ETL504 Assessment 2: Reflective Blog Post

This subject made me aware of the day-to-day leadership that I show in relationships with students and colleagues. Reflecting on how I embody different leadership styles with students was a positive experience because I was able to identify how my teaching style matches leadership styles I admire (Robertson-Jones, M. 2019, July 28). While it feels natural to recognize myself as a leader to my students, I have balked at referring to myself as a leader amongst my colleagues (Robertson-Jones, M. 2019, July 16; Robertson-Jones, M. 2019, July 28). Learning about the concept of “leading from the middle” made me reconsider this perspective. A conversation with my teaching assistant brought me to the sudden awareness that I have been an “unskilled and unaware” leader in many relationships with colleagues (Robertson-Jones, M. 2019, August 17). This uncomfortable realization led me to set leadership as one of my professional goals for this school year (Robertson-Jones, M. 2019, September 22). While I am still in the beginning stages of developing as a leader, setting out the steps I will take to build my leadership capacity this year is a start. 

 

When reflecting on how I act as a leader professionally I realize I am more likely to demonstrate management, as I find fulfillment in “making a system function the way it is supposed to” (Kotter, 2013, 1:00). This was demonstrated with my case study group when I volunteered to post our first group response and shared a vision and timeline for how we could work together effectively through online global collaboration (Group 5, 2019a; FlatConnections, 2016). However, after I posted our response I felt I let my group down because I did not include everyone’s ideas (Group 5, 2019b). Without feedback I was not able to gauge how the other group members felt about my post, and I assumed they were disappointed. 

 

What I realize about leadership and group membership from this experience is how important it is to be able to connect with those you work with. The leader has an essential job of building a foundation of trust within a group, a key characteristic of transformational leadership. The term “psychological collectivism” accounts for the greater proportion of effort members are willing to exert in close-knit teams, and “self-efficacy for teamwork” is the corresponding confidence they feel in themselves as a team members (Barnett & McCormack, 2016, p. 284-285). With my case study group these conditions were not present. I felt that there was not enough communication to establish the feeling of connection that could lead to better outcomes. 

 

Making personal connections is a strength of mine that could contribute to transformational leadership. While I see myself as a transformational leader in the classroom with my students (Robertson-Jones, M. 2019, July 28), I will face some challenges in acting as a transformational leader in my professional life. My struggle in Assessment 2 with honing in on specific strategies for creating a learning commons at my school exemplifies the difficulty I have in thinking like a leader. I hope that by starting small with my goal of acting as a more effective leader in my relationships with colleagues I can stretch beyond managing towards leadership.

 

References

Barnett, K. & McCormick. (2016). Perceptions of task interdependence and functional leadership in schools. Small Group Research, 47(3), 279-302. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496416645409

Flat Connections. (2016, December 7). The norms of online collaboration. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wuwv42SonJs

Group 5. (2019a, August 12). Group 5 Case Study Blog [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/blogs-journals/execute/blogTopicList?course_id=_42385_1&navItem=group_blogs&group_id=_49715_1&type=blogs

Group 5. (2019b, August 12). Group 5 Case Study Wiki [Online forum comment]. Retrieved from https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/Bb-wiki-BB5c1c4db3261aa/wikiView?course_id=_42385_1&group_id=_49715_1

Kotter, J. (2013, August 13). The key differences between leading and management [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEfgCqnMl5E

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