Project leadership support
Participatory processes to support project leadership
CASE Association of Municipalities in Kalmar County, Sweden
the Challenge
The project experienced challenges related to leadership, roles and responsibilities, mainly because of the complexity of the problems that the project aimed to solve as well as the different perspectives represented by the thirteen public actors involved.
the Outcome
A common understanding of the purpose and shared goals of the project for the participants; a higher level of involvement among key actors; an increased clarity of the complexity of the management issues concerning the project as well as concrete ideas on how to deal with them.
Emerging got on board in the midst of the process of defining and clarifying project goals and expected outcomes in the EU Social Fund project FSLA (Fortsatt Samverkan Leder till Arbete/in English: Cooperation Leads to Work). The project aimed to empower unemployed people who faced difficulties in entering the workforce. The method used was cross-sectorial cooperation and partnership between municipalities, e.g. through knowledge sharing and joint efforts to support the development of the target group’s competencies.
In close cooperation with the project management, Emerging supported a process of building sustainable structures in order to lead the collaboration of the thirteen actors. There was a focus on how to increase motivation and active participation as well as sharing principles and best practices on how to cooperate and lead a regional cooperation project. Emerging conducted nine dialogic based and facilitated workshops in total. They were held in a virtual/digital format targeted to the steering committee as well as to seven working groups who needed clarity on their tasks, input and feedback for team cooperation and how to document their results.
Participatory processes enables project success
“At KFKL we are grateful for the support Mette provided to the FSLA project. The virtual workshops functioned as an excellent way to start up our different workgroups and made it possible to move on in our processes as well as sharing best practices among the different stakeholders which were part of the project.”
Sofia Wermelin, Head of the Department of Health and Social Welfare, The Association of Municipalities in Kalmar County.
