Lead for a change! We wrote the book on Collaboration & Network Alignment*
You, your allies and partners
can change a piece of the world
... and we can help you do it.
About ICL
Our History
The Institute for Collaborative Leadership was founded in 1992 as a nonprofit national research, training and consulting center, supporting collaborations and collaborative leaders that benefit the lives of children, families and communities.
Original Board members included: Dr. Willard Boyd (then president of the Chicago Field Museum), Dr. Paul Houston (executive director of the American Association of School Administrators), Toni Smith (then managing partner at Spencer Stuart), David Wilhelm (later chair of the Democratic National Committee), and Dr. Hank Rubin (then head of Roosevelt University's Public Administration Program).
Our founding mission: "... to construct a rigorous knowledge-base and understanding of collaboration so that education and public sector leaders can learn to build, manage, measure and repair collective efforts that are essential for achieving progressive public outcomes."
ICL improves collaboration and shapes the larger conversation. Our international contributions to understanding collaborative leadership and collective impact is documented in dozens of books, scholarly and popular articles, chapters, presentations and endorsements.
Want to build collaboration for collective impact?
Our goal is to improve the collective impact of public leaders and partnerships dedicated to benefiting children, families, communities and schools.
Leadership makes all the difference in the world; collaborative leadership is what we have to do to make that difference together!
ICL will help you convene, engage and motivate the right people in the right way within a sustainable collaboration designed to accomplish change.
ICL will ...
- help you plan and convene a new start-up collaboration ... and then stay on call to help you keep it strong.
- help you strengthen or reboot a collective effort that's grown tired or ineffectual... and then stay on call if you need help keeping it vital.
- help you establish a Collective Impact initiative … and understand its relationship to collaboration.
- be the catalyst, speaker, facilitator you need to launch or energize, regroup or reorganize, plan or audit your collaboration.
The Book ...
Dr. Carl C. Bell, formerly Univ. of Illinois and President & CEO, Community Mental Health Council
". . . (Rubin is) right on target for the thoughtful nonprofit leader . . . will make you think and help you succeed!"
Robert J. Danzig, author of The Leader Within You and former Senior Executive of Hearst Newspapers
". . . reminds me of my good pal Dr. Earnest Boyer . . . (with) that special forward-looking thinking of a great collaborative leader."
Sandy Boyd, former president of the University of Iowa and the Field Museum of Natural History
". . . outstanding, comprehensive, insightful, clear and brief . . . "
US Congressman Danny K. Davis, US House of Representatives, 7th District, Illinois
". . . Hank is, once again, at the portal of a new area of (leadership development) . . . Lord knows, we need to understand, learn, and teach young and aspiring public leaders how to build and manage their relationships with other public leaders."
Peter Carparelli for The School Superintendents Association, The School Administrator
"Hank Rubin is at it again. Collaboration Skills for Educators and Nonprofit Leaders ... is a little volume with a potentially big payoff for thoughtful practitioners.
The focus here is on accomplishing tangible results, making a difference and completing our work in the public realm. Rubin sees our jobs as revolving 'around building villages of support to raise children.' His book can help us be successful in that mission."
Anne Wescott Dodd for National Association of Secondary School Principals. NASSP Bulletin
"This reader-friendly and useful book details convincingly the need for collaboration in educational leadership and provides practical suggestions and tools for leaders who choose to collaborate to accomplish important goals they cannot achieve on their own. "