Leadership for Life Alumni Newsletter

Fall 2004: A Looking Glass Experience Alumnus Makes Her Move

Lois Colburn
The Looking Glass Experience, 2002

Lois Colburn was facing some difficult workplace issues in 2002. There had been a change in leadership at the organization where she was employed at the time, and also a clash of management styles. Struggling to come to grips with this new environment, Lois came to the conclusion that a leadership development experience might provide the guidance she needed.

"You hit a certain point in your career where it's increasingly difficult to think about what you want to do professionally," says Lois, a seasoned executive in the field of medical education. "I felt I needed to step back and take a fresh look at myself and my situation."

After a friend at The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation spoke highly of CCL to her, Lois checked out the Center's catalog of open-enrollment programs. Aided by development grants, she attended The Looking Glass Experience. The program's emphasis on helping executives work through organizational change attracted her, as well as its focus on helping individuals discover how their leadership styles impact their organizations, the people they work with, and their own success.

In her week at the Center, Lois came to understand for the first time the basis for some of the issues she had been experiencing at work. "What was most illuminating for me was to go through the 360-degree feedback and the leadership and personality assessments," she says. "They worked together to provide a snapshot on how I relate to others and what my professional needs are versus those of other people. All of a sudden, a light bulb came on. There's something about being taken out of your context. You can't duplicate this on the job."

The Looking Glass simulation was an education in itself — involving her for the first time in the decision-making duties of a plant manager. "My small group was a great bunch of people," she said. "I think there are strengths in having differences as opposed to everybody being totally the same. I found that to be extraordinarily helpful."

The program gave her some new techniques for improving her workplace environment, but the experience had its greatest impact in shaping her long-term outlook. "I learned more than anything that some things just don't work out," she says. "The more you can learn about what your strengths are, the more you can recognize whether a particular environment is good for you. I became much more cognizant of who I was and how I fit in my environment."

In May 2004, Lois began a satisfying new phase of her career, becoming executive director of the Center for Continuing Education at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. In this new position, she manages a staff of 15 with a mission of providing continuing professional education to health professionals in Nebraska and the surrounding region.

The move, geographically as well as organizationally, came after long months of deliberation.

"You do hit a point where you look very differently at your professional career and recognize that if you're going to make a change, you need to decide what it is that's important to you," she says. "After CCL, I started to look much more seriously about what I needed. I went to The Looking Glass Experience at the right time."