Supporting Networks and Communities of Practice

Communities of practice are groups of practitioners who deepen their understanding of a common concern or question by learning together as they pursue their individual work.

At Leadership in Action at Wagner, we treat communities of practice as sources of leadership knowledge in which groups of peers can acquire skills and change their leadership practices through building social relationships.

Communities of practice take different forms, but they share three essential characteristics — participants learn in action, working with real-life questions; they learn together, generating collective wisdom as a group; and they learn continuously, building on an ongoing basis over time.

In partnership with the NYU Leadership Initiative, NYU Wagner supports communities of practice that are interested in teaching leadership as a collective effort both within and beyond NYU Wagner.

For example, between 2014-2016, in partnership with the NYU Leadership Initiative, Wagner convened three Co-Lead Net (Collective Leadership Network) international workshops on the study of collective leadership. For more information, click here. This network continues to operate, and the next workshop will take place in May 2018 in Montreal, hosted by Suzanne Gagnon, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGrill University.

Leadership in Action at Wagner also hosted two Brown Bag sessions in the Fall of 2017. In the first, presented by NYU Wagner’s own Kathy O’Regan, participants heard about her experience as an Assistant Secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama Administration. In the second Brown Bag, Rusty Stahl, the founder of Fund the People, a project incubated at NYU Wagner, discussed the origins and present status of this national campaign to maximize investment in the nonprofit workforce.

Please be on the lookout for announcements about future Brown Bags in the Spring 2018 semester.

CONTACT

For more information about Communities of Practice, contact Professor Sonia M. Ospina and Professor Erica Gabrielle Foldy.