FORWARD hosted two leadership events to aid in the professional development of current and future NDSU leaders. The facilitators, Claudia Plaisted Fernandez and Ruben Fernandez, from Fast Track Leadership in Chapel Hill, N.C., work with many universities on executive leadership development efforts. Plaisted Fernandez is professor of maternal and child health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
On March 14, Plaisted Fernandez offered a mini-leadership workshop for executive administrators, titled “The Powerful Apology.” The mini-leadership workshop discussed how apologies form an important skill in mending damaged relationships and how to effectively deliver an apology. Evaluation results indicated that 83.4 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their participation in the workshop helped them further develop their leadership skills, have a better understanding of how to perform a powerful apology and become better equipped to continue with their current leadership roles at NDSU.
The second event was a full-day leadership workshop held March 15. The workshop built on last year’s FORWARD-sponsored leadership development workshop. Thirty individuals attended the workshop. Attendees for this year’s full-day workshop were nominated and sponsored by their college dean or department chair. The workshop addressed practical soft skill components of leading, managing and working with others. The workshop also debriefed three instruments illustrating their use in organizational settings based on adult learning theory by employing interactive exercises.
Evaluation results of the full-day workshop indicated that 100 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that their participation in the workshop helped them develop leadership skills that will assist in their career advancement, bettered their understanding of how to strengthen their “soft skills” and persuasively sell their ideas to others, and increased their feeling of being equipped to continue with their current leadership roles or pursue new leadership roles at NDSU.
For more information on this and/or other FORWARD programs and events, visit www.ndsu.edu/forward or email ndsu.forward@ndsu.edu.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.