KEYNOTE SPEAKER:DR. GLORIA BURGESS

To read more about this year's keynote speaker, follow this link.

Collaborative Leadership: Working Better Together
(Presenter: Patricia Hughes)

In today’s challenging and complex work environments, solitary, hierarchical efforts are usually not effective. We must work together, across departments and boundaries to achieve our goals and fulfill the organization's purpose.

The session Collaborative Leadership: Working Better Together is an interactive exploration of the nature of collaboration, and provides tools for working better together. Participants will identify their collaboration style and generate a strategy for collaborating better on a challenging project.

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Ethics: Leadership with a Moral Compass
(Presenter: Susan L. Secker)

This session will explore the dimensions of ethical leadership captured in the image of a compass. Bill George, in his recent book on leadership , calls it “True North” and says:

“True North is the internal compass that guides you successfully through life. It represents who you are as a human being at your deepest level. ... When you follow your internal compass, your leadership will be authentic, and people will naturally want to associate with you.”

Discovering what your life and leadership are all about and when you are being true to yourself is the foundational first step to ethical leadership, something all too often missing today in our world.

In this session, you will be invited into an interactive process that explores the interrelationship between the following key components that are part of the journey of leadership:

• Knowing your authentic self
• Practicing your values, principles and ethical boundaries
• Building a Team
• Empowering People to Lead
• The ethical compass: keeping directed

At the conclusion of the session, we will have laid out a framework for ethical leadership, and a road map for designing it into the future. We will have begun to identify your moral compass.

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Leadership Diversity: Creating a Diversity Plan for Your Organization
(Presenter: LueRachelle Brim-Atkins)

This hands-on, interactive session is designed to strengthen your leadership in Diversity by introducing you to a variety of planning tools and techniques that will help you focus on application, skills transfer and practice in the workplace.

As a participant, you will:

• Explore the steps necessary to develop a Diversity Plan that will support Diversity efforts.
  
• Use your organization as a model to begin to develop a Diversity Action Plan that, when followed, will help the organization become a leader in valuing and managing Diversity.
  
• Receive and review Global Diversity and Inclusion Benchmarks to assess and measure progress in valuing and managing diversity and fostering inclusion.
  
• Begin an individual Action Plan as a proactive commitment to diversity.
  

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Succession Planning: The Art of Grooming Tomorrow's Leaders Today
(Presenter: Ron Morey)

Succession Planning is an essential step of preparing for the future of every organization. In essence, it symbolizes a company’s commitment to attracting and retaining the talent necessary to continuously improve through developing professional capabilities. As organizations grow, it is necessary to assure a continuing sequence of qualified people to move up to new levels of responsibility and performance. Job promotions can only be successful when people are properly trained for the additional responsibilities of taking on a new position, or one being vacated.

To effectively implement a succession plan, leaders need to consider a number of elements:

• What are the key areas which require continuity and development of the people resources within our organization?
• What are the career paths our most talented people should be following?
• Is each path customized to fit the abilities and talents of the people involved?
• How does the concept of succession planning fit into our key strategies?
• Are we concentrating our efforts in the areas where the returns will be highest?
• The obvious impact is that it is virtually impossible to successfully promote someone unless there is a trained person to take over the position being vacated.

This session is designed as a “how to” for frontline managers and supervisors to understand the basic strategies involved with developing a solid succession planning approach – one that is tailored to each individual’s needs and capabilities. During the session, participants will:

• Discover the advantages and benefits to a good succession planning approach
• Define ‘succession planning’ versus ‘replacement plan’
• Gain insight to key methodology – processes – guidelines
• Learn how to develop a back-up staff person to move into a key position
• Focus on strategies, skills and development activities for one’s self and others
• Receive a “Professional Development” planning tool to help put succession planning into action
• Discover how to select professional development activities to be aligned with the organization’s succession plans.
• Gain knowledge of planning tracks (vertical or horizontal development pathways)
• Understand the major challenges to succession planning
  

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The Leader's Role in Strengthening Organizational Self-Efficacy & Resiliency
(Presenter: Cal Crow)

Self-efficacy: Our beliefs about our ability to perform a specific task or manage a situation.
Resiliency: The ability to rebound quickly from setbacks.

Organizations with high degrees of self-efficacy and resiliency have a "can do" philosophy and bounce back quickly when faced with obstacles. Other organizations are more tentative and often let setbacks prevent them from achieving their goals. These differences are often due to the type of leadership driving the organization.

Participants in this interactive session will examine the leader's role in creating resilient, self-efficacious organizations, and learn about the characteristics of these leaders. They will leave the session--

• Being able to assess their organizations' degree of self-efficacy and resiliency.
  
• Being able to assess their individual leadership self-efficacy and resiliency.
  
• With specific strategies to increase self-efficacy and resiliency in their organizations.
  
  

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