More details about the timing of the days can be found by clicking Learn More and Register, but session descriptions of the two days are below:  

Embracing Your Leadership: The Department Chair’s Balancing Acts
Leadership requires the constant evaluation of a series of trade-offs. For instance, you make ask yourself questions like: “Do I lead as a faculty member or as a department head?” “Do I focus on the immediate or the long-term?” or “Am I a colleague or a supervisor?” This session introduces you to the “balancing act” or “seesaw” as a framing device that will help you navigate these inherent trade-offs by orienting your leadership choices and helping you customize your choices to the situation, opportunity, and problem at hand.

Enhancing Your Leadership Effectiveness: The Five Paths to Leadership℠ Self-Assessment
Self-awareness lies at the heart of effective leadership. To deepen your understanding of your strengths, areas for improvement, and leadership style, you’ll complete the Five Paths to Leadership℠ Self-Assessment before the conference. We’ll review your results at the event to help you understand how to adapt your leadership approach to different situations and people, enhancing your effectiveness as a leader.

Revitalizing Academic Passion: Strategies for Combating Burnout and Enhancing Professional Fulfillment
Faculty burnout, disengagement, and other well-being challenges are part of the higher ed landscape. In this session, you’ll explore strategies and tools to meet these challenges and foster a supportive and thriving academic environment.

Designing Your Department’s Culture: An Inclusive Approach to Creating a Healthy Workplace
A healthy academic department is defined by inclusive communication, transparent decision making, and the equitable sharing of responsibilities and rewards. As department chair, you are responsible for building this culture but cannot do it without the full participation of your faculty and staff. With rising levels of burnout and the growing operational challenges of a hybrid workplace, developing a healthy culture can feel daunting. This workshop models an approach that you can take back and emulate with your own faculty and staff to engage them in the important work of designing your departmental culture.

Designing Effective Meetings: Applying the Five Paths to Leadership℠ Self-Assessment
Building on day one’s discussions related to designing a healthy department culture and combating burnout, we’ll continue the conversation and explore how the Five Paths to Leadership℠ Self-Assessment can inform and inspire how you design, structure, and lead effective department meetings.

Navigating High-Stakes Conversations to Drive Positive Outcomes
During this session, we’ll begin to address conflict and difficult conversations. Through exploring emotional intelligence and your own identity, you’ll learn how you can approach high-stakes conversations with your faculty and staff with confidence. You’ll have time to prep for and practice an upcoming high-stakes conversation you know you need to have.

Navigating Challenging Conversations: Communicating Critical Feedback
Building upon the previous session, we’ll explore the strategies you can use to communicate critical feedback to faculty and staff. In this session, you’ll be introduced to a series of talking points that can help you initiate uncomfortable conversations with your subordinates, peers, and superiors. You’ll also learn how “radical candor” can help you challenge behavior while demonstrating that you care about the other person. To apply these strategies, you’ll practice these skills in role play.

Bringing It All Together: Take Aways and Next Steps
We’ll close our time together with a reflective activity designed to recap your key insights. You’ll identify how you can apply these insights to your own leadership choices when you return to campus.