Reflections of a Leader of Tomorrow

Hi, my name is Alexander Flynn-Belanger and I was the recipient of the 2013 leaders of tomorrow award- elementary division.

It was back in January when I found out I was nominated for this award by my teacher. It was a great honour to know that people recognized me and how often I volunteer.

Some of the volunteering I have done in the past includes:

-Feed the hungry at St Mary’s cathedral where we served meals to people who needed it at Christmas -My family and I make and hand out bagged lunches to the homeless downtown around thanksgiving, a tradition we started when I was 5 -My mom and I ring bells for Salvation Army Red Kettle Campaign -I participated in building a sport court with make a wish foundation -I shaved my head for shave a lid for a kid after growing my hair for 6 months, raising almost $700.

I volunteer because not all people have as fortunate a life as I do. It makes me feel good to give back to my community. It’s the little things that help the most, I think.

When I found out I won it was such a great surprise. What an honour to be chosen when there were so many deserving candidates.

The process of having the video done at Theatre Grand was super fun. The video shoot at my school made me feel like a rock star!

The anticipation leading up the gala was unreal. I was so excited. The day of the gala finally came. I left school early and went for a special lunch with my mom. My expectations of the gala were nowhere near what it was. I expected it to be cool but it was actually amazing!

At the gala I was introduced to many people- from the nominating committee to the folks from Encana to fellow award recipients. Even the mayor was there to support us all. I heard many inspiring stories and was asked to tell mine many times. One woman stands out in my memory from that night- she approached me to tell me it was amazing I had shaved my head for cancer to help people like her who had lost her hair from cancer. She told me her friends were to chicken to do what I bravely did.

The dinner was delicious. I also really liked the hors d’oeuvre. I was given a beautiful engraved award, I will display proudly.

I would like to thank Encana, Volunteer Calgary and my family for inspiring me to volunteer.

My volunteer journey is not over. I’m going to continue to volunteer as this has inspired me to give more.

I hope hearing my story inspires other kids and people to give their time to help others.

It really is worth it.

A World of Change: Social Innovation & Leadership

“In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.” ― Eric Hoffer

By: Blythe Butler – Leadership Calgary

As someone who has been involved in Leadership Calgary for many years, I always knew the program had the potential to support social change – in fact, that is the explicit purpose of the program – but I hadn’t consciously considered how adaptive leadership and social innovation are connected and mutually supportive. It was a recent conversation with friends about social innovation that got me thinking about the power of understanding adaptive leadership and social innovation as linked and parallel processes.

Although the term ‘social innovation’ has been around since the 1960s , it has recently become a huge buzz-word in the social sector. “Social innovation” is everywhere these days. It’s associated with social entrepreneurship, social finance, corporate social responsibility, social enterprise and a host of other tactical efforts to create social value. Despite all of these efforts, true social innovation continues to be elusive.

The University of Waterloo defines social innovation as “Social innovation is an initiative, product, process or program that profoundly changes the basic routines, resource and authority flows or beliefs of any social system. Successful social innovations have durability and broad impact.” And a definition from the Stanford Social Innovation Review defines it as “A novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals.” Both definitions deal with a common theme: Change that creates and supports a more adaptive society.

So, the question becomes: how do we create change that creates and supports a more adaptive society? Well, in order to understand social innovation we need to understand something about innovation generally. Innovation happens around us all the time: a new App, a better dog food, an improved running shoe, a medical discovery, new weapons systems, new finance & banking services, new marketing techniques, a new policy for supporting development in the developing world… the list goes on.

It seems to me that the problem isn’t that we don’t know how to innovate: it’s that we don’t know how to innovate in ways that support sustainable, positive societal change over time. Innovations are driven by a range of motivations with different levels of understanding, care and concern for the common good. What looks like a great advance in one specialized area of interest can have highly destructive effects on society as a whole. This is where the notion of adaptive leadership comes in.

The curriculum for Leadership Calgary is focused on how to develop adaptive – or pioneer – leadership: the kind of leadership required when we are at the edge of human capacity; when the challenges we face are emergent, unknown, complex and uncertain. Adaptive leadership influences the social ecology of organizations, communities and/or societies to help them meet these types of challenges, relying on the capacity for social innovation as part of the solution space for change.

Both adaptive leadership and innovation have a common feature: they rely on ecologies of influences and cultures to support their development.

This means that the capacity to create social innovation or adaptive leadership is dependent on the culture in which they are being developed. All cultures have both healthy and toxic components – so adaptive leaders and social innovators must have the capacity to draw on the healthy components in order to create change that will be adaptive over time . No small task, but it’s possible and we have examples in history of how this has been done.

Literature and educational programs on social innovation tend to focus on specific systems: food production, urban design, poverty, hunger, justice, homelessness… But true social innovation can’t be understood by focusing only on the system we want to change: that’s like looking at a flower expecting it to give us all the answers on what is required to make it grow.

We need to look at the entire culture and concurrent, interlocking systems – how they have been constructed and how they function – in order to understand how to innovate in any specific system. An example of this is explored in a recent article which outlines how the airline industry created the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), and how the development of the NTSB could lead to social innovation within the healthcare sector, with the potential to ultimately save tens of thousands of lives every year.

The structures of social innovation and adaptive leadership have several foundational components in common which support successful change: prevention, creativity, strategic planning, ethics, resilience, critical thinking, expertise and sustainability . These are all core processes of learning that are required for structuring our organizations, communities, societies in ways that support innovation. Of course, doing this requires a level of intelligence – thinking, caring, acting and learning – that goes beyond what is required of most of us on a day-to-day basis. As Einstein is quoted as saying “We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”.

This should beg the question then, how do we design new ways of thinking? This is the critical question of our time, and is the focus of the Leadership Calgary curriculum.

Any social innovation, and any form of adaptive leadership must include the components of empowerment and learning. The innovation or leadership capacity must go deeper than creating a solution for a problem in a moment of time: it must address the underlying processes required for that change to remain adaptive over time for society as a whole. After all, that’s what life is about: our ability to adapt, in an increasingly progressive way, to the challenges and opportunities we face. In that sense, social innovation and adaptive leadership cannot be achieved without the other – they are inexorably linked.

The Leadership Calgary program is recruiting for the Class of 2014! Send in your application by June 14. You can download the application form here

Top 6 benefits of Employee Volunteering

Leadership Award Winners: Leaders in Employee Volunteering – Hopewell Residential Communities

Hopewell Winner Article

The Leaders in Employee Volunteering Award recognizes Calgary businesses that demonstrate leadership and innovation in workplace volunteerism. Two businesses are recognized this year in the medium and large category, as is determined by the number of total employees. This award is sponsored by Chevron Canada Resources Ltd. – a wholly owned subsidiary of ChevronTexaco Corporation – to recognize excellence in workplace volunteerism

Hopewell Residential Communities (Hopewell) won our Leaders in Employee Volunteering award in the medium category. At Hopewell, they really support employee volunteerism because they believe that giving back helps move them forward.

Scott Hamilton, senior manager marketing in community relations for Hopewell, believes that having an employee volunteering program is second nature to the company.

“The culture is very much one of inclusiveness and empowerment and volunteer really runs through all of us, so for us volunteerism is a way of life at Hopewell, it’s really about giving back to community,” says Hamilton. “What we do is build healthy vibrant communities so the things that we do are meant to build that out there in the world.”

At Hopewell, they don’t want to only financially support a cause, they want to roll up their sleeves and really get involved to ensure the health of the city, this means that annually they pick a “charitable partner of choice” with the goal of expending up to 65% of their volunteer efforts and charitable resources with that partner.

“It’s very much an engaged culture, it’s very much driven by a personal level by a collection of volunteers at Hopewell, an employee group, which seek projects which are not only interactive, but also fun,” says Hamilton. “Our culture is more one of seeking out projects that give back to us as much as we give to them, it’s very much about experience, it’s not so much about let’s give to that, it’s more about let’s be a part of that.”

In the summer of 2012, Hopewell found their charitable partner of choice in Calgary Reads, which meant that Calgary Reads would not only benefit from a financial donation, but from a volunteer day for the entire Hopewell Residential Communities team – which adds up to approximately 200 man hours. They built tutor tubs, put together information that goes out to school, and came out to a Calgary Reads school for a reading celebration, getting down on the mats and reading to children in grade 1 and 2.

Anita Hofer, communications director at Calgary Reads, remembers the Hopewell team and their contributions very fondly.

“Hopewell had a little bit of a spark that was different than we always see. Their entire office shut down for the day that they came into our space, and they were super enthusiastic, they really wanted to make a difference,” says a beaming Hofer. “They were genuinely interested in helping children read, and then when they came up to the event, you could just see that they were really engaged and really making connections with those children.”

Both Hopewell and Calgary Reads understand that having a thriving Employee Volunteering program is not completely selfless; it helps keep employees engaged with their jobs, and the organization for which they work.

“Organizations that do what Hopewell does are going to have in the end happier employees that are really making a difference, and I think it’s important to go to work and to do work that you think is really meaningful and really purposeful. It makes a difference in the community that you live in,” says Hofer.

It is Hopewell’s desire to dig in and help the communities they build also thrive, and their passion for doing just that, that makes them a Leader in Employee Volunteering.

To see Hopewell in action you can watch the video below.

Do you want to engage your employees the way that Hopewell does?
It is common to have employee volunteering days where everyone gets out of the office and into their community, rolls up their sleeves and helps out their local individuals or non-profits. You can take part in Volunteer Calgary’s Paint the Town project, all you have to do is pick a date, sign up, and go! Or, we can customize a project that meets your needs and interests. For more information on our Employee Volunteering program contact Lori DeLuca at 403-231-1428