Author: Nancy Southern


Crisis management: Essential for 21st century leadership

Saybrook University will facilitate a 3-day crisis management workshop hosted at the City of Renton. The workshop will introduce the fundamentals of crisis management and strategy. The workshop will emphasize learning about how to prepare for and respond to a multitude of crises from systems, organizational dynamics, and psychodynamics perspectives. This workshop will demonstrate the… Read more »

Transforming a City Once Divided- Reflections on the Fall of the Berlin Wall

This year on November 9, the people of Berlin celebrated the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  A business trip to explore partnerships with German universities took me to Berlin one month before that anniversary to see what has been, and continues to be, an amazing transformation.  What I saw taking place… Read more »

The Importance of Gender Equity

In my last blog Strengthening our Social Fabric, I mentioned Sweden’s emphasis on gender equity as a way to create a good society.  Here I will further consider the systemic implications of gender equity in hopes that we consider its importance to all societies. The Global Gender Gap report (2013) rates 136 countries on their… Read more »

Strengthening Our Social Fabric

Recently I travelled to Finland for a conference which created an opportunity to travel around the Scandinavian countries. The country that left the strongest impression was Sweden.  We took the ferry from Vassa Finland to Umea Sweden and as soon as we got on the ferry, I noticed something different in the way Swedish people… Read more »

Cross-cultural Encounters: A Gateway to Transformative Learning

This month I travelled to Finland for a conference on Culture, Values, and Justice.  An interesting group of scholars attended who were exploring the many aspects, interrelationships, and applications of ideas that comprise these three areas.  To me, these three subjects and their interrelationships suggest three questions that define the nature of being human.  Who… Read more »

Creating Safe Spaces to Turn Challenges into Opportunities

Many of today’s complexity-related challenges require leaders to create more space in the workplace for people to share their difficulties and concerns, and explore new ways of addressing them. Whenever we are facing the unknown, doing something we haven’t done before, and unsure how to approach a new challenge or what the outcome might be, we… Read more »

Revitalizing Downtown Communities

Recently I had the opportunity to visit and experience the work being done as part of the Las Vegas  Downtown Project.  It is a $350M project with a mission to “ transform Las Vegas into the most community-focused large city in the world”.   They are working on that mission actively through the purchase of real… Read more »

Leadership for Local & Global Resilience

Last week I attended the 15th Annual International Leadership Association Global Conference in Montreal. The conference theme was Leadership for Local and Global Resilience, recognizing the need for leaders to innovate and lead sustainable change in our local and global communities and organizations. This academic conference brought together students, faculty, consultants, coaches, and just a… Read more »