The Institute focuses on the leadership, board, and organizational development that enable lay leaders to effectively transform their synagogues.

• Leadership Development
• Board Development
• Synagogue Development

Leadership Development

Effective lay leaders understand and enact principles of leadership. Acquiring such knowledge and the ability to apply it requires a process of leadership development—personal growth in awareness and insight, skills, and the ability to reflect on oneself and one's practice. The Institute program emphasizes particular areas of leadership development that include the following:

• Intellectual understanding of leadership theory and concepts.
• Awareness of personal pre-dispositions, tendencies, and practices in the roles of institutional and congregational leader, based on self-assessments and feedback from others.
• Developing visions to guide leadership practices.
• Understanding the role of the lay leader, and the nature of the partnership with spiritual leaders in leading synagogues.
• Understanding the dynamics of authority, power, transference, and influence in congregational life.
• Jewish values and role models of leadership.

Board Development

Effective lay leaders also develop boards and their committees into highly functioning units whose members trust and work well with one another in often trying situations. It is difficult to build these units, particularly when they involve volunteers who vary a great deal in terms of their interests and agendas, experiences, and skills. The Institute program focuses on helping lay leaders learn the following types of insights and skills related to building effective boards:

• The theory and nature of effective boards—structures, processes, and leadership.
• Stages and key transition points in board development.
• The leader's sources of influence in creating effective boards and committees.
• Best practices of using committees, meetings, and task forces.
• Working with differences and managing conflict among lay leaders.
• Building and using lay leader coalitions wisely.
• Developing successive generations of lay leaders.

Synagogue Development

Lay leaders also work with rabbis, clergy and staff to develop their organizations as vibrant, effective entities that engage members to achieve shared visions and Jewish values. This too requires a set of insights and skills by which lay leaders mobilize individuals, groups, and organizations toward productive action. The Institute program emphasizes the following areas of synagogue development:

• Creating, clarifying, and communicating strategic visions.
• Developing collaborative relationships with rabbis, clergy and staff.
• Supporting rabbis in their work.
• Clarifying staff roles, responsibilities, boundaries and inter-relationships.
• Working with rabbis and staff to create positive organizational cultures marked by innovation, accountability, collaboration and support.
• Involving significant populations of synagogue members in activities.
• Managing change through networks of formal and informal relationships.
• Skill-building in the practical areas of organizational change and development (e.g., strategic visioning, analyzing organizational problems, achieving consensus, negotiating, managing conflict, building coalitions).