Cross-site Team Profile
Center for Global Education
Name of Cross-site Team: Leadership Council
Purpose: The Leadership Council (LC) is a cross-site policy and decision-making body within CGE that is
responsible for providing leadership in the areas of budget oversight, salaries, policy making, strategic planning, and
personnel decisions.
Primary Purpose(s) of the Team:
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To coordinate cross-site administrative planning, decisions and policy.
Ensuring that all policy and decisions are in line with the CGE mission
To set new policies in response to changing organizational needs and priorities.
To plan, approve and provide oversight for the annual budget.
To make decisions where designated by policy (i.e. approval of staff study leave)
To oversee and ensure implementation of CGE’s portion of the strategic plan.
Membership definition: The Leadership Council (LC) is composed of 5 members: 1) Assistant Vice
President for International Programs/CGE Director, 2) CGE Associate Director, 3) Mexico site director,
4) Namibia site director, 5) one of the site directors from the Central America regional team.
Current Members: (5)
Ann Lutterman-Aguilar, Mexico Site Director and Academic Director
Cesar Acevedo, Central America Site Director
Urbanus Dax, Namibia/South Africa Site Director
Orv Gingerich, Assistant Vice President/CGE director
Regina McGoff, Associate Director of CGE
**Note from August 2005 LC minutes regarding membership on the LC:
LC will consider the idea that there be an at-large member of LC who is not already in a leadership
position, to be voted on for a 1-year term. That proposal and others will be addressed after a CGE-wide
assessment of decision-making has been made.
Why the team was formed (background/history):
The Leadership Council (LC) was formed in 1999 to create a more effective leadership model. Prior to
the formation of LC, there was a 12-member Team Leaders Committee. Team Leaders included the
coordinators of each work area within the Minneapolis site, as well as the site director in Namibia, the
two co-directors in Central America, and the two co-directors in Mexico. As a result, the Team Leaders
Committee was too large to work effectively, and since most of the Team Leaders were in Minneapolis,
most of the meetings were held there. On occasions, the Team Leaders in Minneapolis placed conference
calls with the “Team Leaders” in the sites, and then the phone calls included 12 or more people.
As a result, Team Leaders outside the U.S. felt that they were outnumbered and did not have enough say
in the decision-making. In addition, there were no written documents discussing the scope or power of
the Team Leaders in CGE-decision-making. As a result, when the founding director of CGE retired, the
new director decided to make many important decisions independently of the Team Leaders Committee.
This led to numerous conflicts and crises in decision-making.
After the resignation of that director, the Team Leaders concluded that the former decision-making body
had been inadequate and decided to create a new Leadership Council (LC) that would be made up of only
5 members: the associate director of the Minneapolis office, one director of each site or region (Central
America, Mexico, and Namibia), and the Associate Dean for International Programs/CGE Director, which
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was a new position created to replace the former CGE Director position. (Note: the name “Leadership
Council” was a mutation of the old name “Team Leaders.”)
The goal of the new LC was to decentralize decision-making, which had previously been almost
exclusively based in Minneapolis, and to increase the decision-making capacity of site-directors outside
of Minneapolis by including them in policy making, program planning, budget oversight, strategic
planning, and personnel decisions. The new LC was created prior to the hiring of the new Associate Dean
and documents were written regarding the nature of LC to try to ensure that the College would recognize
the decision-making authority of the LC rather than making decisions about CGE without consulting or
collaborating with the leadership within CGE.
Meeting Schedule/Frequency:
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Meets monthly or as needed via international phone conference.
Meets in person biannually in conjunction with all staff conference and other times as opportunity
presents.
Team rules:
 Facilitating meetings and recording minutes is rotated among the members.
 Associate director in conjunction with the facilitator will solicit agenda from members one week
before a meeting and send out a proposed agenda at least 3 days in advance of a meeting with
supportive documents (documents sent out earlier should be resent) . Agenda can be added at the
3 day notice. Agendas will state what the needed outcome/goal of each item is so that we can
take action.
 Will only meet when all members present
 Minutes will be sent out to all CGE staff, although confidential information may be edited or
removed
 Site representatives are responsible for soliciting information and input from site staff and
communicating decisions to them, as needed.
 Dates will be set several months in advance, as much as possible, prioritizing dates that staff
without back up can attend. Alternative meeting dates will also be identified.
 The facilitator will ensure that everyone responds to specific proposals, going alphabetically in
terms of responses if needed.
 At the end of our meetings, 2 things will be evaluated: 1) if everyone participated or if some
dominated, and 2) if we accomplished what we needed to accomplish. We will then set our
agenda for the next meeting .
Decision making process:
All decisions are made by consensus which may require an extended decision making process on a
particular issue. Discussion and deliberation is extended until a decision is reached.
Who are the stakeholders?
CGE staff, Augsburg College, host communities, participants
What reporting mechanisms are operative?
Minutes will be sent out to all CGE staff, although confidential information may be edited or removed
LC Authority and responsibility (parameters for decision-making):
Reports administratively through the Associate Dean to the Vice-President and Dean of the College
within the Division of Academic Affairs. The Leadership Council is the final authority and decisionmaker for all CGE-wide policy, program, and operations (within parameters of the college) including:
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1. Approves and monitors annual operating budget – Directive within the parameters of the
college’s budget
2. Approves site capital expenditures over US$5,000 – directive with college approval as needed
3. Approves variations in site salaries that are US$1000 over budget and/or FTE will increase more
than .5 FTE – directive with college approval as needed
4. Approves CGE salary policies and monitor CGE salaries and in accordance with CGE policies
and in conjunction with Augsburg HR policies - directive
5. Approves new site and/or program expansion – directive (with participative involvement from
either ITS or SPA)
6. Approves requests for extra professional development funds, study leaves, and site staff
exchanges - directive
7. Develops and approves CGE wide policies - directive
8. Approves and monitor OIP/CGE strategic plan – participative with OIP director’s approval
9. Monitors overall risk management practices and decisions, making recommendation and
decisions as necessary – consultative
10. Appoints or dissolves CGE cross-site teams as needed – consultative
11. Oversight of human resources management for CGE staff – directive within Augsburg Human
Resources policies
12. Update or review CGE mission statement – consultative
13. Final arbiter if question about program fitting CGE mission – directive
14. Reviews business plans annually with approval for specific items given by the relevant cross-site
teams (ie, APA, marketing). Reviews business plan with regard to: 1) fit with mission, 2)
financial sustainability, and 3) impact on other sites.
Site director’s authority and responsibility of (parameters for decision-making):
Budget
 Propose an annual budget that achieves at least 25-30% return to overhead or provide a clear rationale
for why that’s not the case - directive
 Decisions related to expenses within approved annual budgets (can move expenses among categories
if overall expenses don’t increase) – delegative unless LC decides otherwise due to need to cut
expenses mid-year due to lower revenue projections than expected
 Decisions related to extra site revenue up to $5000 over budget; otherwise LC determines how to best
allocate organizationally
Personnel
 Decisions on support staff hires/compensation within the site’s approved annual operating budget delegative
 Increase of support staff compensation as long as they don’t exceed a total of US$1000 over
approved budget and/or FTE will increase more than .5 FTE – participative
 Change in policy related to support staff benefits – participative?
Facilities
 Decisions on the layout and best use of facilities – delegative (see above if budget implications)
 Purchase of new property - participative
Program
 How to best administer and implement programs based on approved CGE-wide guidelines
 Assessment of safety/security issues at site
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Development and implementation of business plans – participative with other teams that may need to
approve ideas
Further work may need to be done on the following
Other questions to be addressed:
How will we know when we have done a good job or when we have achieved the expected results?
What is LC’s relationship to business plans?
What LC oversight is there if a site isn’t consistently able to make it’s 25-30% return to overhead
Team Empowerment Chart – Continuum
Management Role………………………………………………….Team’s Role
I Directive
Who decides:
Management (LC)
decides, then informs
team
Appropriate if:
Information is
sensitive, team lacks
skill or experience, or
accountability can’t
be shared
Effect:
Management control
and accountability
Dependency:
Team is dependent
Most
5%
II Consultative
III Participative
IV Delegative
Management (LC)
decides after
consulting team
Team recommends
and acts after
receiving approval
Team decides and acts
(has pre-approval)
Management has
information and can’t
share accountability,
but wishes input and
ideas from team
Team’s ideas and
active participation
are desired, but risk is
high or team still
lacks experience to go
it alone
Team has needed
skills and can assume
full accountability for
outcomes
Management benefits
from staff ideas
Team takes initiative
and implements
outcomes
Team takes
responsibility
Team is more
involved
Effective
10%
Team and leaders are
interdependent
distribution
25%
Team is independent
60%
Note: Once a team has been together for some time and established a proven track record, it needs to be able to
make most (ie, 60%) of its decisions at level IV. If this doesn’t happen and the team needs to get approval for
everything, then teamwork gets bogged down, innovations won’t take place, and the team will be hampered in
responding quickly to customer needs.
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Approved - March 2007
Updated – July 2008
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