• Three Day Residential Session
• The Next Ten Months­Faculty and Peer Coaches
• Final Residential

Three Day Residential Session

PEER is a year-long program that involves residential sessions, peer coaching, and coaching by Eitzah Center faculty. The Institute commences with a three-day residential session in which rabbis are exposed to the principles of leadership generally (through presentations, case discussions, and dialogue) and given structured opportunities to learn about themselves as spiritual and organizational leaders (through self-assessments, role-plays, and interactive exercises). Participants are exposed to the various leadership challenges they face in the real world of synagogue life. For example: working more effectively with lay leaders, building a staff team, balancing work and family, holding others accountable, working with an assistant, associate, or potential successor, being a religious institution that is business-like without becoming a "business", or transforming conflict in the synagogue into productive behavior. Rabbis leave with a set of insights, tools, competencies, and behaviors that will enable them to effectively meet those challenges. Rabbis also develop an action plan to help them focus on one particular leadership challenge that they have identified and discussed with faculty and peers during the course of this first session.

The Next Ten Months­Faculty and Peer Coaches

Over the course of the next ten months, participating rabbis work on the leadership challenges they face with two primary sources of support for their efforts. First, Eitzah Center faculty members provide individual coaching. Faculty members help rabbis diagnose developing situations in their synagogues, offer support and guidance, and continue the process of developing their capacities to effectively lead complex organizations. Second, each rabbi is matched with a peer coach - a fellow PEER member from a different geographical area. who gives and receives support throughout the program. PEER members remain in steady contact for the purpose of providing support for individual work on particular leadership challenges.

Final Residential

PEER concludes with a final three-day residential session in which participants re-examine their strengths and weaknesses as institutional and spiritual leaders, based on feedback from others, self-reflection, and an analysis of their efforts on their particular leadership challenges. Participating rabbis leave PEER with a clear sense of the choices that they make, and need to make, to be effective leaders, and with the skills and capacities to enact their choices.