SLA Leadership Summit January 19, 2006

The Thursday Summit began with an excellent keynote address by Doug Lipp. As the former head of training at Disney University, he had excellent examples of creative strategies for leadership, teamwork and service. He is the author of Even Monkeys Fall From Trees. His keynote address discussed obstacles and opportunities to sucess. He described the importance of walking in the shoes of our clients and coworkers, describing his experience as a Disneyland street sweeper, pirate on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and as Tigger.

The second part of his talk was on the "Magic of Exceptional Leadership", discussing the balance of leadership, teamwork and service needed for successful leadership. What I found most interesting was his description of the various balancing acts that work for success - art and science, quality and quantity, skills and attitude, and maintenance and risk taking.

The afternoon session was a choice of two breakout sessions presented by Leadership Outfitters. They were the trainers at least year's Leadership Summit, and I was looking forward to this. I went to "The Triple Whammy: Change, Communication and Conflict". This was an interesting session, with several brainstorming activities related to the 3 themes. It included a few communication techniques for working with the 4 types from the Effectiveness Institute - the controller, the analyzer, the stabilizer, and the persuader. Joe Kraus attended the other session, but I haven't had a chance to ask him what he thought of it.

The day ended with a very nice reception hosted by the Texas chapter at The Downtown Club, a very nice site on the 49th floor of the Shell Plaza, with good food and a great view of Houston. We got a chance to see PAM's own Debra Bailey at the reception.