Student Leadership Library

The ideal equipper is a person who can impart the vision of the work, evaluate the potential leader, give them the tools they need, and then help them along the way at the beginning of their journey. Consider 'mattering v. marginalizing' and a new paradigm for serving.

Learn about essential communication and workplace skills for moving from conflict to cooperation. Strategize and review best practices.

Learn more about facilitating, or managing, conflict as a mechanism for individual and collective learning and change. Become familiar with conflict coaching, facilitated dialogue, mediation, and restorative justice.

TED describes this TEDTalk:

"Trust is the foundation for everything we do. But what do we do when it's broken? In an eye-opening talk, Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei gives a crash course in trust: how to build it, maintain it and rebuild it -- something she worked on during a recent stint at Uber. 'If we can learn to trust one another more, we can have unprecedented human progress,' Frei says."

NPR describes this TED Radio Hour episode:

"Admitting we're wrong is painful—even seen as a sign of weakness. But what if we take a more flexible approach? This hour: how rethinking ideas can be good for our brains and our relationships."

Meetings can be an extremely efficient way to get things done quickly, to support building a team environment, and to enable collaboration among key people to produce a better outcome than possible working independently.

1. Clearly define the objectives for yourself or the group if you are the person responsible for the meeting. To help you think through your objectives, ask yourself some key questions.
2. Learn how to get work done in meetings. By rethinking and changing the culture of meetings, they can move from being energy-sapping to energizing environments.

Parliamentary procedure is the body of rules, ethics and customs governing meetings and other operations of clubs, organizations, legislative bodies and other deliberative assemblies. Learn more about Robert's Rules and how to fully engage during your meetings.

1. Setting SMART goals means you can clarify your ideas, focus your efforts, use your time and resources productively, and increase your chances of achieving what you want in life.
2. To execute strategy (FAST), leaders must set ambitious targets, translate them into specific metrics and milestones, make them transparent throughout the organization, and discuss progress frequently.

1. Develop your own system by applying some key steps to increase your productivity. From keeping to a routine to simplifying your project list, consider how you identify your most important tasks.
2. Habits are powerful forces in our lives. They determine our level of effectiveness or ineffectiveness. Consider an approach to being effective in attaining goals by aligning oneself with character ethic principles that are universal and timeless.

Most of us have a support system by default. Certain people have always been around and they automatically become the ones that we talk to. But, what if we put as much thought toward selecting our personal board as we would in selecting a corporate board?

1. We must work collaboratively to utilize the collective talents of our campus stakeholders. And learning to build high performing teams is one of the most effective ways we can meet the many challenges that confront us.
2. What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team - New research reveals surprising truths about why some work groups thrive and others falter.

A list of key articles on leadership, curated by Patrick Sanaghan & Amit Mrig, from Academic Impressions.

This brief guide provides an overview of the student learning outcomes (SLO) assessment cycle and presents a framework to use in order to improve student learning through evidence-based assessment and analysis. All who interact with students and desire to foster student learning can benefit from the methods and practices presented in this booklet.

Deborah S. Willis gives advice for how to become a diversity, equity and inclusion leader.

1. Interpersonal practices to support inclusion require both a commitment to engage with another who may see the world in a way different from one’s own, and the capacity to do so. This paper discusses three frameworks that support interpersonal practices for inclusion—empathy, emotional and social intelligence, and mindfulness.
2. How does a leader engage others to create meaning and facilitate action? What are some methods that leaders can use to accomplish this task? How can leaders evaluate and develop skills in engagement and mean-making? One approach that has been used effectively in the field of therapy and organizational development comes from communication theory.

While highlighting the Obama Administration’s efforts to promote diversity in institutions of higher education, this report shows the continuing educational inequities and opportunity gaps in accessing and completing a quality postsecondary education.

Making Excellence Inclusive is AAC&U’s guiding principle for access, student success, and high-quality learning. It is designed to help colleges and universities integrate diversity, equity, and educational quality efforts into their missions and institutional operations.

Getting involved in social justice can be overwhelming. There are so many causes you can get behind, varieties of movements, tricky vocabulary words and big names to know — and that can make it difficult to know where to start.

There are important intersections between social justice work and sanctuary, with youth expressing a desire to impact change from protected and affirming spaces that are liberating and allow them to take risks.

Activist leaders and scholars communicate a clear message of institutional values of diversity, equity, and inclusion to constituents on and off campus. They also hold themselves and others accountable for being culturally proficient and deliver culturally relevant and responsive curriculum and programming to the campus and surrounding communities.

TED describes this TEDTalk:

"There's a right way and wrong way to do empathy, says author and scholar Chezare A. Warren. So how do we get it right? He unpacks the source of false empathy and explains the key shift in perspective we need to build healthy relationships and truly support others."

The key to genuine shared governance is broad and unending communication. When various groups of people are kept in the loop and understand what developments are occurring within the college, and when they are invited to participate as true partners, the institution prospers.

1. Based on 'Seven Habits' by Stephen Covey, this concept is crucial to anyone wishing to have greater impact on their world. No matter who you are or where you are located in your system, you have a circle of influence.
2. Learn about the five influencing styles, how to build influence, and how to be assertive.

Find linked a worksheet to help you understand your rights as a student to speak freely on campus. This includes not only federal and state law, but also College policy.

Understanding that we have a collective responsibility to respect the dignity of others, to acknowledge the right to express differing opinions, and to defend free expression on campus, the College expects us to adhere to the protections, expectations, and general guidelines set forth by the policy.

Please review our shared commitment, as articulated in the Occidental College Right to Dissent and Demonstration Policy,

Any student organized event not registered with SLICE is considered unauthorized by the College. This pertains to any and all student groups, whether they are an officially recognized club or not.

To ensure compliance with College expectations, you must schedule a preliminary meeting with the SLICE Director to secure space use approval on campus. After an initial review of the demonstration proposal and intended outcomes, the Director will set subsequent event planning sessions during which the demonstration organizers will review any relevant policies and be connected with the appropriate resources on campus. Additional considerations would include, but not limited to:

• Proposed event location(s)
• Event time and duration
• Estimated attendance of Occidental College students, faculty, and staff
• Possibility of and coordination of off-campus attendees including invites to associated clubs, organizations, and media outlets
• Mutual understanding of expectations, rights, and responsibilities, including staying within the designated areas for the demonstration
• Responsibility for behavior of organization’s members and off-campus invited guests
• Virtual and remote components that include use of social media

Occidental College support staff will be present at demonstrations to ensure that organizers' rights are protected, regular College operations and activities are able to continue, and that the safety of the community is not compromised. The SLICE Director (or Dean of Students designee), with the support of Campus Safety and the Office of Risk Management, will serve as a neutral facilitator, in order to maintain a safe environment for all Occidental College community members and stakeholders.

This paper proposes a new, identity-based model of leader development that focuses attention on the key transitions that shape leaders' careers, specifying processes and moderating conditions for identity transformation. Implications for designing experiences and training that take identity processes into account are drawn.

In developing collective leadership identities, processes that involve participants in engaging across boundaries (functional, hierarchical, geographical) are recommended.

Helping people make identity transitions—allowing them to shed outdated identities that hinder change and creating opportunities for them to practice (and make mistakes with) new identities is a key component of leadership development.

"Even after writing eleven books and winning several awards, Maya Angelou couldn't escape the doubt that she hadn't earned her accomplishments. This feeling of fraudulence is extremely common. Why can't so many of us shake feelings that our ideas and skills aren't worthy of others' attention? Elizabeth Cox describes the psychology behind the imposter syndrome, and what you can do to combat it. [TED-Ed Animation by Sharon Coleman]."

The advantages of student leadership experience in the workforce. Discover the benefits and development areas of student leadership and how they relate to employability.

As companies around the globe make adjustments to prioritize the health and safety of their employees and communities amid coronavirus, many talent acquisition teams are reassessing how they conduct candidate interviews. In many cases, this means transitioning from in-person interviews to virtual ones.

Discover behavior-based interviewing designed to address the skills, expertise, and experience of candidates. Also called behavioral interviewing, it is built on the premise that past experience is the best predictor of future performance.

Check out this digital version of ASOC's public speaking workshop with a special emphasis on being vulnerable and transparent leaders; no powerpoint! Interacting with one another more organically without a formal presentation on the wall is encouraged.

1. The key is assertiveness: a worldview, behavior strategy, and set of techniques that enables its users to get more of what they want by acknowledging, respecting, and accommodating the needs and wants of others.
2. Dispel limiting beliefs by being clear about what you want and need while also recognizing your own value. Use these excercises to reflect upon the differences in passive, aggressive, and assertive communication.

TED describes this TED Talks Daily Podcast:

"'Storytelling is one of the most powerful marketing and leadership tools there is,' says communications expert Kelly D. Parker. She explains how stories make proposals of all kinds more memorable — and shows how you can craft a compelling narrative to connect, persuade and drive meaningful action."

Check out nine of the best TED Talks on challenges related to remote work and managing remote teams. Improve your communication, fight burnout, and strengthen connections.

Being a leader is never easy, let alone during times of crisis. With the coronavirus pandemic, Sensitive Strivers across the nation and world are reckoning with a new reality: leading their teams from afar. Managing distributed employees might be completely new to you.

As you lead a newly remote team through these uncertain times, you may need to rethink communication, deadlines, gossip, and forgiveness, for starters.

A healthy, engaged and productive work environment starts with conversations about people’s needs. So whether you have always been on a co-located team or are a veteran of remote work, there are new circumstances and the old rulebook doesn’t quite help. The change has been sudden, in a sustained moment of uncertainty, and has disrupted employee routines and support structures.

If you're suddenly managing your team remotely, these tips can help you communicate effectively, calm fears and keep your business running smoothly.

Effective remote working teams don’t just require the right technology—they require the right leadership. Prepared or not, you find yourself the manager of a fully remote team. It’s likely you have never worked 100%-remote, let alone managed a team in this setting. Add to that the overall unrest in the world, and this task can seem overwhelming and daunting.