Nexus: Leading Across Boundaries

The “Layers of Leadership,” developed in partnership by Educopia Institute, the Center for Creative Leadership, and more than 35 museum, library, and archives associations and representatives, provides a common lens for understanding high-demand leadership training skills and competencies in these fields.

The “Layers of Leadership” documents the key challenge, key leadership tasks, skills necessary to address those tasks, and outcomes sought within seven “layers” of leadership, from “Leading Self” to “Leading the Organization” to “Leading the Profession:

• Layers of Leadership, published October 2017

The “Layers of Leadership” publication has many uses, including the following:

1. by individuals, to consider and gauge the leadership competencies they need at different stages of their work and career
2. by graduate programs, to help students think about their lifelong learning trajectory for leadership
3. by trainers, to customize training offerings that meet the competency needs of a specific layer’s challenges
4. by supervisors, to identify competencies needed within their staff and offerings that may address those competencies
5. by existing training programs, to help construct and/or revise curricular offerings to address different phases of leadership growth
6. by funders, to identify gaps and/or opportunities in the landscape of offerings
7. by trainers and programs to help contextualize and advertise their offerings to specific audiences

The Nexus LAB team, in partnership with Toolkit Consulting, issued this fully adaptable and customizable set of seven leadership-focused curriculum modules in 2017.

These modules are freely available for trainers and workshop leaders to adopt, adapt, and use when delivering leadership development and training offerings. This curriculum development was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [Award Number: RE-00-14-0095-14]:

• Nexus LAB: Core Curriculum, published 5 September 2018

Using the Curriculum:

Trainers are encouraged to use any or all of the Nexus LAB Leadership Curriculum modules as it fits their programmatic needs. All Nexus LAB Leadership Curriculum modules and materials are meant to be customized to suit unique audiences, programs, goals, and training styles. The modules are designed to stand alone, but they can also be delivered in conjunction with one another and/or incorporated alongside other curriculum. While a few of the modules overlap slightly in content, none of the modules are duplicative in activities or content delivered; they reference and build upon each other in a non-sequential fashion.

The curriculum is designed to be flexible and customizable to fit a wide variety of continuing education and professional development offerings, from conference workshops to components within larger scale leadership development programs. We encourage trainers and workshop leaders to adapt the materials to best fit their programmatic needs. We intentionally have maintained a “clean,” lightly formatted look and feel to these resources. We hope this will make the material easier for trainers to modify and personalize.

License:

Nexus Leadership Curriculum development was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [Award Number: RE-00-14-0095-14]. All Nexus Curriculum materials referenced in this Instructor’s Guide are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license means you are welcome to share and adapt, transform, and build upon this material, even for commercial purposes, as long as you give appropriate credit and distribute future contributions under the same license. Existing Creative Commons materials referenced in the curriculum continue to be governed by their original Creative Commons license type.

The Nexus LAB team, in partnership with TrueBearing Consulting, Educopia, and the Center for Creative Leadership, issued this fully validated, adaptable, and customizable evaluation instrument in 2017.

The evaluation instrument is based on rigorously validated leadership competencies documented in the “Layers of Leadership” publication produced by the Nexus LAB team under the guidance of Educopia and the Center for Creative Leadership:

• Evaluation Framework and Instrument, published 15 November 2017

Please note that this is a validated evaluation framework and instrument, not a fully configured tool. (The Nexus LAB team hopes to build a tool to support trainers in a follow-on project.) At this time, instructors can use our well-documented framework and instrument to 1) identify the specific competencies their training addresses and 2) to pull the corresponding questions for pre- and post-training assessments. Instructors can then populate the survey tool of their choice (SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo, Zoho, GoogleForms, etc.) with those questions, ensuring they have reliable and validated assessment measures that evaluate student learning according to competencies.

The evaluation framework and instrument is freely available for trainers and workshop leaders to adopt, adapt, and use when delivering leadership development and training offerings. The development of the evaluation framework and instrument was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [Award Number: RE-00-14-0095-14].

Using the Evaluation Framework & Instrument:

This framework and instrument is deliberately structured around a range of high-demand leadership competencies across library, archives, and museum environments that have been identified by the Nexus LAB team. These competencies are described and related directly to a range of leadership functions commonly encountered in a career in the Nexus LAB “Layers of Leadership” publication. These functions include the following: “Leading Self,” “Leading Others,” “Leading the Department,” “Leading Multiple Departments,” “Leading the Organization,” and “Leading the Profession.”

Trainers should begin by identifying the Layers and Competencies in the Nexus LAB “Layers of Leadership” to which their own training offerings correspond, and using that information, select the questions in the evaluation framework and instrument that match those layers and competencies.

The framework and instrument includes the following:

• A Pre-Training Skills Assessment to gather baseline data about individual learners. This pre-training assessment includes common questions that can be presented to all learners, and an additional set of custom-selected questions that the instructor will identify according to the Layers and Competencies addressed by the specific offering.
• A Post-Training Evaluation (Immediate Post-Event) to measure individual learners’ learning immediately after the training event. This post-training assessment includes common questions that can be presented to all learners, and an additional set of custom-selected questions that the instructor will identify according to the Layers and Competencies addressed by the specific offering.
• A Post-Training Evaluation (3-Month) to measure individual learners’ learning and applied skills three months after the training event. This post-training assessment includes common questions that can be presented to all learners, and an additional set of custom-selected questions that the instructor will identify according to the Layers and Competencies addressed by the specific offering.

Trainers are encouraged to use the Nexus LAB Leadership Evaluation Instrument as it fits their programmatic needs. It is intentionally flexible and customizable to fit a wide variety of continuing education and professional development offerings, from conference workshops to components within larger scale leadership development programs. These three assessment components can be used as a series; they can also be used separately. Trainers are also welcome to combine the questions included in these assessment components with other questions of their own.

We encourage trainers and workshop leaders to adapt the framework and instrument as needed.

License:

Nexus LAB evaluation framework and instrument development was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services [Award Number: RE-00-14-0095-14]. All Nexus materials referenced in this User’s Guide are made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license means you are welcome to share and adapt, transform, and build upon this material, even for commercial purposes, as long as you give appropriate credit and distribute future contributions under the same license.