Leadership Functions.
Effective network leadership comprises several crucial functions. A network leader, or leadership team, must possess the skills, and have sufficient time allocated, to perform all of these functions well:

• Defining and adapting the network’s objectives, in collaboration with its members and sponsor(s);
• Energizing members around the network’s objectives, and building community among them;
• Establishing, in collaboration with members, behavioral norms related to member participation and contribution, orientation to results, and constructive peer-critique;
• Assessing the needs of network members, and ensuring that network activities are well-designed and facilitated to meet these needs (see Standard 4);
• Mobilizing resources, including funding and expertise external to the network (see Standard 7);
• Ensuring that network products or outputs are documented and distributed, widely and effectively; and
• Measuring the network’s effectiveness and results (see Standard 5).

Leadership Skills. 
The leadership functions listed above require both content and process expertise.  Designing an effective network activity, for example a workshop, requires process design and facilitation skills as well as knowledge of the content to be addressed.  Process design and facilitation expertise is necessary to select and design the specific decision-making or learning methods to be used.  These choices, however, cannot be made independent of content.  The number and structure of steps required in each workshop session, for example, and the time necessary to execute them, pivot on content.

It is not common to find the requisite content and process expertise embodied in one individual.  Thus, it might be necessary to assemble a leadership team of two or more individuals who collectively embody the skills required for effective network leadership.

Process expertise is required on a more continual basis than is content expertise, and the content expertise required for network leadership is often general.  As implied by the list of functions above, the greater part of network leadership is procedural.  Members often bring to a network much of the content expertise required to meet its objectives.  The expertise embodied in network leader(s) and members can be augmented as needed by engaging specialists.   

Level of Effort. 
The level of effort required to perform the leadership role effectively varies with the number of network members and the intensity of network activity (e.g. frequency of network meetings, volume of network product, and extent of capacity-building activities that are to be carried out between meetings).  Expect to allocate a minimum of 0.30 FTE to network leadership, and as much as 2 FTE.