The Stories about What Leaders Do
On May 2-3rd, 2024, in Los Angeles, CA, Leadership + Design will host its third annual Leadership Lab at the Milken Community Schooll in partnership with Milken Community School and The Buckley School.
Who Should Come: This event is designed for leaders who are brand new to leadership, who are aspiring leaders, or who find themselves in leadership roles but think they missed the training where somebody explicitly addressed the primary things leaders actually do:
Converse Intentionally: Talking to people, including feedback conversations, difficult conversations, public speaking, speaking to emotional parents
Meet Thoughtfully: Designing, facilitating, and following up on great meetings where the people attending shrug their shoulders afterwards and admit, “we got a lot done there.”
Design Clarity: Leading initiatives with no clear right answer, no clear route or direction to get there, and unclear authority, permission and ambiguous context. Creating clarity instead of seeking it.
Lead Humbly: Working to set the conditions for others to thrive, collaborate, and grow without micromanaging, telling others what to do, or overhelping and burning out because one finds themselves doing everyone else’s work.
Manage Compassionately: Including everything from trying to form deep, rich and real relationships while also championing school goals and holding those same people that you form relationships with capable.
The Challenge: Many new leaders do this work while also still retaining some of their old jobs, or without clear authority or mandate, and many new leaders are turned off to leadership after struggling in those roles in their first few years. This also happened to me, and I wish somebody had designed a learning opportunity to unlearn some of the myths of leadership that are perpetuated implicitly, myths like:
Leadership is about telling others what to do, and/or getting others to do things.
Leadership is about knowing the right answers when others do not.
Leadership is about solving problems for people.
Leadership is about passing along advice and helping others by sharing your experience and helping them avoid some of the pitfalls you experienced.
If you do a good job as a leader, you will be well-liked, you will be appreciated and people will understand the work you are doing.
You will be able to work hard and get ahead of the workload as long as you are organized, have a system, and are clever and disciplined.
Leadership is about making hard decisions that people then just carry out despite their feelings about the decision.
There are more myths, and we why leadership is not explicitly taught in schools. Leading people with the above myths in place will quickly humble you, and you might find yourself wondering and questioning your ability, your choices, and even your career path. Leading is messy, hard, and in our experience, you cannot outwork it. Whether you work 40 or 80 hours in a week, you will still have more next week, and often, if you are doing a good job, you will increase the level of discomfort in your organization.
Our Invitation: This is why we created the Leadership Lab. We wanted a space to address a fundamental question: What do leaders actually do, if they are not telling others what to do and then making them do those things?
What do leaders do if the goal is not simply compliance and control, but rather creative and collaborative solutions to adaptive challenges?
What do leaders do if they would like to influence and inspire others without forcing them through coercion or control?
How can leaders thrive, stay healthy, optimistic and focused while consistently operating in a space of ambiguity, and stress where it is normal to regularly interface with parents and colleagues that are highly emotional and unregulated?
The Lab Environment: Leadership Lab is an opportunity to practice, to learn and unlearn with others, and to make these challenges tangible through play, simulation, and case-studies. During this two day event, we present four overarching frameworks that will help guide leaders through any situation, and each framework is designed to be content and circumstantially agnostic, so that anyone can use them for the challenges they face. We’ll practice the applications of these frameworks in small cohorts so the learning is experiential.
The Unspoken X-Factor: Last, Leadership Lab is designed to build confidence and belief in one’s self. So much of learning to be a leader is about learning to embody one’s own way of being. We may start our leadership journey hoping to lead like a favorite role model, but it doesn’t take long to realize that we can’t lead like someone else. We must find our own voice, our own way of being, and it must be both deeply authentic and also skilled and practiced, and as many veteran leaders know, the value of play, laughter and the joy of learning, struggling and succeeding with others is paramount. Leadership Lab is also a chance for new leaders to build a cohort of peers to call when it is tough, when it is great, and when one needs a second set of eyes.
Please share this opportunity with new leaders, leaders you supervise or mentor, or anyone you think would be interested in this type of learning experience and help us re-imagine the messaging that new leaders receive, and hopefully provide better and more explicit support so that they can thrive and help our schools evolve and meet the changing needs of students and families.
