Topics

•  Communicating as a leader

  • Dr. Rutherford started his talk today by discussing the ways we can improve our communication skills, specifically as speakers. We watched a TED talk and dissected what made the speaker an effective communicator.

  • We also discussed our interpersonal communication skills. We, specifically, talked about ways to have difficult conversations like using the hamburger technique, avoiding binary thinking and using content-process shifts.

• Influence

  • Dr. Rutherford also talked about ways we improve our influence over others by our presence, complexity, ability to be influenced and loss of self consciousness.

• Life Management

  • Dr. Rutherford addressed each of the 4 domains of life management: physical, social/emotional, professional & spiritual. When you do something to improve even just one of these areas, it can cause ripple effects.

Major Points

• Ways we communicate and how we present ourselves to others can have a major impact on our leadership.

  • Gestures and posture must be congruent with words. Humans are great at deceiving each other with words, but our actions often give us away.

• Time and life management are massive influences in the effectiveness of a leader.

Importance to Teacher Leadership

• The lessons on communication and life managment can be applied any where, in any person's life. Teachers and leaders who can effectively communicate and manage their life are able to support others.