ETL 504 Module 1 Reflection: The Nice Leader
I’m often reluctant to take surveys about my “personality” as I don’t feel they are overly useful. However, after being deemed the “nice leader” in an on-line survey about leadership I can relate to one of the criticisms: I need to be liked. While it’s true that a likeable leader is usually “understanding and willing to help out” I do find it “hard to deal with serious conflict”. I’d rather avoid it or give-in if that will keep people happy. The survey made me realise, if I have listened carefully to other concerns, that staying true to my beliefs, even in the face of adversity, is an area for me to grow as a leader. I can often cave if I feel that someone has a better pedagogical background or they have a strong personality. The TL role may help me thrive as a leader as I feel I can be more honest about conflicts and possible resolutions and I would ideally be creating my own initiatives (aligning with the school goals) which may help me avoid initiatives that I’m not in full support of.
Similar to my reluctance to taking the on-line survey, I was also a bit negative in regards to the Bush and Glover (2014) article on categorizing leadership. I felt that I was taking a lot of time to calssifying leadership and learning how to be a leader. However, upon reading the conclusion I recognised that knowing and being able to label leadership styles helps in recognising your own and other styles, while knowing what types of leadership may be required according the context of the situation (contingent leadership). In the course discussion board posts about applying leadership styles to general hypothetical situations I noticed many students choosing distributed leadership, not surprisingly, as the best model. While I recognise the strengths of this model I have also experienced situations in which none of these leaders are held accountable for bringing forth and completing initiatives. Marzano and McNulty may call this “transactional passive” as school administration create these roles, as research suggests, but do little to encourage, guide and set standards for these positions. Leaders can become passive in these roles if they are not asked to be accountable.
Bush, T., & Glover, D. (2014). School leadership models: What do we know? School Leadership and Management, 34(5), 553-571. doi: 10.1080/13632434.2014.928680
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
Hi Michael, I hope you don’t mind me finding your thinkspace page. I find that constantly making additions to my page and seeming to not have anyone comment does help me clear my own head, but doesn’t necessarily help clarify anything.
I agree with what you have said, though I would add one thing. You mentioned that you have seen many leaders who have not been held accountable for completing initiatives. I would suggest that the leaders did not have a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve. I have been at a school where every new piece of research or program was swiftly implemented whether a previous one had been taken to completion or not. After the readings, I feel that this is probably because the leaders only vision is ‘improved student learning’ and ‘reduced class problems.’
My current school clarifies the vision as ‘improved student engagement through collaboration’ and so there are many initiatives under way, but they are all aimed at the same vision and are working well. With such a clear vision, the staff are slowly being won over rather than having the new initiatives foisted upon them every few months.
Thanks for reading my post my Rebecca! You’re right about blog spaces; they need to be an interactive environment.
I agree that there is a clear vision piece lacking from leadership when teacher leaders are not held accountable. I can’t remember the course reading off-hand, I think it’s in Module 3, but it highlights what you’ve pointed out. All teams in a school need to be working towards the same vision piece as it is essential for success. It seems that your school is starting to implement this strategy to ensure that “all ships are sailing in the same direction”. Communicating and sharing what teams are accomplishing is vital to succeeding in school wide initiatives and I hope we can start to develop our own vision more clearly through collaboration.