"Only in community can we discover the best course of action, claim our power, and act in unity."
-Margo Adair and Sharon Howell
Individuals with disabilities are paired with existing leaders in their community acting as mentors. Participants will engage in multiple developmental and action learning experiences for a period of 14 months. As participants identify, organize, and deliver an action research project they practice both established and new leadership skills. Mentors learn alongside their mentees. They are supported to season existing and new learning about how to be a mentor to a person with a disability.
Both mentees and mentors meet twice quarterly for a year. A skill building day offers various topics of leadership that are identified by the participants as something they want to learn. A reflective day is facilitated by the MSU research team as a participative method of both learning and collecting data about the learning.
Three leadership development strategies will be used, Mentoring, Networking and Action Learning.
Mentoring is a pairing of a person who has a specific skill with a person who wants to develop that skill. Mentoring is often used as a way to develop leadership. Within the disabilities movement, mentoring is important because of the complexity of social change and the fact that people with disabilities are often isolated within their community. Yet, it is absent in most disability leadership development efforts. BAD-L uses a formal mentoring program that links young adults with disabilities with an experienced change agent and leader (with or without a disability) in their community. Both the mentor and mentee share a specific community concern, and make a commitment to work together during the year-long project. It is our intention to support the building of a life-long relationship between the mentoring pairs.
BAD-L‘s mentoring relationship is a working alliance with: a) mutually agreed upon goals and tasks, and b) creation of a trusting bond. We find the working alliance framework valuable because there are significant differences in power between the mentors who are community leaders, and young adults with disabilities who have emerged from a devalued (young people with disabilities) social group. Strong working alliances will produce positive outcomes for both mentors and protégés, including helping to build participatory skills such as increased self-efficacy and sense of empowerment.
Connections with a broad and diverse group of people and organizations enhance leadership skills to make change. A strong and large network offers more resources, ideas, and points of view. Strong connections make the chance that workable change strategies will be designed that have large support and lasting effects. Activities in this project designed to strengthen networks include: a) linking mentees to mentors’ existing networks; b) engaging teams in activities that increase their awareness of and connections to places and people with a stake in their issue; and c) placing participants in learning circles with each other.
Action learning has become a popular and effective strategies used to promote leadership within organizations. Action learning involves peer-to-peer learning processes where participants consider real problems, engage in reflective questioning, and identify and pursue actions around them. Three strategies will be used to foster an action learning orientation.
Learning laboratory workshop series
Both mentors and mentees will participate in a learning laboratory that will include five days of workshops and learning community processes. In each session participants will actively engage in identifying what is necessary to know in order to take action. Some of the knowledge is shared through mini-lectures, other knowledge in learning community sessions, and still more through participation in action-learning activities.
Peer-to-Peer learning communities
Between workshop sessions, peer-to-peer learning communities will be held bi-monthly within each community for the five leadership pairs. When peers share their experiences and learn from each other, individual and community ability and the production of learning are both strengthened. An important part of this process is the promotion of praxis: emerging leaders experiment with ideas and change strategies and then reflect on their effectiveness. The learning a habit of reflection is essential to effective leadership development.
Mini-grant projects
Leadership can not be taught, but instead can only be learned by practicing deliberately. To encourage opportunities for practice, participants will pursue a mini-grant project within their community. The mini-grant projects build local readiness for change because they nurture connections and prove the feasibility of change. Emerging leaders will select an issue that that will promote the “livable community” character of their community. They propose and implement a small project designed to foster community readiness for this change. The second learning laboratory session provides leaders with needed support and information to design their project. All teams can apply for small funding support their projects.
People with disabilities will practice specific skills of organizing the project, sharing leadership, motivating others, and dealing with conflict. They will also become aware of their effect on others, their sense of self, and their ability to influence others. Both mentors and participants will work together to increase their ability to develop and articulate a shared vision.
While emerging leaders are building their leadership skills, mentors will increase their understanding of this specific generation of new leaders, the current circumstances of people with disabilities, any unique issues that might arise as they support a mentee with a disability. They will also participate in a learning community mentors committed to the development of a new generation of leaders.