership Development Plan

The Leadership Development Plan is published and invites your feedback! Read the summary below for an overview of the resource, please find the full Leadership Development Plan here.

Read the full Leadership Development Plan in pdf format.

Summary

The Leadership Development Plan is a practical resource for emerging and existing leaders across the Wikimedia movement who want to develop themselves and others. Its purpose is to surface, encourage and grow effective leadership. Through a year of collaboration and community consultation, the Leadership Development Working Group – a global and diverse community working group responding to Movement Strategy’s “Invest in Skills and Leadership Development” recommendation – published a leadership definition and now the Leadership Development Plan. As volunteers ourselves, we know how precious and limited your time is, so we have created a resource that aims to be easy to use, practical, and flexible. The resource consists of tools, concepts, and recommendations for leadership development. It is written with a global and cross-movement lens and invites you to contextualize and localize it.

What to Expect

The resource contains three sections:

• Section 1: Understanding leadership roles and skills: This section provides an overview of leadership in the Wikimedia movement. It shares the definition of leadership, a framework to view leadership roles and skills, and a leadership skills self-assessment.
• Section 2: Navigating leadership situations: This section shares a few common situations and themes experienced by leaders. It shares overviews and practical suggestions to navigate the situations.
• Section 3: Starting a leadership development initiative: This section presents a step-by-step guide to creating a leadership development initiative. It includes templates and tools to help you define, develop and deliver an initiative.

Highlights from Section 1

• Definition: Effective leadership is “the ability to guide, inspire, build autonomy, encourage and motivate a group of people towards a shared goal or common vision.” It means demonstrating leadership qualities and actions such as empathy, trust-building, and abilities to create supportive environments for others to thrive. These leadership skills and qualities are attainable and available to everyone, no matter one’s position or experience level, and they are necessary for all leaders across the movement.

  

  Leadership Skills Diagram

• Leadership skills: Leadership skills are a set of soft skills that allow one to encourage, motivate, and develop others. By soft skills, we mean personal attributes and social skills. These are different from hard skills, which are technical, administrative, task-specific, or role-specific skills. Though both soft and hard skills are necessary for effective leadership, in this resource, we focus on leadership (soft) skills and argue that they are relevant in all Wikimedia contexts where leadership appears, regardless of role or responsibilities. Based on the leadership definition, these leadership skills include internal qualities such as courage, resilience, focus, and accountability; and outward actions such as trust-building, setting a shared vision, and guiding collaborative decision-making. The Leadership Skills Diagram (see image) depicts a (non-comprehensive) list of Wikimedia leadership skills.
• Leadership roles: In the Wikimedia movement, leadership appears in different contexts and leaders hold different roles, whether formally or informally. In order to develop a common understanding of where and how leadership surfaces in the movement, we’ve identified a list of contexts and their respective roles. This is not an exhaustive or prescriptive list and acknowledges that there are many roles that overlap or aren’t visible.

Contexts Roles (Examples) Affiliates and Informal Groups

• Emerging group founders, directors, coordinators
• Established group directors, managers, or coordinators

On-wiki Extended Rights

Extended rights holders (administrators, bureaucrats, stewards, check-users, etc.)

Governance Committees

Committee members (Affiliations Committee, Regional Funds Committees, Board of Trustees, Movement Charter Drafting Committee, etc.)

Organizing

• Event and conference organizers (for Editathons, ESEAP Conference, WikiIndaba, Wikimania, Wikimedia Summit, CEE Meeting, etc.)
• Campaign organizers (Art+Feminism, Wiki Loves Women: SheSaid, WikiGap, WikiForHumanRights, etc.)

Program and Projects

• Project leaders, grantees, Wikimedians in Residence

Community Facilitation

• Thematic facilitators, ambassadors, and liaisons (Art+Feminism Ambassadors, EduWiki Outreach Collaborators, etc.)
• Governance facilitators, ambassadors, and liaisons (Movement Strategy facilitators, Movement Charter Ambassadors, etc.)
• Tech facilitators, ambassadors, and liaisons (Tech Ambassadors, etc.)

Mentorship

• On-wiki or technical mentors (Small wiki toolkit mentors, Wikidata: Wiki Mentor Africa, newcomer mentors such as Wikipedia Teahouse, etc.)
• Off-wiki mentors (Let’s Connect Program sharers, Wikipedia & Education User Group mentorship, Kiwix Mentorship Program, etc.)

Capacity Building

• Technical or non-technical skills trainers (affiliates and groups conducting training, Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom trainers, etc.)

• Skills assessment: based on the leadership definition and skills, the Leadership Skills Assessment is a tool you can readily use to self-assess and reflect on your leadership strengths and areas for improvement.

Highlights from Section 2

• Burnout and managing stress: Burnout, a syndrome resulting from “chronic workplace stress,” is characterized by a decline in psychological, emotional, and physical well-being intensified by feelings of hopelessness. In the Wikimedia movement, burnout is a relevant issue for leaders, both in managing their own risks of burnout as well as those of colleagues. The section shares a few examples of Wikimedia initiatives addressing burnout as well as strategies for navigating and discussing burnout.
• Encouraging diversity, equity, and inclusion in leadership: Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are terms that refer to how power is distributed in any setting where human interactions take place. Diversity refers to the physical presence or representation of individuals with different backgrounds, identities, and experiences. Inclusion is the involvement of individuals and groups, particularly those who are excluded or prevented from using their voice, in policies, practices, and decision-making. Equity is about just treatment and fair access or distribution of resources for individuals and groups; it is the effort of transforming social, political, and economic systems of oppression and injustice. The section shares a few examples of Wikimedia initiatives addressing DEI as well as strategies for encouraging and discussing it.
• Toxic or ineffective leadership: Toxic or ineffective leadership refers to individuals or groups who have responsibility over a group or organization and abuses the leader-follower relationship. There are common traits to identify toxic leadership, such as possessing unrealistic expectations and dishonesty, acting in self-serving ways, and having a dependency on hierarchies. The section shares examples of the impact of such leadership and includes recommended strategies and tools for approaching toxic or ineffective leadership in oneself and others.
• Self-assessment and continuous learning: Self-assessment and continuous learning help leaders grow their capacities to lead. They allow you to routinely gain new knowledge and skills to adapt and improve the ways you support your communities. The section shares information about when to perform self-assessments as well as methods to do so, including 360-degree feedback, reflection journals, and creating personalized assessments based on your specific learning goals.
• Passing on knowledge and mentorship: When experienced leaders make efforts to capture and share knowledge, they ensure lessons are retained and prepare future leaders. There are several ways to pass on knowledge, including establishing onboarding processes, using knowledge-sharing platforms, and mentorship. To highlight one method, mentorship is a key and common way that knowledge is transferred in the Wikimedia movement. The section shares examples of mentorship and further resources to explore.

Highlights from Section 3

Do you want to create a leadership development initiative but don’t know how to begin? Or maybe you are an experienced mentor or trainer but haven’t found the time to document and share your learnings with others yet? If this resonates, then this section is for you. The section shares a process for creating a leadership development initiative – whether it be a program, workshop, guidebook, or any other format. It guides you through the steps of defining your initiative’s focus and audience, preparing materials, delivering the initiative, and following up afterward. Here are the steps:

1. Define: Defining your initiative involves clarifying all its aspects, including the audience, outcomes, content, format, resources, and project plan. In this step, you are invited to use a Leadership Development Canvas and are guided to fill it out. You will find other tools such as a Leadership Development Syllabus Example to determine the contents of your initiative and a Learning Delivery Formats Selection Tool to make decisions about the delivery format.
2. Prepare: once your initiative is defined, you prepare for delivery. This includes securing financial and human resources, developing learning materials, and creating a call for participants. You will find tools such as Application Guidelines to access funding through the WMF and a Job Description Template to determine the people you need in your team.
3. Deliver: delivering your initiative is next. For synchronous initiatives, this is the moment learners experience your materials. For asynchronous initiatives, this is the moment you publish. You will find tools such as a guide for leading groups online and tips for effective facilitation.
4. Follow up: after your leadership initiative is complete, it’s important to keep the momentum going through building learning networks, evaluation, improving the initiative for next time, and sharing your learnings. You will find tools such as a guide for sharing your learnings through case studies and a Sample Evaluation Survey to gain insights from your participants.