Class Title: Advanced Collaboration
Class Format: This is a recording of a 90-minute, interactive teleclass held via conference call on Tuesday, February 12, 2008. Since we recorded the class, you can listen to it in the convenience of your home or office.
As soon as you register, you will also be sent emails providing you with your username and password, in case you need to log in again, good for 90 days. You'll also receive an electronic receipt, in case you need it for reimbursement or for tax purposes.
Immediately on registering you will automatically be taken to a classroom page where you may listen to the class via streaming audio from your web browser. The controls on the player enable you to listen to, or re-listen to, any part of the class. You may log out and come back at a later time or times, so long as you return some time within 90 days from the date you registered for the class. In other words, you can decide when to listen to a class, even breaking it over over different days. Even better, you replay portions that you'd like to re-hear.
The class slides are available for download from the classroom page. You may download the Powerpoint version (best for viewing on your screen during the class), the PDF version (best for printing), or both. The important thing is to have them downloaded and ready for viewing during the class.
Do You Have a Group? Class registration is for you only* with the following exception: If you wish to convene a group to physically gather around a single computer where you play the class audio, you may do so at no additional charge. With the money you'll save, you can spring for pizza for everybody!
*Please note that it is impermissible to give out your login information to anyone who is not registered in this class. We do monitor log-ins for compliance purposes.
Class Description:
Advanced Collaboration is for anyone who has to collaborate in their job, who likes or hates to collaborate in their job, who puts collaborations together for grants, who wants to transform the world or some part of it, or who needs to sustain and document collaboration. Course participants should be interested in effective collaboration – building and sustaining collaboration that creates forward movement, incubates great thoughts, or motivates.
In a thought provoking article, titled “What’s Next: The Idiocy of Crowds,” David H. Freeman, Published September 2006) explores the fallacy that collaboration is always better. He writes: “Collaboration is the hottest buzzword in business today. Too bad it doesn’t work.” This is a concept we will explore in Advanced Collaboration. For many professionals, “collaboration” is a tired cliché. On the other hand, perhaps you have found yourself in a situation where a grant requires collaboration with community partners and you wished you didn’t have to fake it. How do we get beyond tired or fake?
In this course, participants will:
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React to definitions of and “truisms” about collaboration. For example
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Websters: “to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one’s country and especially an occupying force.”
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National Network for Collaboration: “When beginning a journey, it is critical that all existing and potential members share the vision and purpose. It is this commonality that brings members together to focus on achieving a mission.”
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Bernice Johnson Reagon: "We've pretty much come to the end of a time when you can have a space that is "yours only" - just for the people you want to be there…. To a large extent it's because we have finished with that kind of isolating. There is no hiding place. There is nowhere you can go and only be with people who are like you. It's over. Give it up.” ( From remarks presented in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, ed. Barbara Smith, Kitchen Table Press, 1983; Rutgers University Press, 2000, as "Coalition Politics: Turning the Century.")
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Talk about why collaboration is sometimes not worth the effort
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Map collaborations critical to participants on the following levels:
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Personal
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Project
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Organizational
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Community
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Discuss the notion of champions. Who are they? Do you need one?
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Think about sustaining collaboration:
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Prepare for mobility
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Identify road blocks
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Share communication and relationship-building tools that work in a virtual age. For example:
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5-15 reports
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Virtual coffee
- Collaborative space
CEU
Participation in this class is applicable for 1.5 points in Category 1.B – Education of the CFRE International application for initial certification and/or recertification.
About the Instructor, Kristin Lundgren
Since 2000 Kristin Lundgren has been the director of Roots of Promise: The Alliance for Children and Families, in Billings, Montana. In her capacity as director she works on collaboration in a number of ways:
1) The coalition operates under a fiscal agent, so she collaborates with Montana State University-Billings, United Way of Yellowstone County, and other agencies for the management of funds and personnel.
2) Coalition work on behalf of children and families is accomplished through multiple task forces composed of community members, so Kristin is constantly building and sustaining collaborations to make these succeed.
3) Kristin has grown the coalition through mergers with similar coalitions and works to consistently maintain representation from 12 sectors (including health, education, business, law enforcement, youth, parents...).
Occasionally Kristin ends a collaboration. Her motto is “politeness is the poison of collaboration;” she hates to waste time in meetings; and humor, trust, and food are her core values.
For her side job, Kristin works as a grant evaluator for Montana Wyoming Tribal Leaders, and runs children’s programs at her church. Her academic background includes an M. Ed in Youth Development Leadership from the University of Minnesota (1998); a B.A. in History (African and African American Studies) from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota (1989); urban studies; and certification as a Substance Abuse Prevention Specialist.
The life experiences which most influence Kristin’s approach to collaboration are the 18 years she had growing up in Chad, Nigeria, and Cameroon. As a child she had the privilege of observing cross-cultural health collaboratives succeeding and failing; and she got to live with children from all religions and races, an interesting collaborative all on its own. This opportunity, together with formal training and her experience as a coalition director, shape the material she offers in “Advanced Collaboration.”