This 4 day workshop was an invaluable opportunity to collaborate with over 25 female educators from across the country around 3 themes: Storytelling and Personal Narratives, Signature Leadership Presence, and Futurist Thinking and Design.
We focused on learning and practicing skills in these three areas and established a risk-taking, safe environment to do so very quickly under the guidance of 4 excellent educational leader facilitators. L & D also brought in area leaders with a strong signature presence to provide a variety of examples and models for what this means as we focused on identifying and amplifying our own signature presence through various experiences. The 5 components of signature presence for you to consider in self reflection are:
Context (role, environment, audience purpose), Communication Style (voice, posture, language, attitude), Capability & Credibility (research, training, experience), Confidence & Self-Awareness ( self-belief/doubt/hatred/respect), and Centered & Present Mindfulness (alive and connected to trust the process). As you consider these components of your signature leadership presence in a variety of situations, both past and future, it's a chance to focus on what helps you be most authentic, influential, and connected as a leader.
A big part of this workshop was focusing on the stories that define us; specificially the Moments (events, people, places, milestones), Messages (throughlines informing who we believe we are, and what's Mutual (the collective experience and messages currently being told about women, society, workforce, families, and leadership). A book that centered this conversation was Cassandra Speaks, by Elizabeth Lesser which I would highly recommend. We did some storytelling in creative ways such as creating a book cover about our story and doing a 60 second 'campfire' story impromptu to a word chosen from a wall of words. Both were thought-provoking and fun in exploring our own stories and thinking about how to tell them.
The group work during this workshop was as powerful as the self-reflective and individual worktime. We did a lot of work around futurist thinking and signal hunting is a great concept I feel can be a part of a daily futurist thinking mindset. We were given a scenario to present to regarding a school situation in the year 2033 and our group embraced considering all the options and the impact on private schools if all colleges went to a lottery system of acceptance. The time constraints on this were tight and this forced some good lessons for me in that I wasn't able to 'prepare' for the presentation in the normal ways, had to rely on the group and myself to present in a dynamic and 'in real time' way and trust the conversations and ideas of the group to result in a cohesive, effective presentation - and it ended up being great!
I would recommend this workshop (and any Leadership and Design workshop) to any educator looking to learn more about themselves, the characteristics of effective leadership, and experience collaborative work with other educators from across the country. All faculty and staff at Burke's have an L & Doers Unite membership which is a great place to start accessing their resources and networking. Let me know if you'd like to be added to our roster of active members in this group.