Success StoryDesigning More Effective Leadership Programs



Designing More Effective Leadership Programs

Author: Daniel Kahl

Planning Unit: Community & Leadership Development

Major Program: Community Leadership Development

Outcome: Initial Outcome

When the director of the Leadership Winchester/Clark County program contacted me to discuss ways to improve the programs leadership content, initial conversations indicated the community did not have a tool for listening to the community priorities for leadership development. Built on the belief that successful programs reflect and address the priorities of the community, I developed a survey tool that can be used to document the priority leadership needs of individual participants, organizations that support the program, and other community members. Following the leadership concepts identified through research findings reported in Community effects of leadership development education: Citizen empowerment for civic engagement (2015), the Community Leadership Priorities Assessment was published online through CEDIK (https://cedik.ca.uky.edu/comm-lead-assess) in 2020. In June of 2020, I was able to highlight this tool at the World Community Development Conference through a presentation called, Leadership Development as a Method of Community Development, which was recorded and archived at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8v9NyPXKryE . The sharing of this document has led to calls of inquiry from leadership programs wanting to improve their measurement of program impact. While this is still an initial outcome, CEDIK is tracking tool downloads to assess the use of the tool.