“SUE ASHFORD'S TALK AT THE 2019 POSITIVE BUSINESS CONFERENCE WAS SUPERB. NOT ONLY DID SHE ENRICH OUR UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE A WORKER IN THE GIG ECONOMY, SHE INSPIRED EACH OF US TO IMAGINE HOW WE COULD USE PRACTICAL STRATEGIES FOR THRIVING IN THE MORE INDEPENDENT ASPECTS OF OUR WORK. SHE IS PASSIONATE AND PRACTICAL IN THE WAY SHE MAKES RESEARCH USEFUL TO ALL OF US. I TRY TO ATTEND AS MANY OF HER TALKS AS POSSIBLE AS I ALWAYS LEAVE WITH NEW INSIGHTS AND ENERGY TO PUT HER WISDOM INTO PRACTICE.”
— Jane Dutton, author of How to be a Positive Leader and Awakening Compassion at Work
Speaking Engagements
half-day to partial-week workshops and keynote talks of various lengths.
Sue speaks on a number of topics related to developing as a leader, issue selling, and being effective at work, whether that work is in traditional organizations or independent in the gig economy:
Selling issues in dynamic organizations
The Power of Flexing: How to use your everyday experiences to grow as a leader and person
Using influence to get the help you need and the change you want
Developing your own leadership when no one else will
What we all can learn from gig workers to do work more creatively and effectively
To get an event on Sue’s schedule, use the contact form linked below.
Experience-Driven Leader Development
Contributed Chapter: Proactive Feedback Seeking: The Power of Seeing Yourself as Others See You
Leadership is a complex skill—one that is not learned by simple directives. Indeed, many people consider it an art form. When individuals lead, they are the instrument— leadership is done through their behaviors, physical presence, and talents and in the context of their doubts and fears, their biases and preconceptions. To increase their effectiveness as an instrument, individuals hoping to develop leadership need to know themselves well and understand their impact on others.
Leadership development is never complete. As conditions and people change, learning continues. In fact, the more leadership someone does and the higher level the role from which he or she leads, the more active development needs to be. That’s where seeking feedback comes in. If leadership is about setting direction for others and motivating them to follow in that direction, leaders need to understand how they come across to others, what they do that increases others’ excitement and motivation versus detracting from it, and how they might improve. To obtain that information in work settings, they often have to seek it.
Leadership Crisis Challenge
Put yourself in the midst of a crisis and test your leadership skills
Helping people to learn how to act effectively in a crisis situation is quite difficult. Crises occur often suddenly and are quite costly if mismanaged. It is often easy to say what one would do in a crisis when involved in a discussion in the safety of the classroom. It's much more difficult to both plan what one would do and actually do it in a real crisis situation. And yet that is exactly the preparation that will help future managers deal with real crises in their organizations. To address this issue, Sue created a teaching intervention called the leadership crisis challenge. This challenge involves students directly in the role of crisis responders. They need to come up with a plan and be able to defend it. They are given a short time to do this and during their planning time, further aspects of the crisis are brought to their attention. This simulates an unfolding crisis situation. The challenge then asks them to defend their plan in front of a Board of Directors (typically our faculty or second-year MBA students). This is a true defense – with very little formal statements and a lot of challenging Q & A. Student teams are then confronted by a press corps with video cameras rolling they leave the board room and are asked further questions. The best students from this round make a formal press release presentation with microphones, video cameras, hot lights, and so forth. The press corps and students in the audience pick the best team and they are given a prize. The leadership crisis tool can be used in this extended format, or use as a crisis case in the class discussion as well. That class discussion can be supplemented by some of the role playing suggested in the format described above. Students have found this to be an exceptional learning experience. They are taken out of their comfort zones, out of the safety of adding one comment to an overall class discussion and really put on the hot seat. The leadership crisis challenge would be a great exercise to do in a pre-term orientation program, a leadership class, or as a stand-alone, co-curricular event as we do at Michigan. Our program is voluntary, and students compete to get into it – it's that popular.
