| By
Loree Cook-Daniels
Sixty-eight people earned the NCEA Leadership Certificate
in Conflict Management when the National Center on Elder Abuse
held its first Leadership Institute in March, 2001 at the
California aging/APS conference in Palm Springs.
The NCEA Leadership Institute is designed to better prepare
all participants to become effective leaders and team builders
in planning, developing, carrying out and improving programs
and activities that combat elder abuse, neglect and exploitation.
Participants have the opportunity to develop their own personal
effectiveness within an organizational structure, and enhance
their coalition-building skills in ensuring workable coordination
among various programs serving abused elderly that is sustainable
over time.
Using examples and case studies drawn from real problems
and situations faced by professionals working with, and advocating
for, abused elders, the NCEA Leadership Institute offers three
different programs.
The conflict training session (appropriate for anyone who
finds him- or herself working with others to accomplish mutual
or conflicting goals), helps ensure that conflict in an organization
is expressed productively and is used as a source for better
outcomes.
Leadership development (suitable for everyone, but particularly
effective for people who are already in a leadership position
or who anticipate taking leadership of some project or coalition),
helps develop leaders using a combination of personal assessment
tools, opportunities to receive feedback, and simulations
to demonstrate the results of distinct leadership styles.
Lastly, NCEA’s team-building session (appropriate only
for people who are already working together as a group) concentrates
on skill development in group decision-making, reconciling
cooperative and competitive roles, and giving and receiving
feedback to accomplish mutual goals.
Two of the Institutes were offered at the California conference.
Led by NCEA partner Karen Stein, Ph.D., the training session
on conflict management helped participants:
-
Gain an understanding of the destructive outcomes from
unmanaged conflict and the constructive outcomes from
properly managed conflict;
-
Learn five strategies, and the advantages and disadvantages
of each, for handling conflict: integrating, compromising,
competing, smoothing, avoiding;
-
Identify their own preferred strategies for dealing
with conflict through a self-inventory/self-test;
-
Using self-awareness of one's preferred strategy, develop
action plans that can be applied in current and future
conflict situations;
-
Recognize tendencies of teams to engage in “groupthink”
in decision-making as a means of avoiding conflict, which
adversely affects group productivity; and
-
Learn the keys to successful decision-making to increase
critical thinking skills and help eliminate “groupthink”
tendencies.
The other institute, also led by Dr. Stein, was on Leadership
Development. In this workshop, participants:
-
Understood that leadership potential exists in all persons,
and is not based solely in positions of authority;
-
Recognized their own leadership profile, through a self-test;
and
-
Learned about the sources of power available to everyone
in an organization, and the advantages and disadvantages
of using each type of power in specific situations.
Participants in this half-day training could earn an NCEA
certificate in Leadership Development by submitting an action
plan for developing one's leadership potential and/or skills
post-conference.
The NCEA Leadership Institute is available to come to your
conference, coalition, or agency. There is no charge to participants,
although it is expected that the hosting agency will bear
the expenses associated with bringing the training to the
participants.
For more information, contact:
Karen Stein, Ph.D.
Department of Consumer Studies
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716
(302) 831-8714 (phone)
(302) 831-6081 (fax)
kstein@udel.edu
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