Student Conference on Leadership

Often times, the most impactful leadership within an organization comes from peers who do not have formal rank. Leaders without rank, or informal leaders, can greatly improve the culture and efficiency of an organization. It takes courage and determination to step up as an informal leader. Whether it is the private sector, law enforcement, the military, or anything else; becoming a leader among one's peers can help you stand out for promotions and special assignments. This break out session will help student attendees understand how to leverage their leadership skills among their peers to advance their careers and enrich their personal lives.
On a managerial level, recognizing who the informal leaders are among the ranks can help you tremendously. A skilled manager can use informal leaders to help solve disputes between employees, boost morale within the organization, increase work efficiency, and more. This break out session will help student attendees identify how to use informal leaders that they manage to increase their organization's efficiency.
If we can learn how to be a strong informal leader, as well as how to use the informal leaders underneath us, we will see incredible positive results in the function of our organizations. It is important to understand that leadership does not require a title, and a title does not make someone a leader. This break out session will address the ins and outs of informal leadership and how to leverage it to better yourself and your organization.

Leading with Fortitude: Using Your Strengths from Purpose to Impact will delve into the strengths-based leadership styles at Gallup and various other companies to model how student leaders can develop their own leadership purpose statement based on personal strengths, values, hopes and views to know what they are doing and why they are doing it. This statement should also ensure that others can tell where they lead from not because it's posted on their door, but it is how they live their lives. Students will be given several exemplars of a personal leadership statement as well as participate in activities to begin the process of developing their own personal leadership purpose statement. Participants will walk away with resources to guide them as they continue in their personal leadership journey.

The How to Be an Inclusive Leader workshop will provide students with insights on how Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion fit into the professional world. Students will develop a foundational knowledge of terms, definitions, and trends that will connect the dots to what they have gained as students and how it translates to the work world. The session will also touch on things to consider during the job search process.
This session will be part presentation and part interactive giving students the opportunities to reflect on their lived experiences and begin to develop their own philosophy on inclusive leadership. In the end, I hope students come away prepared to be an inclusive leader!

Within every leader exists a struggle between pride and servanthood. A courageous leader fights for self examination while everything in them seeks to justify their pride. This is uncomfortable, which only adds to the difficulty. There, however, is no progress in comfort. Leaders drive others toward a common goal. The success of leaders comes from the success of those they lead. Serving those you lead will bolster their drive to success. If leadership becomes a method of self glorification or promotion(which is a tendancy), it will ultimatly lead to failure. How does one gain the courage to become a better sevant, and through this, a better leader? There are several practical steps we will explore.

Learn from UNG alumni on best practices for taking your leadership in the real world.

In smaller industries, it can sometimes be very difficult to break in. Most of the time you will hear that these smaller industries such as Aviation is a very "Who You Know" type of industry. Just because it may be difficult does not mean it is impossible. Networking is the most important skill to learn no matter what industry you are in, because it allows you to get involved, get ahead, and get you on track to where you want to be. In this break out session, learn how to network, where to network, and who are the right people to talk to? Once you get into these conversations, how can you capitalize on it? How can you use these skills you've learned to get into your career, to now gain sales, clients, and partnerships? It is all about networking and showing up!

Audience members will hear from a University of South Carolina graduate student about the best practices when trying to create and foster relationships, and build effective networks. The session will focus on how to reconnect, re-engage, and refocus in a "post-COVID-19" higher education system, and how to build relationships, leverage different communication styles, and commitment to bettering one's own experiences inside and out of the classroom. Active participation is strongly encouraged.

Students will encounter conflict throughout their personal and professional lives. This workshop provides student attendees with opportunities to connect Emotional Intelligence competencies (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management) with conflict management and conflict resolution applications.
We will explore the five different Conflict-Handling Styles of the Thomas-Kilmann Model (accommodating style, avoiding style, compromising style, competing style, and collaboration style) in conjunction with self-awareness and social awareness.
Student attendees will be able to participate in a large group activity, engage in small group conversation, and leave with practical tools to put into use the moment they leave the workshop.
Students will leave the workshop with a greater understanding of their conflict-handling style, other's conflict-handling styles, and will have some tools to confidently lead their organization -filled with multiple conflict-handling styles- through conflict in the future.

Best-selling author John C. Maxwell has written many books on leadership, mostly with the aim of helping practitioners become more effective. His book "The 5 Levels of Leadership" can help you understand much of his underlying philosophy, and examine your own leadership. Along the way, we will reference a few commonly reference leadership theories. Whether you are just starting to lead or already have leadership experience, this brief discussion can give you numerous ways to up your game!

Learn how being a servant leader allows your direct reports to grow and become better performers. Developing the individual skills within your direct reports to overcome your weaknesses.

Do traditional leadership and management traits still apply today? Today's modern workforce is truly unique and has changed the organizational landscape. Unlike previous generational cohorts of new workers, today's emerging workforce brings a worldview that is vastly different. Smarter, possessed of a more developed sense of self-worth, and driven by a desire to fully experience life, today's younger workers challenge organizational frameworks and norms that have stood for nearly a century. We must therefore rethink our leadership and management styles to address this changing dynamic.
Today's leaders must adapt to address the differing values these new workers possess. Traditional compensation approaches no longer effectively motivate employee performance. Empowerment, entrepreneurship, and personal fulfillment are highly valued by the new workforce, which stands in contrast to traditional hierarchical structures. Current leaders must determine how best to approach these differences and tailor organizational culture to accommodate and integrate these new characteristics while maintaining the organization's core values.
Conversely, today's newly minted leaders possess a different worldview than the older workforce they will lead. Willingness to enter their role with an open mind and understanding of organizational cultures will prevent new leaders from alienating and potentially losing their workforce.
These diametrically opposed norms of old and new must therefore be integrated in a manner that maintains harmony within the organization. Modern leaders must consequently adjust their leadership approach and style to influence a broadly diverse workforce towards a common goal.

The goal of this presentation is to create a step-wise road-map for future leaders to practice their skills in the workplace. This session guides attendees in a collaborative process where we self-reflect on a topic in our major, then discuss those reflections with colleagues in related and similar majors, and jointly produce the ideas needed for change. The ultimate goal is to acquire knowledge about an unmet need, and to inspire policy-makers to meet that need and carry the project through from beginning to end. This presentation is for future leaders who wish to make use of a step-wise process to accomplish that task. Participants will self-reflect, discuss, and learn to collaborate on a common goal.

Attendees will be provided with a description of the differences between assigned leadership and emergent leadership, a brief history of the Emergent Leader Initiative, and a description of how the concept of emergent leadership has had an impact on the group's founding. Attendees will be encouraged to patriciate in the discussion by providing their own experiences and asking questions of the presenters.

Dedicated to lending his skills and experience from his decades of practice and research as a leader, Jim is driven by his commitment to developing Integrator Leaders for future generations. This leader development session helps leaders to learn to see themselves and their organizations in new ways. It assists them in becoming more effective leaders, while also benefiting their team and their customers. Not a bunch of theory, but practical actions that can be applied today. Participants will be introduced to the role of the Integrator Leader, a term we coined for the type of leader needed now and in future generations. Integrator Leaders possess the unique ability to see what isn't there, channeling the collective energy of others to make their vision reality. These leaders don't react to change, they create it. Principles, practices, and tips will be introduced, with vivid examples, enabling participants to turn the information to action as a valued takeaway.