Leadership Development Working Group/Appendix

• Overview
• Purpose and Structure
• Working Group
• Updates
• Participate
• Content
• Appendix
  • 1. What has been done so far?
  • 2. Skills
  • 3. Definitions of leadership
  • 4. Implementation ideas
  • 5. Design principles

This appendix includes additional details, including a collection of leadership-related ideas shared by community members. Reading the appendix is not required. This is information in case anyone is interested in the details.

1. What has been done so far?

Over the last several years, there have been conversations, research projects, and other initiatives related to leadership and leadership development. The Community Development team conducted an information review, reading and analyzing the below listed documentation. The Leadership Development Working Group proposal the team has drafted is based on ideas previously stated by members of the Wikimedia movement. Here is a non-exhaustive list of some of the efforts of affiliates, the Wikimedia Foundation, and individual volunteers:

• Wikimedia UK: Train the Trainers 2012 - 2019
• Wikimedia DC: Leadership Bootcamp 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018
• Wikimedia Deutschland: Chapter Dialogues Research 2016
• Community Capacity Development Research (& pilot evaluation) 2016
• Leadership Development Dialogue 2017
• Wikimedia Conference
  • Wikimedia Conference 2017 Learning days
  • Wikimedia Conference 2017 Capacity building and learning track
  • Wikimedia Conference 2018 Capacity building and learning track
• Movement Organizers Preresearch 2018
• Does Wikipedia Belong in Education? 2018
• Movement Organizers Study 2019
• Movement Learning and Leadership Development Project 2020
• Community Resources Insights Summary 2020
• Wikimedia Argentina: Leadership Fellowship 2020
• Movement Communications Insights 2021
• Movement Strategy 2018 - 2021
  • Community Survey
  • MS Reports
  • MS Community Conversations Summary
    • German Conversations
    • Women & LGBT
    • Arabic Conversations
    • Asian Conversations
    • Spanish Conversations
    • Central and Eastern Europe
    • English Conversations
    • Portuguese Conversation
  • Community Conversations
    • March-April Conversations
    • June Conversations
    • July & early August Conversations
    • Late August & September Conversations
  • Strategy Salons
  • Iteration 2
    • Capacity Building
      • Independently governed capacity building unit
      • Building capacity for capacity building
      • Mentoring and leadership development
      • Matching human assets and online knowledge resources
      • Capacity building should occur in context
      • Provide capacity building for organizational development
      • Resources for capacity building
      • Evaluating capacity building
      • Recognizing and supporting individuals
      • Online training
    • Community Health
      • Building the leadership of the future
      • Investing in building an inclusive community
    • Partnerships
      • Invest in the leadership potential of community members
  • Iteration 3
    • Promote sustainability and resilience
    • Foster and develop distributed leadership (talk page)
    • Invest in skill development
  • Final Iteration
    • Invest in Skill and Leadership Development recommendation (summary)
    • December Global Conversations
      • December 5
        • Round 1 discussion
        • Round 2 discussion
      • December 6
        • Round 1 discussion
        • Round 2 discussion
    • February Follow-Up Conversations
      • Global coordination room
      • Leadership development room
      • Local and global capacity assessment
• The Capacity Exchange project 2021

If there are initiatives that you are aware of that are not listed here, please share them in the Collecting leadership resources section of the Participate page.

2. Skills

These are skills that community members have mentioned. Not all are relevant to leadership. View this alphabetized list as a broad list of skills that can be categorized and narrowed down by the working group:

• Accountability
• Adaptability
• Advocacy (lobbying, speaking for the cause of free knowledge)
• Appreciation
• Boldness
• Change management
• Coaching
• Commitment
• Communication (public relations, media, community relations)
• Community outreach and organizing
• Conflict resolution / transformation
• Conscientiousness
• Consensus building
• Constructive
• Creating and delivering presentations
• Delegation
• Digital security
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)
• Emotional intelligence
• Empathetic
• Empowering & bringing people along
• Encouraging engagement
• Inclusiveness
• Finance
• Flexibility
• Fundraising
• Global collaboration
• Governance
• Handling adversity (e.g. digital safety, personal safety)
• Human resources
• Humility
• Humor and self irony
• Knowledge / experience sharing
• Learning to learn (ability to update their skills)
• Legal
• Listening
• Member recruitment and management
• Mentorship ability
• Motivating
• On-wiki editing
• Openness/Open mindedness
• Organizational management
• Patience
• Partnership development and management
• Peer encouragement
• Perseverance
• Persuasion skills
• Prioritization
• Proactivity
• Process design
• Project management
• Public speaking and self-presentation
• Recruiting
• Relationship building
• Reporting & evaluation
• Resilience
• Risk identification and escalation
• Self-care / burnout prevention
• Self-sacrifice
• Sensibility to context
• Storytelling
• Strategic planning
• Team collaboration
• Technical skills (e.g. WikiCite, WikiData)
• Transparent
• Trusting
• Trustworthiness
• Training and educating

• Valuing other points of view

3. Definitions of leadership

These are definitions that have been previously mentioned by community members. Each definition is accompanied by supporting quotes:

Leadership is contextual

• “Leadership qualities can change. For example, leaders under the pandemic have more challenges than before”
• “Leadership differs from region to region, so what might work for countries in America might not work for countries in Africa”
• “Skill development has to happen in the local context, with mentorship and other tools”
• “Everyone can be a leader in a specific context”
• “Leadership skills should be framed within a group context, rather than focusing on single individuals and trying to train them into “knowing everything”

There are many forms of leadership

• “We recognise that there are many forms of leadership which are useful and valued in different situations, Wikimedia should support our community to find what works for them”
• Some forms of leadership:
  • “Community coordinators - folks who have the ability to communicate and inspire confidence to get people working together for the common good. They should also be able to listen and gather people's ideas together, rather than imposing their own views… Many of the leaders of our successful chapters are probably this type of leader”
  • “Constructive change-makers - folks who can lead by example, showing others how to make real transformational change, and then organizing the effort. This requires high energy and passion among other things.... Wouldn't it be nice if we could train people on how to do this correctly?”

Leadership is about the qualities someone displays, not a defined role

• "Leadership is not any one definitive thing, action, or role but instead is a continuous demonstration of certain qualities that are valued across the movement"
• What could leadership qualities be?
  • People-centered
  • Inclusive
  • Proactive
  • Accountable
  • Emotionally-aware
  • Ability to communicate
  • Ability to mentor
  • Ability to motivate people and convince them of Wikimedia values

Leaders are mentors  

• What are some of the behaviors of mentors?
  • Sharing knowledge
  • Offering support, feedback and guidance to help others learn and build confidence
  • Providing a safe space for others to ask questions and learn from mistakes
  • Creating access and connection to opportunities and networks
  • Setting a positive example
  • Making Wikimedia a kind and welcoming place

Leadership is about growth

• “Leadership is to guide your community and to help grow and motivate your community. It is about trying to keep the people in Wikipedia, and trying to attract more people to Wikipedia. We have to teach people and bring awareness to Wikipedia”

Leadership is about support, not control

• “Leadership is support structure and not control”
• “We need to clearly frame the development of leadership as creating leadership supporting from bottom up, no longer controlling from top down”
• “There is an over reliance on adversive directive leadership which cannot and will not work. Rather you must use democratic, or coaching”
• “Leadership” is often perceived as hierarchical control vs ‘Servant Leadership’ which is more clearly about support structures for the people working to solve problems within their own domains. Conceptual diagram.  One of our greatest current challenges is in the frequency with which we are told ‘No’ instead of helped to find paths forward. We cannot grow if the people trying to build have their efforts ignored or rejected”
• “Getting away from capitalist notions of leadership and the importance of scalability (as opposed to sustainability). Perhaps we can be more like mushrooms”

Leadership is about facilitation

• “Facilitating discussions and mediating or resolving disputes… I think it's getting at providing better support to people in a wide range of positions, from people who want to go and set up a small local outreach project, through to complex dispute resolution between large movement organisations and movement-wide governance roles (e.g. the WMF Board or FDC). Genuinely I think there is scope for us to do better in supporting people in all of those areas”

Leadership is not about one person leading but many people leading

• “Leadership is not about something beyond us, it is not about a single person leading, but a great many people: it is a shared practice that lies in the core of our culture. Wikimedia is a movement made of many volunteers leading through everyday acts to liberate knowledge, and help others to do the same”
• “Frame leadership skills within a group context, rather than focusing on single individuals and trying to train them into ‘knowing everything’”

4. Implementation ideas

These are ideas shared by community members about how skills and leaders can be developed. As you read them, you may notice that some of the ideas overlap:

Leadership capacity mapping (or needs assessment)

• What is this idea?
  • This idea tries to ask: what is the current state of the movement? What leadership skill gaps exist in each region?
• What could capacity mapping involve?
  • Create a map (with the support of local community contribution) that shows leadership development needs on regional and role level
  • Separate skills into different categories: technical, interpersonal, etc.
  • Identify the communities that need support and see where they can get support from (regionally or globally)
• Questions to answer:
  • What are the biggest leadership development needs (local / global)?
  • How do needs differ across the movement?
  • What resources (materials, people, funds, knowledge) exist already that can support those needs? What can increase their utilization? What resources are missing?
  • How does the Wikimedia movement create shared definitions (e.g. a glossary) around those needs?
  • How does the Wikimedia movement align needs with assessment/evaluation? What is success for each of the leadership development needs?

A growing toolbox of resources and methods

• Why?
  • This helps community members know what other communities are creating or have created so that others can learn from or re-use the resources
  • “Much of all this is already available, but it is not structured, tagged, or searchable in a way real people can actually locate them so this effort will be successful only if some people try to organize and structure this to make it useful”
• What could this toolbox include?
  • “A growing toolbox of methods to support multiple learning needs, including sharing information, assessment, training, online learning, on-site technical assistance, consultation, mentoring/coaching, physical immersive exchange, communities of practice, and partnerships, to meet the various capacity building needs”
  • “Documenting past projects and activities: for example, all the edit-a-thons across the movement”
  • “Learning resources (e.g. “learning packs”) directed to individuals and organizations joining the Movement to encourage self-directed knowledge acquisition and development of skills within our practices and roles”
  • Resources could be: people or organizations with specific skills; experiences; tools; materials; past trainings; books; tutorials
• What could creating this toolbox involve?
  • “Tap into, adjust and consolidate existing resources and learning materials from different [affiliates]: build on existing initiatives and resources”
  • “Conduct a scan of the resources (training materials, templates, etc.) we already have, and where there are gaps”
  • Translating and localizing existing resources into local languages
• An example of a collection of resources: Wikimedia Argentina’s Community Resources site

An online database to centralize, offer and find leadership development opportunities

(note: this idea is similar to the “a growing toolbox of resources and methods” idea except it focuses on the online database)

• What could this idea involve?
  • A user-friendly, searchable, multilingual, multi-format, curated platform to host learning resources (e.g. tutorials, videos, online training, etc.)
• What could the platform’s features include?
  • Variety
    • Different languages and modalities
  • Findability
    • “Meta does not suffice - Not only do we have a wide variety of offers of skill training, services and resources, but these also need to be 'findable' in an easy to use database"
    • “In the OER space, there is the OER world map. The OER world map allows people to filter on their question "I am looking for this". People can add their own skills and contact info. This is more attractive than a long list”
  • Centrality
    • “We need to have one single place in the movement where I can go and say "I have this need" and where I can find resources and people to connect to .. because approaching people can be quite daunting and it's difficult to know who to talk to and who might be willing to offer guidance/work with me on a specific topic”
    • “Gather the best tutorials from the movement and make a copy that is in a centralised place”

Peer exchange network (also described as mentorship, informal learning, matchmaking)

• Why?
  • “Each time you are facing a challenge with a Wikimedia-related programme (whatever programme, be it promoting Wikipedia via social networks or organising a GLAM cooperation), you will most likely be able to find a person who already faced this challenge somewhere else in the world. We should indeed capitalise on this and build a platform to develop such P2P networks”
  • “In a not very systematic way, we are already doing this, but so far people have to be lucky enough to find each other (often in the context of in person events btw ;-) )/ know somebody they can turn to. Promoting a central platform where people can pair up would make this approach work for a broader group (including people not being very well networked in the movement yet) and could lead to even better results concerning finding the best person for the skills and experiences needed”
• What could this idea involve?
  • Establish a service that facilitates connecting/matching peers across the Movement for teaching and learning skills (e.g. peer-learning, networking, and pooling of information from partners and allies)
  • “Dedicate people to support and respond to help desk questions (examples: WMDC, WMUK)”
  • Create opportunities for human-to-human networking
  • “Develop a way to reward participants for sharing what they know or have developed. Knowledge management does not happen on its own, and for people to have knowledge and skills available to learn, we need to find a way to invite participants who already have those things to share them”
• What are the benefits of a peer exchange network?
  • “Distribute the training and support responsibilities across more people in the movement
  • Decrease the burnout of individuals by building up the capacity of volunteers who can then support the learning of others
  • Build trust and accountability between movement volunteers
  • Create additional opportunities for volunteers to engage and contribute to Wikimedia
  • Provide space for Wikimedians to solidify their own knowledge by training and supporting others
  • Equip volunteers with the skills, confidence, and knowledge to contribute to the Wikimedia mission
  • Helps leaders multiply themselves”
• An example of a matchmaking platform: The Capacity Exchange project

Online learning management system (LMS)

• Why?
  • “Large Wikipedia Education teams all over the world have long learned that in-person learning is fairly inefficient. Wikimedia Conference is an especially exclusive event where mostly leaders of affiliated organizations (such as board members) gather so organizing learning days there has limited potential”
  • “Both recorded and blended online training opportunities can help focus the sharing and capacity building of core capacities needed by stakeholders across the Movement, ensuring both knowledge development and maintaining / strengthening the human connections that are the focus of our how our Movement will expand”
• What could this involve?
  • Self-led, pre-recorded courses: “There are many learning needs across the Movement, and many differences in how people need or want to learn. An online training approach will have two outputs -- the first being recorded learning videos and educational assets that will be located and accessible to anybody who wants to engage with them”
  • Live courses: “The second output will be the opportunity and platform for learners to engage with one another in live online learning sessions, the ability to discuss / ask / answer questions / engage in community building”
• An example of work being done is WikiLearn, an online learning management system that the Community Development team is helping to develop, with plans to scale access to online learning in the movement

Look to affiliates as models and learning sources

• Where does this idea come from?
  • “Established and mature affiliates will play a key role in a decentralised structure of leadership development, taking a role in sharing knowledge and experiences with emerging affiliates”
  • “Some chapters are setting a very good example, and some new user groups would like to explore and mimic their strategy and work process to improve their contribution to the Wikimedia movement”
  • “You need to have a User Group establish before WMF moves in with capacity building efforts so that you have something to build on (it’s difficult for individual users to advance without an existing User Group”
  • “Affiliates and other local online and offline structures of support and self organisation with a role profile and resourcing are recommended to play an important role in contextualisation and context-sensitive localization”
• What could this idea involve?
  • “WMF should allocate financial resources for affiliates to organize events with experts/pay professors to reinforce capacities”
  • Successful affiliate projects acting as case study examples
  • “If a group has at least half of it's members with a certain skill, that skill could then be distributed within the local group”

Learn from and partner with external organizations or movements

• What could this idea involve?
  • “Connecting individuals working on partnerships into a network that can provide mutual support, mentorship and recognition”
  • “Strengthen connections between movement entities and partners”
  • “Identify the like-minded organizations, institutions and other stakeholders who share similar vision and enthusiastic about free knowledge from all parts of the society to partner and collaborate with them”
  • “We should have more volunteer-based organisations and user-generated platforms as our partners. For example, Toastmasters International’s clubs can help Wikimedians to improve public speaking skills, which contributes to leadership, and we can share our knowledge about digital literacy with them”
  • “Invite potential leaders from other social movements to diversify and enrich the Movement through sharing experiences”

Recognize and enable existing leaders to develop others

• What could this idea involve?
  • “Deal with professionals among us who can prepare courses for the skills we need. Give people the opportunity to develop the skills and encourage them by groups in Wikimedia”
  • Create mentorship programs, train the trainers, or toolkits to equip existing leaders with skills and knowledge to empower others

Train the trainers

• Why?
  • “A training of trainers, mentors, coaches, and circuit riders from our communities to create teams of human capacity builders within the movement. They can then help adapt capacities within local and cultural contexts to ensure that diversity, equity, and inclusion of content and capacity building strategies are represented”
• What could this idea involve?
  • “Training movement stakeholders in capacity building methods (such as providing one-on-one mentoring, running effective workshops, creating high quality open educational resources) will serve to grow our movement through newly emerging leaders, experts, and create social capital for growth”

Communities of practice

• Why?
  • “By supporting community learning and engagement, it is important to recognize and amplify the many ways volunteers are already cultivating strong, resilient, and engaged communities that support the movement”

A way to help people identify the skills they need to develop

• What could this idea involve?
  • “Assessment tools for different stakeholder types usable through a guided process, such as through appreciative inquiry, to cover both assets and gaps”
  • Communities perform self-reflection or self-assessment to help oneself think of the ways they need to develop as a leader and what skills they are missing

Build leadership skills in organizations and affiliates

• Where does this idea come from?
  • “Organizations are more likely to develop appropriately if they have access to resources and consultation (from their peers, coaches or experts of their choice, see R1, R2 and R3 for the system to enable this). Activities could include on-boarding trainings, local technical assistance, and coaching”
  • “Organizations may be a vehicle for creating equity among communities in different parts of the world. They will be well-placed to advocate for their communities, or as a group of emerging communities in the Wikimedia movement. Organizations could serve as the vehicles to take part in movement-wide decision making. Providing support for organizations to develop and sustain themselves in emerging communities will be critical to ensuring that the global governance of Wikimedia is equitable in the future”

Use novel and multi-modal approaches to learning

• What could this idea involve?
  • “Invest in new or existing technological infrastructure which facilitates learning of skills through functional, collaborative, real-time tools and quality content”
  • “Use new technologies and formats (video) for learning platform and resources”
  • “Develop training and capacity-resources using different platforms and languages”
  • “Review existing practices like eye catching / enticing tutorials in YouTube and customize their techniques/ methods to Wikimedia community”

Locally driven trainings

• What could this idea involve?
  • “Actively support in-person regional conferences, thematic gatherings, immersion experiences, mentoring, cohort learning and capacity-oriented partnerships”
  • “WMF should hire experts in different regions and organize regular workshops and trainings in these regions depending on the specific needs of the community”

Appoint leadership development champions

• Where does this idea come from?
  • “Each chapter should have a Capacity Champion that is connected to the Unit, either directly or through a Continental Point person”

Provide recognition with badges and certificates.

• What could this idea involve?
  • “Create incentives for skill development (online and offline) through the recognition of skills (e.g. through open badges)”
  • “The training (re-)certifications demonstrate skill levels and results should be provided in a format that is re-usable by the people certifying for other purposes, demonstrating the skills they have gained in the trainings”

Provide leadership and skill development training

• What could this involve?
  • “Provide training options (e.g. online, in-person) at local and regional levels to allow individuals to acquire leadership skills relevant to their communities”
  • “Participants can share their learnings afterwards to encourage others to join”
  • Live video trainings hosted by experienced Wikimedians
    • “The Foundation should support the creation of a video-live on Youtube and/or Twitch, where Wikimedians would take turns and show how they contribute. Example : Lyokoi does Youtube-lives where he shows how he contributes to the French Wiktionary (~100 people following each live session) : this allows contributors to share good practices and to demystify contribution, showing everyone it can be easy”
  • In-person skill developing and sharing events
    • “A dedicated event for skill sharing
    • “So much of the work happens when Wikimedians connect to understand who is doing what, and this has to become digital now”
    • “It is critical that this does not prioritize technology over the human interaction and engagement, as a technology in itself will not meet our various diverse learning needs”

5. Design principles

What considerations need to be prioritized and accounted for in any of the leadership development work that is done? Below is a list of design principles (and supporting references) that have been shared by community members:

Need for a systematic, global approach

• Why is this important?
  • “So that communities can learn from each other, build upon existing expertise, and increase local skills for online and offline activities

Be intentional and differentiated about who is part of the design process and whose needs are prioritized; design for real needs

• Why is this important?
  • “From our experience, what are taught as part of the learning days (both in Berlin and at Wikimanias) are usually what the WMF believes to be useful. Those attending the sessions, however, might not find it as beneficial as the organizers want it to be”

Need for accessibility and inclusion

• What could this involve?
  • “Create culturally sensitive guidelines for global coordination”
  • “Account for time zones”
  • “Account for multiple language, not English-centric”
  • “There will be a budget for translation, funds available upon request, which can also be directly allocated to local communities to engage their own translation/interpretation/ adaptation assets"
  • “User friendliness of training materials"

Need for contextual lens

• Why is this important?
  • “In feedback we often heard the ‘one size fits not all’ argument: general trainings provided may be interesting, however often the content is not applicable to the specific context of the recipient or it is challenging for people to transition their learnings back to their local contexts”
  • “Need for different approaches to skill development in third world countries, like the support in terms of broadband subsidies and child care”
  • “Implementing regionally or locally would be better because of cultural similarities”
  • “The needs are different across the globe, what European affiliates need is not the same as other places”
• What is a definition of contextualization?
  • "Being located in the same or adjoining regions or the same country
  • Sharing a regional language
  • Sharing a demographic commonality, such as gender, orientation, age, creating shared safe spaces for participants
  • Similar thematic areas of interest or commitment
  • Communities or projects of a similar size or maturity stage (e.g., medium size Wikipedias)
  • Having the same type of organizational form or moving towards an organizational stage
  • Having assessed similar core capacity building needs based on thematic relationship
  • Individuals being in similar leadership or staff positions"
• What could this involve?
  • “Assuring contextualization and cultural competency”
  • “The current foundation and WMDE centered model to host capacity building events may shift to the more resourceful affiliates in certain region as the key supporters for capacity building"
  • Enabling capacity building to happen in cultural, linguistic, thematic, and regional contexts
  • Contextualization can involve cohorting people:
    • With similar needs: for example “Wikimedians working in public policy, or security training for the community organizers in regions with negative records of privacy, or participants from the global open ecosystem of free and accessible knowledge”
    • Of similar region / language: for example “Celtic Knots conference or Free Knowledge Advocacy Group of European Union”
  • Taking into consideration environmental context, including cultural norms (e.g. notions of authority or notions of volunteerism differ across cultures)

Respect and acknowledge emerging communities

• Why is this important?
  • “We need to decentralize and de-westernise the movement and invest in local leaders and schemes”
• What is this about?
  • “Reassure underrepresented communities with the idea that all individuals and communities have knowledge and expertise that is unique and valuable for the Movement”
  • “Reaching underrepresented groups to share resources and training spaces, and to translate or explain about the resources”

Outreach broadly to get wide community input

• What is this about?
  • Get feedback through multiple channels: “we should have several ways to know what people really need: surveys, meta pages and focus groups”

Need for sustained, long-term resourcing

• Why is this important?
  • “Supporting the growth is key for the growth of the movement and connects with other recommendations - financial resources are important”
  • “The second important insight we received from both internal and external of Wikimedia movement is that one-time trainings alone are insufficient to meet the many needs of people across the movement, as many are excluded from this because they cannot financially attend the few global gatherings. One-time trainings without mentoring, coaching, or contextual follow-up often emains without impact”
• What is this about?
  • Both givers and receivers are resourced
  • “Capacity Building only works if the group/person/affiliate also has the resources (human and financial) to implement and sustain the capacity steps. Combine funds for the global structure with funds for participants, both types:  those who give and those who receive skills and services”
  • “Assuring sustained, long-term resources for capacity building, and ways to connect multiple initiatives, rather than serial pilots”

Be mindful of volunteer time commitment and effort burden

• What is this about?
  • “Being aware that many groups are already burdened with a lot of reporting and other management, so any additional work should not further strain smaller or less well-resourced groups”
• What are some causes of burnout?
  • The lack of volunteers to take on various roles keeps the same people in power for years and causes burnout and capacity gaps
  • Lack of volunteers to train new volunteers causes burnout [for existing volunteers who have to continue the work they’re doing]
  • When volunteers leave or no longer have capacity to keep projects going it can cause a void leaving things unfinished. Communities around the world feel disconnected and have a hard time knowing what other communities and projects are doing
  • The lack of term limits and the increasing experience requirements for roles decreases the opportunities for newer volunteers to learn and gain such experience and causes unhealthy power dynamics

Embed evaluation throughout

• What does this involve?
  • Ensuring evaluation is embedded from the beginning of unit’s work