MIDWEST COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP RESOURCE CENTER

Guiding Principles

The partners are committed to the following guiding principles for professional development. These principles will provide the underpinning for the center and its development.

1. Professional development is grounded in and driven by the strategic management and leadership agenda of the community and demonstrates and expects a commitment to a shared philosophy, vision, values, and guiding principles.
2. Professional development is an essential management tool in achieving organizational goals and objectives.
3. Professional development includes a strong emphasis on the understanding and development of leadership capacity throughout the organization.
4. Professional development embodies and models a philosophy of continuous quality improvement and organizational learning. It builds on and strengthens the high quality of existing programs and activities.
5. Professional development is planned and delivered in a comprehensive and systematic manner, ensuring that basic needs are the first to be addressed.
6. Professional development includes the development of internal capacity to ensure an ongoing program of training, education, and organizational development.
7. Professional development is progressive, developmental, sequential, and learner-focused in design and delivery.
8. Professional development is responsive to the needs and interests of the local community and will be locally controlled.
9. Professional development is state of the art and innovative in design and delivery.
10. Professional development promotes and integrative cross-agency model, strengthening collaboration and the sharing of resources.
11. Professional development supports and promotes the development and delivery of a family-oriented service system.
12. Professional development recognizes and values the strength of diversity in the workplace, community, and participant population served, building peoples’ capacity to incorporate and capitalize on this diversity to ensure effective service delivery.
13. Professional development empowers people to work together to meet the needs of those served, and facilitate and promote commitment throughout the organization. It encourages people to be accountable and responsible for high quality service to the community.
14. Professional development requires strong commitment and full investment of resources for the delivery of quality training and educational program mining. It will not sacrifice quality to meet quantity demands.
15. Professional development relies upon effective assessment and evaluation techniques to support the continuous improvement for the system and the growth of individuals within and served by the system.
16. Professional development uses data as a tool to inform dialogue and decisions about performance, priorities, and to clarify and develop an understanding of community, organization and individual needs. Data will be understood in the context of broader goals and results and will support mutual and shared accountability for those goals/results.