Lessons In Effective Leadership With La Salle’s Donease Smith & TCU’s Kim Johnson

Guest Donease Smith, La Salle; Kim Johnson, TCU

17:59 min watch

Summary

La Salle University Chief of Staff/SWA Donease Smith and TCU Senior Associate AD/SWA Kim Johnson join ADU’s Tai M. Brown at the 2022 Women Leaders Convention to discuss effective leadership strategies for navigating change, how to instill confidence in staff and when and how to implement strategic thinking. Johnson shares lessons learned from experiencing conference realignment while at TCU, including the value of being transparent during times of change. Smith explains how she empowers her team to be the “CEO” of their unit and how she helps coaches shift from sport-specific to department-wide thinking.

The conversation is indexed below for efficient viewing (click the time stamp to jump to a specific question/topic).

- What are the aspects of leadership that you've seen during your time at TCU that have been successful?
- Donease, what are effective aspects of leadership that have worked for you and the institutions you've been at?
- As a leader, how do you give people confidence?
- Beyond giving someone a leadership title and the resources to do the work, how do you "speak the spirit" into someone, to empower them to really lead their team or unit?
- Kim, how have these strategies for giving someone confidence manifested in your career?
- When did you start thinking strategically in your career?
- Kim, when did you start thinking strategically?
- How early in a career should young professionals start thinking strategically and thinking about the athletic department as a whole?
- How do you help coaches think about the entire department versus just their sport?
- What advice do you have for navigating change and transition?

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