CELF leadership programme evolves

A leadership development program that is bringing together businesses and not-for-profits has new initiatives underway to continue their goal of increasing the leadership capital of the Waikato.

The Community and Enterprise Leadership Foundation (CELF) is working to build future leaders who can re-imagine a stronger Waikato from a social, environmental, cultural and economic perspective.

Each year CELF welcomes a new cohort of 20 participants to a nine-month programme. The model is structured so that there are 10 business participants and 10 community organisations, which allows both groups to engage, learn from one another and grow alongside each other. 

Since its inception in 2014, CELF’s Board has grown. It now includes founding trustees Prolife Foods founder Bernie Crosby, current Chair of Prolife Foods David Irving David Irving, Stainless Design founder John Cook, and Waikato University Associate Professor Peter Sun. 

In 2017, CELF alumni Raewyn Jones and Susan Trodden joined the team of trustees, along with Malcolm Phillipps who is Waikato Management School’s Director of External Engagement. 

Sun said it was a privilege to have Raewyn and Susan join the team as they were a part of the first cohort. So they were there when CELF began and had grown with CELF. Raewyn is the manager of Wel Energy Trust and Susan is the chief executive of Orchestras Central.

As of 2018, Malcolm has taken over as Chair of CELF from John Cook. Sun says John’s contribution as the Chair has been invaluable and the success of CELF today has been because of his leadership. 

“Now it is a case of institutionalising, so we can take our goals to the next level,” Sun said. 

CELF has now employed a post-doctorate researcher Sudong Shang, who will help tailor their existing leadership programme to incorporate the latest best practice through international and local research. That research will be embedded in the CELF Elevate programme. Sudong comes from a background of organisational psychology, and has researched extensively in the area of work life balance. 

“We are constantly looking at ways of upgrading knowledge and ways of thinking about leadership,” Sun said. 

He said CELF’s partnership with the University, which began upon CELF’s inception, had further strengthened with the creation of a centre for a leadership, located at the University campus and where the researcher is based.

The idea for the centre is to bring in new knowledge of leadership research and to understand new ideas of what leadership is. The centre will not only engage with research but also play a pivotal role in bridging the interface between research and practice.

“CELF is involved in enhancing the leadership potential of the Waikato region, so it’s important that we bring in cutting edge knowledge of what leadership is all about… to make sure we bring in the latest research in leadership,” Sun said. 

CELF wants to broaden their horizon by coming up with new programmes. Sun said they are now looking at creating a programme targeted at “the younger generation”. 

They want to develop a programme for working millennials, who are post-graduates and are fresh in the workplace or have been working for a couple of years. 

“We want them to take the programme leadership skills and connections through with them as they grow,” Sun said. 

While there hadn’t been any structural changes to the CELF Elevate programme, the topics participants study do get refreshed and the different cohorts visit different organisations as part of their programme of learning site visits. 

“One of the things that we are thinking of doing for the future is how to engage the people who are going through the programme in to social entrepreneurship. We are looking at what can they do to build something to give back to the community,” Sun said. 

That vision is already beginning to take shape as the current cohort are starting to think about it and are putting ideas in place to keep growing for the future. The current cohort are seeding ideas, with the intention of growing a business that contributes its profits for social benefit.

He said CELF also wants to establish better engagement between the cohorts. 

“We have had three cohorts and we need to work out how we can get that connection across them all. Each year of cohorts could be considered a generation of CELF, so how do we connect them across each other inter-generationally?”