Made possible with the support of Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

Established and emerging leaders in the family field have the opportunity to discover and leverage their personal leadership strengths during this all-day preconference workshop. The positive response to last year’s introduction to strengths-based leadership indicated an expansion to this area of development would be welcome. New and returning participants alike will benefit from this experience. The session will run from 9 a.m. to 5:15 p.m., with coffee beginning at 8:30 a.m.

The morning will be led by Mindy Hooper, Ph.D., coaching and consulting psychologist, and president of TruthRunners. Dr. Hooper will facilitate opportunities for participants to identify their talent themes and develop their cognitive strengths using the CliftonStrengths (previously known as StrengthsFinder) online assessment. Each participant may receive a customized report of their results. Separate breakout sessions will enable both new and returning participants to build skills and knowledge.

The afternoon session will differentiate content for emerging and established leaders and include sessions specifically designed for emerging and established leaders, facilitated by current NCFR leaders.

Price: The cost of the preconference workshop is $150 for established leaders and $100 for emerging leaders. The reduced registration is available only for the first 10 registrants. Emerging leaders should email Jennifer Crosswhite to coordinate their $100 registration. 

Limited space available: registration is capped at 40 professionals
Minimum registration required: 25
Deadline to register: Oct. 15, 2018

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

1. Align your self-understanding with your top five strengths
2. Gain an understanding of how you lead
3. Learn a framework to apply your strengths, advance your ability to lead, and discover more about your leaders and culture

Intended Audience

The workshop is directed at both established and emerging leaders.

• established leaders such as department heads, deans, other leaders and administrators in university settings as well as CFLEs and practitioners working in the field
• emerging leaders such as pre-tenured or newly tenured faculty and early career CFLEs and practitioners
• NCFR members and CFLEs

Registration

You may add the preconference to your full or single-day NCFR conference registration, or register for and attend this preconference only (without attending the rest of the NCFR conference). Find more information about all NCFR conference registration options. 

Registration Price:

• $150 established leaders
• $100 reduced registration available for first 10 emerging leaders

Registration includes:

• Preconference Registration
• Access code to take the StrengthsFinder 2.0 assessment to determine the individual’s top five strengths
• Access to the e-book, StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath
• Morning Coffee
• Lunch with coffee and tea
• Mid-afternoon coffee and dessert

Register for Preconference + Other Conference Events

Schedule

8:30 a.m.: Coffee

9 a.m.: Welcome and Introductions
Dave Demo, Ph.D., and Anne Farrell, Ph.D.

9:15-10 a.m.: CliftonStrengths – Discovering Your Talents (all participants)
Mindy R. Hooper, Ph.D., Truth Runners

10-10:30 a.m.: Breakout session #1

• AAL Planning Team* – Learn how to incorporate one’s Top 5 strengths into work and leadership. (returning participants)
  *Dave Demo, Ph.D., Anne Farrell, Ph.D., Suzanne Smith, Ph.D., Joe Wilmoth, Ph.D
• Mindy Hooper, Ph.D. – Discovering Your Themes and Strengths Profile (new participants)
  Participants will be introduced to the 34 Clifton Themes. We will take a quick dive into your top five talents, what they mean, and how they grow into Strengths. You will gain clues to your leadership style by examining your strengths profile.

10:30-10:45 a.m.: Morning break

10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.: Morning session #2

• Mindy R. Hooper, Ph.D. – Leadership Domains, DNA of the Team, and Your Unique Contribution for the Team
  During this time, participants will learn about leadership domains, the DNA of the team, and unique team contributions. Leaders must truly know their strengths and call upon the right strength at the right time. Team DNA also helps the team gain awareness and appreciation of its collective talents. Finally, while each CliftonStrengths theme has its own power and edge, it can be useful to think about how your talents and strengths help you and the team execute, influence others, build relationships, and absorb and think about information.

12:15-1:15 p.m.: Working Lunch, Q & A with Mindy, Networking

1:15-2:45 p.m.: Breakout session #1

• Suzanne Smith, Ph.D.  – Leadership Skills for Emerging Leaders
  This breakout session will focus on leadership skills that will help you be successful in an leadership position at your place of employment. We will talk about common models of leadership and how they can be applied to an university and other work place settings. After hearing a personal description of how StrengthsFinder has been applied to various university and community leadership positions, we will interact with our colleagues as we determine how to use your StrengthsFinder training as an aide as you take on leadership. If you are thinking about taking on a leadership role, or are new in your leadership position, this will be a great session for you.
• Norma Burgess, Ph.D. – Leadership Skills for Established Leaders
  This breakout session will focus on personal and professional development for established leaders.  Proven success strategies for well-being and effectiveness will be provided for participants emphasizing individual leadership philosophies by which to live.

2:45-3 p.m.: Dessert and Coffee break

3-4:30 p.m.: Breakout session #2

• Jay Mancini, Ph.D. – Looking Good on A Horse: Travels and Travails of Leadership (Established Leaders)
  This breakout session focuses on core elements for success as a professional and that transcend various positions and contexts of leadership. These elements reflect both processes and outcomes. There are eight elements: (1) recognizing the difference between being busy and being productive; (2) understanding that leadership and partnership go hand in hand; (3) managing results rather than activities; (4) identifying leverage points as future success is planned; (5) accounting for contexts when specifying causes and effects; (6) activating the conversations on critical child and family issues; (7) predicting the yield likely to emerge from particular efforts; (8) and becoming indispensable to your organization, whether public or private, academic or service-provision oriented.
• Roudi Nazarinia Roy, Ph.D. – Emerging Leadership: Navigating Challenges and Promoting Equity (Emerging Leaders)
  Dr. Roy will outline challenges facing emerging professionals with a specific emphasis on individuals who are typically underrepresented in leadership positions (women, persons of color). She will facilitate a discussion of these challenges as well as strategies for managing them, whether participants are from diverse backgrounds or merely see the imperative of allying with individuals from underrepresented groups to best promote equity and inclusion. This session will incorporate the importance of emerging leaders modeling encouragement, nurturance, and compassion.

4:30-5:15 p.m.: Closing Thoughts & Next Steps
Dave Demo, Ph.D., and Anne Farrell, Ph.D.

5:15 p.m.: Adjourn

Facilitator Bios

Mindy R. Hooper, Ph.D., TruthRunners, Inc. A coaching and consulting psychologist, Dr. Hooper takes a strategic approach to coaching others in order to discover, develop, and aim talents to align teams and/or to find solutions for getting on track to move forward. As a Gallup-certified strengths specialist, she has developed her own tool, Passport to Significance, which builds on CliftonStrengths, Leadership Styles, Personality, Life Narrative, and Focused Purpose to coach clients to find their best career fit and/or to live a life of meaning and significance. Most recently, she served as a producer on a new documentary, yet to be released, that spotlights the efforts of K9s for Warriors to train and pair service dogs with veterans dealing with PTSD and traumatic brain injury. These service dogs help disabled veterans find peace and get on with their lives.

David Demo, Ph.D., is interim dean of the School of Health and Human Sciences at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. He has served in various leadership positions, including chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at UNC Greensboro (1996-2007), associate dean in the School of Health and Human Sciences at UNC Greensboro (2011-2018), and editor of the Journal of Marriage and Family (2007-2012). He is a Fellow of the National Council on Family Relations.

Anne Farrell, Ph.D., is the director of research at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. She serves a critical role in keeping Chapin Hall at the forefront of policy research and fosters a commitment to innovative, rigorous, and actionable research. Farrell supports the acquisition and development of talent and engages in collaborations that ensure the creation, delivery, and development of knowledge and strategies to improve the well-being of children, youth, and families. In addition to leading Chapin Hall’s policy research agenda, Farrell conducts research and policy analysis on housing and child welfare, cross-systems collaborations, family-centered services, and family and community resilience. Farrell is Principal Investigator on a federally funded demonstration project on housing and child welfare, developed a screening tool on housing instability, speaks frequently on the topic of housing, authored several peer-reviewed publications in this area, and serves on the editorial boards of scholarly journals.

Suzanne R. Smith, Ph.D., is provost/vice president of academic affairs at Georgia Southwestern State University. She previously served as the director of academic planning and special assistant to the vice chancellor of academic affairs at Washington State University Vancouver, where she was a faculty member for 21 years. Her research has been focused in three areas: parenting practices among the Hutterites, the development of school gardens in Burundi, Africa, and the impact of poverty on women and their children who live in rural areas. She has been an active member of NCFR since she was an undergraduate student.

Jay A. Mancini, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of human development at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) and adjunct professor of human development and Family Science at the University of Georgia. From 1977 to 2009 he was on the human development faculty at Virginia Tech, and was also the senior research fellow at Virginia Tech’s Institute for Society, Culture, and Environment. Dr. Mancini served as department head of human development at Virginia Teach from 1989 to 1996 and department head of human development and Family Science at the University of Georgia from 2009 to 2014. Dr. Mancini’s work has focused on lifespan human development, community systems, building community capacity, military family support systems, time-use and families, and psychological well-being. Throughout his career the focus has been on resilience and vulnerabilities of individuals, families, and communities, and their multiple intersections.

Norma Burgess, Ph.D. has served as dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. She is now associate provost for Diversity, Inclusion, and Special Initiatives. She served as faculty at Syracuse University for 14 years, nine of which were as department chair and two years as founding dean of the College for Graduate Studies at Chatham University. Dr. Burgess has lectured and conducted workshops nationally and internationally on leadership, self-management, success, goal setting, conflict management, professional image, self-esteem, and faith. Her workshops focus on self-knowledge, integrating and maintaining wholeness in life, family, and career using basic principles that work.

Roudi Nazarinia Roy, Ph.D. is an assistant professor and area coordinator of child development and family studies in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at California State University, Long Beach. She is also the 2017-2018 chair of the Ethnic Minorities Section for the National Council on Family Relations. She has a B.A. in psychology and an M.A. in Family Science from the University of British Columbia. She received her Ph.D. in family studies from Kansas State University in 2009. She teaches courses related to life transitions, Family Life Education, families and diversity, and parent education. Her research interest revolves around the transition to parenthood and cultural influences on parental roles. Dr. Roy is also a consultant for community agencies serving diverse populations of families.