**FTS-HRSA OA**

**Moderator: Ms. Lakisha Smith**

**October 28, 2008**

**10:00 am CT**

Coordinator: Excuse me. This is the conference coordinator. I would like
to remind parties today's conference is being recorded. If you have any
objections, you may disconnect at this time. Again, it is star 6 to mute
your lines, star 6 to un-mute. Thank you. You may begin.

Lakisha Smith: Good afternoon. This is Lakisha Smith from the Office of
Rural Health Policy. Thank each of you for being on our \-- I believe
our third technical \-- Part 4 of our sustainability series on the
technical assistance call. I actually wanted to go and do a round robin
really quickly. And I will actually do it by state. So if you are on the
line, please identify yourself so I can make note of it. Okay? Alabama?
Arkansas Region A? Arkansas Region A?

(Naomi Cottoms): (Naomi Cottoms) from Arkansas just joining the call.

Lakisha Smith: I'm sorry. Who is this? Could you repeat who that was?
I'm sorry.

(Naomi Cottoms): (Naomi Cottoms) from Arkansas.

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Thank you. Arkansas Region B?

(Nancy Gelman): This is (Nancy Gelman).

Lakisha Smith: Hi, (Nancy). Illinois?

(Diana Crawford): (Diana Crawford). I'm sorry. I'm Region B from
Paragould, Arkansas.

Lakisha Smith: Thank you, (Diana).

(Lynn Hawkins): And Lakisha, (Lynn Hawkins). And I'm in Arkansas with
Regions A and B.

Lakisha Smith: Thank you.

(Anna): This is (Anna) from Arkansas Region A.

Lakisha Smith: Hi, (Anna).

Jackie Gorton: Lakisha, this is Jackie Gorton and Bill Rodgers at the
Office of Rural Health and Primary Care working with both regions.

Lakisha Smith: Thank you, Jackie.

(Linda): (Linda) from Arkansas Region A.

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Great.

(Shana Coleman): This is (Shana Coleman) with Region A.

Lakisha Smith: Thanks, (Shana). Any more folks from Arkansas?

(Joe): (Joe) here with Region B.

Lakisha Smith: Thank you, (Joe).

Woman: And I also have, Lakisha, I have (Vernon Smithlock), (Ed Baliles)
and (Sarah Benson) are also here in the office from Region B.

Lakisha Smith: Thank you. Okay. Illinois?

Heather Hartung: This is Heather Hartung from the Southern Illinois
University Center for Rural Health and Social Services Development. And
James Teufel is here as well.

Woman: (Unintelligible) You hearing this? (Unintelligible)

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Anyone else from Illinois?

Heather Hartung: No. That's all.

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Kentucky?

(Kelsea Rutledge): (Kelsea Rutledge), (Joe Lion) and (Susan Reed).

Lakisha Smith: Thank you. Louisiana Region A? Louisiana Region A?

Man: (Unintelligible)

Stacey Willocks: Hey, Lakisha. This is Stacey.

Lakisha Smith: Hello, Stacey.

(Jim): (Jim) Region B.

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Okay. Region B Louisiana?

(Donna Newton): (Donna Newton) and (Emily Nixon).

(Tamara Hawkins): (Tamara Hawkins).

(Charlie Charpis): (Charlie Charpis) in Louisiana Independent.

(Tamara Hawkins): (Tamara Hawkins) from Louisiana.

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Thank you. Okay. Missouri Region A?

Woman: (Unintelligible)

Lakisha Smith: Missouri Region A? Missouri Region B?

(Ann): (Cosimo) Health Network.

Lakisha Smith: Is that (Ann)? Okay. Hi, (Ann).

(Ann): Hi. How are you?

Lakisha Smith: Good. Okay. Mississippi Region A?

Chrissy Warren: On Missouri, Chrissy Warren with Cross Trails Medical
Center.

Lakisha Smith: Hi, Chrissy.

(Jennifer Hart): And (BEHO Counseling Services), (Jennifer Hart) here in
(Levit).

Lakisha Smith: Okay.

Cindy Finley: And Cindy Finley, Great Mines Health Center.

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Mississippi Region A?

Woman: (Unintelligible) and (Annalynn Witt) and (Bess McCullard).

Lakisha Smith: (Unintelligible) and (Bess).

Woman: (Unintelligible) with (Gifted Gray Health) (unintelligible).

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Mississippi Region B?

(Debbie Bloomfield): (Debbie Bloomfield), (South Comprehensive Health
Center).

Woman: (Unintelligible).

(Donna Robinson): (Donna Robinson), (Cincy) County Community Foundation.

Lakisha Smith: Okay.

(Gail Franklin): ...Southwest Mississippi (Med) (unintelligible), (Gail
Franklin).

Lakisha Smith: Thank you. Tennessee?

(Ricky Banks): (Ricky Banks), Region B of Mississippi.

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Thank you.

Jacinda Roach: Jacinda Roach and (Millie Salvo), University of
Mississippi Medical Center.

Lakisha Smith: Great. Okay. Anybody from Tennessee?

Mary Heinzin: Mary Heinzin, Hardeman County Community Health Center.

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Good.

Pam Burnett: Pam Burnett, Le Bonheur Children's Medical Center.

Lakisha Smith: All right.

Lucy Ratcliff: Lucy Ratcliff, Hardeman Community Health Center.

Lakisha Smith: Great. Well thank you on that so much. I really just
wanted to get a feel for who all was on. So if I didn't hear your name,
I will get back on the roster that I obtained from the conference
center, so no worries. Again, thank you for being on the call.

One thing I wanted to do some housekeeping and provide some updates.
Basically about the FSR and carryover requests which are due November
30, I've sent out several emails just to put that on your radar. And if
you, you know, are able to submit your carryover request now that's
fine. Go ahead and submit that to both Eric Black and myself, in terms
of what you have left over from Year 1.

So that's really important because I don't want there \-- you to be
de-obligated any funds because you missed a deadline. So they're really
becoming strict with that in the Division of Grants Management. So if
you have any questions about that, please let me know. And we can talk
offline about that.

Also, each of you or each of the project directors should have received
a HRSA generated broadcast email, notifying you of an opportunity to
participate on an electronic FSR module training, which basically will
require each of our grantees beginning November 1 and thereafter to
submit your FSRs into the HRSA electronic handbook system.

I've learned today that the upcoming trainings \-- which I believe begin
today through the 31st \-- really are going to be informational sessions
at this point. And they may conclude those with other specific training
sessions in the future. But at any rate I would highly recommend that
each of you participate, as really it's just for your benefit to learn
how to properly submit a financial status report.

And if you didn't receive that email, you know, you can send me an
email. And I can let you know about the registration requirements, and
the time at which they will be conducting the calls which have been
designated by region.

So I believe for you guys the calls will be on October 29 and the 30th,
based on the regions that you all are in by HRSA's definition. So again,
if you didn't get that email from HRSA, just send a me a quick email.
And I'll conduct the necessary information about that.

Also, this is a heads up. This is, you know, really early on. But I want
to make you aware that as I'm being made aware - the Office of
Performance Review has released its schedule for the 2009 calendar year.
I'll be sending out an email to those of you who are slated for review.

And I believe there are 8 of you out of the 12 who will receive a site
visit next year from the Office of Performance review. That's assigned
to your particular grant. So be looking for a email from me about that
upcoming OPR process.

And remember (Jeff Jordan) joined us New Orleans earlier this year,
talking about, you know, in general what the OPR process is about and
how these grantee aimed over the life of your grant program. At least
one of the grant programs that you have with HRSA will obtain an OPR
site visit.

And it really is your benefit in terms of what accomplishments that
you're making, in terms of your goals and objectives with relation to
your project and how they can serve you, if you're not actually being
able to meet those goals and objectives as you've outlined. So at any
rate I will send that to you soon. But I wanted to make you aware that
the 2009 list has been made available.

So now I will turn it over to Stacey and the folks at GSU. Stacey?

Stacey Willocks: Thanks, Lakisha. Hi. My name is Stacey Willocks, and
I'm a technical assistance provider to two Delta states grantees here
from the Georgia Health Policy Center. And we're going to be talking
today with you all about collaborative leadership.

But before I begin I'd like to take care of some techie sort of
housekeeping things that I'd like to make you aware of. If you could get
a pen and paper handy, I would like to give you - we've got a helpline
today. And I'd like to give you a telephone number that you can call, if
you're having trouble accessing the meeting through the Web. That number
is 404-846-5858. And I'll tell it one more time, 404-846-5858.

And you will be talking with Theresa Kanter, a colleague of mine here at
the Health Policy Center. And she will do here best to answer your
questions about any challenges you're having. In that same vein, I'd
like to tell you that we're going to be using some new features today on
the Web meeting - the Web-based Web meeting that we have not used in the
past.

And those two features are the chat feature and the polling feature. And
so at different points in the presentation I'll be asking those of you
who have accessed the presentation through the Internet to do just a
quick, easy participatory click on this to vote kind of a thing. And
I'll give you instructions in real time for that.

I do want to give a little caveat though. Anything that you post - don't
post anything that you wouldn't like for me to share with the group. And
it's not that we're asking for any sort of confidential information or
anything sensitive. But just be sure that if, you know, if we ask a
question that you feel comfortable answering it to the larger group.
Your answer will not be associated with you, however.

We also have a backup email that we'd like for you to use in case you're
having trouble with the chat function, or in case you are accessing the
presentation through the email that we sent to you instead of through
the Web. So you may have just opened the PowerPoint presentation through
your email. And that will work just fine, too.

That email address - I'll give it to you two times. Again, Theresa
Kanter is the person who will be answering these emails for you. The
email address is T-K-A-N-T-E-R, T-K-A-N-T-E-R. It's tkanter for Theresa
Kanter \@gsu.edu, G-S-U dot E-D-U. So if you're having any trouble you
call Theresa on the helpline. Or you can send her an email if you are
unable to use the chat feature, which I will describe to you here in a
little bit.

And now I'd like to start off with the presentation. Well first of all,
are there any questions that anybody has before we move ahead? Press
star 6 if you have any questions. Hello? Okay. I guess we don't have any
questions. And I'd like to remind folks to please do star 6 to mute, so
that we don't pick up any background paper shuffling or cell phone noise
or whatnot as we go through the presentation.

So this is Part 4 as Lakisha said, in our leadership for
sustainability - or in our sustainability series. And Part 4 is
leadership for sustainability. And I was - is there a question? Okay. If
you don't have a question, please dial star 6 to mute your phone. I'm
hearing some sounds like wind noise from somebody's cell phone. Just
please be sure to do that to keep - to make sure that other folks can
hear.

As I was anticipating doing this presentation a week or two back, I was
flipping through the Wall Street Journal. And there was a quote under
the management section of that newspaper that caught my eye.

And I wanted to share it with you today for you to sort of keep in your
minds as we go through this presentation, because I thought it was very
applicable to community-based leadership and to collaborative
leadership, which is what we'll focus on today.

And the quote is by Allen Ollendorf. And he said that, "The top down
model of heroic leadership is waning." And he meant this quote for
for-profit organizations. But it's equally true if not more true for
community-based organizations and initiatives.

But instead of the model of sort of a bold individual at the top making
all the decisions and calling all the shots, leading community-based
organizations and initiatives requires leaders to be enmeshed within
multiple layers of relationships with stakeholders.

And the reason that this helps especially with community-based
leadership is that this ensures a better flow of information, which
ultimately serves to bolster an initiative or an organization's chances
for sustainability. And that's the case that we're going to make to you
all today.

So in order to do that it requires skills that will fall under the
category of collaborative leadership. And we are trying to get the
slides to change. I got it, Theresa.

Theresa Kanter: Okay.

Stacey Willocks: There we go. And I'd like to review our definition of
sustainability. You all will recognize this definition from probably
every single time somebody from the Health Policy Center gets you on a
call, or we've shared this with you in New Orleans in the springtime as
well.

The definition for sustainability that we are using is the basis for the
framework, of the curriculum that we're presenting to you throughout
your funded time. It is that sustainability is achieving an
organizational state where programs and services are continually
provided, because they have perceived value and receive adequate
financial support.

It's important to have the right structure for ongoing program
implementation, and to have your partnerships and working relationships
solidified. And in order for your programs and services to continue,
others outside of your organization must also value and recognize their
importance. So it's folks that don't work for you, folks that you don't
necessarily serve at all believe in what you're doing. And they value
the efforts of your organization.

And they must value them enough to support them in a financial way. And
this doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to write you a check
directly. But it can also include in kinds donation of office space or
supplies and volunteer time, etc. Oops. And now I went too far since
this slide - let me back up one.

And you'll also recognize these two important questions as well, as
questions that we share with you at the beginning of each of our chat
throughs of the sustainability series. Do you have the asking rights and
how will you get the money? So do you have asking rights? Do you know if
your program works? Can you document that? And this question really does
speak to what your evaluation has to tell you.

What does your evaluation reveal about the services that you're
providing? Are you providing - not only are you providing the services
that you have set out to do, but are they making a difference for the
client population that you have set out to help? And how will you get
the money? This is the question that you will be working with in the
months to come as you develop your sustainability plan.

And so here's the list of chapters in our sustainability series. We
worked with you all in New Orleans on communication. We had a previous
teleconference call was on evaluation. Today is the call on leadership.
And we have chosen a collaborative leadership model to share with you
today.

We will also be sharing return on investment and strategic vision with
you as well. And organizational capacity and efficiency and practicality
are also two chapters that may better suited for one-on-one meetings
with your TA provider. And so those may be reserved for a site visit.

And so the focus of today's call is collaborative leadership, and how
it's an essential component to position you and your pro - position your
program for sustainability.

So our goals for today's call \-- by the end of the call, we would like
to say that we have distinguished the leader role that there's an \--
that you all have an understanding of key leadership actions, and the
ability to apply the practice of collaborative leadership with your
organizations or initiatives. So we're going to start off with the role
of the leader.

So what does it take to be a leader? And our argument here today is that
collaborative leadership is leadership that takes action to position for
sustainability. This is some of the non-traditional view of leadership
that we're sharing with you today.

And these balloons represent things that you may be thinking. And this
may be the tiny little voice in your head. Or it may be something that
you've actually voiced to a colleague or to a friend. But these thoughts
have to do with people's perhaps subconscious views of how their program
will be sustained at the close of the funding period.

But if I focus on making sure we have great results, won't support show
up? We have a plan to follow. That's my job, to execute the work plan.
We can do this ourselves. Involving lots of people will just slow us
down. Or you may be thinking, "We've been funded by the same grant for
multiple years. Why worry? It seems like we're in."

Now I don't know if any of you all out there can relate to any of those
thoughts. But we'd like present the flip side of the coin on things that
you might like to consider. But if I focus on making sure we have great
results, won't support show up? We would argue that not necessarily. It
may take too long to find support at the end of your program, especially
if few people are aware of your efforts and progress along the way.

And so imagine yourself showing up to the rotary club lunch because you
would like to ask the Rotarians to support ten kids to get their teeth
cleaned this year. But they've never, ever heard of you before. And
we've used this example before. We may have talked with some of you
before about this example.

Without having done the pre-work of establishing the relationship with
those Rotarians, and folks sort of being at least having been introduced
to your efforts and what it is that you're trying to do for your
community, that's going to be a tough sell if you're showing up for the
first time to meet these folks to ask them for financial support. And so
it's more than just the merit of making sure that you have good results.
It's also communicating those results along the way.

We have a plan to follow. That's my job - to execute the work plan. And
this is something that we've used an example of the plate juggler with
you all before. And to execute the work plan can be a tremendous - can
take tremendous effort in and of itself. But it actually is not enough.

Ultimately your job is about creating a successful, enduring program.
It's not simply coordinating services and reaching the population that
you wish to serve, and providing those services and evaluating them. If
planning for sustainability wasn't a part of your original plan, it's
time to change your plan and invest in this type of leadership.

We can do this ourselves. Involving a lot of people will slow us down.
This is something that some folks may be thinking because it is
cumbersome to involve stakeholders from many different levels. You have
to schedule meetings. You have to wait for people to show up. You have
to worry about disseminating your information that folks who may not
have been able to make the meeting or respond in a timely way. And it
can seem cumbersome.

But unless you're going to fund the program yourself, it's important to
recognize that inviting and involving others is critical to gathering
ideas and making connections with influencers. And this also brings up a
point that when implementing community-based initiatives, it's also
important to remember that it's even important to engage more critical
constituents.

So there may be some folks who may have some less than positive feedback
for you on how things are going. That can be very valuable information
to you as well. And so it's real important to keep the lines of
communication open across constituents and stakeholders, so that you
make sure that you are leading with the most pertinent information.

We've been funded by the same grant for multiple years. Why worry? It
seems like we're in. Even folks who have come to be able to rely on
their local foundation for a grant every year to three years and it's
gone on that way for some time, in today's climate nothing can be taken
for granted.

There is the push that we've all been working with for accountability
from most funders. And also we're seeing some challenging days with the
ledger economy, and so most funders now would like to provide starter
funds, and to see if the program can sustain itself.

So leadership \-- there's the two different halves of the screen shows
different views of leadership. The side on the left is a more
traditional view of leadership. It's using the black font leadership. It
gets great results. It grows people.

It used resources wisely - excuse me. And it fulfills goals. That's the
traditional view of leadership. And I would put it to you that it
actually looks more to me like management, sort of management of a
program but not necessarily leading a program.

And then if you look at the purple font to the right, collaborative
leadership, that positions for sustainability. It's leadership plus. So
it's everything from the left side of the screen plus a collaborative
leader will create a shared vision. They will access the talents and
connections and ideas of others. They understand it's not just about
them.

It's about a team effort and a community-wide effort with mixed
constituents and stakeholders from all different sorts of areas, and
also to understand the value of influence and those people who are
influential in their community, so few results of a collaborative
leader.

This section highlights three results collaborative leaders get. And
this is something that the traditional model of leadership or management
doesn't really quite get it to be used. It's these results. So the first
is ensure knowledge of the program.

And so we've got a scenario here. And it's again, it uses the rotary
club. A county commissioner hears from a constituent about the success
of your program, in finding cost saving ways to share resources. At the
rotary club meeting, the commissioner sees the director of human
resources at your hospital who isn't involved in the program. So this is
someone who works for your organization but who is not directly involved
with the program.

And the commissioner mentions hearing about the program's success. Your
HR director looks surprised and responds that he's not sure who's
involved with that program. And this is something that should really
sort of make project directors shake their head. It is such an - it's so
unfortunate. It's such a missed opportunity because this could have been
a beautiful, free, spontaneous public relations moment for the project.

But instead it looks a little bit like the organization is a little bit
disconnect or disjointed or disorganized, and that the program may
actually be rather insignificant if the HR director is unaware of it.
And this happens to a commissioner, somebody who could definitely be a
gatekeeper of funds, somebody who does have influence in the community,
and somebody who may need to be called upon in the future for
sustainability.

So ensure the knowledge of the program. Make yourself known. Coworkers
in the facility need to be able to recognize the program by name and the
activities and associate you with the program. So then they meet
somebody at a cookout somewhere. And they may - oh, have the connection
of you. And they can discuss your program on a level where they actual
know something about it.

Organization leaders can describe the program and the status of the
program's objectives. So this is where it would be helpful for not only
the HR director but also the hospital CEO to be aware of what's going on
in the program, what's the status, what are the program's objectives as
well.

Build ownership. Coworkers in the organization refer to the program as
our program, not your program. People in your organization ask about the
latest results and stories of success. And so building ownership within
the organization, not just the staff who worked directly on the project,
is also key.

And equip everyone with key information and key messages. And this would
have been helpful to the HR director who was at that rotary meeting, and
bumped into the county commissioner.

For coworkers in the organization to be able to share the program's
primary goal and major activities, they need to be able to share key
points about the program and that are included in the organizational
newsletter, speeches, Web sites, etc. So have a consistent message and
share it throughout your organization.

Okay. Now this is the chance to use the chat function. Using the one to
one chat function, send a message to the Webinar facilitator, and that
is in this case it's going to be Theresa Kanter. And I'll tell you how
to do that in just a minute. But what we'd like for you to do is we'd
like for you to send a chat that includes the position title of two
people in your own organization.

So this is somebody who works in your - two people that work in your
organization that need to have greater knowledge of your program. So
they're probably not your direct staff - or hopefully not your direct
staff. But they're folks who could stand to know more about your
program.

Now to do the chat please click on the attendees up at the top bar \--
thank you \-- the top bar of the screen. You'll see the word content to
the left. And then \-- oh they don't see that \-- just attendees. Okay.
Click on attendees. It should have a number 26 with a parentheses next
to it.

And what it'll do is it'll pull down a window. And it's going to show
everybody's name who has logged on to this Webinar. And what you do is
you click on GHPC \-- thank you, Theresa \-- for Georgia Health Policy
Center. And if you just double-click on that it'll open up a window for
you to send in your answer to the question you see on the screen. And
I'm going to give you all a few seconds to go on ahead and do that.

And again let me remind you that if you are not on the Web-based view of
this presentation and you're just in the PowerPoint on your desktop,
please send Theresa an email at T-K-A-N-T-E-R \@gsu.edu. And I'll give
you a little bit of time to go on ahead and figure that out.

Woman: (Unintelligible) trying to get it set up.

Man: So what's the email?

Woman: T-K-A-N-T-E-R at G-S-U dot E-D-U.

Man: (Unintelligible)

Woman: Everybody. And everybody know about us.

Man: Well we should be talking about sales.

Woman: Well somebody may not know that much about us is those two \--
the newer people that was just hired.

Man: (Unintelligible)

Woman: Yes. Get what you ask for.

Stacey Willocks: Okay. We've gotten quite a number of responses here. So
that tells us that the chat wasn't too cumbersome from your end which is
encouraging. There were some responses that - there was a project
director who could use more information about the program, a board
president, board chair, chief financial officer, the AHEC education
director, community affairs director.

And somebody said that their Webmaster needed to know more about what
was going on with their program. And those are all great examples of
people that should definitely be engaged to the point of having an
understanding of your program. So thank you for using the chat. That was
a little experiment. And I think it went relatively well. Thank you.

So results of a collaborative leader - collaborative leaders create
interdependent relationships within the community. And this is something
again, it doesn't go with our traditional view of what a leader does.
It's something that may have been more behind the scenes or something
that wasn't necessarily attributed to leadership.

And so what we have on the screen right now to the left we have
independence. And this is definitely a stance that an organization or
leadership of an organization can take - to go it alone. Our program is
better. It's more important. It's higher priority, etc., than other
programs in the community. And it deserves to be sustained.

And that is the independence perspective of sustainability versus
interdependence, where we go at it together with the agencies in our
community with our program partners. Our program plays a critical role
in the network of services in this community. And so it's a more
collectivistic view that it's not just us trying to serve a population.
We have many peers who are trying to do that.

And you also might notice that there is the independence side on the
left. It's more of a competitive perspective. And the reason that that's
a little bit dangerous when doing community-based work is that other
agencies would have - if you set yourself up to be a competitor, other
agencies will have a vested interested in your agencies or your
program's failure\...

Woman: Overhead (unintelligible).

Stacey Willocks: \...versus interdependence. Other agencies will have a
vested interest in your agency's success or the sustainability of your
agency, because they depend on you as well. An example of that may be if
you are running an emergency room conversion program. If your program
goes away, the ER is really going to feel it with the influx of patients
who are filling up in the ER, with ailments that are inappropriate for
emergency room care.

And so people will be able to imagine, "Oh my gosh. What if they close
up shop? And then if they're not doing the ER diversion anymore, we're
going to have a problem. We, the hospital, have a vested interest in
this organization to provide that service. And so that's an example of a
cooperative or interconnected perspective.

Another way of looking at it would be strength within the community as
well. So why interdependence works - it highlights the value of others
efforts and it builds good will. It creates a demand or a need for your
service or products. And with this line I'd like for you all consider
not only among a client or patient base, but also it's equally important
that there's a self demand or need among the other agencies in your
community.

And it also makes it easier to have your program exist that not. So the
example that I just gave about the ER conversion program - it's easier
to have a program like that in a community than not to, when if there's
a problem with folks coming to the ER for an ear infection for example.

Okay. So you've just gotten to catch your breath since the chat. And now
it's time to do a poll. This is another new sort of technology that
we're going to try out today. We'd like for you to react. And so using
the voting function on the Webinar, choose the one action your program's
team already does well to create interdependence.

And I'm going to switch the screen now so that you will see - do that.
Okay. Let's see. You will see four choices, A, if you utilize quality
resources of others; B, share ideas and information with others; C,
share staff, tools and resources with others; D, collaboratively plan,
advocate and review. And so go on ahead and click on those buttons to
the left. And the poll results will be tallied.

Woman: It's got to be...

Woman: For that already.

Stacey Willocks: And we'll give you a little bit of time to do that. And
you can change your answer if you change your mind. So if you click the
wrong thing, go on ahead and click on the right one. Okay. I'd like to
make another reminder for people to press star 6 to mute their phones.
We're picking a good bit of background noise and a little background
conversation as well. And it would be helpful if everybody could star 6
please.

Okay. Thank you for taking the poll. It looks like it went relatively
well. We have a number of folks to answer. So 12% of you are already
utilizing quality resources of others. Fifty percent of you are sharing
ideas and information with others. Eighteen percent of you are sharing
staff, tools and resources with others. And another 18% are already
collaboratively planning, advocating and reviewing the program results.

And so that shows a pretty wide spread of different activities that
folks are doing. And it looks like the largest number of you all are
letter B - sharing ideas and information with others. Thank you for
participating in that. And now I'm going to switch us back over to
collaborative leadership.

Okay. So another example of results that collaborative leadership can
cultivate. It can help to grow influence. And to grow influence - when
you grow influence, you have to identify opportunities, share expertise
or resources and connect to additional leaders.

So influence occurs when civic, business and political leaders in your
community know about and support your program. So it's not just the
folks at the health department or not just your staff or the people that
you interact with most.

It's important that the county commissioner knows what's going on, the
superintendent of schools, the chamber of comers, the ladies from the
junior league. These are all the folks in your community that need to
know about your program, and that may help to ultimately support your
programs to become sustainable.

So in growing influence, inform others, invite folks to share their
knowledge, to participate and to experience what it is that that you're
doing. People are usually very willing to give their opinions and to
share their knowledge if they have special expertise. Also involve
people as advisors and advocates.

And over to the right side of the screen remember this is a metaphor.
This is a quote from a non-profit director here in Atlanta.
"Millionaires hang out with millionaires, and billionaires hang out with
billionaires."

And what this man was trying to communicate is that people with
influence hang out and talk with and play sports, and go to one
another's houses, other people who have influence. And these are the
people that you really would like to have talking about your program.

And now we have another chance to do a chat. So using the one on one
chat function, send a message to Georgia Health Policy Center, GHPC. It
shares an example of how you have informed, invited or involved an
influential leader in your community.

And make sure that this person is not on your consortium. They're not a
partner. It's somebody else who is influential in your community. How
have you informed, invited or involved them? And we'll give you all just
a minute to do that.

Woman: There's a drop down\...

Stacey Willocks: Let me just give you a quick reminder on how to do the
chat in case folks are having a little question out there. Click on
attendees at the top of the screen. It will open a window. Then
double-click on GHPC. And that will open a line for you to send your
answer in.

Okay. We've had a real good response to this question as well. And we'd
like to thank everybody who sent in answers. And there's some real good
ideas here, some real good examples that people have already done in
their communities.

Two people mentioned inviting influential leaders to special events.
Someone shared that they invite a judge and a county commissioner to
their board meetings, involve community in planning meetings and
educational seminars, community leaders in planning meetings and
educational seminars. Someone invited \-- or someone did a presentation
at a grand round event at the Department of Health, which is a fabulous
idea.

And someone else also sent their quarterly newsletters all the way to
their state legislators. And so they're getting there message outside of
the community to some people who may well be able to help them sustain
in the future. So thank you for sending in your answers to that. And I
hope that you all have gotten some good ideas from one another.

So let's review. A collaborative leader will ensure knowledge of their
program. They will create interdependence within their community, not
only among the people that they serve but also among their peer
agencies. And they will also work to grow influence.

So how is this done? And this is my favorite slide of the whole
presentation. This is done by creating and executing a plan that uses
practices of collaborative leadership. And my favorite thing about this
slide is what it does not say. And what it does not say is that people
are born leaders. What it says is that people can create a plan and they
can execute it.

And so through being thoughtful and making a plan and working, people
can become very effective collaborative leaders. And so it's not that
old sort of, "Oh, it's the charisma of that person that enables them
speak of leaders." Not necessarily. There are things that those of us
who do not have the stereotypical leadership charisma can do to create,
plan and execute leadership practices.

So practices of a collaborative leader - so apply collaborative
practices to achieve results. By practices we mean ways of doing things
that help to contribute to results. And so the collaborative practices
that we are sort of offering to you to think about today \-- and I know
that many of you are already doing these \-- are accepting the
environment, creating clarity, building trust, sharing power or
influence, self reflection and developing people.

So assessing the environment - understanding the context for change
before you act. This is slowing down, being thoughtful as you interpret
information before you act on that information. And someone who is
skilled at this practice would likely clarify problems before seeking
solution, ensure that their data is properly interpreted.

So if something looks kind of funny that's come in from the evaluation,
question it. Go back. Figure it out. Talk with people. Make sure that
you're interpreting it in an accurate way. Use tools to understand the
needs of the community. Seek multiple points of view.

And as I said earlier, even somebody who may have some constructive
criticism may not be the most pleasant person to talk with, but may have
very important information for you. So be sure to engage them as well.
And also use a systems perspective.

Don't think that you're isolated in and serving a specific population
for example. There are other agencies and other programs that are
working to serve those same folks. And so consider yourself part of a
system.

Building trust, creating safe places for developing shared purpose and
action. Someone who is skilled at this practice would likely use
transparent communication, build trust among stakeholders, create a
credible process and walk the talk.

You don't want folks in your community doubting your motivations or your
word when you say you're going to do something. You want people to
believe that you are credible. And you're going to do what you say that
you're going to do.

And developing people - committing to people as a key asset through
coaching and mentoring. Someone skilled at this practice would likely be
committed to coaching or mentoring others, investing time in others,
helping others to be successful and defining expectations.

And I thought of one of the project directors that I am able to work
with through the sell the states project, who told me once real early on
\-- and I was really touched by this \-- that she sees her staff \-- and
she has a fairly young staff \-- she sees her staff as future community
leaders.

And she treats them in such a way looking for ways to help to train
them, to equip them not only to do their jobs, but to think about their
role and what they can become. And in doing that she is doing a
beautiful job at being a collaborative leader, because she's not just
looking at, "Okay, I have a staffing need here. I've got to get somebody
over here to do this job."

She's thinking of them as whole people and of their careers, and if she
is able to train them now early on in their careers, what an investment
she is giving to the community for the future. And so that's something
that sort of inspired me in working with my grantee on this project. And
I wanted to share it with you as an example of someone committed to
developing people.

Another practice of collaborative leadership is creating clarity,
defining shared values and engaging people in positive action. Someone
who is skilled in this would likely understand community vision, create
buy-in into action plans, understand stakeholders and communicate the
shared vision.

In sharing power influence, developing a synergy of people,
organizations and communities to accomplish a shared vision. Someone
skilled at this practice would likely rely significantly on peer problem
solving, be open to being influenced by others.

So they would be listening not only to their peers as they work together
to solve a problem, but if they are working with someone who actually
has an idea that makes a lot of sense, they're open to engaging that
person or that party and maybe changing things because it may work
better, and also having confidence in others, encouraging others to act.

And so the sharing power and influences again underlines that quote that
I opened with. That it's not a heroic top down leadership. It's being
enmeshed in being collaborative that can be a true strength in leading a
community-based organization.

Self-reflection is also very important, understanding your own values,
attitudes and behaviors as they relate to your leadership style and its
impact on others. And someone skilled at this practice would like be an
active listener, accurately describe personal strengths and weaknesses.
So we're not all good at everything.

And somebody who is self-reflective would be able to readily acknowledge
a shortcoming they may have, so that they can focus on that to make
themselves better and to improve their approach in that area. And they
also understand others' perspectives.

Okay. Are there any questions so far? If you have any questions, you can
dial star 6 to un-mute to ask over the telephone. Or if you would rather
send a chat with your question if you don't feel like talking on the
telephone, but you'd be more comfortable sending a chat in go on ahead
and do that. Or you can send an email question to tkanter \--
T-K-A-N-T-E-R \-- \@gsu.edu. And I'll give you just a second if you'd
like to submit any questions to us.

We just got a question about the PowerPoint presentation. Someone would
like to receive a copy of it. It should be posted on the HRSA Web site.
So you can find it there. And it may be in your back emails as well.
We've sent it out a couple of times.

And if you can't get to it through those two avenues, ask your technical
assistance provider to forward a copy of the presentation on to you. And
they'll forward on the presentation and also this collaborative
leadership quick course that I'm about to go over with you. And we're
going to give just another second for any questions that come in through
the emails or the chat.

Okay. Well we don't have any more questions. So I'm going to go on ahead
and move forward. You all might remember from the last telephone call we
had, the evaluation module, there was a self-directed quick course that
we gave to you on logic model development.

And this is the same sort of an idea. It's a self-directed quick course
on collaborative leadership. This is optional homework. But it is
encouraged. And it should take your local team one to two hours to
complete. And it's designed to help program administrators lead teams in
investing time to create tools for sustainability positioning.

And it's a neat tool. It's got - what it does is this is a collaboration
mini self-assessments. It's an example that we have up here. It asks you
a series of questions. And you rate your organization or other
stakeholders and constituents on their knowledge of your program,
interdependence of resources, influence outside of the project.

Then you can go on to another quiz. There are several quizzes in there.
You can assess the environment and rate how you do that. And these
quizzes are designed in such a way that you get a score at the end. And
it can show you where your strengths are and where you may need to
really focus on improvement.

And so another screen capture from the self-directed learning is my
collaboration plan. And so what this does is it helps you to sort of
organize your thoughts around action steps and ways to really focus on
challenge areas for you, and to think with your team about how to
address those challenges and put it down into some basic steps and
things that you can act on, to kind of get to moving and get into motion
in those areas where there's been challenges for you before.

And so the idea behind this quick course is that not only is it a
helpful tool for you as you work with your teams, but also the
information that can come from your doing this quick course could be
very helpful information for you to share with your technical assistance
provider.

Because we can then use that, use the results of this to help you either
develop your action steps, or we may focus on one of the particular
challenges that you have when we come out and do your site visit with
you. And so even though this isn't like we said, it's not - you're not
obligated to do this homework.

It's something that can be a very helpful tool to you. And it can also
help you get some very directed technical assistance from your technical
assistance provider as well. So if you do choose to do this with your
team, please send a copy in to your TA provider. And we'll be sure to
have a call with you about it to discuss the results and the next steps
for you.

Okay. So take the next step. Take action. Complete the quick course.
Assess the state of leadership with your project. Develop a
collaboration plan. Execute your plan using the collaboration practices
and communication skills that we shared with you today. And we also have
a Web site up here that we wanted to share from you.

This presentation was based in a presentation and other learning
materials from the Collaborative Leadership Group. And their Web site is
up here. And we'd like for you to check it out. They've got some free
resources on there that could really help you in your work. And so we'd
like for you to check that out as well and think of that as a resource.

And what question do you all have today? Again, you can ask over the
telephone by pressing star 6. Or you can do a chat or do an email if
you'd like. And then we'll give you a few minutes to do that.

Okay. It looks like folks don't have any questions for us today. If you,
you know, think about this presentation later on and you want to give
your TA provider a call for something for clarification, or you have an
idea about some TA that you'd like, go on ahead and give us a call. And
Lakisha, do you have anything that you'd like to\...

Lakisha Smith: No. I thank you so much for this particular segment in
the series. I really like the chatting and the polling functions. I
thought that was very unique. And I really would have the grantees
encourage you to utilize the self-directed quick course.

And really feel free to share your results with me and/or your TA
provider as, you know, this is yet another tool that we can use to
assess your progress and see where there's need for extended TA and, you
know, really it's for your benefit at the end of the day.

So I really like the notion of the collaborative leader as this is
timely with regards to this grant program, and really what the
expectation is for partnership throughout the Delta. So are there any
other, you know, thoughts or questions that anybody may have? The
instant replay will be available until November 28. And that number is
1-800-285-0721. And that's in the email that (Amanda Goth-Martinez) sent
out earlier. Again, 1-800-285-0721.

And there also will be a transcript in a few days with basically the
whole conversation that we had today. So I don't want to leave anybody
with not addressing their questions or ideas if you've had any. You guys
are so quiet.

I am glad to hear that there were so many people on the call, and even
some extended partners. So I have a big smile on my face because of that
because I really wanted to invite other partners in your states and your
communities to be involved, because I think it really is a trickle down
effect or trickle around effect I might say. So anything else?

Stacey Willocks: Not from us, Lakisha.

Lakisha Smith: Okay. Well everything will be posted on the Web site.
Again, I have to go through some layers of clearance here to get all
that posted. So if you have, you know, you need any other documentation,
feel free to email me or your GSU technical assistance provider.

And we can give that to you as soon as possible. But it will be
available on the main HRSA ORHP technical assistance page later on.
Okay? So if anybody doesn't have anything else, I will say goodbye. And
we will see you next time. When is the next call, Stacey?

Stacey Willocks: It's in February.

Lakisha Smith: February. Okay.

Stacey Willocks: And we'll send out notifications to folks.

Lakisha Smith: Feb '09. So if everything is going well with Year 2 and
if you, you know, need to talk to me, please feel free. Okay? Have a
great day. Thank you.

Stacey Willocks: Thank you. Bye, Lakisha.

Lakisha Smith: All right. Bye-bye.

Woman: Thank you.

END