Developing Tomorrow's Leaders Today

About the Program

Category: Personnel Management, Employment and Training (Best in Category)

Year: 2012

The County of San Bernardino Department of Behavioral Health in collaboration with the Loma Linda University School of Social Work developed a Leadership Development Program (LDP) to train existing, non management staff in the competencies needed to become a leader in the public behavioral health system. The competency areas were determined through a large number of focus groups with current staff and leaders as well as through research of evidence based leadership competencies. The competencies were then broken down into functional areas. The functional areas include: Public Mental Health System of Care, Stakeholder Collaboration, Team Effectiveness, Climate, Organizational Performance, and Cultural Diversity Practices. The LDP is a yearlong program consisting of six live classroom trainings, a mentoring component and a team project. The classroom training includes both lecture and didactic sessions, taught by the current leaders of the organization. The mentoring component pairs participants with current leaders to provide one on one mentoring as well as job shadowing. The group project allows participants to develop a project outside of their current work area to learn more about another part of the organization.