As traditional forms of leadership have fallen by the wayside, defeated by their ineffectiveness, new forms have come to the forefront to offer more effective leadership. One of these new forms is termed ôshared leadership,ö or leadership that is distributed among members of a group. The value of shared leadership is that it benefits the group by allowing each member of the team to bring his or her own expertise to the table, resulting in the availability of much greater expertise than one leader alone could bring. A cross-functional team, for example, brings ôa diverse set of functional backgroundsö that provides a composite picture that a leader from only one functional area could not provide (Pearce & Conger, 2002, p. 2). Along with shared leadership come shared accountability, shared responsibility for getting work done, and shared work products (Sharpe & Templin, 1997, p. 50). The shared leadership concept is evidence that many heads can do a better job than one.
Using shared leadership as the premise, a project team can be created and a shared leadership plan developed to secure Federal funding grants for the non-profit industry specializing in workforce development programs. The team needs to represent as many faces of the non-profit industry, workforce development programs, and Federal funding grants as possible, to ensure that there is expertise available to cover every contingency in the effort. The team should be comprised of a combination of people whose combined experience includes:
Workforce development program funding
Shared leadership training and experience.
Within the team, members will have specific roles, but these roles do not preclude their stepping forward to take leadership of the team at points in the work where their particular expertise is needed. These team roles include the facilitator, who le
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