4 Ways to Stay Connected with Your New LEADS Network

The LEADS Learning Series is a unique opportunity to build your capacity, extend your impact, and prepare to lead the future of community and primary health care. It’s also a great chance to build your network.

Having a peer group to learn, grow, collaborate, and work with can be transformative, both for you and your organization. So how can you keep the relationships you develop at LEADS alive?

Here are 4 tips for staying connected with your LEADS peers. Combine any or all of them to create the approach that’s right for you and your LEADS cohort.

. Post in the Community

As a graduate of the LEADS Learning Series, you’ve got a free membership to our moderated online Community for Practice until 2020.  It’s a great place to discuss your LEADS experience and implementation, share resources, and get support.

Use the Community for Practice to engage with your cohort peers, ask questions, and share effective leadership tools while being coached and challenged by our LEADS moderator. This kind of interaction will help you achieve a deeper understanding of the skills and competencies acquired through the 5-day Learning Series. [1]

Login here to check out the latest development in the Community.
 
2. Keep it Real

In-person meet-ups create space for spontaneous conversations that can really help deepen relationships and foster collaborations.

Planning a meet-up can be as easy as choosing a date, time, and meeting spot and spreading the word. Involve at least 2 or 3 people in organizing meet-ups so they can continue even when one of you is busy.

Monthly meet-ups will really accelerate relationships, but quarterly ones can be easier to sustain for both planners and participants.
 
3. Chat it Up
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​A monthly teleconference can be a great way to stay connected and is often easier to schedule than an in-person meet-up. To make it a can’t miss monthly call, consider using a simple but powerful framework to create a standing agenda. A good place to start:

• What Are You Working On? This is a great way to keep the group connected to each other’s work and ignite ideas, insights, and collaborations.
• What Have You Learned? Processing and sharing lessons benefits everyone on the call.
• What Do You Need Help With? This makes it easy to ask for help, and for participants to uncover ways in which they can support one another.

 
4. Leverage Collaboration Tools

Capacity Builders’ Collaboration Coach has a wealth of information designed to help you collaborate in high-impact ways. You’ll find answers to common questions, practical tools, and helpful insights for new and mature collaborations.
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This one-stop virtual coach provides great content to guide you on your collaboration journey.
 
Staying connected with your LEADS peers takes a bit of effort, but it’s well worth it. Those relationships will extend the impact of your development experience and create new opportunities for ongoing collaboration in the future.

Not a LEADS graduate yet? Find out more about how you and others in your organization can participate in the series, fully funded by LeaderShift.

[1] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0018726716661040