ATD Leadership Developmenet Community of Practice

This story about a World Café focusing on the field of leadership has been submitted by Claudia Escribano. The ripple effects of World Café are amazing.

Hosts:

Claudia Escribano, Laurie Carrigan, Melynda Benlemlih, Susan Epperson, Susan Schwartz, Neal Henderson

Hosting Org/Sponsor:
Association for Talent Development, DC Chapter

Location (City & Country):
Fairfax, VA, United States

Who was this World Café for:
Members of the Leadership Development Community of Practice: trainers, instructional designers, coaches, managers, and others who support development of leaders in their organizations.

Purpose:

• Consider the future of leadership and what leadership development professionals need to be doing today to prepare leaders for that future
• Try out the World Café approach

Number of People Attending (approx):
40

Questions used:

1) Imagine it’s 2035 and today’s children are now in charge. What does leadership look like in the year 2035? What strengths do leaders have? What challenges will they face?

2) How will leadership development professionals prepare leaders for that future? How will we add value?

3) What is the leadership toolkit that leaders in 2035 will need?

4) What skills and knowledge will be most important for leaders in the year 2035?

Impact:
This World Café has had major ripple effects across our community. I had been wanting to use this approach for a Department of Defense client, and seeing how successful it was for our Community, I had the confidence to use the approach for that client. We have now used it twice for them, and they have found it very effective. In addition, one of our members who participated in the event decided to use it for his colleagues at the Department of Health and Human Services. And my colleagues are using it for our annual corporate retreat to better engage people in addressing our challenges and planning for the future.

Claudia Escribano adds: "Also, I wanted to say that this is really a story about impact and the ripple effect of the World Café. I first heard about World Café over dinner with a friend. After that dinner, I bought the World Café book to learn more about it, and I saw so many opportunities to use it in my work in improving performance in government and commercial organizations. I co-lead a Leadership Development Community of Practice and thought that the CoP would be a great venue to see the World Café in action. So, as described above, we conducted a World Café in September 2015. And based on that successful experiment, our members have found all kinds of uses for the approach. For me, it's been interesting to see how people are taking the approach and using it to address their needs."