Gladys Givens-Barber has more than three decades of leadership experience to call on when it comes to helping children and families in the Glades, but she decided to build on that even more.
The director of NOAH’s Family Services Division places a premium on continued education and is always pushing her staff to learn more and achieve additional certifications to help improve the delivery of services they offer clients. She continues to lead by example with her own self-development. She was among an elite class of 24 leaders to graduate over the summer from the Palm Beach County Leadership and Management Initiative.
She repeatedly referred to the year-long experience as an "eye-opener" that helped her see the bigger picture and to look more closely at the effectiveness of NOAH’s programs and keeping the agency tightly focused on its mission.
"It was a real eye-opener to how, if you’re going to be a leader, how can you be an effective and engaging one, and how do you get your staff to buy into what you are trying to do," Givens-Barber said. "Unless you get everybody to see your mission and your vision, your mission and programs suffer. I always considered our founders visionaries and it’s a matter of getting everybody on the same page."
The Leadership Management Initiative is offered through the Center for Nonprofit Excellence and the University of Miami, Division of Continuing & International Education to build management skills and strengthen leadership abilities of middle managers in the nonprofit sector. Participants attended bi-monthly, three-day seminars for one year and worked in teams to develop projects that applied leadership strategies. The program helped Givens-Barber expand her view.
"We have to really to see the big picture and the impact that outside forces have on what we are doing and how it fits into funding societal needs," she said. "With the dwindling of funding and with the impact of taxes and all of that, there is a critical need for fundraising and ideas. It brought that to the forefront. It’s just critical at this point to diversify so you are not so reliant on funders. And being a pretty good size employer, we have to look at how we can retain staff because a lot of people depend on the services we are providing."
Her participation already has benefited Glades residents. As part of a team project, participants devised a plan to make Resource Depot more accessible to Glades schools and child development agencies.
Other Palm Beach County agencies represented among the recent graduates included the Children's Services Council, Health Care District, the School District and Resource Depot Inc. among others. |
