Leadership for Transition Erasmus Project

Project Title

Leadership for Transition

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Creativity and culture; Social dialogue; Entrepreneurial learning – entrepreneurship education

Project Summary

Leadership for Transition (LiFT 2.0) pilots and spreads an innovative cross-sector capacity building program offering next generation training and education in basic and transversal leadership skills for facilitating dialog processes with diverse stakeholders in transnational and intercultural settings. The project rationale holds that in times of multidimensional crisis, where fundamental values are simultaneously at stake, public leadership is faced with multiple adaptive challenges. Therefore, leaders, workers and citizens need to transcend narrow particularistic views and develop methods of dialog, intercultural communication and conflict resolution grounded in notions of global responsibility and interconnectedness. Based on innovative trends in leadership thinking, LiFT 2.0 applies academic and practical knowledge about Europe’s most pressing real world challenges to specific issues related to peace, justice and sustainability.

LiFT 2.0 is building on the successful Grundtvig learning partnership LiFT 1.0 (2013-2015) in which unique knowledge and experience in collaborative leadership has been gained, including, in particular, a holistic and integrative citizen engagement method called the “Collaboratory”. Drawing on the joint intelligence of a broad range of stakeholders, this method empowers participants to take responsibility for organizational and societal transitions, to think and behave in respectful, socially responsible and ecologically intelligent ways and to co-create innovative and powerful solutions to complex challenges. The focused yet flexible design of the Collaboratory allows for collective inquiry on the basis of multiperspectival dialog, deep reflexivity, and transformative learning.

The purpose of LiFT 2.0 is to prepare the ground for mainstreaming its collaborative leadership methods for broader use. Accordingly, the strategic partnership is committed to harvesting and disseminating best practices in the field. Based on an evaluation, systematization and prototyping of the previous project’s multiple insights and experiences, LiFT 2.0 has developed learning, teaching and training tools and materials which enable others to adopt successful collaborative leadership practices in their own contexts.

LiFT 2.0 has met all its three main goals: First, hosting and organizing international stakeholder workshops and learning events that support the development of a joint vision and corresponding actions across sectors, cultures, generations, persons and fields of activity, thereby helping individuals, groups and larger transformative projects to develop towards their full potential. Second, it has condensed and documented its experiences in collaborative leadership for others to use. Third, it has developed and implemented a unique transnational leadership training format that enables multipliers to use and further spread collaborative leadership and communication methods across various contexts. Thereby it has created viable learning communities and a cohort of leaders who can better address big adaptive challenges on local, regional, European and global levels.

All activities have combined public stakeholder involvement events with genuine training in collaborative leadership and practice based, problem-centered transformative learning. The project has conducted six public workshops, a summer school and a final conference which have reached a total of around 400 participants. Its cross-sectoral approach caters for a wide range of overlapping target audiences, from early school leavers and students to trainers, educators, innovative researchers, social entrepreneurs, practitioners and citizens engaged in working towards peaceful and sustainable futures in the fields of leadership, education, organizational transformation and societal transition. The six workshops have focused on education for transition, alternative schooling to address dropout issues, transformative politics, innovative collaborative governance and community building, as well as social entrepreneurship. The consortium’s one week summer school, including a train-the-trainer course in collaborative leadership was hosted at the end of the project.

To ensure academic quality and rigor, LiFT 2.0 has developed five intellectual and pedagogical outputs enabling multipliers to make use of LiFT’s insights, methodological knowledge and experience in their own fields of activity. The training and educational materials provided by LiFT enable leaders to engage more effectively in dialogue and collaboration with key partners and stakeholders, and thus empower individuals and society at large to take responsibility for working towards the common good in relation to the specific challenges they are facing. The project thus brings positive, long-lasting effects on the participating individuals and organizations, their networks and local communities, as well as the institutional and policy systems they are embedded in.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 358594,79 Eur

Project Coordinator

NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU & Country: NO

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITAET FUER BODENKULTUR WIEN
• Business School Lausanne
• ZENTRUM FÜR INTEGRALE FÜHRUNG Seuhs-Schoeller Unternehmensberatung
• Alliance for the Future G.E.I.E.
• Initiativ Samutveckling
• Institut für Integrale Studien