Upcoming Summits

New Mexico
Santa Fe, NM
April 26 - 27, 2010

Host a Summit in Your Community

News

Is Atlanta Prepared for a Disaster?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Summit Prepares Leaders
for Disaster
WTOC-11 (Savannah, GA)

Leadership Without Borders
Security Management Magazine

Preparing Communities for H1N1
Grantmakers in Health Bulletin

Meta-Leadership 2.0
Dr. Louis Rowitz, University of Illinois

Meta-Leadership

Meta-leadership is a new brand of leadership that challenges individuals to think and act cooperatively across organizations and sectors. Meta-leaders operate outside the scope of their traditional professional boundaries, providing inspiration, guidance and momentum for a course of action that spans organizational lines.

Meta-Leadership in Times of Crisis

Meta-leadership is a critical ingredient for effective emergency preparedness and response. In a crisis, business, government and nonprofit leaders are thrown together, exchanging information, directing resources and managing systems and personnel. The commitment of leaders across sectors to contribute to and guide a coordinated strategy can be a critical factor in the overall success of the response. Events like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina demonstrated the urgent need for leaders and organizations to work together to effectively assist citizens and communities.

Cultivating Meta-Leadership

Until a crisis occurs, leaders characteristically operate within their organizational “silos,” developing emergency plans to protect their own employees and business or agency interests. But an unprecedented event immediately reveals the gaps that exist without overarching coordination of resources, information and action.

Organizations and communities ultimately benefit from cultivating a spirit of meta-leadership. When leaders operate with a shared understanding of the core skills and behaviors of meta-leadership (Five Dimensions of Meta-leadership) and build strong links with different people and organizations, they are better able to serve citizens and employees in a crisis.

The Meta-Leadership Summit for Preparedness offers key decision makers in business, government and nonprofits the opportunity to gain critical problem-solving skills and build organizational connections necessary to strengthen community and state-wide readiness for responding to emergencies.