Douglas County Leadership Journey Training Overview Year One: Personal Leadership

Before you lead others, you must first learn to lead yourself. The first year of the journey focuses on Personal Leadership - learning to lead ourselves. We will begin with exploring what makes great leaders and recognizing our own personal values, mission, and vision of leadership. We will learn to set realistic goals that are aligned with the district's mission and long range plans. When faced with obstacles, we will begin to problem solve - turning problems into opportunities. We will gain new insights on own personal behavior patterns and preferences and their impact on the way we work. We will enhance our communication skills and grow our technology skills to interact and network successfully with others. Year One Learning Goals

Understand the characteristics of authentic/personal leadership; Begin to develop their own leadership style and create their own toolbox of skills. Understand the mission, values, and long range goals of DCL. Identify their own personal mission and vision plan and understand the importance of tying them to the district's mission and long range plans. Set personal goals, problem-solve to overcome difficulties, and effectively manage their time to achieve them. Understand the importance of Emotional Intelligence at work; Practice and apply effective EQ behaviors and attitudes of self awareness, self regulation, and self management to positively influence their performance. Enhance their communication skills of listening, writing, and speaking to successfully interact with others. Utilize social networking tools to network and learn with others.

Schedule Monthly in-house seminars are scheduled from February through November . The first session is an all day retreat. The remaining sessions will be held on Wednesday mornings from 9 - 12 at the PSM library. Social Styles: Understanding and Managing Behavioral Differences (one day) and Crucial Conversations training (3 day training) are full day sessions. Prelesson Assignments To maximize our time together, other learning activities will be assigned prior to the seminars. These activities will include: readings, observations, DCL or external workshops, self-assessments, and individual meetings with your supervisor/coach. Facilitators Each seminar will be lead by Missy Shock, Art Glover, an members of the management team. Graduates of the first LJ program will also help facilitate these sessions.

2010 Training Overview

1. Beginning the Journey Overview: We will start off with a day long retreat. You will meet your cohorts, learn more about the LJ mission and goals, discuss personal leadership, explore your own personal values and expectations, and begin to form as a team. 2. Personal Productivity Overview: In this session, we will focus on utilizing personal mission statements, setting goals, prioritizing responsibilities, organizing your stuff, managing time effectively and keeping a realistic attitude for life/work balance. 3. Emotional Intelligence: A Different Kind of Smart Overview: Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships effectively by accurately perceiving, appraising, regulating and expressing emotion. Research shows that leaders with strong emotional intelligence are far more effective than their peers who lack this strength. This session will cover: recognizing the importance of emotional intelligence at work, identifying the emotional intelligence competencies, recognizing your own EQ strengths and learning strategies to develop them.

4. Understanding and Managing Behavioral Differences - Social Styles and Versatility A 360 online multi-rater survey will be completed by the participants and their work colleagues about a month prior to the training. More information about this will be given at the retreat, but you can also learn more at tracom.com 5. Leader, Know Thyself Overview: Self-awareness is the ability to recognize one's own thought processes and emotions, and their impact on performance, relationships, and results. Effective leaders have the ability to see themselves as others do, and observe themselves in action. In this session, participants will more deeply explore their own behavioral patterns as identified in the Social Styles multi-rater profile. They will discuss how their style and versatility influence their interactions with others and the importance of building on their own strengths as well as those of others - using them to improve productivity and working relationships. Midyear Break 6. Thriving on Change Overview: Organizations and individuals that are open to change are the organizations that not only survive, but thrive. Part of what is needed is a culture of personal empowerment. Another is a shift away from a thinking perspective that focuses on what is broken and how to fix it, to what is working and how to build on the opportunities that change provides. The goal is to provide an understanding of the key phases of change and the behaviors and strategies needed to facilitate effective outcomes. 7. Systems Thinking: Seeing the Big Picture Overview: Too often in organizations (and in management training programs), we think we can carve up our system into separate pieces -- only considering its parts or discussing various topics apart from other topics. Systems theory reminds us that if you divide up an elephant, you don't have a bunch of little elephants. The best leaders see the whole picture and can make connections between and among seemingly disparate events and processes. This session will focus on how to think from a big picture perspective, to better understand the cause and effects of complex organizational relationships and to apply it in your decision making.

8. Creative Problem Solving Overview: The organizations that thrive and grow are not necessarily the ones with the deepest pockets, but the ones that unleash and apply the creativity of their workforce. Leaders who know how to nurture their own creativity while igniting creativity in others are able to think outside the box to stimulate innovation and solve problems. This seminar will focus on how to nurture your own creativity, explore idea generation techniques and learn basic problem solving steps to make effective decisions. 9. Communication Skills: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when Stakes are High For more information about Crucial Conversations, please go to vitalsmarts.com 10. Reflecting on the Old and Anticipating the New Overview: The wrap up session will include program evaluation and discussion, personal growth self-assessment, and 2010 learning goals/preliminary agenda for Year Two: Leading Others. Additional Workshops: Participants will need to attend additional workshops: 1. MSEC Supervision: Core Competencies - register and attend a 2010 or 2011 session at MSEC in Denver. 2. MSEC Facilitation Skills - two day class in Denver 3. DCL Present, Project, and Protect presentation workshop 2010 4. Complete Colorado Libraries Web 2.0 learning modules