Listening and Leading Your Way to Long-term Learning and Growth

Learning, Listening & Leading: Taking What You’ve Learned to the Next Level by Kenann McKenzie-DeFranza, PhD, is a companion journal to any kind of transformational training or professional development. The book includes prompts, words of inspiration and a way to track your learning across time. This guided self-development journal is meant as a companion to help make sense of training experiences, so there are long-term learning and benefits.

The journal gives space for you to ask questions like:

• How do I use this information?
• How can I process this later?
• What am I learning about myself, what works for me or how I think and act?
• Are there shifts in my thinking or behavior that can help me?

Designed to help readers reconcile concepts that may have elicited a lot of emotion or thought, Learning, Listening & Leading is a helpful tool, providing accessible reflection space to grow as both a professional and a person.

Learning, Listening & Leading: Taking What You’ve Learned To The Next Level is a great pick for teams of business professionals, as well as classes of college and graduate students.

Single most important takeaway

Taking what you’ve learned to the next level is an investment in yourself.

Meet the author

Kenann McKenzie-DeFranza, PhD, is the Founder of Aspiring Spirit, LLC which includes the well-known podcast. Her professional experience and expertise in education spans 25 years and includes teaching in graduate education programs, civic engagement research & practice, organizational consulting, PreK-12 schools and higher education professional development on subjects such as educational practices, policy, K12 administration, and leadership. She has authored papers and peer-reviewed publications. Dr. McKenzie served in the federal government for several years as well in the US Department of Education.

In higher education, she is noted for being the inaugural Director of the Generous Listening and Dialogue Center at Tufts University. She serves as an elected official for the Beverly School Committee and an Associate Professor of Practice at Gordon College School of Education.

In 2022, she was recognized with the Heroine Award by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women. Her professional development companion journal was published in 2023, Called Learning, Listening & Leading.