Relationally Skilled Leading: Being and Doing
The foundation of quality leadership is building relationships. For many of us, this can be a challenge. Some of us are more innately skilled communicators than others, and even the best among us can find refinements to improve our practice and results for students.
Facilitated by expert leadership coaches Kendall Zoller, Chad Dumas, and Kathy Gross, this eight-week online course supports leaders and aspiring leaders to increase their credibility and strengthen relationships as they lead skillfully. Participants will examine both internal mindsets and external skills, and will practice and refine communicative intelligence strategies they will use in one-on-one, small group, and large group settings.
Designed on two tracks, being and doing, this highly interactive series of sessions will build your capacity to do both by focusing on five primary content areas: 1) Presenter mindsets, 2) Communicative intelligence, 3) Relationship building skills, 4) Leadership and personal development, and 5) Self-actualization.
Course outcomes
Participants in this course will be able to:
- Examine and demonstrate how relationship building contributes to a leaders’ credibility and the creation of a culture of learning.
- Assess their own personal communicative intelligence growth needs and development to maximize learning.
- Create and implement a personal learning plan to apply mindsets and strategies for successful relationship building.
- Demonstrate, examine, and refine effective communication skills, including:
- Using communicative intelligence to establish credibility and build rapport;
- Responding to conflict/resistance while honoring relationships;
- Crafting an opening to set a frame for participants;
- Developing technical skills for choosing a mindset to ensure a leader’s flexibility and ability to respond to groups;
- Practicing and applying skills to a variety of settings (one-on-one, small group, and large group) to ensure effectiveness.
- Practice communication and relationship-building skills in a "safe space" during sessions with guidance from facilitators, then implement them in your leadership role.
Who is this for?
This course is for any leader or aspiring leader who wants to strengthen their communication skills and build their capacity to lead others. Strategies in the course will apply to principals, assistant principals, leadership teams, central office personnel, department heads, higher education leaders, regional service agency personnel, and instructional coaches.
Course Facilitators
Chad Dumas is an international educational consultant, presenter, and award-winning researcher whose primary focus is collaborating to develop capacity for continuous improvement. With over two decades of successful leadership experience, Chad has led significant improvements for both students and staff. He shares his research and knowledge in his books, Let’s Put the C in PLC (2020, Next Learning Solutions Press), and An Action Guide to Put the C in PLC (2021, Next Learning Solutions Press), and consulting that includes research, stories, hands-on tools, useful knowledge, and practical skills. He served a variety of school districts as a teacher, principal, central office administrator, professional developer and consultant.
Kathy Gross serves as a consultant for Learning Forward and is a Training Associate of Cognitive CoachingSM. Throughout her career her work has focused on empowering teachers and leaders. During her 28 years of service in Springfield (MO) Public Schools, she served as Director of Professional Learning, Coordinator of Teacher and Leader Development, coach to teachers new to the career, Principal and Assistant Principal, and teacher. She serves as an Education Ambassador for the non-profit I Pour Life, and is on the Board of Directors for Kagan Charitable Foundation. Kathy graduated from the Learning Forward Academy in 2013.
Kendall Zoller is an author, educator, researcher, and global consultant. His work in communicative intelligence, presentation and facilitation skills, storytelling, leadership, and adaptive schools has taken him to 23 countries in person and 45 countries virtually, and hundreds of schools and districts. He is co-author of HeartSpace (2021, Word & Deed Publishing), Voices Leading From the Ecotone (2019, Word & Deed Publishing) and The Choreography of Presenting: The 7 Essential Abilities of Effective Presenters (2010, Corwin Press). Kendall is president of Sierra Training Associates and graduate faculty at California State University, Dominguez Hills. He has authored over four dozen reviewed book chapters and journal articles on topics of communication, community, and leadership for educators and corporations.