Learn about leadership
Ten-month program provides staff with skills needed to become effective campus leaders

By D. Lyn Hunter, Public Affairs

16 January 2003 | Kati Markowitz, a student-affairs officer for the Neuroscience Institute, helped prepare a plan to launch a student portal at Berkeley. Laurie Kossoff, human-resources manager for the Berkeley Art Museum, contributed to a report on how supervisors across campus should handle surge issues resulting from seismic-retrofit construction.

These are projects that Markowitz and Kossoff would never have encountered during the course of their regular jobs, but thanks to their participation in the Leadership Development Program (LDP), they were able to step outside their normal roles and acquire new skills and experiences.

The annual program seeks to improve the leadership pool on campus by helping staff acquire or build upon several core competencies, including change facilitation, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, planning, and resource management.
Each year, 25 staff are selected to participate in the intensive, 10-month career enhancement program, now in its fourth year. Employees who are at the analyst level or above in Academic, MSP, or Professional and Support Staff (PSS) classifications, and currently have leadership responsibilities, are invited to apply. The deadline for 2003 applications is Friday, Jan. 24.

The cost of the program is $3,500 for each participant, with $850 paid for by the employee’s home department, and the balance funded by the Vice Chancellor for Business and Administrative Services and the Office of Human Resources.

On average, participants spend about 12 hours per month working on LDP-related activities. These include professional development coaching, classroom instruction, leadership assessment, and case-study work, all led by senior campus experts.

While the work can be challenging and labor-intensive, the results are very rewarding, say both Markowitz and Kossoff.

“Because of our project work, I came into contact with folks from across campus that I wouldn’t normally interact with,” says Markowitz, who completed the program last year. “This interaction helped me build up my network of university contacts and gain a better understanding of how the campus works.”

The program provided a safe and supportive environment for risk-taking and experimentation, Markowitz adds, which allowed her to accomplish things she never thought possible.

“LDP gave me a clearer sense of my strengths and weaknesses,” says Kossoff. “I gained not only a better understanding of what I bring to the table, but also an appreciation of how the unique contributions of each individual enable a group to reach its goals.”

The skills that participants gain from LDP also benefit their home departments and the campus as a whole, says Pat Lavelle, manager of the Employee Development and Training program in the Office of Human Resources.

“Employees bring the behaviors and knowledge they learn in the program back to their home units, making them more effective and productive managers and supervisors,” says Lavelle. “And many of the recommendations resulting from the analytical project work completed by our graduates have been implemented on campus or served as the genesis for new projects, thereby improving the way the university operates.”

Information about LDP, including details on how to apply, is available at hrweb.berkeley.edu/ learning/edtcatlg/ldp.htm.