Posted on Friday, 21st November 2008 by chris wignall

Too often we get the impression that leadership is a topic or skill set that can be learned in isolation from other things. I know of more than one “leader” with outstanding credentials who are making significant, obvious, and damaging blunders with stunning frequency.
As we’re nearing the end of our pilot project of the Catalyst [...]

Tags: Catalyst, Leadership
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Posted on Friday, 14th November 2008 by chris wignall

Read this article from Christianity Today.
A few brief observations:
-If Apple can be a religion, leadership can tend towards being a cult.
-That women find leadership particularly difficult is the reason for existence for our friends at Next Level Leadership.
-Servant Leadership certainly has become a relatively meaningless buzzword; but I still believe it can express the best [...]

Tags: Leadership, Partners
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Posted on Tuesday, 28th October 2008 by chris wignall

Seth Godin again. This time passing on someone else’s writing.
I got a nice thank you today from a fundraiser at a great organization in Toronto; which was interesting because we didn’t send them any funds. Instead they appreciated that I’d taken an hour recently to talk with them about how Catalyst prefers to be approached [...]

Tags: Leadership, Philanthropy
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Posted on Tuesday, 28th October 2008 by chris wignall

One of the e-newsletters I subscribe to if from Patrick Lencioni. As with his best selling books, these shorter pieces are always insightful.
Here’s a quote from the latest:
Whenever I hear someone encourage all young people to become leaders, or better yet, when I hear a young person say glibly that he or she wants to [...]

Tags: Leadership, Resources
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Posted on Wednesday, 24th September 2008 by chris wignall

Years ago I interviewed for a job and during the process I was told the salary was based on the pay grid of school teachers in the region. That was quite appealing, but the actual salary offered was quite a bit less. It seems the salary grid was a basis only in terms of being [...]

Tags: Catalyst, Leadership, Philanthropy
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Posted on Wednesday, 27th August 2008 by chris wignall

I am learning quite a lot about the roles and responsibilities of board members. I’m realizing how very important an effective board can be to the long term work of an organization, and conversely, how crippling a poor board can be.
In evaluating grant applications one of the factors we consider is the effectiveness of [...]

Tags: Leadership, Resources
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Posted on Tuesday, 19th August 2008 by chris wignall

Two contrasting episodes today:
1. Spent an enjoyable with Hugh Brewster of World Vision Canada’s Partners to End Child Poverty program and Scott Jones from Micah House reviewing some material from the LEAP workshop that Scott and I attended with Hugh a couple weeks ago. LEAP is an intensive process in developing project designs that is [...]

Tags: Leadership, Partners
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Posted on Sunday, 3rd August 2008 by chris wignall

This from Fred Smith (who posts a lot of interesting articles on Facebook).
It raises some excellent questions about the role of foundations relative to those we desire to help. Obviously there is bound to be some question about the quality of the work done by the Gates Foundation. Just as there is criticism of Bono’s [...]

Tags: Leadership, Philanthropy
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Posted on Monday, 28th July 2008 by chris wignall

When is leadership development not worthwhile?
I spent some time recently with my old friends at Medeba Adventure Learning Centre. I’ll confess that I’m biased in their favour. Several years ago I was part of their second class in the leadership internship program they’ve developed.
It was great to catch up with some old friends and see [...]

Tags: Leadership, Vision
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Posted on Sunday, 20th July 2008 by chris wignall

Why can’t the organizations I meet with each week tell me the real cost of their programming?
Time and time again I have conversations in which people who are hoping to receive support from Catalyst explain their desire to offset some of the fees required by their participants, but need to be prompted to explain the [...]

Tags: Leadership, Philanthropy
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