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The Agents of Change program is a two-year, project-based learning program to develop Extension Professionals’ capacity to engage in Adaptive and Transformative Leadership. Its primary goal is to develop the capacity of Extension Professionals to engage in leadership to create more diverse, equitable, inclusive and just Extension programs and community change initiatives. This manuscript describes the program and an initial evaluation and results.

Results of an evaluation of the first year of the program indicate that regular training sessions and support are appropriate for leadership development and that Extension Professionals are using the learning, awareness and tools from this program to address challenges with Adaptive and Transformative Leadership elements. Also, Extension professionals demonstrated commitment to personal growth, community engagement and understanding of their multifaceted roles as change agents.

Participants are sharing resources from the program with colleagues, leading meetings differently, questioning the status quo and pushing others to try new ways forward.

Drawing on research in the social psychology and political science literatures, this research aims to examine how political moderates perceive, and are perceived by, their co-workers with differing political ideologies in an organisational context, with a focus on the perceptions of social status.

To test the hypotheses regarding the social status perceptions of and by political moderates in the workplace, the authors conducted an online experiment in which working adults read a hypothetical workplace scenario and then assessed the social status of a co-worker based on the political ideology of that co-worker.

The results largely supported the two hypothesised asymmetries of social perceptions of and by political moderates in an organisational context. Specifically, political moderates were perceived to have higher social status by their moderate and conservative co-workers than by their liberal co-workers. In addition, political moderates perceived moderate co-workers to have higher social status than conservative ones.

This research investigates the influence of political ideology on social status perceptions in organisations by focusing on the previously underexamined political moderates. The findings illustrate the importance of political moderates, who tend to espouse a moderate level of resistance to social change, in the process of developing a functional hierarchy and balancing change and stability in organisations.