Colorado Leadership Training

In 2022, Butler Institute was awarded a preferred vendor status from the Colorado Department of Human Services to support leadership training and development. 

Effective leaders - those who can who can implement innovative change and build organizational cultures that support equity and staff-well-being - are critical for building and sustaining human services agencies. Butler is a national leader in effective workforce and leadership development and is ideally situated to engage with state agencies to identify and address training opportunities individually crafted to meet the unique leadership needs of the state’s workforce. Butler's trainings are grounded in approaching the workforce from a holistic viewpoint, believing individuals bring their whole selves to work leadership is not just focused on performance.

Our training and capacity building team can:

• meet with agency leadership and staff to explore challenges and build effective and holistic training solutions

• access and tailor training through strong partnerships across the nation that support leadership development

• leverage extensive experience providing virtual and in-person training as well as instructor-led and self-paced training

• provide certificates of attendance for completion of training

• provide one-on-one training, including executive leadership coaching

Training Options

Butler can work with you to design custom training options and formats that meet your leadership and workforce needs. Below, we outline examples of existing training content that has been designed and vetted to meet workforce development needs across the nation.

Butler offers an adapted version of the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute's Leadership Academy for Child Welfare Leaders (Leadership Academy). Butler’s trainings can be offered virtually or in-person, synchronously or asynchronously, and one-on-one or in groups. Depending on the learning goals, we can design learning opportunities to include didactic as well as experiential and peer learning components. Butler’s skilled team can also work with you to implement Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessments and create microvideo and eLearning products that support your training needs.

To discuss any of these options in more detail, or simply learn more, please contact Christa Doty at Christa.Doty@du.edu.

• One-on-One Coaching

  Butler has a team of trained professional coaches to provide one-on-one leadership coaching to support individuals’ development and ability to succeed at every stage of someone’s career. The coaches use a developmental coaching approach to support values-driven leadership and explore opportunities to enhance organizational and individual areas for strength and growth.  Butler coaches typically offer between four to six sessions per client, during which time they will work with the client to identify their values, strengths, opportunities and application for continued development and growth.

• Leadership Coaching Skill Development

  Coaching is an essential skill for leaders to support staff and organizational change. Organizations that incorporate coaching skills into their management culture show increased organizational commitment, job competency and belonging, and an improved learning environment (Park, et al., 2021). Coaching also supports increases in self-efficacy, hope, optimism, well-being, self-regulation and endurance (Theeboom, 2016; Burt, 2017; Novitasari, 2021). 

  Butler offers a variety of trainings that help leaders integrate coaching skills and approaches within their roles. All training options adhere to the International Coaching Federation competencies.

• Leadership Academy

  An adapted version of the National Child Welfare Workforce Institute’s Leadership Academy for Child Welfare Leaders (Academy) is available through the Butler Institute. The Leadership Academy is relevant for leaders across different content areas, including early childhood, education, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program, behavioral health, and more, as this training builds essential skills for managing change, leading people, leading for results, building strong collaboratives by leading in context and developing organizational cultures of racial equity, safety and learning. Butler certified coaches provide individualized and peer-group coaching for leaders in the program, and we offer evaluation support to ensure competency gains and transfer of learning.

  Butler typically offers the Leadership Academy over nine to 12 months. The Academy's five learning modules include:

  1. Fundamentals of Leadership
  2. Leading Change
  3. Leading in Context
  4. Leading for Results
  5. Leading People
      

  Each module includes an asynchronous online learning component and a synchronous experiential learning session that can be delivered in person or virtually. Participants engage in online pre-learning instruction, optional assessments and individual one-on-one leadership coaching from certified Butler coaches. The Leadership Academy also includes 360 feedback assessments aligned with the Leadership Competency Framework. This framework was informed by best-practice leadership literature across public and private sectors. We can customize the Leadership Academy to meet your agency’s needs and interests for format, duration, content and more. Data indicates the Leadership Academy successfully advances leadership competencies of participants by increasing their knowledge, skills and ability to develop and implement a meaningful change project aligned with agency workforce efforts.

• Trauma-Informed Leadership

  Increasingly, organizational leaders are recognizing the importance of trauma-informed leadership. Effective leaders must be able to create organizational cultures and climates that prevent and address both organizational trauma and secondary traumatic stress (STS). Organizational trauma can occur when distressing or disturbing events happen within a workplace, or when other conditions occur that cause employees to feel a lack of trust in their leaders or colleagues, physically or emotionally unsafe, or insecure in their jobs. STS can occur when individuals are exposed to the traumatic experiences of other people, usually the clients they serve, and they develop symptoms that present as post-traumatic stress disorder. STS is a major contributor to turnover in the helping professions. Turnover is a contributor to workforce shortages, which affect the ability of human service systems to respond to the needs of the service population. Thus, organizational leaders must be competent to address the needs of their organizations and workforce in a manner attuned to the stress and trauma that may impact the workforce and which builds the resilience of the organization and the workforce.

  Butler offers a variety of trainings on trauma-informed leadership including Reflective & Trauma-Informed Supervision and Transformational Leadership. 

• Foundation of Youth Engagement for Leaders

  Engaging youth leadership in a meaningful, rather than performative, way requires creating organizational environments that are supportive of youth while building capacity of adults to partner with youth and adequately equipping youth with the knowledge and resources to fully participate. Building on the concepts of positive youth development, Butler offers training to build the capacity of adults working alongside and supporting young people. These trainings include the core elements and principles of engaging youth in leadership opportunities, supporting the developmental opportunities for young people, and sharing the benefits to organizations of youth-centered leadership as well as the potential for more meaningful participation.

• Foundations of Community Partnership for Leaders

  Equitable, inclusive and sustained impact requires community involvement and ownership, which is achieved through authentic partnership with the communities one aims to serve. Butler’s training focuses on the importance of community partnership and the role for agency leaders to create an organizational environment that values and supports principles of authentic partnership. These principles include identifying the reasons for and type of engagement for meaningful partnership; building trust and accountability with the identified community; becoming aware of the community’s social context including historical oppression, and addressing power differentials; using equitable approaches to information gathering, co-creation and decision-making; and establishing pathways for sustained partnership and reciprocity.

• Evaluation Services

  Butler has a robust research and evaluation team and portfolio. Butler applies thorough and culturally responsive evaluation methods to our work and supports a variety of organizations in their use of knowledge and approaches that include many voices and are data driven. Butler’s evaluation services can be included with training offerings to understand competency gains and transfer of learning efforts and support continued quality improvement of training systems and delivery.