The Boss Skills Lab
A course in applied leadership for Fall, 2025
Virtual via Zoom - 8 classes - 75 or 90 minutes in length
First class - week of August 18th
Second class - week of September 8th
Classes will then meet every two weeks until Thanksgiving week
Final class - week of December 1st
Price: $750
Wednesday afternoons generally seem to be a good time for people, but a survey with options will be circulated before finalizing dates.
The time will be set to accommodate both EST and PST during the work day - likely noon/1pm EST
Applied leadership is all about how being a leader works in practice, acknowledging leadership and management are all about people.
Leaders become stronger, more capable and more clear-eyed when they gain insight into their own behavior, interpersonal dynamics between themselves and others as well as the dynamics of groups. And every leader can enhance these abilities.
Applied leadership is also about building a habit of mindful communication. That doesn’t mean being stilted or scripted - in fact,the most effective communicators generally are in touch with a very authentic part of themselves and seek to ground their communications in that place. It does mean attending to your listening skills and learning to respond in ways that meet the moment with individuals and groups - saying the hard thing people can hear.
The Boss Skills Lab is designed to introduce concepts based in organizational psychology that are both “bite sized” and significant enough to move you forward. It will allow room to process these concepts in small groups with peers and then return to your job and experiment applying the concepts and building your skillset.
Through interactive presentations and conversation, we’ll cover topics including those below and discuss how they apply to managing up, down and across:
Stepping into your authority without fear of being an authoritarian, helping you to get over imposter syndrome* (and why imposter syndrome is particularly acute in schools)
Simple steps to improve skills and comfort managing interpersonal conflict
Approaches to successfully manage the human side of change
How to think about strategic use of your energy - putting time into the people who are moving forward rather than into chronic “resisters”
Letting go of perfectionism and Increasing the capacity of your direct reports
Maintaining personal integrity
Intentionality and inclusivity in decision making
Most class meetings will include a warm up exercise - an interview clip or an insight from someone doing the work of leadership outside of education - to discuss in breakout rooms, coming back together for the presentation of the day’s concept and then returning to breakout rooms to process.
Between sessions, there will be little to no “homework” other than reflecting on recognizing opportunities to apply concepts in your day to day work and ideally, trial and error applying concepts. There may also be some guidelines to help you recognize opportunities and prompt reflection.
Who should enroll in the Boss Skills Lab?
Anyone who is responsible for managing people! This will not be a course sorted by cohorts - although context may be important in some ways, the core focus is the complicated, messy work of leading and managing people. An inclination towards reflection will probably be helpful. Some frustration at how complicated managing people is - a good motivator!
School people are very busy so missing one class is understandable but if you think you may have to miss many classes, this may not be the course for you.
This is a pilot. Some classes and material will click better than others and I look forward to students in this pilot providing feedback! I am currently reflecting on the best ways to gather feedback so that it’s not an overwhelming ask but it can be efficient and real. (I will also likely be tweaking as we go - but don’t all teachers do that?)
This pilot will also include 90 minutes of 1-1 meeting time via Zoom with Julie Faulstich - and that time is your time to direct as you would find supportive in your work.