Cooperative Leadership Certification Program

Gain cooperative leadership tactics & tools in the online Level I: Facilitative Leadership Skills training.

Online Training | 10 Sessions | Cohort Community

Increase your facilitative leadership capacity in this training by:

  • Tapping into tools, skills, & confidence to facilitate in the midst of uncertainty (hint: team work does make the dream work)
  • Gaining effective AND collaborative decision-making processes (including figuring out who makes which decisions)
  • Strengthening alignment & accountability and reduce burnout through collaborative project management tools
  • Building community & hashing out the real world complexities in meaningful democratic management

Fall Cohort Applications — DUE Monday, September 18th, 2023! >>  Apply Here!

You value the power of the collective and the importance of shared leadership and self organization.

You strive to nurture a culture of accountability in your teams, to co-design a people-centered and agile strategy, and to be a firm leader (that’s not dominating) to reach your team’s true potential.

You believe so strongly in the vision of your team, but you still feel stuck in the process, conflict, or never-ending task list. Time and again you see good intentions fail to truly deliver the momentum you know your team is capable of…

 

What does it take to get the success that you and your team want and need without being a “traditional leader”? 

  • Strengthen human-centered leadership
  • Facilitate more mindfully
  • Nurture accountability
  • Handle tricky group dynamics (including uncertainty)

Leverage Your Leadership

To be an effective collaborative leader, you must have a deep understanding of how to meet people where they are, what your team members need to do their best work, and how to bring your team together so that you can take your accountability practices beyond delegation. You must figure out how to share the workload and prioritize together to prevent burnout, confusion, and resentment.

You’ll need both concrete tools and the somewhat abstract skills of leading a team to build up your team(s) and to facilitate efficient collective decision-making and manage conflict.

In this day, when one member of the team has a problem, more often than not, the whole team has a problem. BUT, it’s not only up to one person to solve it! in this course, our participants learn how to use their team members to help solve the tensions that come up.

This training has been designed to strengthen and build embodied, dynamic, and intentional shared leadership for cooperative and collaborative teams!

Which of these benefits would improve your current situation?

Share your answer in the application below!

  • comprehensive approach to participatory management
  • Tools for sharing (and shifting) power in your team
  • More productive meetings with clear outcomes and less wasted time
  • Democratic management tools to strengthen and align your team
  • A powerful, efficient, and inclusive decision making process
  • Governance practices to make sustainable (and crucial) changes
  • Use the energy of the collective to make innovative decisions
  • Workable and effective accountability
  • Mindful facilitation skills
  • Increased self-awareness of your strengths and how to grow

What our past and current students are saying:

As someone whose background is in racial equity and social justice, I work with a lot of folks who are interested in shifting power structures and collaborative leadership. I appreciated how this course gave structure to sharing power in collaborative spaces and processing tensions in a way that feels generative rather than harmful.

I think it can benefit anyone who is open to learning and willing to spend the time and effort in creating a space where all voices are valid and heard.

Lia Carpio, Level I Graduate 2022
Former Regional Project Administrator at The Colorado Trust

If you want to learn a practical system for collective decision-making, mutual accountability, collaborative governance, and self and group reflexivity in a supportive and patient environment, I highly encourage you to enroll in this course.

If not for the wealth of content, then for the community we built that was, for me, a model of what a work environment attentive to our humanity could look like.

Alyssa Moncure, Level I Graduate 2021
Former Northeast Grocers Project Coordinator at Groundwork Northeast Revitalization Group

This course helped me see all the ways I'd been blocking my own dreams for more democratic organizational structures just by relying on the same old ordinary meeting practices I'd been used to.

This was life transforming. And in the most powerfully practical way.

Omar Freilla, Level I Graduate 2020
Co-Founder at Collective Diaspora

The Collab system is an exploration of power. As a member of a self-organizing team for 12 years I have seen so many different manifestations of power in a non-hierarchical setting and wanted to know how do we really organize ourself in an efficient way without replicating toxic social norms?

The tools we explored in this course aim to increase autonomy and accountability while building better business strategies that are actually driven by the workers. I highly recommend this course for any leadership team.

Kristin McRay, Level I Graduate 2020
Community Bicycle Mechanic at BICAS (A Worker Self Directed Non Profit)

“This course was super informative and practical - it gave me some really important tools for working more clearly and compassionately in group/collective settings and facilitating collective decision making. These lessons continue to inform my work and facilitation.”

Lila Arnaud, Level I Graduate 2020
Cooperativistx & language justice worker

The Collab CLCP course allowed me the opportunity to hone my understanding and experiences of cooperative and democratic governance and leadership that I've internalized over decades of participation; while also providing me with new models and templates of autonomous interdependence and accountability which I perceive as a constant and major failing of many group processes and participants. 

Frank Cetera, Level I Graduate 2020
Advanced Certified Business Advisor at New York Small Business Development Center

This was a great course, something that I will continue to use and refer to. I appreciated the theoretical framework but was grateful that we had the opportunity to implement with each other and to apply with our organization. This [implementation] is usually the difficult part that I have been finding as I've been researching and learning about the cooperative structure.

Edith Arias, Level I Graduate 2019
Co-founder, Semillas Wellness

Through the implementation of several Collab documents, I can visibly see my own team’s efficiency and organization coming together rapidly and with pinpoint accuracy. We better understand the work we each need to do, and we know how to go about doing it; without checking in upon one another’s own table. 

Kirsten Sunesen, Level I Graduate 2019
National Claims Specialist, The Co-operators

On a chilly Sunday afternoon with some tea and mellow music in the background, I have read through Cecile Green's article, "The Organizational Power Matrix". I immediately reflected how much more I now understand about power. What a fantastic resource in learning for me in thinking about this area - informing my somatic response to delving into this work with you all...no wonder my body knows through shivery excitement that THIS is what I needed to dig into.

Elly Wood, Level I Graduate 2018
HR Assistant, Hunger Mountain Food Coop  

Learning to use Collab tools has dramatically increased my level of confidence in addressing complex situations in my organization and with our clients and partners. Where before I had vague intuitions and far more desire than knowledge about democratic processes, now I can competently assess trouble spots, suggest processes that address people’s needs for participation as well as structure, and use these processes myself to make concrete progress.

Noemi Giszpenc, Level I Graduate 2017
Former Executive Director, Cooperative Development Institute

My time with Round Sky and the Collab model has completely changed the way I move and work in the world. It is so comprehensive in it’s attention to detail as well as the big picture, in understanding how business works well and efficiently as well as understanding the psychology of whole human development.

Amanda Franz, Level I & II Graduate 2015
Somatic Movement Educator and Embodiment Activist

The Collab course has really broadened my horizon in the space of organizational management for effectiveness and efficiency. I have begun implementing the Standard Meeting Practice with my team, and everyone seems to have found the "Aha" moment in their professional journey.

Francis Ghunney, Level I Graduate 2018
Managing Director & Mining Consultant, Mining Tool Ghana Ltd

 

I found this training incredibly inspiring, mind expanding, practical, and life changing. The scale of what this system can do, and its capacity to reshape and upgrade how we work together cannot be overstated.

Jamie Kearney, Level I Graduate 2015
Certified Massage Therapist, Holistic Bodywork and Integral Coaching

Collab makes the conversations we're all already having distinct and identifies exactly-right processes to turn those conversations into actionable outcomes. Collab is the most powerful set of tools I've encountered for empowering well-intentioned people and teams to streamline the processes of doing great work, while retaining the humanity that makes the work worth doing.

Jan Sage, Level I Graduate 2018
Learning Experience Designer, MediaSage

Collab is a holistic approach to personal and group development that harnesses creative tension through well structured practice. It celebrates and leverages different ways of knowing and embraces embodiment as a tool of self-awareness.

Mike Crowley, Level I Graduate 2015
President, Yestermorrow Design/Build School

The Level 1 training, in particular, helped me to focus on my own work practices and development as a leader, deepening my effectiveness and my conceptual grasp of how and why Collab works. Also, it’s sharpened my commitment to leadership development for myself, my coworkers, and our clients. We can all be better leaders, and it’s not a mystery how that can happen!

Noemi Giszpenc, Level I Graduate 2017
Former Executive Director, Cooperative Development Institute

Over 100 people have participated in this training coming from all over the world. All are connected around this question of how to meaningfully collaborate together.

 

>>Meet *some* of them here!<<

Get all the Details of the CLCP Level I: Facilitative Leadership Skills Training

What’s Included:

  • Adaptable tools you’ll use in REMOTE and in-person team management
  • Facilitation practice with feedback to strengthen your shared leadership skills
  • Practical templates and training to build responsive, dynamic collaborative teams, with empowered team members and working accountability
  • A community of mission-driven change-makers, like you, to learn from and deepen your learning
  • Weekly live sessions to get support with your facilitation, implementation, and troubleshooting the current issues in your team
  • Online forums and student-led sessions to go deeper into the content with your peers
  • Certification as a Collab Level 1: Facilitator to work as a professional and guide yourself and your team(s)

 

Have more questions? Check out the frequently asked questions page!

Who is this For?

  • Managers, directors, & members in mission-driven teams (cooperatives, non-profits, boards, & businesses)
  • Consultants, Coaches, & Cooperative Developers working with teams
  • Small business owners doing succession planning or selling their business to their employees
  • Leaders seeking new tools for their leadership and their team(s) for both remote work and in-person teams
  • Organizations may also apply for a customized cohort to work on their organizational challenges together while building up leadership. Make a note in your application if you have more than 1 person from your team applying.

Important Dates

Click *Here* to Explore the Curriculum Details

The Level I Collab Facilitator Training includes 10 live weekly sessions (online via Zoom). The Level I curriculum is designed to gradually build upon each session. In each session there will be time given to troubleshoot real problems/scenarios, to connect with each other in the cohort, and to ask questions.

 

Session 1: Course Orientation & Theory of Collab

  • Orientation to the course, instructors, assignments, and your cohort
  • Get an overview of the theory that informs Collab’s processes for self-organized, collaborative, “teal”, and cooperative management systems
  •  Some tools/frameworks include:
    • The Power Matrix
    • The Seven Conversations: Introduction to the 7 conversations that every team must have to stay on track in all aspects
    • The Pillars and Principles of Collab

Session 2: Collaborative Facilitation in Remote AND in Person Teams

  • Learn in-person and online tools and skills for facilitating productive and inclusive meetings for shared and self-organized teams
  • Get a step by step introduction to facilitating collaborative meetings via effective processes for knowing WHAT you and your team need in just about any situation and HOW to get there
  • Build your facilitation skills such as how to manage difficult dynamics, get accountability, and communicate with clarity
  • Increase your ability to manage the uncertainty that comes up in our team (including conflict and crisis) into positive movement for your team
  • Hone in on skills to facilitate fun and productive meetings
  • Integrate a practice you can use to continuously improve your facilitation

Session 3: Efficient Collaborative Decision-Making

  • Understand a collaborative decision-making tool (Integrative Consent) to integrate different perspectives
  • Gain confidence to facilitate a participatory process to get clear and aligning results
  • Access tools and processes to explicitly define your many roles in order to to understand who makes which decisions
  • Learn how to unravel the dynamic of “when everyone is accountable, no one is accountable”

Session 4: Implementation Tools and Techniques Part I: Embodying the change

  • Learn how to introduce these tools to your potentially hesitant teams
  • Gain implicit tactics for improving collaboration
  • Identifying opportunities for intervention

Session 5: Self-management in a Self-organizing Team

  • Understand the role of personal development in leading and managing
  • Gain somatic awareness for skilled and grounded facilitation, including the better use of conflict in your team
  • Learn a tangible and easily integrated approach to task and project tracking
  • Integrate a project to upgrade or implement your own task tracking system that’s strong and intentional to visibly track your work and priorities in alignment with your team

Session 6: Mapping your Team through Clarifying Who’s Doing What

  • Visibilize and work through how you share power in your team to get more ALIGNED energy and engagement from all team members
  • Understand the purpose and use of core management roles and team based roles
  • Envision and put what you’ve learned into practice with real world work and teams in your life
  • Understand how to confer autonomy and get accountability (give people power over their work!)
  • Create the foundation for collaborative accountability that transforms the patterns that make it difficult to hold people accountable in participatory environments

Session 7: Collaborative Accountability Systems

  • Understand what accountability means and identify who we are accountable to
  • Set up collective project management for crafting that culture of accountability across your team
  • Get tools to become visibly on track and deliver on your goals
  • Learn how to work with people in your team who, despite their good intentions, have not followed through with what they said they would do
  • Learn why, how, and what to track for collaborative impact

Session 8: Implementation Tools and Techniques Part II: Practical Solutions to Different Situations

  • Unpack different implementation scenarios to troubleshoot how to put these practices into place
  • Get facilitation tips and tricks
  • Review the course concepts and practices

Session 9: Practicing and Refining your Collaborative Leadership Skills

  • Get an overview of how to facilitate the other conversations
  • Practice and refine your facilitation skills as ways of managing unhealthy power dynamics in the moment
  • Identify the need for purpose, business model, strategy, interpersonal and personal development conversations
  • Prepare for the certification exam

Session 10: Integrating, Completing, and Moving Forward

  • Review the certification test and training objectives
  • Demonstrate the integration of your new capacities
  • Create a clear plan of action for moving forward for yourself and your team

BONUS & Optional Session 11: Integrating, Completing, and Moving Forward Continued

  • Review the certification test and training objectives
  • Demonstrate the integration of your new capacities
  • Create a clear plan of action for moving forward for yourself and your team
Click here to read more for the next steps

Step 1: Apply today BELOW

Step 2: Interview with a member of our team to determine if this is the right program for you

Step 3: Determine your financial needs and plans

  • Payment plans and financial support options are available. And, some Vermont residents will be eligible for funding through a VSAC Non Academic Grant.

Step 4: Cohort Placement

  • Then, you will be placed in a small cohort of your peers and an instructor.
  • This cohort model provides space for group learning of collaboration practices, acts as a sounding board, and facilitates crucial feedback for practicing your leadership skills.

Step 5: The Course

  • Your cohort will spend 10 weeks to take your collaborative leadership to the next level.
  • The course will be delivered virtually and grounded in your real life challenges to maximize your benefits
Click here to find out: Financial Details

The cost of the Level I Training to become a certified Facilitator is $2500. This includes all learning materials, the 10 sessions, coordination, individualized feedback, and the training itself. Monthly payment plans are available.

**Financial Aid and Scholarships Available**

Our intention is to make this course accessible to everyone. If you need support financially, please indicate this as you apply for the course. We’ll do our best to make it work.

If you are a Vermont resident, you may be eligible for a VSAC non-degree grant. See more here.
We also have financial aid available if needed.

Cooperative Leadership Certification Program Application:

Take a look at this easy application below! 
Reflect and answer the questions below, smash that submit button, and check your e-mail for an invitation to have a one-on-one meeting to discuss whether this training is the right fit. If you have any questions, add it to your application.

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Don’t forget to click “Submit Your Application”!