2024 Available Roundtables

Space to Focus All Year (sponsored by The Miller Group)

• Meeting February 9th through November 8th

• 2nd Fridays

• 9:00-11:00 a.m. CST via Zoom

This is the standard format, convening since 2015. We provide advance reading for each session and case studies presented by members.

New Executive Directors Peer Coaching (sponsored by The Moran Company)

• Meeting January through December (2nd Thursday)

• Designed for Execs in their first year in a new role (regardless of previous e.d. experience)

• Pertinent topics selected plus case studies

• 9:00-10:30 a.m. CST via Zoom

Aligning Boards, Missions & Execs - NEW

• A group for Execs working to align their Boards of Directors with the mission & partnership with the management team

• Six sessions March - May

• WATCH for details

Few people understand the challenges of leadership at the top like our peers,

and that’s why confidential discussion with other CEO’s provides a place to openly share your concerns. This gives executives the chance to  hear from savvy, accomplished, and unbiased leaders - and gain Space to Focus.

Purpose & Concept: Space to Focus is a facilitated peer learning group that meets to share ideas, successes, and challenges in a safe, confidential setting.  The groups are created as forums to analyze trends and current best practices in nonprofit leadership. The intention is to share what is happening in members’ organizations, discuss solutions, and receive feedback and ideas from others.

Membership & Structure

• 10 - 12 participants who hold a top executive position

• Group facilitation by Bruce Scott, M.S.W.

• Members commit to confidentiality and agree to attend a majority of the sessions

• One fee for each series of meetings.

Program Model

We use a pure peer-learning model that splits each session into a topical exploration and individually shared case studies* (in the ten month group). The topic-of-the-day allows the group to define and explore any pertinent subject, relying on member sharing and skilled facilitation to gain focus each week.  Structured discussion topics (supported by advance reading materials) have included: growing an executive leadership team, diversity/equity/inclusion, crisis management in the pandemic, benefiting from challenging board members, strengths based leadership, the “overhead myth,” and board-executive partnership. In ten-month groups we use journal articles and books to guide the discussion (see examples below*).

*Case study reviews comprise at least half of each session.  Members bring their “cases” and use the group as “consultants” with this format:

• The Headline – short and enticing.

• The Nutshell – a concise statement of the issue.

• The Background – the players, how long it's been going on, what’s at stake.

• What’s been tried?

• Clarifying questions from the group.

• Peer Consultation.

• Review - What are you taking back with you – what will you try?

*Books utilized in past groups are: Drive, Daniel H. Pink; Rest, Alex Pang; The One Thing, Gary Keller; The Work of Leaders, Julie Straw et al; The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni; Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott; The Four Disciplines of Execution, McChesney, Covey, Huling; The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier; Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan.

  “For leaders to get results they need three kinds of focus.  Inner focus attunes us to our intuitions, guiding values, and better decisions. Other focus smooths our connections to the people in our lives.  And outer focus lets us navigate in the larger world.  A leader tuned out of his internal world will be rudderless; one blind to the world of others will be clueless; those indifferent to the larger systems within which they operate will be blindsided.”

  Daniel Goleman, Focus – The Hidden Driver of Excellence, 2013  

“Absolutely a great investment of time and money. The ability to gather in a safe space among peers to discuss high-level, real-life organizational topics and pain points is priceless. “

- Participant 2023