Community Leadership Development Resources
These publications facilitate leadership skill development among community members — including focus group facilitation, mapping resource networks, approaches for community engagement and convenings, and asset and barrier identification.
Civic Engagement Series
Civic Engagement Series Publication | Make a Difference through Board or Commission Service
Becoming an engaged citizen in your local community can take many forms: a community member can begin by serving on a local board or commission that does not require an election and after volunteering or serving on a board, a citizen may choose to run for elected office (city or county commission, school board, or other elected positions). Local board or commission service is a way to provide valuable input on public policies related to local issues, city or county growth, and on a personal level, gain knowledge and experience in how public policy is created and monitored.
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Discussions for Exploring Leadership Publication | Power Plays and Partnerships: Rethinking Leadership Assumptions
This publication challenges community leaders to challenge assumptions they may hold in their working relationships regarding competition.
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Discussions for Exploring Leadership Publication | Who Do You Trust?
This publication explores where and how trust is formed at the personal and community level.
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Discussions for Exploring Leadership Publication | Organizational Decision Making: What are the Decision Points for Leadership?
Have you ever been surprised about an action and wondered about the rationale used to make the decision? While individual decisions are often less complicated because the implications primarily affect the decision-maker, organizational decisions often carry multiple levels of impact. When exercising leadership in organizations, decision-makers often consider several levels of implication, not only for the individuals involved, but also for the overall organization.
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How-To Guide | Youth & Adult Listening Sessions
The Youth and Adult Listening Session is a low barrier activity that engages youth and community members in a facilitated conversation whose results can be used to inform program planning for organizations and service agencies. This toolkit is designed to assist community leaders and facilitators to plan, conduct and follow up on a Youth and Adult Listening Session in their community.
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Publication | Growing Successful Community Gardens
How do we make community gardens more successful and help them persist through time with less reliance on Extension? This publication identifies five criteria that are important for the long-term success of a community garden: (1) land security; (2) community support; (3) resource mobilization; (4) environmental conditions and garden design; and (5) governance, management and leadership.
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Assessment | Community Leadership Priorities Assessment
Offering a leadership program is a way for a community to develop depth of leadership in community members. A good starting point is to assess the community leadership priorities. This assessment allows local individuals, government, business and organizational representatives to share their priority outcomes for leadership skill development, establishing a solid foundation for aligning leadership program content.
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Publication | Imagine the Implications! Facilitating Mind Mapping to Identify Community Repercussions from a Disruption
Community disruptions are changes in the world that cause us to rethink our community systems and processes. This publication provides step-by-step guidance to Extension Agents or community leaders on how to facilitate a group mapping exercise to identify implications of a community disruption and consider actions for responding to those disruptions.
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Publication | Moving from Listening to Action: A Guide to Facilitating Focus Groups for Community Asset Identification
Involving community members to explore their local health environment is an effective way to engage people in discovery of community assets. This publication provides guidance to Extension Agents to facilitate a focus group to explore health assets and organize community members for follow-up health improvement actions.
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Publication | Mapping Local Networks to Reach Stakeholders and Mobilize Resources
Stakeholder mapping is a process of aligning projects or ideas with the people that will be most impacted by it. Connecting to people who could be negatively impacted by the project or issue allows early consideration to change plans with unanticipated consequences or that are not publicly supported. By aligning people or groups that benefit from the effort, the initiative gains resource connections and broader involvement.
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Publication | A Policy, Systems and Environment Approach to Community Health
The existing policies, systems and environments that impact community health can be a confusing maze of physical attributes, organizational systems and rules that govern behavior. This document will help Extension Agents and health advocates to tease apart the complexity of community living and use a Policy, Systems and Environment (PSE) approach to identify assets and barriers to community health and explore the importance of engaging community members in the process.
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Guide | A Convener's Guide to Hosting a Public Forum
This guide is intended to provide support to Cooperative Extension professionals who intend to bring the public together for an issue discussion. It will provide a general overview to help the convener of a public meeting address basic details needed to design and host a meeting.
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Kentucky Extension Leadership Development (KELD) Publications
Dr. Kristina Hains in the College of Education coordinated the development of three publication series on personal, organizational and community leadership skill development.
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