(July 17, 2009) More than 700 people eager to become great leaders have participated in the Denver Community Leadership Forum (DCLF) the past 25 years. For many the experience is more powerful than they could have anticipated.
Whether it is overcoming preconceived notions about fellow participants, identifying untapped skills and passions or conquering challenges of the curriculum’s Outward Bound course, alumni of UC Denver School of Public Affairs’ DCLF emerge from the eight-month program changed.
“We’re really not teaching a person how to be a leader,” says Effley Brooks, director of DCLF from 2002 through 2008. “To me it’s just really creating a context in which each person can explore what makes sense in his or her life.”
Often when people go through the sessions, which range from understanding concepts of leadership and learning how to run a meeting to thinking strategically and managing conflict, they clarify their sense of purpose, explains Louise Ninneman, who was DCLF director from 1991 to 2001 and returned to direct the program again in 2009.
“I think participants come to ask themselves, ‘What am I here to do and am I doing that? Am I contributing as much as I could?’ For some people, it gives them the courage to take a leap,” she says.
The success of the program hardly could have been envisioned back in 1984 when it began.
The Piton Foundation funded the original program, which focused on issues confronting Lower Downtown. “At that time Lower Downtown was really suffering,” says Carlson, “so the objective was to get a group of people together who were personally invested in the area, but on all different sides of the issues.”
DCLF set out to define the characteristics of effective leaders, to create an environment conducive to collaborative decision making and problem solving, and to build leadership capacity in the community one amazing immersion session at a time.
In the years since, the DCLF has produced a remarkable legacy of innovative, effective leaders. Among them are Tom Strickland, chief of staff for Interior Secretary Salazar and director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Class of ’85); U.S. Sen. Mark Udall (Class of ’86); Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar (Class of ’88); Christine Benero, president and CEO of Mile High United Way (Class of ’89); former Denver City Council members and civic leaders Susan Barnes Gelt (Class of ’93) and Happy Haynes (Class of ’87); Denise Delgado, director of Clinica Tepeyac (Class of ’03); Omar Jabara, senior director of communications for Newmont Mining Co. (Class of ’06); and dozens of others.
Udall remembers his DCLF class fondly, recalling his classmates by name and crediting many of them with opening his eyes to new ideas and different approaches to civic life. “It was a very powerful experience for me,” he says.
Not only did he expand his leadership potential tremendously, but he was also in the extraordinary position of being, as he put it, “a consumer of my own product.”
At the time, Udall was director of the Colorado Outward Bound School. In the DCLF class he found himself among all the other blindfolded rock climbers who had been fumbling their way up a cliff, struggling to reach the top. It was a chance for him to see the Outward Bound challenge from a decidedly different point of view.
“I can’t speak highly enough about DCLF,” says Udall. “It certainly gave me a sense of where I belonged in the community. And I learned that while we all have intrinsic leadership qualities, there is much we all can learn to become effective leaders.”