33 Great Ideas For Women In Leadership Positions

I attended a great session today at the NAIS Conference (National Association of Independent Schools) titled: Engendering Leadership: How Independent Schools Support Successful Female Leaders. 

Thank you to Lindsay Koss, Pearl Kane, Lucy Goldstein, Meera Ratnesar, Frances Fondren, Karen Whitaker and Katie Arjona for all of your sage advice!

Here is what I learned:

Leadership is a behavior
1. Leadership is about doing not about the title
2. If your passions don’t align with your institution you have to listen to that and move to a place that fits.
3. You need to know the stereotypes that are attached to you (whatever they may be) - use them for your benefit or debunk them. 
4. Be frank and clear in your communication even at the risk of not being perceived as nice.
5. Develop a capacity for solitude - as you move up you have a smaller peer group, develop your capacity to solve things alone or with a smaller group of people.
6. Retain your spirit of joy - It can be a joyful position. Need resiliency. Important you know how to bounce back and find the place of joy again. 

Developing yourself
7. Presenting at a conference as a way to develop yourself
8. Rent feedback before you own it - look at the reason for the feedback and who is giving it - before you own it.
9. Be aware of your weaknesses - find people who can help you in those areas

Developing others
10. Modeling the way - you are modeling how to be a leader
11. Encourage leadership in each other and in your students
12. Classroom teaching is great training for leadership
13. Cultivate other people in your school
14. New teacher mentoring is an opportunity to build leaders
15. Listen and allow people to tell you their stories
16. Open yourself up to the people around you
17. Develop a protocol for everyone to have a way to think about their career arc - where would you like to be in 5 years - express aspirations and opportunities for the school to help along the way

Blending work and life
18. Work brings joy - don’t apologize or be a martyr
19. Can’t build walls up between work and life
20. Spend less time worrying about the overlap
21Spend more time making sure both are bringing you joy
22. Model as a leader what it looks like to be off line - 
23. Eat a piece of chocolate and go for a run - what are your ways to indulge yourself
24. Embrace the glamour of being in a leadership position
25. Cultivate your mentors and your village
26. Times that are really hard can give you a lot to laugh about 

Taking initiative
27. You don't have to know everything in advance
28. Finance knowledge is attainable - 
29. Guidestar - Find out what salaries are and ask for money.
30. Don’t be afraid to talk about your value to the institution
31. Look in the mirror and say no to yourself 10 times - the mirror doesn’t break. Don’t back down.
32. If you don’t get the raise ask for feedback as to why
33. Negotiate for PD funds, for comp time not only for money

Passion Driven Professional Development - Teachers Unplugged at NAISAC14

This morning I helped facilitate our second (annual?) Teachers Unplugged session at the NAIS conference. This is an Edcamp style unconference that allows the participants who show up to define the conversations that they want to have. Among a sea of stand and deliver presentations, Teachers Unplugged is a chance to connect with other independent educators attending the conference and discuss issues that we are all grappling with.

This is something you can run inside your own school at a faculty meeting with teachers or in a classroom with students. A number of participants asked me to list out the steps so that they could try it at home, so here they are.

I hope this is helpful. I welcome your comments, suggestions, or questions!

Set Up:

• Easels with chart paper or white boards or a google form set up for people to propose topics.
• 3-5 Circles of chairs or tables set up for different discussions

Procedure

• Participants arrive and write down topics that they are interested in discussing.
• Participants also vote for the topics that they are most interested in (the ones they wrote down and the ones others wrote down)
• Explain the "rules" of an unconference.
• Who ever shows up is meant to be there
• If no one comes to your discussion, go to another one
• The law of two feet - if the discussion isn't what you thought it was going to be, go to another one.
• One organizer/facilitator runs an icebreaker that allows participants to introduce themselves to eachother
• While the icebreaker is going on, the other organizer(s) find the most popular topics and assign them to different tables.
• Participants choose the discussion circles in which they want to participate.
• Participants discuss the topics for about 20 minutes and then (if there is time), they move to another circle (or stay where they are if they want to continue the conversation).

Wrap Up

• Ask participants to share with the entire group something they learned.

On my way to NAISAC12 and edcampIS...

if the snow doesn't stop me. This would be the one storm of the entire winter, on the day I am flying to Seattle for two great conferences, the National Association of Independent Schools Annual Conference (NAISAC12) and the first Independent School edcamp (edcampIS). I'm looking forward to both, and hoping I get there tonight.

The theme of this year's NAISAC12 is "Innovation." That seems to be the buzz word of the year. I really like their sub-title: "imagine, invent, inspire, dream." Those are great verbs and I'm hoping to do all 4 out in Seattle.

Here are some of the sessions I'm excited about:

• Disruptive Innovations: Lessons Learned from Mobile Learning Devices
• How to Move Tradional Faculty Members to Innovation Using Their Strengths
• Re-thinking Professional Development: Inspiring Meaningful Teacher Growth
• Innovative Schools, Innovative Students
• You Say Tomato, I say Tomahto: Just What Does Tech-Saavy Mean?
• Measuring What We Value: 21st Century Assessment Tools

If nothing else the titles are great!

And then I head to the much anticipated (by me) edcampIS, a brain-child of mine last year, that is finally coming to fruition.  It has been amazing to me to organize this conference from 3,000 miles away. It would not be happening if hadn’t been for Ben Lee and The Northwest School’s generous donation of their space, and local orgainzers, Jac de Haan, Anthony McGrann and Greg Bamford who have done all of the serious legwork on the ground in Seattle. I can't believe I have never met Jac or Greg in person. I feel like I know them so well!

I can't tell you what sessions I will attend at edcampIS, because they don't exist yet! That is one of the best parts about un-conferences, the spontaneous nature of the experience. Because we post our sessions on the day of the event, we have the opportunity to hear from people who might not have presented or been accepted to present at a typical conference (like me, who's NAISAC proposal was denied).  I'm really looking forward to seeing what unfolds.

I just hope the snow holds off for little while longer!

NAIS Unconference Next Year?

Wordle from EBCEast Unconference

As I was following the #NAISAC11 Tweets last night I had an idea...

What if we organize an unconference before the main NAIS conference next year? I organize Edubloggercon East before the Building Learning Communities conference in Boston every summer and Steve Hargadon organizes one before the ISTE conference every year. The NYAIS folks throw a great unconference at NEIT every year. I'm helping to organize Edcamp Boston this spring.  An NAIS unconference seems like a logical next step.

We could call it ISEDCamp, IndyCamp, UnNAIS, ISCamp...

What we need...

The biggest requirement is space. ISTE and BLC both donate space the day before their conference starts. Would NAIS do that? Ideally we would need wifi, projectors, a large meeting space and some breakout rooms. Does anyone know anyone or know someone who knows someone? Could we use a local school in Seattle near NAIS next year?

I am not at NAIS this year. If you are reading this and you are there talk it up a bit and see what people think. If we can do it, I'll definitely find my way to NAISac12 to help organize.