Frequently Asked Questions
on the Cooperative Leadership Certification Program

This is a 10 week online training. The sessions are weekly online for 2 hours. Outside of the live sessions, your homework takes about 1 to 3 hours a week. 
Total weekly time commitment: 3 to 5 hours a week 

Homework note:
Homework includes some video and reading assignments, practicing what you learn to prepare for the sessions, and small group sessions.
There is a minimum amount of participation that we recommend in the homework, but after that, your level of engagement is up to you. These practices could take you an hour or more depending on how much time and energy you’d like to devote to them.

Some of these practices (like facilitating a meeting) may end up replacing some of the work you’re doing, so our hope is that your homework will not always be added-on work to your busy schedule.

Once the dates have been set by the participants in the course, you may find that you need to miss a session. Our weekly course sessions will be recorded, so you can always listen later if you miss one (or to simply review the materials).

However, if you can anticipate needing to miss more than 2 sessions, we encourage you to wait till the next course launch.

Each class will be packed with experience and opportunities to build community, so even though you can make up parts of a missed class, you won’t get the full experience unless you’re there with the group.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Apply

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

Yes! The sessions are interactive and designed for participation. This is not a two hour lecture each week. There will be time to get your questions answered and to contextualize the homework in your real world issues.

You can also participate via the forums to post any questions, comments, struggles, or success stories to both the instructors and the other participants. Other participants will have a chance to respond to posts in the forums. The instructors will also be monitoring the forum to provide extra support throughout the course.

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

Again and again, we have found that the system, processes, and tools that we teach can be applied in any organization from any position. It’s designed for teams that already value collaboration in their team work (whether that’s living mostly in theory or in practice).

Specifically, many of our participants work in cooperatives (worker-owned, consumer-owned, food cooperatives or as cooperative developers). Some of our participants are in non-profits. And, some are in businesses that are more collaborative or orienting to a “teal” framework.

The bottom line is that our course is a practical learning experience for collaborative management. The things you’ll learn will be helpful for both completely horizontal/flat teams and teams that want to bring in only some aspects of collaboration.

You will learn tools and approaches for streamlining personal development, effectiveness, efficiency, and collaboration in any organization that you find yourself a part of.

Because the course focuses on both individual and organizational development, it provides you with a skill set and training that you can take anywhere. Even if your job changes next month or next year, you’ll find that your new abilities will be useful to you wherever you are. Our past participants have found that what they learn in this training has been useful for how they listen and relate to others in almost any setting.

If you’re unsure, that is okay. Once you apply, you’ll also get a chance to talk to someone on our team to see if this is a good fit for you.

We’ve found that this course can be helpful for people in slightly collaborative and also in fully democratically operated teams. People take our course that have positional power and that are not quite leaders yet.

People tend to find this course particularly helpful if they have some capacity and authority to bring in new meeting tools and decision-making tools to guide their team’s work. This could be a director, manager, or a member that is taking lead on a project.

However, sometimes, as members or leaders in teams, they are sensing that things could be done differently, but for whatever reason their team isn’t ready for the change. This course addresses some micro changes that they (you!) can make in order to bring in the concepts of more intentional collaboration into the team.

The best next step is to apply and then interview with one of our team members to make sure it’s the right fit.