Veronica Brady is senior vice president for philanthropy at Gulf Coast Community Foundation and a graduate of the 2010 Class of Gulf Coast Leadership Institute

A Sarasota real estate agent, a Bradenton entrepreneur, and a Punta Gorda wealth manager walked into a meeting room. Two and a half months later, they (and 20 others from around our region) emerged as “leaders.”

In a sense, that’s what happened with the 23 graduates of our 2015 Gulf Coast Leadership Institute. They met—most for the first time—on a Friday in mid-April for their initial, eight-hour training class. Ten weeks and seven sessions later, they were all smiles as they ate celebratory cupcakes, huddled for a large-group selfie, and then stepped out into the bright sunlight with many things on their minds—and the tools to put them into action.

Of course, their accomplishment (and Gulf Coast Community Foundation’s investment) is far from that simple, or simplistic. For starters, the 23 very different participants in our latest Leadership Institute were all “leaders,” to some extent, when they entered the program. Applying to join and successfully demonstrating their potential and commitment to use what they would learn in service of their community showed us as much.

The role of GCLI, then, was to offer this collection of individuals with varied aspirations for their communities the skills, knowledge and, perhaps most importantly, new network to more effectively realize their goals. And to help one another do the same.

Louise Hill, an Instructor from the Fanning Institute for Leadership Development, leads our Gulf Coast program. Louise notes that, for some people, we talk a lot about leadership in the context of organizations and businesses, but we rarely think about leadership in the context of community. As someone who now thinks about that daily at Gulf Coast, but who first spent 25 years in the banking world, I appreciate her insight. (And full disclosure: I’m a proud grad of GCLI myself, an experience that certainly bridged my community-leadership knowledge and abilities.)

Louise has been with us from the start, when our first two leadership classes focused on the rapidly growing North Port community back in pre-recession 2006. At last month’s annual “State of the City” address in North Port, a pan of the room showed more Leadership Institute alumni than you could count on a hand. Nearly a decade on and still active in their community. Did our program make them leaders? Probably not. Did it make them better leaders able to better serve their community in collective and collaborative ways? I’d say so.

“Leadership is really about building relationships,” according to Louise. “How do you build relationships to move the community forward?” Just last week, more than a dozen members of our 2014 Leadership Institute class welcomed several 2015 alumni to their monthly get-together. The meet-up isn’t organized by Gulf Coast; it’s a product of these individuals’ collective motivation. It also honors their original commitment to use their leadership skills for the long-term benefit of the community.

The members of the group share updates and new projects, offer help and invite it from others and generally build the social capital that makes communities stronger. And then they walk out of the restaurant and head back to their respective communities, as leaders.

Veronica Brady is senior vice president for philanthropy at Gulf Coast Community Foundation and a graduate of the 2010 Class of Gulf Coast Leadership Institute