Questions for our LDP Graduates!
Firstly... congratulations!! Your hard work and dedication to learning and leadership have earned you the title of Leadership Graduate!
We want to continue to iterate on this program to strengthen it and make it an integral part of our community's leadership process. As you are a graduate with fresh insight, we'd love to hear from you! Please answer any questions you're comfortable with below!
1. What made you sign up for the LDP?
2. What is your favorite part about your LDP journey?
3. If you earned your first leadership position through this program: how did you end up choosing your leadership role?
4. Would you encourage others to give this program a try?
5. Sum up your LDP journey in 3 words or less!
Thank you for your feedback!
@Heather225
Hello! Sorry that I missed the celebration earlier today for the first group of graduates--had IRL work.
1. What made you sign up for the LDP?
Something I'm thinking about right now pertaining to motivation for being in leadership roles is that they offer an opportunity to increase one's impact.
Example #1:
- Maybe as an individual listener, I could spend 50 hours at 1 hour per chat and have a direct positive impact on ~50 members.
- Let's say that in 50 hours as a QM, I'm able to provide mentoring to ~50 listeners, and let's say conservatively that only ~20% of those listeners improve and they continue to use the site and have vastly improved chats with only ~10 members each... then I will have had an indirect positive impact on ~100 members (plus the ~10 listeners I directly impacted).
Example #2:
- If tens of thousands of listeners are learning how to do listening from their initial exposure to the introductory active listener training, then changes to that training could potentially improve the skills of thousands of listeners, which translates to improving the chat experiences of tens of thousands of members.
- So, the return on investment for work to improve introductory active listener training could hypothetically be thousands of members helped per hour spent.
- (Note: I don't have control over the initial training. This is just an illustration of the general principle that certain improvements that leaders might be uniquely able to make--that affect broader systems and processes--can have a big impact.)
All of this is to say that there's a plausible line of reasoning for leadership roles being at least somewhat helpful. 
I don't at all mean to say that leadership roles are better than non-leadership roles, nor is LDP saying that:
There are many ways to spend our volunteer time at 7 Cups. Some of you will choose to focus on member chats and others will choose to be involved with our community programs, or both! No matter which path, all contributions are considered incredibly valuable and special.
...Sometimes leaders or community members who help with projects receive high praise for their efforts (and they all deserve it) but this is never to take away or undermine the contributions of listeners who fly a little bit more under the radar. How one chooses to spend their volunteer time on 7 Cups is up to them & we love you all the same!
Returning to the question, I think my motivation for wanting to be in LDP was that I was already interested in leadership positions (for the reasons above)--and I felt like LDP would help me understand the expectations, best practices, and principles for leadership so that I could do it as well as possible.
It feels similar to how I've chatted with listeners who really want to receive training and feel competent/confident that they won't accidentally harm members. I wanted to have the necessary background and understanding to feel like I was qualified to be in leadership positions and able to minimize any harm that I might cause by accident.
2. What is your favorite part about your LDP journey?
My favorite part has been reading the responses of other LDP participants and having them read my responses. Before joining LDP, my contact with other listeners on this site was fairly limited. To be able to interact with others has been helpful for getting a general sense of where I fit into the bigger picture--in what ways I'm similar to others, different from others, etc. Sort of like there are different types of listeners, getting a feel for the different types of leaders.
3. If you earned your first leadership position through this program: how did you end up choosing your leadership role?
N/A, but the slides listing the leadership roles and general tracks were very helpful for getting a sense of the general scope/categories of leadership roles on this site--and it helped me affirm that the roles I was already considering were the right fit for me (and understand the broader context in which those roles function).
4. Would you encourage others to give this program a try?
Yeah, it's possible I already have.
5. Sum up your LDP journey in 3 words or less!
Solidifying the foundation
@QuietMagic
thank you for this comprehensive feedback! your insight is some of my favorites to hear in our community!
since one of your favorite parts of the LDP was the engagement with peers, do you have any suggestions for how we strengthen that area? we are going to be hosting discussions and open chats eventually, but i wanted to see if you had any thoughts to offer!
thanks again!
@Heather225 Thank you! 
I'm not quite sure how to strengthen engagement, but I can share some elements of the existing program that I felt contributed to my own sense of that.
1) "Reply to three of your peers" prompt
I felt like this definitely encouraged everyone to read one another's posts and interact with them.
2) Cohort structure
Early on, the structure was:
- Separate cohorts organized by join month
- Each cohort had its own independent set of discussion threads
- Course pacing was structured and guided by the course leader (i.e. based on when you or Glen posted the next thread)
Some thoughts on how this helped:
1) With a smaller group of participants writing in smaller discussion threads that have fewer existing posts, it feels like posts matter more.
- You have a greater chance of being seen/heard if you're the 5th person to post in a thread vs. being the 195th person and having your post get lost in a sea of other posts
- It's harder to feel like you have anything new/creative/original/innovative to say if 100 people have already answered the same question and said anything you might have thought to say
- It's easier to recognize/remember/notice individual people when there are fewer of them.
- Even while LDP threads were pretty small, I noticed that the earliest posts tended to get the most attention. People often scroll down from the beginning and comment on the first post that catches their eye. For bigger threads, I'd imagine this effect becomes even more pronounced over time.
2) Recently, I've been noticing that current LDP participants are replying to posts that I made 2-3 months ago.
- Since I'm no longer in the program and my posts are quite old, I don't feel as much investment in them. If I were still in the program, I'd probably be more likely to engage (e.g. reply to their comment, read their post and respond, keep an eye out for them in future discussion threads, possibly build some connection/rapport over time, etc.)
- It also occurs to me that if LDP participants are replying to me as one of their "respond to 3 peers", this means that they *aren't* responding as much to other active LDP participants who are currently in the program.
3) When discussion threads were posted one at a time on a fixed schedule, it felt like the discussions were more active/engaged
- Discussions tended to have a lot of people all interacting at the same time. Like in the first few days after a discussion went live, there would be a burst of activity/excitement. (This also felt like it increased the sense that what I was posting would be read by someone.)
- I got more of a sense of, "Now we are all thinking about and responding to this topic together as a group"
- I'd receive comments on my posts closer to the time when I actually made those posts and was actively thinking about them.
***
I guess what I'm largely realizing through writing this is that at least for me personally (sample size of N=1 ), after the cohorts merged together, LDP felt like it became a bit more of a self-study course rather than a group activity.
At the same time, I can totally imagine how having multiple cohorts running simultaneously on different schedules might be a logistical/organizational headache. Also there's probably a lot that goes into running/managing LDP that I don't know because I haven't needed to know it, lol. So, I'm definitely not strongly advocating or pushing for returning to the cohort-centric structure unless if whatever issues prompted that change in the first place can be resolved.
I wonder if maybe having more course mentors would make certain things possible that would otherwise be unfeasible? (E.g. plan out everything that needs to happen for any given cohort, and then have the cohorts running largely independent from one another with 1-2 mentors responsible for managing everything that needs to happen for each cohort.)
Separate cohorts might also make it easier to tweak/revise course materials without creating confusion. Something I just remembered is that Course 4 Discussion #1 seemed like it could benefit from revisions since the quiz has a couple issues. I recall there being a pretty long reading toward the end of Course 5 where I learned a lot about leadership styles. Maybe an alternative would be to pull excerpts from that document, have LDP students read the style descriptions, and ask them to give a self-assessment of which style(s) describe them best, pros/cons of those style(s), etc.?
@QuietMagic
THANK YOU!! i'll use your feedback to improve our process and fortify LDP! I'll also work on revising the course 4 eval quiz too and updating links. appreciated!
@Heather225
1. What made you sign up for the LDP?
At first, I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it. After that, I liked the opportunity to study and develop.
2. What is your favorite part about your LDP journey?
I don't have a very favorite part. Perhaps it was the best thing we had when three of our companions had to give positive feedback. That 's where I really felt we were a team
3. If you earned your first leadership position through this program: how did you end up choosing your leadership role?
I became a room supporter and mod
4. Would you encourage others to give this program a try?
I encourage everyone to do this program, because there is a great deal to learn from it and that we can apply what we learn in private life.
5. Sum up your LDP journey in 3 words or less!
learning, opportunity, teamwork
"The true leader serves. Serves people. Serves their best interests, and in doing so will not always be popular, may not always impress. But because true leaders are motivated by loving concern than a desire for personal glory, they are willing to pay the price." Eugene Habecker
@Mankka
Great answer and magnificent quote !
@WelcomeToChat
Thank you 
@Heather225
1. What made you sign up for the LDP?
I have always been a "forum-person", and wanted to help in a Sub-Community Forum. I think Forums can be very powerful to build a healing sense of Community. But I am very new to 7 Cups, so I wished to strengthen my skills to be able to contribute in the best way I could, and feel confident in such a role.
2. What is your favorite part about your LDP journey?
I appreciated particularly learning the best practices and skills for interacting with other 7 Cups leaders, like giving and accepting feedback, conflict resolution, avoiding triangulation, and dealing with passive-aggressive behaviors. A lot was new knowledge, not obvious to me, and extremely relevant and useful.
I also enjoyed studying in-depth the book "7 Cups for the Searching Soul", which I found of huge value, as a philosophy of life, a "down to earth" Psychology manual, and as a large box of practical tools. I found these 3 levels to be extremely relevant both to my work at 7 Cups, and in my life.
Finally, the Community Building course was also totally new knowledge to me, nothing obvious there, and 100% relevant and useful, both to understand 7 Cups as a whole, and to learn practical tools to work promoting the vitality, participation, and usefulness of a Sub-Community and its Forums.
3. If you earned your first leadership position through this program: how did you end up choosing your leadership role?
I entered all the Sub-Communities, browsed their Forums, and listened in their chatrooms. I decided to go where I felt most moved by the work done there. As it's Meaning what motivates me to work in a Sub-Community. I used my "emotional compass" to find a place where I would feel most fulfilled because of the intensity of the healing work that took place there.
4. Would you encourage others to give this program a try?
Absolutely, Yes !!!
5. Sum up your LDP journey in 3 words or less!
Learning, Understanding, Growing.
@Heather225
1. What made you sign up for the LDP?
At first it was the checkboxes that were unchecked on My Training page. But then it was the value of the content that made me come back to it.
2. What is your favorite part about your LDP journey?
It was a community-building course. That was most enlightening and explained how 7cups came to be the way it is.
3. If you earned your first leadership position through this program: how did you end up choosing your leadership role?
Although I was in leadership roles before, one role came after LDP. It's PA for popup discussions. That's something was on my mind when I was going through community building course.
4. Would you encourage others to give this program a try?
Yep. Anyone with a zest to improve themselves and bring up the people around them should give this course a try.
5. Sum up your LDP journey in 3 words or less!
I feel proud
