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Leadership Development Plan

Community members may agree that leadership development is important for our movement. However, information about how to create such initiatives can be either difficult to find, incomplete, or not available. This section shares a step-by-step guide for designing and implementing a leadership development initiative. The guide also includes a suggested syllabus to use as a basis for developing your own instructional materials. Perhaps you are an affiliate coordinator who wants to encourage more community members to adopt leadership skills and qualities; a community organizer who believes developing leadership skills can motivate editors to work more collaboratively; or a project grantee with a background in training and interested in sharing your expertise with your community. This section will help you develop your initiative from start to finish.

“Leadership development initiative” refers to learning delivery formats dedicated to developing leadership skills. We use the word “initiative” to broadly encompass a range of formats, such as: workshops, online courses, guidebooks, or online applications. The recommended steps are based on existing instructional design[1] and project design models, including: ADDIE[2], Design Thinking[3], Project Cycle Management[4].

There are other groups who have developed models[5] within and adjacent to our movement, though for different learning objectives and contexts. We hope this serves as a helpful addition to a hopefully growing body of resources for leadership development.

Overview & Resources Directory

Want a quick overview of each section before going into details? Here it is!

A Step-by-Step Guide

Define

Defining your initiative is the first phase. Who are your learners? What problem are you solving? What resources do you need to implement the initiative successfully? These are the questions you will answer in this Define phase.

To help you, we’ve created a Leadership Development Canvas, a template you can fill in with details about your own leadership development initiative. The following sections will share tips and practices for completing each component of the canvas.

Define audience and need

To create a leadership development initiative that is useful, you will need to clearly identify and define your learners. Doing this will provide you with a better understanding of the requirements for your initiative. For a leadership development initiative, your audience will likely be a Wikimedia community member who is interested in developing as a leader, or an existing leader wanting to practice or improve their skills.

How do you define your audience? Defining your audience involves understanding their motivations, challenges, learning gaps, and needs. Information that can help you understand your audience include their gender, age, language, roles, movement experiences, values, prior knowledge, priorities, and worldviews. You may also want to define the leadership context(s) they are in and the type of leadership roles they hold or aspire to hold. Refer to the leadership roles table in Section 1 for guidance on this.

Maybe you already know your learners well because you work closely with them or share the same experiences and characteristics. If that’s the case, view this step as an opportunity to clarify your intentions and align with your project collaborators. If you don’t know your learners well, for example because you are targeting a region or international group of learners, you may need to do research. This can involve surveying your proposed audience, interviewing community members who have experience working with the audience, or reviewing documentation from past projects.

Define learning outcomes

Learning outcomes are a set of statements describing the “skills and knowledge that a [learner] will be able to demonstrate upon completion of the learning process.”[6][7][8]

Defining learning outcomes helps you and the learners know the aims of the leadership development initiative. Often, learning outcomes use the phrase: “By the end of this initiative…learners will be able to…”

To develop leadership learning outcomes that are relevant to the Wikimedia movement and chosen audience, recall the leadership skills and roles shared in Section 1 and keep in mind the following characteristics: [9][10]

  • Specific: be precise about the knowledge and skills learned and focus on the learner rather than the person delivering the initiative
  • Measurable: make sure that the learning outcomes have an indication of how the knowledge and skills can be assessed
  • Actionable: use active language and write learning outcomes that reflect how learners can apply the knowledge or skills
  • Realistic: write attainable rather than aspirational learning outcomes. Everyone who participates in your initiative should be able to achieve the outcomes
  • Time-bound: the learning outcomes include a timeline of completion, e.g., “by the end of the session”

Good examples of learning outcomes:

  • “By the end of this workshop, new leaders in the Sub-Saharan Africa region will be able to craft inspiring visions and communicate the vision in a compelling and clear manner.”
  • “By attending this online course, experienced leaders of established affiliates will have improved their abilities to build empathy, trust, and accountability within their teams.”

In addition to learning outcomes, which are learner focused, you should also define the broader impact of the initiative for the community or movement. What positive changes do you foresee in your group, community, region, or movement-wide because of your leadership development initiative?

Define content

The learning content is the leadership topics that your initiative will focus on. You will select leadership topics based on a few considerations: the audience and their needs, the intended learning outcomes, and the resources and subject-matter expertise available to you.

To aid you in selecting the content of your initiative, we’ve written a Leadership Development Syllabus that includes a list of topics relevant to leadership in the Wikimedia movement. You will notice that many of the topic areas correlate to the leadership definition and skills shared in Section 1. We invite you to use the syllabus as a starting point to select the leadership focus areas that are right for your particular audience and context.

Define delivery format

Choosing the learning delivery format is just as important as selecting the content of your initiative. The delivery format or method refers to how your initiative is experienced by learners. Learning happens in many ways! There are many delivery formats, from multi-day, in-person trainings to narrative audiobooks. We created a Learning Delivery Formats Selection Tool to help you decide your initiative’s format.

Please note that some of the formats listed require more elaboration. For example, if your delivery format involves multiple training sessions, you will also need to determine the group size, duration, and frequency of your sessions. Once you’ve selected your format, reflect on what other information might be relevant to your initiative.

Define resources

There are many kinds of resources that may be needed to create your leadership development initiative. Understanding which resources you already have and which you need will be a necessary part of this Define phase. Here is a Resources Checklist that will help you begin defining your resource “haves” and “needs.” If the list is missing resources or including ones you don’t need, you can adjust the checklist so that it is relevant to your situation.

Next, determine the financial resources needed by drafting a budget plan. Your budget plan will include all the resources you have identified in the Resources Checklist. The Wikimedia Foundation shares a template for creating a budget. You can also reference the budget template from Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom’s program implementation.

Define project plan

Writing a project plan can help you structure your work, document decisions and tasks, and support communication. The project plan for your leadership development initiative will likely include:

  • Roles and responsibilities
  • Purpose and outcomes
  • Timeline
  • Key milestones and deadlines
  • Resources used

To help you write your project plan, we’ve created a Project Plan Template, based on the Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom program’s implementation plan. After you have written the project plan, ideally in collaboration with your project team, be sure to visit it often to determine if the project is on track or if anything needs to change based on new information.

Prepare

After defining your initiative, it’s time to act on your plans. Although your preparation steps will depend on your delivery format, audience and resources, a few common steps include: securing financial and human resources to carry out the work, developing learning materials, and calling for participants.

Secure financial resources

Before you seek funding, we first suggest determining if funding is really required to secure the resources you’ve previously identified. Sometimes funding isn’t necessary. This may be the case if you have all the relevant expertise and capacity within your project team, or can leverage free online tools and resources to complete your initiative. Review your budget plan to determine how much funding you need to complete your project.

Once you have reviewed the budget plan, your next step is to identify funding sources. The main way to secure funding will be through grants, whether that be a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, affiliates, or external partners (e.g. governmental organizations, cultural institutions, mission-aligned non-profits).

For guidance on writing a successful grant proposal, review the Wikimedia Foundation’s application guide which shares helpful examples and tips.

Secure human resources

In addition to financial resources, you’ll also need to find your human resources, that is, the people with the relevant skills and knowledge to help you develop and deliver your initiative. For example, you may be looking for subject matter experts if you are developing a structured training program, a multimedia designer for a self-paced online course, or a facilitator for a two-day workshop. The following are suggested steps to securing your collaborators:

  1. Write job descriptions for each of the roles you want to fill. Use this Job Description Template to help you draft clear and concise job descriptions. If you already have people in mind for the roles you’ve identified, you can still use the template as a reflection or discussion guide of the specific responsibilities and expectations for the roles
  2. Plan your hiring process. Some of the key questions to answer include: are you conducting interviews? How many interviews? Who will conduct the interviews? By when do you plan to have a candidate selected? What questions will you ask? What is your criteria for accepting a candidate?
  3. Determine where to look for job candidates and perform outreach. Will you look within and outside of the Wikimedia movement? If you are looking within the movement, what global or local mailing lists, Wiki discussion pages, social media platforms, or chat groups will you target?
  4. Finally, after selecting people for the roles, onboard them to your project by sharing your project plan, how you’ll work together, and what outcomes you envision

Develop learning materials

Learning (or instructional) materials are any content, activities, media, or tools shared with learners to help them achieve the learning outcomes.[11] Learning materials can range widely, from written text and presentations, to videos, stories and interactive activities. Sometimes this step involves curating and collecting existing materials and other times it involves creating your own. It is also helpful to consider the various Wikimedia tools and platforms that you can make use of, including WikiLearn, Wikiversity, and Let’s Connect.

When creating materials, both the content and the way it is experienced need to be considered. Whenever possible, include in your project team someone who understands how people learn (instructional designers) and someone who understands the topics in depth (subject matter experts).

Best practices when developing your leadership development initiative:

  • Focus on the learning journey. Think about the journey you want learners to experience. Ask yourself: what kinds of materials will best engage the learners and help them meet learning outcomes? What is their starting point? Do the learners have similar or different prior knowledge and experiences?
  • Identify the materials based on your chosen delivery format. If you are creating a training, for example, developing learning materials could include creating lesson plans, activities, assignments, and assessments. If your chosen delivery format is a podcast, then developing learning materials will involve developing the podcast episodes themselves – writing scripts, creating stories, recording videos, and editing them
  • Identify the materials based on your chosen leadership topics. If your chosen topics focus on skills like giving feedback or collaboration, for example, you can develop interactive role-play exercises for the learners to practice these skills. If your chosen topics focus on self-awareness, you could opt to create self-reflection questions or journal exercises
  • Keep your learners in mind. You are developing materials for adults, many of whom are volunteers with limited time to spare, speak different languages, and have different professional or educational backgrounds. This means that your initiative needs to keep in mind people’s time availability, motivations, language needs, and previous knowledge. This also means that you need to keep in mind adult learning principles, which are:
    • Motivation: adults need to have an internal motivation to learn
    • Relevance: adults want to learn practical and relevant knowledge and skills
    • Problem-solving: adults want to learn through realistic problems rather than content
    • Experience: adults will draw from previous knowledge and experiences when learning
    • Self-directed: adults want to be involved in the learning and planning process instead of simply being told what to do. They also want to know the reason for learning something
  • Create an engaging and active experience. Learners learn best through “active, experiential, and contextually varied learning.”[12] To do this, make sure to introduce different methods into the experience. Keep in mind that there are different ways to learn. To name a few, learning happens through reflecting, watching, discussing, practicing, brainstorming, feedbacking, and assessing.[13] Additionally, remember that learning doesn’t only happen through thinking, but also emotions[14] and the body[15]. To get you started in creating active and engaging activities, you can refer to this list of activities from the National Equity Project or this list of active learning methods from Cornell University’s Center for Teaching Innovation
  • Prioritize accessibility. For all delivery formats, accessibility is a critical consideration to ensure that your leadership development initiative is inclusive. Ways to make your initiative more accessible:[16]
    • Use free, open-source, copyright-unrestricted online materials
    • Document and publish materials online (mind copyright!) so that all learners can participate
    • Provide materials in more than one format (e.g. text, image, videos) so that you consider all learning preferences and needs
    • If your initiative is online, consider poor data connection and lack of hardware
    • Accommodate people with different learning speeds or abilities, for instance by giving them more time to catch up if they missed anything
    • Provide learners with clear information about what to expect of the initiative and anticipate possible questions, such as: is it recorded or not? Who can they direct questions to? How do they use the tools or materials presented? How should they behave with other learners?

Additional accessibility questions you can ask when developing learning materials:

  • How will I accommodate neurodiverse learners, learners who have visual or auditory impairments, or those who require mobility accommodations?
  • How will I support learners speaking different languages than me and/or than each other?
  • How will I support learners with unstable internet connectivity or difficulty accessing an appropriate device?
  • How can I account for learners who will participate in loud or public spaces?
  • How can I support learners who juggle multiple commitments - work, childcare, and other priorities?
  • What cultural norms do I need to be aware of that could impact the learning experience?
  • What unconscious biases do I have that could affect the learner experience?

Call for participants

Inviting participants to join or experience the leadership development initiative is an essential part of your preparation. Afterall, if you don’t share the opportunity, how will people know about it and benefit from it? This step includes:

  1. Creating an engaging invitation message that explains:
      • The target audience
      • The learning outcomes
      • How to participate
      • The deadline for registration
      • The prerequisite knowledge or skills needed in order to participate
      • The timing and duration
      • The time commitment
      • Languages and other accessibility features
      • Benefits of participation
    • Be sure to write with your specific audience in mind and think about what would motivate them to join. Try to use various types of media – text, images, videos, graphics - to create a compelling invite
  2. Reaching all the channels that your target audience is on: mailing lists, newsletters, Wiki discussion pages, social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn), chat groups (Telegram, Whatsapp)
  3. Keeping track of who registers or joins and communicating with them throughout the engagement

Deliver

It’s time to deliver your leadership development initiative! If your initiative is synchronous, such as an in-person workshop or a live online training program, then this is the moment learners experience the materials. If your initiative is asynchronous, such as a guidebook, a self-paced online course, or a video, then this is the moment you publish. The following guidance is more focused on synchronous initiatives but can also be helpful to consider if your initiative is asynchronous, especially when participants ask questions.

Facilitate

The facilitator, trainer, instructor or host has a critical role to play during synchronous sessions. Their delivery of the learning material has an impact on whether learners understand, engage and ultimately learn. The facilitator of the session(s) may be yourself or someone you recruited. A facilitator’s role is to help participants achieve their learning goals in the most productive and generative way possible. Of course, different contexts may require different approaches, but the following principles are best practices that may be helpful:

  • Safe space: a facilitator’s role is to create an environment where participants feel comfortable and able to learn, ask questions, take risks and make mistakes. Creating a safe space involves establishing open and honest communication and making sure people have what they need, such as time, tools, and language support
  • Involving and empowering:[17] recalling the adult learning principles, participants should feel like they are involved in the decisions, activities and process of learning. As the facilitator, you help empower participants to take an active role
  • Guiding the process:[18] you help participants reach learning goals by focusing on the how. You communicate a clear process or agenda that participants can expect to experience and you guide participants through the process. By doing this, you help participants know what to do and how to do it
  • Understood goals: stating and reminding participants of the goals of the sessions help them understand the purpose of what they are doing and to stay motivated and focused
  • Reading the participants: instead of strictly following an agenda, a skilled facilitator will ask and notice the needs and feelings of participants, making changes to the process or materials to better suit the situation in the moment
  • Summarizing and reflecting: summing up what has been shared or discussed is a way to provide an overview of what has happened and reinforce learnings. You can do this summing up yourself or have participants do it. You will also want to host reflections, either written, verbal, individually or in groups. Reflection opportunities give participants the opportunity to sense-make and process the experience

Further resources:

Document content and outcomes

To make sure that your initiative is sustainable and has lasting impact, document the process of creation (before), the audience’s learning experience (during), and the learning outcomes (after). Not every word has to be recorded, and not every doodle has to be photographed, but make sure the learnings, content, and outcome of any given element of your initiative would be clear to someone who did not attend or a participant who revisits it after a long time.

Depending on the format of your initiative, this can be more or less work. A written guide for self-learning, for example, is already “documented” and doesn’t require much more work. An event involving conversation, on the other hand, is more documentation-intensive. If this is a synchronous initiative, aim to document all that is presented, discussed and learned. Often this happens through reflection activities during or after an initiative, or through evaluations. By documenting learnings, learners have a record of what they have gained and you have information about the impact of the initiative. Within the Wikimedia movement, we have several examples of documentation, such as written text, visual notes, and video summaries.

Follow up

Follow up with participants

Leadership skills require repeated practice, feedback and reflection, so check in with learners periodically to see if they have put the skills to practice. To support learners in continued learning, share additional resources with them, such as relevant articles, books, online courses, or future events.

Maintain a network

Building a community or network among the learners is one way to maintain their interest and engagement. It could also be an opportunity for peer learning and support as participants experience leadership challenges. Here are some tips for creating and maintaining a network:

  • Use social media or Wiki communication channels: to encourage communication between participants, establish a chat group or page that invites participants to exchange experiences, ask questions, and offer ideas and suggestions
  • Host online events: host online events such as webinars or discussion forums to keep participants engaged and connected
  • Encourage collaboration: encourage people to collaborate on projects or initiatives related to leadership or leadership development
  • Recognize achievements: recognize and celebrate the achievements of participants, for example through direct verbal appreciation or public acknowledgements

Evaluate the initiative

Evaluation is an essential way to understand the impact of your initiative and the areas for improvement. In this step, you want to compare your goals at the beginning of the program with the results you reach. There are many evaluation methods to consider. When choosing your method, keep in mind that each has its pros and cons. For instance, a survey or self assessment relies on the participants' own perceived progress which can provide valuable insight into their thoughts but be subjective and skewed. A few methods for evaluation include:

  • Surveys that measure the experience of participants before and after the initiative. You can find an example from Wikimania 2019’s Learning Days with before and after question sets to measure learning. You can also find a list of survey questions in the Event Evaluation Toolkit on Meta-wiki
  • Self evaluation
  • Peer evaluation
  • One-on-one or small group discussions
  • On-the-job observation
  • Assignments themselves are a method to evaluate whether learning outcomes are achieved
  • Feedback from leadership development initiative host, facilitator, instructor

What metrics are relevant to evaluate? Here are some ideas to get you started:

  • Number of participants
  • Participant demographics (e.g. gender, years in movement, roles, experience)
  • Percentage of participants who completed the initiative
  • Assignment completion rate and/or scores
  • Leadership knowledge and skills gained by participants
  • Handling of leadership situations and challenges
  • Number of new leaders and/or new movement initiatives created by leaders
  • Number of leadership development initiatives
  • Perception or awareness of movement leadership
  • Leaders’ perceptions of feeling supported
  • Community members’ perceptions of feeling supported by leaders
  • Quality and productivity of community collaborations and relationships
  • Community growth or stability
  • Community diversity

Improve the initiative for next time

Before creating another initiative, it's important to take stock of what has happened, review the feedback received, and make improvements. Improvements can be made on a few levels: material, initiative, and project planning level:

  • Material level. Update and prepare materials for the next iteration:
    • Review materials: go through all the materials used during the initiative and evaluate what worked well and what didn't
    • Update materials: based on the feedback received from participants, update and improve the materials used for the initiative
    • Create new materials: identify new materials that would be helpful for the next iteration and develop them
    • Translate materials: if necessary, translate materials into different languages to reach a wider audience
  • Initiative level. Make improvements to your overall initiative:
    • Revisit the audience: is this still the right audience to target? Have you correctly identified their needs? You may learn after you’ve delivered your initiative that the audience you’ve invited is too broad, or that the leaders or aspiring leaders you want to support need more in-depth content
    • Update your content focus areas: you can return to the syllabus and update, expand, reduce, or adapt your topic areas and learning outcomes
    • Update the delivery formats: return to the delivery format possibilities and determine if the format you initially chose helps you reach the desired learning outcomes. If it doesn’t, you can tweak it or change to a new format. For example, if you initially decided to create a 6-month training program and your evaluation showed that this is too long, then consider reducing the training time or changing to a delivery format that better accounts for people’s time availability
  • Project planning level. Improve your project plan and process:
    • Redefine the timeline: if the deadlines you initially set weren’t feasible and the project steps took more or less time than anticipated, this is an opportunity to note this and update it for the future
    • Refine your teamwork: reflect on how the team worked together and make improvements to various areas, such as: collaboration, roles distribution, performance, communication and decision making
    • Review resources: consider whether you had the adequate amount or the right resources. This could include reviewing the tools, materials, personnel, and funding

Share learnings

Finally, share your learnings with others! The purpose of sharing your learnings is not only so that others can learn from you, but also a way for you to celebrate the leadership development you’ve enabled. Detail the success of the initiative, the process you took, and include feedback received and areas for improvement. You can consider publishing a report, a post on social media, a blog article, a case study, or a video. To share an inspiring example, Wikimedia Argentina published a video showcasing the regional skill development program they hosted in Latin America.

Notes

  1. ↑ There are many instructional design models, for example Backward Design, Universal Design for Learning and 5Es. Yale University shares several Teaching and Learning Frameworks
  2. ↑ ADDIE is an instructional design framework that stands for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate. Education Technology shares information about the ADDIE Model
  3. ↑ Design Thinking - New Zealand’s Ministry of Education
  4. ↑ Project Cycle Management is a project and program management approach
  5. ↑ Examples: Wikimedia UK’s Training of Trainers, Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom, Let’s Connect - Peer Learning Program, Mozilla’s Open Leadership Program, and Europeana Foundation’s “Guidelines for delivering training and development”
  6. ↑ Writing and using Learning Outcomes - Nathan Roberts (Cardiff University)
  7. ↑ Developing Learning Outcomes - University of Toronto
  8. ↑ Learning Outcomes - University of Galway
  9. ↑ The five characteristics come from the goal-setting method known as SMART Goals, which is written with the English mnemonic acronym “S.M.A.R.T.”
  10. ↑ Developing Learning Outcomes - University of Toronto
  11. ↑ What is Instructional Materials
  12. ↑ Teaching and Learning Frameworks - Yale University
  13. ↑ Active Learning - Cornell University
  14. ↑ The Influences of Emotion on Learning and Memory - Tyng, Chai M., et al.
  15. ↑ Embodied Knowing: An Experiential, Contextual, and Reflective Process - Sodh, Mimi
  16. ↑ 10 Strategies for Creating Inclusive and Equitable Online Learning Environments
  17. ↑ Meeting Facilitation: The No Magic Method - Training For Change
  18. ↑ Developing Facilitation Skills - Community Toolbox
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