
Interactive workshop: The Leadership Blindspot Audit
Tuesday, September 16: 2:00pm PDT / 4:00pm CDT / 5:00pm EDT
The Leadership Blindspot Audit: When Excellence Becomes the Enemy of Transformation
- a 60-minute diagnostic experience that will fundamentally change how you see your role as a leader.
This isn't another professional development session. This is a reckoning with the uncomfortable truth that your competence might be maintaining the very patterns you think you're changing. You'll work through a live audit of your most celebrated success to discover what it might be hiding.
You'll leave with an analysis of your practice that highlights those practices that serve some students while systematically leaving others behind - even when those practices look like progress.
You'll discover:
- Which of your "wins" are actually sophisticated forms of pattern preservation.
- How to ask questions that reveal system barriers instead of student deficits.
- The difference between optimizing broken systems and transforming them.
- A framework for building "seeing capacity" throughout your organization.
In the first half of the session, you'll hear the experiences of one Washington Principal - an experienced leader whose deep self-reflection practices and her work with Etio helped create a transformational culture that created transformational change with teachers.
The second half of the session is dedicated to the interactive workshop where we'll take you through a three-step reflection protocol to audit your leadership blindspot.
This experience is designed for superintendents, district leaders, and heads of school who are tired of managing inequitable systems and ready to transform them.
Warning: This session will challenge everything you think you know about effective leadership. Only register if you're prepared to examine what your success might be hiding and take action on what you discover. Because here's what we've learned: Once you start seeing differently, you can't unsee. And that's when real transformation begins.
Your presenter: Nicole Williams
Educational Consultant | Leadership Coach | School Improvement Specialist
Nicole Williams is a seasoned educational leader and consultant with over 20 years of experience driving instructional excellence and transformative leadership across K-12 settings. A former school leader and instructional coach for practicing and aspiring principals, Ms. Williams has dedicated her career to advancing student achievement through strategic leadership development, effective instructional practices, and equity-centered school improvement.
Nicole believes strongly in developing leadership at every level of the school community. Her leadership philosophy emphasizes intentional action, reflective practice, and building adaptive capacity—ensuring schools are equipped to navigate complexity while sustaining instructional excellence. This approach creates environments where both educators and students thrive.
A sought-after speaker on instructional leadership and school improvement, Nicole equips educators with practical tools for delivering rigorous, inclusive instruction that meets diverse learner needs. Her unique blend of strategic vision and practical implementation has helped numerous schools transform their leadership practices and achieve measurable improvements in instructional quality and student performance.
Nicole is joined by: Darice Johnson, Executive Director School and Leadership Success at Kent School District, and former Principal at Meridian Middle School (WA)
