Huge honor

I am feeling hugely fortunate and honored as a woman social worker and leader. I recently found out that I will be the first woman dean at the University of South Carolina College of Social Work. What a personal honor and great step for all women social work leaders!

New Resource

I've just found a resource that has some interesting materials on leadership. The Journal of Healthcare Leadership is an open access (i.e. free to readers) peer-reviewed journal. It can be found at http://www.dovepress.com/journal-of-healthcare-leadership-journal

Happy reading!

Transitions

Leaders work to move systems forward and aim for transformational change. This is great,and results in positive growth; but transitions, even truly positive ones, are hard. One of the big challenges of leadership is to be positive about change while acknowledging the difficulty of transition.

Balance

It seems to me that one of the challenges of leadership is to get change processes moving without doing too much of it oneself. Do too little and you don't build any momentum. Do too much and no one else feels any ownership. Titrating that dichotomy can be tricky...I wonder how others do it?

Doing

"The largest question facing the human race is not when will you learn, but when will you act on what you've already learned." - Neale Donald Walsch

Leadership and action are inextricably intertwined. However, action without thought, and thought in isolation from others, are both meaningless. So leaders need connection, contemplation, and action.

Last week I had a chance to lobby on the Hill for NASW, promoting the Social Work Reinvestment Act. I was surprised at how easy it was...staffers were interested in what I said and I think I actually made a difference. Goes to show you that having passion about your topic can make you a really convincing and engaging speaker.

HIV and the social work curriculum

One thing a social work leader can do is provide guidance regarding the curriculum, making suggestions for ways in which the social work curriculum can be strengthened to better meet the needs of the community. My colleagues and I offer some suggestions for incorporating more HIV content in the social work curriculum in the article at the site below.


https://sites.google.com/site/hivandswcurriculum/hiv