Dr Sandra J Stein gives a view from New York

Dr Sandra J Stein, Chief Executive of NYC Leadership Academy captured the hall’s attention with a warm, empathetic and challenging approach to creating a set of personal standards with which to anchor one's leadership role.

She talked about the overwhelming number of competencies, standards and matrices against which to evaluate leadership roles. Her team created a set of keeping healthy standards for leadership to bring a balance to the over-worked lives of leaders in schools and other settings.

One of these standards was 'the ability to sleep without dreaming about the job'. There were a lot of nods and smiles around the hall as she expanded this set of standards.

She went on to reflect on the questions she asked herself to help create a set of personal standards like 'who is in my team?'. She talked about creating a team where the cognitive ability of the group is smarter than the sum of the individuals working alone.

• Find out more about Sandra Stein and the NYC leadership development programmes.