The Teddy Bear Wants to Smash Hierarchies?

      I admittedly was frustrated with the initial reading in this course.  I smugly considered myself as a leader already and thought reading theory about transformational  (Marzano, Waters and McNulty 2005) and contingent (Bush & Glover 2014) leadership was unnecessary.  “If I already am a leader, then what do I need to read about?”.   Gary Green (2011)  points out, some TLs will find it difficult to network with classroom teachers while others will find it easier.  If I already am a classroom teacher, with good rapport amongst the staff, then networking as a TL should be simple.  However, upon realising that situational leadership requires a leader to understand many theories and apply the best type contextual leadership for success, I began to internalise the readings more carefully.  The servant leader, though I dislike the label, spoke to me personally as I need to “shut-up and listen” more often.  Discussion Board 3 made me realise one of the most successful initiatives at my school last year was a teacher led blogging group that met about once a month.  The teacher that organised the group relinquished her “authority” after the first two meetings and encouraged others to decide the topics and format of the meetings.  By listening to others and encouraging their leadership skills, she was proving the power of a servant leader, and her respect amongst staff skyrocketed.  Watching her “quietly” lead was a humbling experience.  Similarly humbling was being labeled the “nice” leader and the “teddy bear” in two leadership surveys I took on-line.  It seems clear to me that I was not as strong of a leader as I thought and that that networking with a variety of leaders, listening to staff members and being involved with teams outside of my comfort zone will improve my ability to lead as TL.

I was also a bit frustrated when I read the first discussion board post and saw how often distributive leadership was selected as the solution to hypothetical problems.  In a blog post I vented about how I’ve seen administrators “distribute” leadership, but to the wrong people and for the wrong reasons.  Fortunately my classmate Rebecca went out of her to way to comment on my blog post and relay to me that with a strong school vision and trust amongst team members, distributed leadership can work.  Rebecca’s comment not only made me reconsider how I can curb my own pessimism, but it also made me realise the power of blogging and how TLs and educators can lead one another by sharing and communicating in the on-line environment.  If we want our students to network in order to problem solve then we need to model it also!

Lastly I’d like to note how Don Tapscott’s “Four Principals” video encouraged my wondering about hierarchies and how they may actually be preventing effective collaboration.  It started with my wife being nice enough to look over my concept map for this assignment and I was rationalizing the hierarchal placement of leaders she commented, “Wouldn’t it be easier if they were all on the same level?”
Hmmmmm….
Tapscott’s talk on “open collaboration” recognised that “the boundaries of organizations becoming more porous” is key to collaborative success.  So that leaves this “Teddy Bear” leader wondering if he is innovative enough to smash the hierarchies he is so use to better support collaboration.
Thanks for reading my post.

References

Bush, T., & Glover, D. (2014). School leadership models: What do we    know?  School Leadership and Management, 34(5), 553-571. doi:             10.1080/13632434.2014.

Green, G. (2011). Learning leadership through the school library. Access, 25(4),         22-26. Retrieved from http://www.asla.org.au/publications/access.aspx

Marzano, R. J., Waters, T., & McNulty, B. A. (2005). School leadership that works:           From research to results. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and        Curriculum Development. Retrieved from Ebook Library.
[Chapter 2: Some theories and theorists on leadership (pp.13-27)

TED. (2012, June 28). Don Tapscott: Four principles for the open world [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfqwHT3u1-8