FEATURE STORY
Social Capital and the California Agricultural Leadership Program BY ATHANASIOS “ALEX” ALEXANDROU, PH.D., CORE FACULTY, FRESNO STATE DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGY
Leadership Development
The California Agricultural Leadership Program (CALP) is designed to enhance the leadership skills of its participants in three different primary areas: personal/individual growth, social/civic engagement and institutional/ community engagement. The program seeks to develop measurable competencies such as skills and knowledge but also competencies that are difficult to measure such as values, self-image, motives and traits (Hay Group, 2003). It uses a diamond model of leadership developed by Dr. Pat Lattore (Fig. 1) which has four interconnected elements that constitute the basics of a leader, namely: doing, current reality, future reality and being.
Doing
This dimension of the leader is related to both individual and collective growth. It is based on the skills, competencies and courage that allows the leader to develop qualities that would enhance his/her executive abilities and understanding of his/her surroundings.
Current Reality
This dimension of the model allows the participant to develop an understanding of the current challenges that may reside at the individual relationship level and also at a larger institutional or higher level. Both require traits related to an understanding of the cultural and organizational challenges.
Future Reality
The leader needs to lead self or the group into the future with actions and decisions that will enhance the element of trust that the followers endow upon the leader. The futuristic element includes a certain degree of uncertainty and needs to include a measure of transparency, thus making the involvement of the stakeholders in the decision-making process necessary. Such involvement will increase the acceptance of the leader’s decisions and indicate that they are willing to create and use social capital.
Being
This dimension focuses mostly on the individual and its personal growth. It targets the development of skills that will increase the leader’s emotional intelligence, ability to change, to understand different opinions, question established patterns, communication skills and other similar traits. The above dimensions of leadership can be used at an individual level, to form and shape character and spirituality at the community and organization levels as figure 1 indicates. In other words, the current model used by CALP nurtures the development of individual sets of skills that can be used to understand how to relate to others and engage with civic functions and social networks.
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To achieve the above, the CALF Education Team exposes the fellows to leadership theory, effective communication, motivation, critical thinking, change management and emotional intelligence, among others, that contribute to improved performance and “immersion into complex social and cultural issues.” The program uses individual coaching as an important part of the experiences offered.
Social Capital
Social capital is a term that has grown in use since the 1990s (Scrivens & Smith, 2013) and today is used in a variety of disciplines including economics, education and politics. The term has been defined in a number of ways based on the discipline and perceptions. Most authors relate social capital with relationships within and between groups, while others consider the concept of social capital as the “productive value of social connections” (Scrivens & Smith, 2013). Robert Putnam (2000), James Coleman (1998) and Pierre Bourdieu (1996) have contributed significantly to the understanding of the concept of social capital theory. Each author’s view is popular and contributes “to the understanding of how social capital networks provide value, yet the type of networks and the type of value considered in their respective work differs significantly” (Scrivens & Smith, 2013, p. 12). Scrivens & Smith (2013, p. 8) identified four areas of focus that describe the term social capital, namely: “(1) personal relationships; (2) social network support; (3) civic engagement and (4) trust and cooperative norms” (Fig. 2). In the context of social capital: 1) Personal relationships can be understood as part of a personal social network which includes the people that the person knows. 2) Social support network can be understood as “a range of different kinds of assistance and advantages facilitated by people’s social ties” (Scrivens & Smith, 2013, p. 25). 3) Perez, Espinoza, Ramos, Coronado and Cortes (2010) defined civic engagement as “providing a social service, activism, tutoring and functionary work” (Perez et al., 2010, p. 245). 4) Trust is a concept difficult to define and related to the way that a person interacts with their peers, institutions and the way he/she views society. It can be described as institutional trust or trust in individuals. Cooperative norms describe the tools and means that individuals and institutions have established and follow in order to communicate and collaborate between themselves. Trust together with cooperative norms support societal functioning and cooperation for mutual socioeconomic advancement.
