JCS superintendent talks women's power advice at Chamber event

The Johnson City Schools Superintendent Dr. Erin Slater gave insight to her job and being a woman in leadership during the Johnson City Chamber's Women's Power Hour event on Thursday afternoon. Titled "The Power of YOU", Slater's talk was aimed to inspire attendees to reflect on their leadership practices and find new strategies to help reach their full potential. She began her presentation by acknowledging oftentimes, women and men face much different challenges when it comes to leadership positions. "I just want to kinda kick-off talking about being a woman in leadership," Slater said. "Whether people want to admit it or not, it's different for women than it is for men, especially depending on the sector as well…There's challenges in any sort of venue, I believe, being a woman in leadership." One of the points Slater made during her talk was on the importance of presentation when addressing a team. "You have a lot of power when you're doing presentations in just how you set them up," Slater said. "It's not necessarily about the words, it's about how you portray it." Slater also shared her personal experiences as a woman in leadership roles she's held throughout her career. As someone who's risen through the ranks in education roles, she credited relationships she had with other women for her career growth. "I'm telling you, when you talk about having a strong female support advocate for you, that will make all the difference for you, but you can [also] make all the difference for other women," she said. Another piece of advice Slater had was to be deliberate when planning meetings and conversations in a workplace. "Always know what you want your outcome to be," Slater said. "You might not get there, but if you don't know what that outcome is, that meeting is not going to have that purpose and intent that you want." In her closing remarks Slater encouraged the group to be resilient, use the resources around them and ask key questions to achieve goals, referencing the acronym SMART, which stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely goals. Slater left the audience with two things she said are crucial to success: collaboration and communication. "What's the power you have? You have the power to collaborate and the power to communicate, and there's lots of different ways to be able to do that," she said. "To me, those are the key factors as to how to have a successful organization."