The cooperative enterprise is a living organism; it is a society of people in a community supported by solidarity, and that awareness of this solidarity is the driving force we should place our confidence in.
2018 was a big year of growth for us. And, we have both the worker owners of Round Sky and our community to thank for that! In this blog, I’m going to share some of our most popular resources that you can take advantage of and some things you might be interested in learning about us.
Honing in Cooperative Leadership Skills & Tools
First off, the main strategic initiative of the year was to strengthen and offer our Collaborative Leadership Certification Program to the community. The training became even more relevant to the needs of the cooperative leader focusing on skills and tools for facilitating meaningfully democratic meetings and understanding power flows within democratically managed teams.
And guess what? This program grew from just 6 students in 2017 to 26 students engaged in the training in 2018. We quadrupled the amount of participants in the training. That’s pretty incredible.
And, it is not just about numbers… students who completed the training said..
Erica Buswell
Maine Farmland Trust
“It’s been really liberating, professionally, to recognize that tensions are a natural part of teams; that they really just stem from the human experience of being in community. Viewing them as food and fodder for a team’s functioning has allowed me to shift my view of myself and my role as a problem-solver to a collaborator in helping my team and it’s member to do our best work.”
Elly Wood
Hunger Mountain Food Coop
“Collab has changed my mind, my approach, how I see myself as an effective leader, and my relationships, all for the better. Life changing. I see power differently now, and have a vision of using Collab in the work I do with others to do my small part in changing the world for the better.”
We’re continuing to grow this training and evolve it to the changing needs of our cooperative leaders. We coordinated scholarships internally, and offered payment plans. We are so thankful to VSAC for financially supporting Vermont residents in the training. If you’re interested in this for yourself, we’ll continue this training in 2019!
Free Interactive Webinars Offered
We also hosted several free webinars for the community on hot topics such as Overcoming Founder’s Syndrome, Hacks for collaborative remote meetings, feedback practices, and leadership assessments. The most popular webinar we offered was on Collaborative Strategic Planning. During the webinar, participants walked through a strategic planning method and connected with other leaders. We recorded all of these, you can access them for free and find out about future webinars in our webinar archive!
Connecting with Community in Person
We also connected with cooperators and new economy leaders across the country. We facilitated workshops on power flows, decision making, and founder’s syndrome in cooperative and mission-driven teams at the California Coop Conference, the Commonbound Conference, and at the Vermont Employee Ownership Conference. We met some wonderful people in these spaces. Two of which hosted us on their cooperative podcasts!
Interview on Everything Coop Radio Show
Rebecca met Vernon Oakes at the California Coop Conference, where he offered his wisdom and expertise on the case for cooperatives as the Keynote Speaker. Listen in on our conversation with Vernon about Round Sky’s commitment to the cooperative principles.
Interview with Solidarity House Media Coop
Rebecca met Yana Ludwig while co-organizing a workshop together on decision-making and power at the Commonbound Conference hosted by the New Economy Coalition. Listen in on our conversation with Yana about Round Sky’s take on power, housing, and cooperation. If you want to skip to us, fast forward to our conversation on the last half.
Most Popular Blogs of 2018
You can learn about all types of things in our blog from super practical tips for cooperative management, tools to use, stories from our participants, what we’re up to, and opportunities to take advantage of. Check out our top 3 most popular blogs of 2018.
Engaging Collaborative Meetings
So many of us have experienced bad meetings ranging from mildly frustrating to intolerable! In fact, bad meetings are so common, it’s easy to assume they are an inevitable part of the status quo. It doesn’t have to be that way. Read this blog for some practical tips and tools for engaging and collaborative meetings!
Deliberative Decision Making
Decision making is such a key piece of cooperation and collaboration. There are two ends of the spectrum–conflicting ideas about how to move forward and others can be stuck in niceties making it difficult to come to a meaningful decision. Check out this simple, yet highly effective tool!
Breaking Founders Syndrome
Founder’s syndrome really is difficult for everyone. It can be unclear about what actually can be done about this. The good news is that there are some remarkably effective tactics that the founder can implement to get yourself and your organization out of founder’s syndrome. Find out more in this blog!