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Respectfully and Confidently Engage in Difficult Conversations: A Dialogue Workshop Series for Advancement Professionals  

As an advancement professional, you engage with alumni, volunteers, donors, and colleagues from different backgrounds, lived experiences, and perspectives. At times, you may receive unsolicited or angry opinions about institutional decisions, or inquiries about national and global news or events as they unfold. These comments or questions can sometimes be polarizing and catch you off guard. For some of us, our natural tendency in these situations is to shut down, disengage, and become defensive. However, a critical requirement of the relationship cultivation process with internal and external constituents is staying present in these challenging moments and allowing the conversation to continue despite political, religious, or social differences. It is also just as critical to know when to exit these conversations safely and professionally, depending on the intensity of the situation and/or other factors.  Join us for this four-part online workshop series, where you’ll learn how to respond professionally to difficult conversations with alumni, volunteers, donors, and colleagues. In community with other Advancement professionals across the nation, you will learn simple yet powerful techniques and practices to help you to stay present in difficult dialogues. The workshop series will also give you an opportunity to practice having difficult conversations through a variety of […]

Building a Culture of Mentoring at Your Institution

Increasingly, higher ed understands the institutional benefits of mentoring to students, staff, and faculty, but creating the conditions for mentoring to flourish remains challenging. Join us for a unique in-person experience where you will learn:   Whether attending individually or as a team, you will have the opportunity to directly engage with our experts, connect with higher education professionals across the country doing similar work, and apply your learning to kickstart your work after the conference.  

Advanced Leadership Development in Higher Education

Leading in higher education is a difficult task under the best of circumstances. Shared governance, structural barriers to change, and limited discretionary funding are just a few of the many reasons why making a meaningful impact can be hard to do. But it can be done, and the current and future challenges faced by the industry demand that we have leaders who can make substantive—and not just incremental—change.   Join us for a one-of-a-kind program that will help you to lead for the impact you desire. We’ll examine your leadership at a personal level with our Five Paths to Leadership℠ Assessment, and we’ll also share strategies for building high-performing teams with the hands-on, simulated activities to equip you with the tools that you can use to align large groups around a new direction or vision. You’ll also receive integrated coaching and industry feedback from peers in attendance, to help you to further refine and improve your leadership skills. Thanks to this valuable feedback, attendees will leave the event armed with a curated action plan to help them to thrive in their own programs, and with a wider potential pool of future accountability partners from fellow attendees and network contacts to help […]

Navigating Your Career Journey: An Online Course for Women Leaders in Higher Education

This six-week online program for women leaders is designed to help you manage conditions for career growth while gaining invaluable feedback on presenting and advocating for yourself both on paper and in person. This is a unique opportunity to learn from some of the best leaders in the industry in a supportive environment alongside other women leaders.  This program is intentionally designed to start with an opportunity to reflect on your leadership strengths through completion of the Five Paths to LeadershipSM Self-Assessment and a 360-degree review with feedback from your network, so that you can discover your authentic leadership style. You will identify the skill sets needed to navigate the current and future higher ed landscape, so that you can write a compelling career narrative that captures your strengths, goals, and values. You’ll incorporate these insights into your external-facing communications—such as your CV, résumé, and LinkedIn profile. Most importantly, you’ll leave with a tangible action plan for how to grow your career and the connections that support your goals—all of which will be informed with feedback from the cohort—a network we hope you’ll leverage and support far into the future. Highlights of the program include: 

Navigating Your Career Journey: An Online Course for Women Leaders in Higher Education

This six-week online program for women leaders is designed to help you manage conditions for career growth while gaining invaluable feedback on presenting and advocating for yourself both on paper and in person. This is a unique opportunity to learn from some of the best leaders in the industry in a supportive environment alongside other women leaders.  This program is intentionally designed to start with an opportunity to reflect on your leadership strengths through completion of the Five Paths to LeadershipSM Self-Assessment and a 360-degree review with feedback from your network, so that you can discover your authentic leadership style. You will identify the skill sets needed to navigate the current and future higher ed landscape, so that you can write a compelling career narrative that captures your strengths, goals, and values. You’ll incorporate these insights into your external-facing communications—such as your CV, résumé, and LinkedIn profile. Most importantly, you’ll leave with a tangible action plan for how to grow your career and the connections that support your goals—all of which will be informed with feedback from the cohort—a network we hope you’ll leverage and support far into the future. Highlights of the program include: 

Essential Leadership Skills for Deans

Leading as an academic Dean demands a specific and often diverse skillset that requires you to inspire those above, across, and below you in the organizational structure. If that’s not complex enough, you’re doing this work in the context of frequent leadership transitions, evolving student needs, increasing competitive pressures, scarce resources, and the highest levels of burnout seen in decades. It quickly becomes clear that being a leader in today’s current higher education environment can test even the most seasoned of leaders.  Join us for this highly interactive in-person conference to learn new strategies and approaches for how to address some of the most common challenges you currently face as a Dean. Special focus will be given to creating a unit culture that makes for a great place to work, and with the help of our expert speaker panel and a network of other deans, you will have the time, space, and support to discuss how to:  Through a variety of group activities and discussions, you’ll share your perspective on how to successfully navigate your role, and you’ll also walk away with useful insights from other academic Deans, as well. 

Recognizing and Celebrating Faculty and Staff:  A Panel Conversation

Faculty and staff morale is at an all-time low across most institutions in higher education, and this puts your department or unit at risk of increasing levels of burnout, decreased productivity and, ultimately, higher turnover. One way you can start to make a difference is by fostering a work environment where praise, appreciation, and gratitude are front and center. Join a panel of academic leaders and discover tips, strategies, and new methods for how you can provide praise and recognition that is meaningful, authentic, and consistent. We recognize that the needs of faculty and staff vary across disciplines and career levels, and we know that your team is likely working in a hybrid environment, so we’ll make sure you walk away with a variety of ways for you to better celebrate the accomplishments, effort, and energy of your faculty and staff.

Feedback as a Faculty (Re)Engagement Strategy 

Both affirmative and constructive one-on-one feedback are critical to faculty talent development.  Feedback that is appropriate for the career level (assistant, associate, professor) provides clarity, direction, goal alignment and motivation, all of which are required to successfully navigate today’s higher education landscape filled with complexity and uncertainty. Feedback, when delivered effectively, can promote creativity, productivity, learning and growth, job satisfaction, and, ultimately, retention through faculty career stages. However, with quitting (both quiet and loud) so prevalent—and current faculty morale so low—providing feedback to faculty can feel high-risk. You don’t want to alienate faculty any further.    Join us online for a two-hour workshop in which we’ll practice the art of providing feedback to faculty in an effort to both develop their talent and re-engage them. We’ll begin the workshop with a short lesson on the most critical components of effective feedback (i.e., timing and consistency, as well as delivery method, mode, and tone) and how they may be influenced by generational differences. You’ll then have time with your peers to practice giving feedback using your new skills. If you’re looking to grow your skills and comfort in giving feedback, this workshop is for you! 

Innovative Strategies for Developing New Academic Programs

It is essential for leaders to understand the impact of creating new academic programs as important parts of growing enrollment, maintaining relevance in the curriculum, and differentiating institutions. Too often, proposals lack rigor, are too ambitious or expensive, and lean too far into traditions as an approach for new program development.   Learn the art and science of growing academic programs in a way that maximizes your institution’s chance for success. You will walk through a set of criteria to consider when deciding whether to move forward with a new academic program or initiative. With the help of our expert speakers, you will consider ways to start small, think creatively, and build programs organically. We will dive deep into how you can assess a potential program and its: 

Optimize Your Fundraising Efforts Through Generative Artificial Intelligence

What would you do with an extra 4 hours in your work week?  In recent years, large for-profit businesses have been using artificial intelligence to win over consumer interest, despite a highly competitive market. Given the rise of more competitor “noise” in the eyes and ears of your alumni or donors, you may have been wondering how artificial intelligence can improve or enhance your own fundraising efforts. Or perhaps you have already experimented with artificial intelligence tools but are curious to learn about additional opportunities—or maybe you’d like to discuss and address barriers that you have faced when using these kinds of programs yourself.  Whether you are new to artificial intelligence or a seasoned user, we invite you to join us online to learn the difference between predictive versus generative artificial intelligence, and how these tools can be easily incorporated into your current fundraising strategy. You will learn the added value that these tools can bring to your daily work in advancement, including how they can help to free up your time so that you can spend it in high-quality, interactive conversations, instead. This two-hour session is intentionally designed to provide both a lecture on artificial intelligence, as well as […]

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