That's the question we tackled in my class last night. It was my first night of this new class called Leadership Dynamics and Data-Driven Decision Making. I'm really excited about this class because part of it is devoted to comparing what members of industry say about Leadership and Change to what Educators say. So often in this program so far (and every other professional development thing I have encountered), everything is about what educators say. Now that may sound odd, because I'm a teacher, in education (a high school), but before becoming a teacher, I was completing my MBA degrees in Finance and Marketing, so I really find the comparisons between the two view points to be extremely interesting.
According to my teacher's research and findings,
Leaders:
- Set a vision
- Set the stage and then get out of the way
- Trust others and are symbols of integrity
- Help define the "core values" of their institution
- Are passionate and committed - They are focused; they know what they have to do and they get it done.
- Inspire and empower others.
Wow. That's a lot to live up too.
We talked about whether leaders are "born" or "made". The final consensus from our class seemed to be a bit of both. I personally feel that some people are born with more of an aptitude towards leadership than others. I do feel that it is possible to learn how to be a good leader, i.e. what the traits of a good leader are, how to inspire others, etc..., but I think that some people are just more kind and empathetic towards their peers than others. I hope that I fall into that category because I want to be a good leader.
The major project in this class is to write a paper. This topic of this paper is to choose an area in your school district or organization that needs to be improved and then create a plan for that improvement based on Kotter's 8-Stage Process for Implementing Change. I've done a little bit of thinking on this in class and this morning, and I think I would like my paper to be based on instructional technology in my school district. Our tech guys do a fantastic job keeping all techie things running, the network, computers, etc..., but I really think there needs to be a radical shift in the focus that is placed on instructional technology training. It is one thing for a "Techie" to teach other "techies" a new piece of software, system, etc... It is entirely another thing for a "techie" to teach a teacher how to use a new piece of software or system and how to implement that successfully in their classroom on an every day basis. My plan is to see if there is any data available on any past attempts like this in my district, and what I might be able to do towards implementing that shift in my district. We'll see! That's my goal for this class. (Something tells me it is going to take much more than one class to see that through - but it's a passion of mine.)