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:  

The Essentials Skills Framework 
We’ll begin our workshop by orienting around Academic Impressions’ Essential Leadership Skills for Deans models, which will serve as an organizing framework for the program.  

Understanding Your Leadership Approach: The Five Paths to Leadership® Self-Assessment 
Self-awareness is at the heart of effective leadership. We'll guide you through The Five Paths to Leadership® Self-Assessment, which allows you to understand your strengths and natural tendencies when it comes to your leadership. The assessment can be helpful in deepening self-awareness as well as in helping you adapt your style to meet the needs of others, including administrative staff, faculty, chairs and provosts.   

The Essence of Leading from the Middle  
As a Dean, you experience pressure from—and have accountability to—stakeholders in all directions: your peers, your Provost (and by extension, your institution), and the faculty and staff you lead. In this session, we’ll explore two things that often pose challenges for Deans, but that are essential to your leadership success: 1) collaborating and communicating sufficiently with your fellow Deans, and 2) managing up effectively. 

Exploring the Landscape of Conflict and Strategies for Success 
As academic leaders, Deans are often at the center of various types of conflict—whether between faculty, students, staff, or within administrative teams. We'll explore the different types of conflict Deans commonly encounter in higher education settings, including interpersonal, organizational, and strategic conflicts. Through case studies and interactive discussions, you'll gain proven strategies for managing and resolving these conflicts in a way that fosters collaboration, maintains morale, and upholds institutional values. You'll leave with practical tools to address conflict proactively, creating a more cohesive and productive academic environment.   

Spearheading Growth within your College: Money, Mindset, and Methods  
Many Deans assume their roles with a growth mandate of some kind. In this session, we’ll explore core economic principles that can be applied to support growth. We’ll pair that with an examination of the practical barriers to growth that commonly exist within our institutions, and engage in an activity to help you think through both opportunities for growth and solutions to obstacles in place that may prevent it for your College or School. 

“What’s Keeping Deans Up at Night?” Moderated Speaker Panel  
We’ll assemble our speaker team to engage in a moderated panel discussion framed around the question, “what’s keeping Deans up at night?” We'll crowdsource topics from the group ahead of time to ensure the conversation is both focused and relevant.  

Strategic Planning: Envisioning Your College’s Future  
Most higher ed leaders are aware that to successfully compete and sustain into the future, we can’t simply rely on old ways of thinking and working: we have to try new things and continue to innovate. In this session, we’ll provide you with some engaging, practical ways to engage your various constituents in strategic planning and visioning for your College’s future.   

Creating a Culture of High Performance 
Your charge as Dean is to build a productive and happy work culture. But you can’t do that alone: you need your leadership team, faculty, and staff to own their responsibility & part in shaping culture, and you need to both create and equip your leadership team to uphold the conditions that enable high performance. In this session, you’ll have the opportunity to take our High Performing Teams assessment, an instrument designed to bring awareness to existing strengths and opportunities for growth in the functioning of your current leadership team. We’ll then discuss the implications of our results for the culture at large, with an eye to identifying and workshopping existing challenges.