SEMC Leadership Institute: Leading for Today’s Challenges

The Southeastern Museum Conference (SEMC) offers a professional development program for future museum leaders that supports diversity and inclusion. 

Proudly developed in partnership with the Association of African American Museums (AAAM), this program is focused on leadership training for staff of small- and mid-sized institutions.

The 2022 Leadership Institute: Leading for Today’s Challenges aims to equip a new generation of museum leaders with outward-looking skills and strategies that increase their effectiveness as leaders and ability to create a productive and inclusive environment within the museum and among the museum’s board.

OBJECTIVES

The Southeastern Museums Conference Leadership Institute will develop a diverse and inclusive group of future museum leaders who:

• Can identify and build on their existing personal strengths

• Assess how to maximize these strengths internally in an organization and externally as part of a community

• Identify methods to capitalize on their strengths and their environment to move an institution forward

CURRICULUM AREAS

The curriculum, taught by leaders in their fields, covers six areas:

• Reflecting Your Best Self*

• Building Inclusive Cultures

• Strategic Communication and Thinking

• Leadership Challenges

• Adaptive Leadership

• Creating Your Best Self as an Organization

*Using the Reflective Best Self Tool

Meet the Leadership Institute Faculty.

2022 Institute Schedule

The Institute took place April 24-29, 2022 at the Duke Mansion in Charlotte, NC. The schedule was as follows:

Sunday, April 24, 2022

1-4pm: Introduction and Reflecting Your Best Self

4-5pm: Reflection Exercise

Monday, April 25, 2022

9am-12pm: Digging Deeper into Reflecting Your Best Self

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break (lunch provided)

1pm-4pm: Leadership Challenges

4pm-5pm: Reflection Work

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

9am-12pm: Strategic Communication and Thinking

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break (lunch provided)

1pm-4pm: Building Inclusive Cultures

4pm-5pm: Reflection Work

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

9am-12pm: Adaptive Leadership

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break (lunch provided)

1pm-4pm: Reflecting Your Organization’s Best Self - Board Governance and Organizational Lifecycle

4pm-5pm: Reflection Work

Thursday, April 28, 2022

9am-12pm: Strategic Visioning and Planning

12pm-1pm: Lunch Break (lunch provided)

1pm-3pm: Reflecting Your Organization’s Best Self - Fundraising

3pm-5pm: Reflecting Your Organization’s Best Self - Guest Panel and reception

Friday, April 29, 2022

9am-12pm: Closing Reflections - Evaluative Thinking and Action Plan

The 2022 Leadership Institute tuition was $1,500 for SEMC and AAAM members and $1,600 for non-members. Tuition included all instruction,  Institute resources, and registration to the SEMC2022 Annual Meeting.

Meals (other than those noted below) and lodging at the Duke Mansion were not included in tuiton. The 2022 Leadership Institute room rate was $179 per night + tax which included daily breakfast and lunch. Dinners were on own. Restaurants and a grocery store were a short walk from the Mansion.

The Institute also included daily coffee, boxed lunch and afternoon snacks, a reception with guest panelists (bar/lite bites) on Thursday and a closing dinner.

Duke Mansion, Charlotte, NC

The inaugural SEMC Leadership Institute - Leading for Today’s Challenges - ran as a virtual program November 8 - 20, 2020.

Meet the inaugural Leadership Institute Class of 2020

2020 Virtual Leadership Institute Cohort 

Read what members of the 2020 Leaderhship Institute cohort had to say about their experience!

"My Institute experience gave me confidence and empowered me. I now have the tools to make my professional challenges work for me rather than against me."

"I feel more confident in knowing what makes me by best self and am also leading my team to have opportunities to be their best selves."

"The Leadership experience gave me the power to think bigger about my working relatioships and be less affected by pettiness."

"I can better diagnose strengths and weaknesses in my organization, understand the phases of wehre we are and identify areas that need to be addressed. I feel better equipped to make positive changes."

"I loved the instructors and they fit perfectly together. They introduced a culture of positivity and lifting each other up. That's not an across-the-board standard."

SEMC is grateful for the support of our generous sponsors and partners for the

2022 Leadership Institute