What would encourage Kansans to care more about local elections, issues? By Jill Sandberg Editor’s note: The spring issue of The Journal, a quarterly publication published by the Kansas Leadership Center, will be released in April. The Journal regularly attempts to take a closer look at key state issues in hopes of helping Kansans think more [...]
A pair of Kansans with passion to improve the lives of others just got a turbo-boost. Wayne Bell, Wichita, and Shannon Cotsoradis, Lawrence, have been selected as the initial participants in Onward Kansas, the Kansas Leadership Center’s new, personalized leadership development experience designed for full-on, intensive difference making. Onward Kansas is designed as an individualized [...]
Nearly three dozen Kansans, recently elected to the state legislature for the first time, gathered recently as a group to learn how to maximize their ability to exercise leadership. Leadership and Legacy in the Statehouse – A New Legislator’s Program is an extensive seven-month program offered by the Kansas Leadership Center to address the unique [...]
More than 50 leadership development practitioners from around the globe are coming to Wichita to explore the Kansas Leadership Center ‘big idea.’ When Kansas Leadership Center President & CEO Ed O’Malley participated in a Harvard leadership development seminar last spring, little did he realize that casual conversations would lead to an international gathering this fall [...]
It’s a common sentiment among those who have participated in a Kansas Leadership Center learning experience. The exposure to new ideas and competencies, the deeper understanding of group tendencies and processes, in short, the entire experience is made fuller by the personal connections made with those with whom you share the experience. That’s the premise [...]
Draw a New Picture features five Kansans who aspire for progress in civic life. Click on their names below to view each segment of the documentary: A thirty-something exec of a global family business in tiny Kiowa, Miranda Walz-Allen returned home and found a community with no organized daycare. She diagnosed the situation and is maneuvering [...]
This is a guest post by Phil Auxier, a KLC alum from Hutchinson, Kansas. I was recently thinking about Intervening Skillfully into a situation and in that competency, I came across that line: “make conscious choices” and the thought occurred to me, what is a conscious choice? How does this kind of choice differ from [...]
Nearly two years ago, I embarked on a mission to turn our community’s attention to gang violence. I’d moved on from a journalism career but thought the best way to intervene was through the credibility I’d earned from years as a solitary but loud occupant of our community’s conscience.
I had modest success but looking back, I didn’t make the progress I could have, and I have no one to blame but myself.
This happens with most of us engaged in civic leadership. We’re so busy evaluating others that we overlook how our zeal, certitude and myopia may be sabotaging our efforts. The Kansas Leadership Center calls this “understanding your part of the mess.”
Most Wichitans can say, “This isn’t our mess.”
We weren’t lingering in the street at 2 a.m. Sunday morning when, according to The Eagle, bullets began piercing the night air in Old Town last weekend leaving one person dead and four other people wounded. We weren’t hanging out in an area where a 2003 parking lot shooting killed a 25-year-old man; where another parking lot shooting in 2006 wounded six people; and where a 2008 stabbing critically injured two men and a woman in their 20s.
We may not have contributed directly, but this is our mess.
Believing that civic leadership creates stronger, healthier and more prosperous communities, the Kansas Leadership Center (KLC) selected two regional efforts in Kansas for its new Academy for Team Leadership initiative.
Visioneering Wichita’s Health Alliance and Project 17 from southeast Kansas have each been chosen to participate in KLC’s first ever Academy for Team Leadership. Both efforts are focused on improving the health and well being of local residents, and each will receive $1 million in civic leadership training.
