We met Sheila Olan-MacLean in 2016 when she came to our presentation on collective leadership at the Leadership Connections conference.  We asked if anyone in the room had read the book by Frederic Laloux called Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousnes.  Not only had Sheila read it, her team had been doing a book study and been adopting practices described in the book as Teal (yes the color.)  Teal organizations are adopting practices in the areas of wholeness, self-management, and evolutionary purpose. We have talked with Sheila a couple of times since we met, and included a quote from her in our book.  Sheila and her team are really walking the walk when it comes to collective leadership. 

Compass ELC staff have been experimenting with new practices that would bring more wholeness and democracy to their organization, and the way staff work together to create positive outcomes for children and families. Compass ELC operates 30 child care centers which are dedicated to creating supporting and nurturing environments for children to learn, and they are aligning their “adult practices” to match.
 
We were excited to hear an update on their journey.  They are not only experimenting more and more themselves, they are teaching other early childhood educators what they are doing.
 
Compass ELC staff are keeping themselves inspired and excited about their journey by:

• increasing the coaching skills and capacity of those in leadership positions; using credit card reward points to fund the majority of costs for 14 educators to visit Reggio Emilia, Italy (this city in Italy created a new approach to education which started a world-wide movement and continues to inspire educators around the world) every two years (teachers contribute a portion of the costs);
• ongoing reflection on their journey and the changes they see in staff and the results on children and families; and
• seeing people embrace the new opportunities for self-leadership and self-direction that they have opened up -- staff are stepping up and taking more responsibility for making their environment an even better place for children and families, and are believing that they can do that.

 
Staff are saying “I don’t have to come to work—I get to come to work, and I love my job” 
 
A recent collaboration culminated in a blog about cold and flus blues.  This was a collaboration between Sheila, educators and staff from one of their programs, a Program Lead and their Social Media team.  The result is a story about how a dilemma became a path forward through reflective thinking connected to their values and beliefs.  Here is the link or you can find it on their facebook page.   

 
http://www.compasselc.com

We met Ben in 2015 when he came to our session at NAEYC's Professional Development Institute on the topic of collective leadership.  He had many examples of how he was using collective leadership, and we reconnected this year.  He shared with us how he is using collective leadership in his new role.  We were excited to feature his story in our January 10 webinar as an example of the element of evolution/emergence.


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"When I started my new position as the Infant Toddler Outcome Specialist with Partnerships for Early Learners last year our statewide infant and toddler focused trainings fell into my lap. One area that stood out to me was that Indiana ranks 7thhighest in the nation in infant mortality. The state has been partnering with healthcare providers and non-profit agencies to address the issue but we had not updated our training or outreach to early childhood education providers in a meaningful way since 2006. 

Indiana is lucky enough to have an amazing team of regional Infant Toddler Specialists and at our first full meeting we came up with some top priorities - #1 was addressing Safe Sleep. I quickly started reaching out to various partners such as the Indiana Office of Early Childhood and Out-of-School Learning (which oversees early childhood providers), the Indiana State Department of Health, and First Candle. The Infant Toddler Specialists and myself worked together to completely restructure our safe sleep trainings for flow, content, feel, and level of engagement. We got feedback from people who had assisted with the creation of the original training. I engaged every partner that we could find and facilitated bringing their collective experiences into a completely new training. 

Since our training went live I have travelled the state observing the Infant Toddler Specialists give the training (since they participated in every step of the development process they did not have to do a train the trainer which meant a quick and seamless rollout!). The difference in the participants’ level of engagement has been amazing. A great moment for me was when an Infant Toddler Specialist’s supervisor (who didn’t know my role yet) commented after observing the new training that she loved it (and how her trainer did) and that she would never have to see the old version again.

I could have approached recreating the training all by myself – in the end it would have ended up being more work for me. Getting the buy-in for the Infant Toddler Specialists upfront and throughout the process made the training much better than it would have been otherwise and made the rollout incredibly smooth."