Super Scoop

Learning Personally and Professionally

Thanks to the generosity of Kati Machtley, 10 SHS students and 3 adults were able to attend the 2018 Women’s Summit at Bryant University.  The Summit is designed to inspire participants, “personally and professionally” through sessions focused on innovative thinking, communication, finance, diversity, entrepreneurship, and health.  It is a privilege to attend, since year after year, the Summit sells out within 8 or so hours. Appreciative of that privilege, I will share my learning in a variety of ways, starting now.

In the opening keynote, Jennifer Hyman, the co-founder of Rent the Runway, described the evolution of her billion dollar company, from conception to execution.  Participants learned about entrepreneurship as well as about the disruption, a radical change, in the way we are living and consuming products. The movement from ownership to access has transformed every industry on Earth in a relatively short time.  From taxis to Spotify, Blockbuster to Netflix, telephone to Instagram, hotel to Airbnb, we do everything quite differently than we did 20 years ago. Certain cultural movements, including urbanization and social media ubiquity, have established a rental disposition whereas ownership had previously been of high importance.

Other key ideas introduced by Jennifer include:

• In the development of Rent the Runway, the idea contributed 1% while execution contributed 99%.
• Helping young people discover their passions is essential because that is where they will be great.
• Only 4% of venture capital monies is given to women and more money is needed for success.  If success is secured for a homogeneous group, what drives our society are homogeneous ideas.
• Hiring for culture is more important than hiring for skills.

Several workshop options were provided for both the morning and the afternoon.  I attended “The Art of Cultivating Lasting Professional Relationships” with Kim Miles.  Much of the content, although already known, reminded me about the importance of teaching high school students basics of business etiquette.  Handshakes, networking, listening, and follow-through are important in any career. What I found most helpful was Kim’s recipe for a successful follow through.  After meeting individuals who may be important partners for future work, we sometimes neglect to follow-through. A note including the connection point, acknowledgement of a common interest, a specific ask, and a “give” is crucial for ensuring a next step.

The plenary speaker was Jodi Urquhart, the author of All Work and No Say… Ho Hum, Another Day, discussed techniques for fostering professional satisfaction among employees in a humorous way (consider this line: I recently met a couple in the airport that had no children.  What they did have was money.).

Other key ideas introduced by Jodi include:

• Humor makes you 40% more productive.
• We learn to ignore our own voice and focus instead on what other people think.
• Technology gives us options.  If you don’t like your job, your house, your spouse… go online! [can be both good and bad]
• When in survival mode, people stay self-focused, rather than else-focused.
• We need to make it a goal to have as much fun as we can while at work.
• Every time you laugh or smile you increase endorphins to the brain.
• When we lift each other we all rise.

The luncheon speaker, Nely Galan, a “media mogul,” producer, and former contestant of The Apprentice, reminded everyone that “fierceness is cultivated” and that we can all think entrepreneurially.  Making fear and failure your best friends and and “doing it anyway” when faced with fear leads to success — most of the time.

Additionally, she contends that true empowerment requires a financial base.  There is no Prince Charming, no magic bullet. Rather than buying shoes, women (or men for that matter) should be buying buildings.

For an afternoon workshop, I attended “The Power of Style” with Jill Marinelli, a personal stylist.  In addition to discussing dressing for success, she introduced the idea of “decision fatigue” whereby the 35,000 or so decisions we make per day lead us to poorer and poorer decisions.  Eliminating the mundane decisions by eating the same breakfast and lunch each day or by wearing somewhat of a uniform helps to put the energy into more important decisions.

While I had previously understood that what you wear affects people’s judgment about you, I hadn’t thought that an outfit might affect your actual performance.  In a study she shared with us, individuals who were given a lab coat, an article of clothing associated with attentiveness, performed better on tasks requiring attentiveness than a control group.  Moreover, when one group wore a lab coat that was described as a doctor’s coat and another group wore a lab coat described as a painter’s coat, the former group performed better on cognitive tasks than the latter group.  Thus, the idea of “enclothed cognition” was born — your performance is affected by both the symbolic meaning of the clothes and the experience of wearing them.

Brigid Schulte, the closing keynote speaker, is the founding director of the Good Life Initiative and a former Washington Post reporter.  She is the author of Overwhelmed:  How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time.  She reminded us of the Aristotle quote, “the end of labor is to gain leisure.” Our modern life, however, includes contaminated time when one can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.  Busyness has become a status symbol or a badge of honor to the point that we have to create it. The richest lives, however, make time for work, love and life.

Some may think, what does all this have to do with being a superintendent?  Quality professional learning, spending time listening to people who make us think deeper, focusing on self-development, all result in inspiration that affects our performance at work.  For me, I came out of the Summit thinking about:

• Applying entreupeneourship our efforts to improve the athletic facilities at SHS by investigating alternative funding sources, remembering to follow-up with potential partners.
• Encouraging a focus on basic business etiquette for all CTE programs.
• Cleaning out my closet of clothes that do not represent who I am or what I want to be.
• Developing ways to bring the fun into work for our employees.
• When confronted with fear, doing it anyway.
• Applying the art of polite persistence to all that I do.
• When networking, spending 90% of time listening and only 10% talking.
• Hiring for culture, rather than for skills.
• Balancing work, love, life.

And, most importantly, I will remember that our job as educators is to help our students discover their passions because that is where they will be great.

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