Imagine! Leadership Development Group Update

Imagine!'s 2018-19 Leadership Development Group. Left to right: Paula McCormick, Emily Walsh, Victoria Thorne, Gabbie Norton, and Jessie Michaud

Every year, Imagine!’s Leadership Development Group (LDG) performs a case study for Imagine!. This year’s case study is “Fostering a Collaborative Culture,” and the LDG will present it to the Imagine! Board of Directors in May. 

Paula: This case study is really exciting for me because I have found that just having the diversity of different services in the LDG has given me a whole new understanding of what happens in other areas within Imagine!. I feel this project will give us a chance to work towards everyone having a good idea of what goes on in each area as well as allowing for knowledge sharing and maybe identification of some best practices. For example, I recently heard about a new ARC opening in Longmont. Since Jessie is looking for employment opportunities for CORE/Labor Source, I was able to share that with her. If I was not familiar with Jessie and Imagine!’s Supported Employment program, we would not have made that connection. This is just one of many examples that show how important our case study topic is.

Victoria: Choosing our case study, surprisingly, took more time than I expected because we made an effort to pull each potential case study apart and deliberate. Picking the case study on how we can help foster a collaborative culture at Imagine! is exciting for two reasons. First, I am eager to meet our goal for this project: to create strategies that help Imagine!’s leadership foster a stronger culture of information sharing and collaboration. Second, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with other employees in the company who will help us gain insight and drive our project’s goals. Every project needs the passion and perseverance of its participants to succeed. I hope that this case study teaches me more about what effective communication, collaboration, and change means to each department at Imagine!.

Jessie: To be honest, at first I wasn’t sold on “collaboration” as our case study because it seemed vague. Collaboration can mean many things and can be enacted across the company in many different ways. But as we slowly narrowed down the list, this topic remained an option. As I listened to others in the group advocate for this topic, I began to see the vagueness as a benefit. Since being in LDG, I have learned so much about different departments: what they do, who they support, and how we all work in different ways to achieve the same mission. Collaboration can mean many different things across Imagine! and this “vagueness” gives us an opportunity to explore options that we think could truly be beneficial for all of us. While many of us do vastly different things in our own day-to-day, we ultimately have the same goal of creating a world of opportunity for all abilities and the more ways we can find to collaborate with each other, the better support we can offer those we serve. 

Gabbie: As busy as everyone tends to be, it is very easy to become so focused on our departments without thinking about how our jobs relate to others in our agency. Participating in LDG has altered this perspective for me. I have realized that my department, while important, is a small portion of what makes Imagine! function and impact the community so effectively. Other departments are doing amazing things, most of which I was unaware of until I got to know my fellow LDG members from various departments. I have learned so much from my group and want others in our agency to experience the same opportunities. As we head into this case study, I am excited to figure out a way for everyone to have opportunities to engage with other departments and expand their knowledge of our agency.

Emily: While we tackle this case study, I am looking forward to some thought provoking discussions among the group. One of the reasons we chose this topic is that we realized every time the LDG meets, we naturally have been fostering a culture of collaboration. Since we represent different areas of Imagine!, we each bring a unique set of ideas to the table. This nucleus of support and collaboration we have in the LDG is something Imagine! as a whole could benefit from. I am excited to bring our ideas together and see what we can come up with as a group to best serve Imagine! and our mission.