Written by Stephanie Ayala, Business Analyst, Johnston Group | Leadership Winnipeg Class of 2025/2026
3-minute read
For our December Leadership session, the first half of the day was Board Governance training with Kevin Freedman. Kevin is a governance consultant for non-profits, school boards and more. He has been on over 15 boards, with numerous chair positions. He is also 2013-2014 alum of the Winnipeg Chamber Leadership program.
The session started off with explaining the What, Why and Who of a Board as well as the different type of governance models. He then went on to explain the responsibilities of the collective board, as well as each individual board member.
He explained how a board works, going into detail about preplanning meetings, running effective meetings including what to do after.
Other topics that were covered were qualities of board members, legal responsibilities, board fiduciary duties and different types of committees.
Throughout the session Kevin paused to ask for feedback from the class. We got to hear great, firsthand experience from our classmates that have served on boards.
The morning session ended with reflecting on why we should join a board.
After lunch we had our second session with Dawna Atamanchuk of Change Innovators. The afternoon focused on our own driving forces and driving characteristics. This information was found in our own personalized workbook that we received in our first session. The information in the workbook came from a personality test we took.
Dawna explained the 12 driving forces to us and broke them up into six groups where the driving forces are similar.
At our tables, we spoke with our class mates and discussed which of the three driving force clusters each of our driving forces landed. Sometimes we felt our assigned numbers were very much in line with us, other times, not so much.
Dawna went over Areas of Awareness. This page showed us which of our driving forces are outside of the mainstream thought. By being aware of this and responding appropriately, we can avoid conflict with others. This is a great resource especially with the holiday season upon us.
The day ended with us meeting with our project groups to start discussing the first steps and to get a plan in place for our project proposal.
Leadership Winnipeg is presented in partnership with Volunteer Manitoba.
Thank you to our program sponsors:
Vision Partners: Canada Life, The Winnipeg Foundation, and Johnston Group
Board Connect sponsor: Assiniboine Credit Union
Proud Supporters: Boston Pizza, Honest Agency, RBC Convention Centre Winnipeg
