Tag: ETL504

Throughout this course, I have expanded and built upon my knowledge and understanding of what a leader is. Coming into this course, I believed that leadership essentially stopped with Head Teachers. Throughout this course, I have learnt that this isn’t true and that every single person can and should be a leader in some way as it expands and builds upon our capacity.

Coming into the case study portion of the course, I was hesitant and nervous about engaging in group work, let alone online group work. My previous experiences with group work weren’t great and a few people had completed the majority of the work previously whilst others did very little. This experience however, has been engaging and I feel as if I have learnt quite a lot not just content wise but also about myself.

Coming into this course, I completed an online leadership style survey which helped me identify my strengths and weaknesses as a leader. I found out that I would prefer to compromise and tend to avoid conflict. Upon learning this, it has inspired me to voice my feelings more openly in my workplace rather than quietening myself to keep others happy. This has led to some minor conflict but I definitely feel like the relationship that I now have with this other staff member is stronger because of it.

The case studies were very interesting and I believe our group worked very cohesively. As a member of group 14, I contributed to every case study. I found myself reading others comments and opinions more closely as they then informed my understanding and allowed me to look at problems from different perspectives. This has opened my eyes to different ways of solving issues as well as reasons why certain things may occur. This has allowed me to think about the decisions that I make in the workplace beyond how they would impact me. I now find myself speaking to other staff about these decisions to get feedback before implementing them.

On beginning our case study journey, it was difficult to communicate due to different time zones and work commitments. Our group found ourselves communicating via email, wiki and the chat option. This led to confusion and work being duplicated. I made the suggestion of coming up with a plan for the next case study in order to save time and stress. We agreed that we would work within the discussion board and would split the task up and a different person each week would take charge and collate and post. This I believe helped us to transition into transformational leaders as we were helping to push each other to become better with our writing and analysis (Ingram, 2017).

One case study has stood out for me in particular. Case study six has made me reflect on my own mental health and how much extra effort I am currently putting in at work and the impact it is having on my family. On our Group 14 Discussion post, Tracey made a comment about the principal making challenges for the staff. This has made me reflect on my principal and how they are empowering us and not pitting us against each other (Condrick, 2019, September, 29) and lucky I am to work in a supportive environment. Due to this I have taken some of Welham’s (2013), advice and have restricted the amount of time I can spend on work at home and have imposed curfews at work. This I believe has helped me with my work life balance.

References

Ingram, D. (2017). Transformational leadership vs transactional leadership definition. In Hearst Newspapers: Small Business. Retrieved from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/transformational-leadership-vs-transactional-leadership-definition-13834.html

Welham, H. (2013, November 6). 10 ideas to help teachers beat stress. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/nov/06/teachers-beat-stress-10-ideas

 

After completing the “Conflict Management Survey” I got the following results:

I am a strong believer in compromise. That yielding does not work and leads to one side feeling “defeated” as does forcing. I found that I agree with problem solving and that both parties need to work together to find a mutually beneficial solution. I did score quite highly in the avoiding sector though.

My approach to managing conflict is to generally work together to find a mutually beneficial solution. This will work the majority of the time expect when the other side takes a more forceful approach with no desire to compromise. Where I often run into trouble though is when I have conflict with an older staff member who will often talk down to me due to the age difference and experience level. This is when I will often try to avoid the conflict in order to work around it.

I believe that this is quite a truthful representation of myself as when I was reading the summary of each section, scenarios and experiences were popping into my head where I had completed certain activities or made compromises which reflected each stage.

I definitely believe I need to work on my avoidance. Conflict is going to happen and by trying to avoid it, I believe it makes it into a bigger issue when it is finally confronted or dealt with.

 

As we are now in the 21st century our structures and motivations have needed to adapt to our new lifestyles. Colvin stats that you could either drive the workplace through authority or through shared interests.

This idea can be applied to schools and libraries through:

• teaching and support staff wanting to make a difference to student learning, which would allow for changes where needed
• staff working together in a collective efficacy instead of against each other to get ahead
• allowing people the freedom to experiment and be creative in order to draw students back into the library space
• having a safe and supportive environment where both staff and students feel supported and have the ability to make mistakes without the fear of getting in trouble