Leadership Retreat: Students Learn to Step Up

These students will be leading everything from athletic teams to affinity groups, from clubs to student publications, from community engagement groups to the coffee house. They’ve been elected to these positions, in the main, but at this point in the year, they are very much leaders-in-training.

Hence the retreat, which covers such topics as community citizenship, cultural competency, organizational and logistical skills, and leadership through play. At the morning’s opening session, Head of School Ryan Dahlem addressed the group, reminding them that much of the job of a leader is serving as a role model, demonstrating support for one another and exerting a positive influence on those around them. It also may mean taking a back seat, he said: “Remember: Leaders sometimes eat last.”

The students broke up into smaller groups to attend focused training sessions. In a Campus Center classroom, Upper School DEI coordinator tc Hanmer and Katie Henderson, director of DEI programming and support, led students through exercises meant to help them develop cultural competency. Hanmer asked students to discuss amongst themselves their strengths and their concerns, and then had them suggest, through a QR code, a couple of words about the kind of culture they hope to inspire on their teams. The suggestions were then morphed into a word cloud that weighted words by the frequency with which they were mentioned: rising to the top were “welcoming,” “engaging,” “inclusive,” and “supportive.”

Those qualities, Henderson and Hanmer stressed, don’t just happen; they come about through intentional efforts to reach and engage group members who may have different ways of working, thinking, speaking, or navigating the space.

In The Revers Center, Interim Upper School Dean of Student Life Victoria Mizzi coached students in the logistics of leadership. To that end, she had put the students through an exercise in writing appropriate and effective emails. She began with prompts showing what not to do and had the students spend a few minutes rewriting the communication. One such prompt asked “Mr. Daylim” to “come speak to our club.” The students were quick to find the concerns—from the misspelling of Mr. Dahlem’s name to the lack of a subject line to the peremptory and disrespectful tone—and to come up with versions that put the request in a more suitable form. 

Director of Community Engagement Lucas Malo led a session in Hutton Hall on building leadership through play. In part, this involved a cooperative game wherein blindfolded students attempted to hit one another with soft foam balls, using only the verbal directives of others as a guide. It required listening, collaboration, trust, and—evidently—a lot of laughter. 

In the afternoon, Susanna Donahue—who this year is serving as interim athletic director, among other roles—led a session about making good announcements, as student leaders often are called upon to do at all-school meetings and other gatherings. Students were placed in groups to practice this skill, and they were “judged” by a panel of three professional community members, who offered feedback. “The goal was to have students make clear and concise announcements,” said Donahue. “Although it’s a lighter session, this is always a productive one for students.”

For the last session of the day, the athletic captains met in Kraft Dining Hall for a presentation by math faculty member Kim Webster and Jillian Dempsey ’09. Webster, an accomplished endurance athlete, holds a master’s degree in sports psychology and last year began offering support services to Rivers athletes, addressing such topics as creating positive team culture, optimizing team and individual performance, goal setting, and mental skills like resiliency and toughness. She told the captains that she is available to work with both teams and individual athletes throughout the year.

Dempsey, a professional hockey player who captained both her pro team and the Harvard women’s hockey team as a senior at the school, spoke about the qualities that make athletes into exceptional leaders, whether they hold the role of captain or not. “There are two factors we can always control,” said Dempsey. “The first is effort: Showing up ready and always giving 100 percent. That willingness to keep showing up is what sets people apart.”

The second factor, she said, is attitude. “You always have to try to find the positives and stay focused, and develop resilience, mental toughness, and discipline.”

Being a captain, Dempsey concluded, “means being the epitome of effort and positive attitude, and it’s special, because your team has chosen you to lead them.”

The same might be said of all the leadership roles held by students. If indeed leaders are made, Tuesday’s retreat went a long way toward molding this group into Rivers’ newest crop of leaders.