NCE Summer Leadership Institute

It was an honor to share the platform at this year’s NCE Summer Leadership Institute with Erik Geizer, Arc NY CEO and Shaloni Winston, Arc Lexington CEO as we told the remarkable success story of The Arc NY Leadership Institute (NYLI) which recently completed its second year. Serving all Arc chapters across the state of New York, the NYLI provides rising senior leaders with perspectives, skills and experiences that prepare them to take on the responsibilities of CEO in their organizations. As important, it is building a supportive peer network, a community of practice for Arc leaders across the state.
With Chapters across New York State, The Arc NY supports more than 60,000 individuals and employs more than 30,000 people – providing programs and services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. Back in 2019 when they determined the need to establish a statewide leadership development program, the Arc NY had seen significant attrition in Executive Director/CEO positions due to retirements and other reasons. Like so many organizations around the world, they were experiencing the impact of boomers exiting the workforce. This trend was accelerated during the Pandemic and has been hardest felt in the healthcare field. The impact: a critical need for a “next generation” of leaders to be ready to fill these positions.
In 2019 the Arc NY reached out to Globe North to partner in the design and implementation of the Leadership Institute with the following goals:

• Boost understanding of business concepts specific to the developmental disability field.
• Empower leadership skills for developing strategy and maximizing impact.
• Build confidence to address organizational change and develop an agile environment.
• Assist in fostering ongoing network opportunities and building collaboration among the leadership team.

Collaborating with leaders from The Arc NY, Globe North designed an experience that goes well beyond generic leadership training. The New York Leadership Institute Model has four key elements:

– Training: building critical skills including how to plan and lead change and practicing them through a case study based on an Arc real-world scenario
– Experience: applying those skills back in their chapters, getting input and feedback from mentors, and observing best practices in visits to other chapters
– Capstone: collaborating with their fellow LI classmates on a team project dealing with a key business challenge facing the Arc and presenting their recommendations to state leaders for consideration
– Community: building a strong per network of chapter executives who share best practices and work together to solve common challenges

The classroom training component engages all learning styles through short lectures followed by practical and fun team exercise immediately trying out new skills. This mix of classroom training, mentors, experiential learning, and team projects provides participants with the opportunity to bring new insights and skills to bear back in their chapters, while connecting what they do with other executives across the state. A DSP Rebranding project focused on improving recruitment efforts proposed by an LI team was adopted as a statewide program, demonstrating the tremendous potential of chapters working together to address key challenges.

Since its founding the institute has graduated 47 participants. The program has top marks from the participants, several of whom have already gone on to CEO roles in their chapters. The CEO of the Arc NY has credited the Leadership Institute with playing a key role in building a culture of trust and cooperation across the chapters in the state.

When we finished sharing this story at the NCE SLI conference, the feedback from the audience was very positive – with clear agreement that preparing the next generation of leaders for the Arc is a top priority and strong support for exploring ways to leverage the Arc NY model in other states, potentially at a regional or national level.

Turnover in leadership and the need to prepare rising leaders to take on the every more complex challenges of the 21st century is not a problem limited to The Arc or to other nonprofits. It is a demographic reality facing all organizations.

To request a free consultation to explore how we can help you address your key challenges and opportunities contact us at info@globenorth.com.