Renewing leadership in Europe’s third sector

Image

David Martí, during his speech. Source: Adrià Milan.
Image

Rafael Ruiz de Gauna and Carles Descalzi during the conference. Source: Adrià Milan
Image

Pablo Aretxabala was talking about reinventing organisations. Source: Adrià Milan
Image

Best practices of leadership in the third sector. Source: Adrià Milan

Barcelona hosted the second transnational meeting #EU3leader where Third Sector experts were talking about leadership and how to reinvent organizations in Europe.

Eu3Leader is the joint initiative of 6 European partner organisations (Pere Tarrés Foundation, Diesis, Priprema Pozor Smart, Wirtschafts Universitat Wien, Euclid Network and The Open University), to create a European competence framework of third sector leadership. This Framework will evolve from research on competences of voluntary sector managers in different European regions and collaboration with a diverse group of leaders, based on regular consultation through 4 capacity building workshops in 4 European countries. The launch meeting was held in March in London and on 27th, 28th and 29th September, the first workshops took place in Barcelona.

At these workshops, participants discovered what skills and competences third sector leaders need to make the best out of Ideas & Opportunities and analyzed alternative ways to reinvent organizations.

On the first day, 25 third sector leaders were talking about their experience in third sector leadership and how entrepreneurial leaders should make the best out of their ideas and opportunities they encounter in their everyday work. After that, they participated in two workshops focused on the Entrecomp framework and the five essential competences of leadership: spotting opportunities, creativity, vision, valuing ideas and ethical and sustainable thinking.

Reinventing organizations

Taking Frederic Laloux's book Reinventing organizations as a model, the second day focused on how third sector organizations could become more efficient and how employees and volunteers could feel closer and more involved with the organisation's mission.

David Martí, manager of the Conservatori Municipal de Música de Barcelona, gave a presentation on the most important changes all organizations should introduce to adjust to this more efficient model and he also explained his experience. Martí claimed that this model drives the organizations to get the best of their employees and to be more efficient and sustainable. Subsequently, Pablo Aretxabala, from NER Group, revealed instances of third sector organizations that have implemented Laloux's model in their daily work. Furthermore, executives from Croatia, Spain and UK shared their experiences in a round table discussion.

The next workshops will take place in Brussels on 14th December.