When you need to rise to the challenge, leadership supports help you step up.
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At Leading Elephants, we see the power of leaders who know how to play big. Maybe you are one of those leaders who sees the potential for your team and your work when you rise to the moment. You can steward ideas to fruition. You can create meaningful opportunities for your team. And you can feel a sense of possibility and confidence when new challenges brings complexity and uncertainty. All of these are possible when you understand the art of leadership and see how to amplify your unique strengths.
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No one wants to be a disempowered, floundering leader.
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When a leader isn’t grounded in their authentic leadership, their impact is diminished. They are lingering on the sidelines, watching others make decisions in "the room where it happens.” At other times, a leader watches swirl organizational dynamics, and feels stuck in knowing how to authentically influence or progress their work. In almost any case, the load for a leader can feel so daunting that they feel exhausted and overwhelmed.
Featured Case Study
Will Tomeka pull her chair up to the senior table?
Tomeka was the first full-time COO at a renowned national nonprofit and the only Black leader on a 5-person executive team. She brought strong role-specific experience, and the chiefs eagerly anticipated her expertise and her input.
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But Tomeka was holding back. Would she pull her chair all the way up to the senior table and thrive in this team of high flyers?
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Testimonials
Genna., Senior Director
Leading Elephants’ cohort learning was the most high-impact "PD" and learning experience that I have experienced, well beyond my 2-year MBA program or formal trainings at other organizations. Over the course of the year, we discussed management, leadership, crucial conversations, personal effectiveness and organizational change.
Jordan M., CEO
We engaged Leading Elephants for a set of trainings for all people managers in our company.Leading Elephants’ preparation was excellent, the session was expertly facilitated, and each member of my team that participated felt that the time was valuable. Because of this combination – domain expertise, excellent preparation, skillful facilitation, and sincere care about whether the training translates into practice – I highly recommend their leadership development!
Yetta L., CEO
The coaching I received with Leading Elephants helped me see step into my authentic leadership in a new way. Together, we worked on providing greater clarity, leaning into tough conversations and overcoming patterns that kept me from consistently showing up as the best version of myself.
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Developing Your Leadership
Busyness occurs in cultures where organizations and individuals equate activity with achievement. It emphasizes constant activity and productivity as a sign of status. ​
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Prolonged exposure to high workloads, or constant busyness across the domains or work and personal responsibilities leads to burnout, characterized by emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced professional efficacy.
At Leading Elephants, we see this pattern in so many instances. How many people do you know who assume that it is normal (and unfixable) to be unhappy in the workplace? There’s a whole comic strip in Dilbert that uncannily shows the dysfunction many think is just normal. As a society, we have normalized this to the point of laughing about it.
We are all in a lifelong journey to integrate our inner and outer selves - to unfurl who we are as human beings, and to create an existence that allows us to live more fully as our whole selves. As leaders, this work of understanding and living more fully into ourselves is even more pressing. Our showing up authentically - with both our strengths and our vulnerability - creates space where others can do the same.
Leading Your Team
We love talking with incredible leaders who are giving so much in these crazy times. You have risen to the challenge and are a powerful force for your schools and communities.
But we also hear you are tired. You feel the weight of all that you have to figure out. It’s as if the whole organization handed you a cape, expected you to be a hero and are watching to see what tall building (or remote strategy) you will leap in a single bound.
Today, we want to encourage you to take the cape off.
As leaders step into more inspiring change leadership, there’s a point where momentum almost grinds to a halt. Somehow as it becomes real, they start to look for an exit back to their old and familiar ways. Let's have some straight talk on the most common off ramps leaders take on the way to great change leadership.
With all that is uncertain these days, one thing is clear: there is no playbook for educational leadership right now. Our time-honored ways of leading didn’t account for the emotional challenges, the fast-moving nature, or the crippling ambiguity leaders face right now.
You’re likely inundated with all sorts of guidance on online curricula, remote learning advice, and more. Our goal is to pull up from all that, and help you build a new picture of what it means to show up as a leader. So many of you are doing this. Let’s give it a name.
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Developing Your Leadership
Despite how it feels, you aren’t overwhelmed because you’re a Zero (ineffectual and incapable of leading your team), you’re overwhelmed because you’re leading like a Hero - and shouldering way too much.
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As a leader you can feel like there is a LOT on your shoulders. People look to you for answers and clarity, and it can feel like people can’t do anything without you driving the work forward.
Ever find yourself hitting a wall at work?
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We've all been there! When faced with a challenging situation or a daunting work problem, it's natural to feel stuck and unsure of how to proceed. But fear not! There are three potent strategies that can help you break free from that inertia and reignite your momentum. Let's dive in!
Are You Leading Your Life—or Is It Leading You? 🤔
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Overwhelm can often feel like something that’s happening to us—a product of external demands, deadlines, and expectations. And while those forces are real, there’s another layer to this experience: the role we play in our own overwhelm.
Leading Your Team
This may seem straightforward, but it’s easy to overlook a critical factor: a lack of influence often stems from weak or damaged relationships. We can often assume that people know a good idea when they see it, and we think that the way to lead well is to be convincing. But influence is felt as much as it is understood.
Influence is the result of collaboration, not control.
And yet, many leaders attempt to persuade their teams to their side with their most thorough and convincing argument rooted in their own positional power or experience… to very little fanfare.
How can you influence without being direct or forceful? What if you can influence by being informed, trusted and creative? How might your working relationships be different if you collaborated differently?
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Influence is for anyone and everyone who wants something to be different than it is right now. Influence is for those who want to change something and be an active (not passive) creator of the future.
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