Minnesota Council of Non-Profits Leadership Conference

I went to a lot of excellent sessions at the leadership conference this year, focusing my time on attending sessions related to finances and systems in non-profits. I have spent years focusing my energies on programming - evaluation, structure, development, outreach - and realized that I the next phase of my growth is to better understanding the systems and structures that support truly effective and efficient organizations. The day offered me a lot...but I am most excited by the concept of financial leadership - going beyond management to lead financial successful and sustainable organizations.

The only session that I attended that wasn't about finances and systems was the one that I presented with Shannon Forney and Danette Olsen. We designed this session to challenge the typical approach to talking about generational differences and we designed it to have no expert speaker - the session was a facilitated dialogue, engaging the wisdom of session participants.

Generational bias is too often the result of marketing data and age-based trends that may be helpful in the world of sales yet are often unproductive in the workplace. In fact, these biases may inhibit successful leadership and contribute to superficial assumptions of our colleagues. Together, we explored the opportunities and constraints of generation-based thinking on our workplaces and interpersonal relationships.

You can see images from break out sessions on Weathervane's Facebook page