Partners for Possibility
MLC VANGUARD | Created by Citizens Leader Lab
The Partners for Possibility (PfP) programme is an award-winning leadership development programme that pairs school principals with business leaders in South Africa in a 12-month co-learning and co-action journey that develops the leadership skills of both partners.
1,288,604 Lives Impacted
Through PfP, over 1,600 school principals and 1,600 business leaders have significantly strengthened their leadership capacity. A three-year evaluation of PfP completed in 2022 found that participation in the programme had led to significant improvements in the following areas: principals' confidence, skills and competence; cohesiveness within school management teams; teacher motivation and community involvement in schools. The research also confirmed that the PfP programme had generated significant, sustained social capital within schools and found that many school improvement projects launched by principals with their business partners were continuing to provide benefits three years later.
PfP is a scalable model that empowers principals to step into their roles as community leaders and create healthy ecosystems around schools. Evaluations have also found that the leadership skills of business partners have grown significantly through working with school principals. Business partners have become more skilled at working across sectoral and cultural boundaries, more willing to collaborate widely, better able to influence others in situations where they have no direct control and better equipped to lead complex and difficult tasks.
The Innovation
Most school leaders in South Africa have not been equipped for the role they are expected to fulfil. This has resulted in South Africa being placed last or near last in the Global Education Rankings. On the other hand, there are thousands of business leaders in South Africa who have been well-equipped by their various organisations to assume leadership positions and manage change.
PfP leverages this national resource by partnering well-trained business leaders with school principals to help support and equip those principals with the knowledge and skills to lead change in their schools and communities. When business leaders, many of whom want to make a contribution to public education, are partnered with school principals in a facilitated and structured development process, principals get the support that they need in order to lead change at their schools. PfP is recognised as an innovation in Corporate Social Investment, leadership development, education reform and principal support because it is not a coaching or mentoring process. Business leaders become partners to principals with the expectation that they will learn from each other in a reciprocal process.
About Citizens Leader Lab
Through innovative leadership development models, we grow conscious citizen leaders who catalyse positive change in their communities and across society, build social cohesion and work towards achieving a just society. Our work is driven by an unfaltering belief: That a future distinct from the past is possible and achievable when we work together.
Implemented in
PfP has been implemented in South Africa.
