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Reflecting over the past nine weeks in Leading Change in Digital Learning<\/strong> this course continuously challenged the status quo of what I came to expect or knew from past and present experiences.\u00a0 It has served me with greater content, resources and learnings only to provide me a with more meaningful and greater depth and breadth of knowledge within topics of leadership, change management and project management, ones that I encounter daily in my workplace.<\/p>\n With the attitude of a growth mindset and continuous learning I felt I have gained new perspectives and appreciation of my own leadership behaviors and tendencies, enabling to further elevate and apply new found skills and knowledge.<\/p>\n I look back to my initial post after reading The Leadership Challenge and what most people look for and admire in a leader, someone whose direction they would willingly and easily follow (Kouzes, J. & Posner, B., 2012) and validated if I still believe my top attributes of inspiring<\/em>, honesty<\/em>, intelligence<\/em>, supportive<\/em> and competent<\/em> hold true for me nine weeks later.\u00a0 With careful consideration I see making a shift to add the attribute of forward looking<\/strong> in to the fold of my top leadership competencies and attributes. Knowing how much change is intertwined into everything I do, and leadership playing such a critical role in successful change, having the ability to look forward allows for more preparedness, proactiveness, and the ease in to welcoming the change, considering we are constantly facing change as part of the norm.<\/p>\n This speaks to adaptive leadership<\/strong> where \u201cadaptive leaders do not just make changes, they carefully recognize potential changes in the external environment and consider the best path that will positively affect the organization\u201d (Khan, 2017, p.178).\u00a0 I translate this to suggest, why wait for it to change to happen, recognize it and be the change.<\/p>\n \u201cChange will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.\u201d<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0\u2015\u00a0Barack Obama<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Another opportunity that awaits my leadership repertoire is reflective leadership<\/strong>.\u00a0 Being a reflective leader provides me with the chance to consciously and consistently make time to practice reflection with the intentions of improving organizational performance.\u00a0 So many times, I find myself constantly just running and not taking the necessary moments to be more self-aware, mindful, and tap in to my personal intuitions and wisdom (Castelli, 2015).\u00a0 By doing this it allows for greater accuracy in assessing strengths and weaknesses with the intentions of making positive improvements, enables a greater sense of awareness, and good judgement.<\/p>\n The other aspect of leadership I see myself learning to master is resilience<\/strong>.\u00a0 Change is tenaciousness and aggressive yet part of organizational normalcy where I currently work.\u00a0 With a pragmatic and optimistic perspective, I view change as invigorating, inspiring and equally exhausting and sometimes frustrating all bound together.\u00a0 Resilience allows the measurement of the persistence of things coming at us and the ability to absorb change and disturbance, while still maintaining the same equilibrium (Weller, 2013).<\/p>\n In my most current role over the past 6 months, I\u2019ve been creating and leading a newly formed function which is the Learning and Development department.\u00a0 What I can say for certain is that change is the norm and constant for me<\/strong>.\u00a0 I find myself immersed, surrounded and impacted by change all the time continuously adapting and embracing to change while leading, supporting and influencing others, all while seeking out new discoveries to innovate meaningful and impactful change in the workplace.<\/p>\n I find much of my successes with many of the learning and development strategic initiatives from the demonstration of my top five leadership attributes, alongside being forward looking and authentic and taking the time to further develop out being reflective and resilient.<\/p>\n As I look at the past few months what I have found successful in advocating and implementing change is ensuring transparency in what I do, high communication, high participation and inclusion through a multitude of venues such as meetings and focus groups and sharing a clear sense of purpose and why the change is necessary.\u00a0 I\u2019ve found this has been received extremely well by many stakeholders, as they have shown great appreciation and gratitude for knowing their voice and opinion matters, as well as feeling like they are part of something big and own this shared responsibility jointly with me to ensure its success.\u00a0 What this demonstrates is the \u201cnotion of collective efficacy, change efficacy referring to the organizational members\u2019 shared beliefs in their collective capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action involved in change implementation\u201d (Weiner, 2009, p.2).<\/p>\n As I look forward in to the near future once this course is completed, I will be leveraging so much of what has been taught and discovered.\u00a0 The multitude of tool kits as it relates to change management and project management has been earmarked to curate and pull from for upcoming projects and I am so grateful for that.<\/p>\n I will also continue to find ways to create better balance between the exponential change, demands of work and constant agility, flexibility and growth required at work of me with the necessary breaks to recharge and be kind to myself to get through some of the tougher changes and challenges our organization seeks to embark and encounters.\u00a0 I will continue to hold true to my leadership values and equally look for growth and development opportunities to build out new skills and knowledge to be the best leader I can through the constant changing times.\u00a0References<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Castelli, P. (2016).\u00a0Reflective leadership review: a framework for improving organisational performance.\u00a0Journal of Management Development<\/em>,\u00a035<\/em>(2), 217-236.<\/span><\/p>\n Khan, N. (2017).\u00a0Adaptive or Transactional Leadership in Current Higher Education: A Brief Comparison.\u00a0The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning,\u00a018<\/em>(3), 178-183.<\/span><\/p>\n Kouzes, J. M. & Posner, B. Z. (2012),\u00a0The Leadership Challenge\u00a0(5th ed.)<\/em>, San Francisco Calif.: Jossey-Bass.<\/span><\/p>\n Weiner, B. J. (2009).\u00a0A theory of organizational readiness for change.\u00a0Implementation Science<\/em>,\u00a04(67)<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n We<\/span>ller, M., & Anderson, T. (2013).\u00a0Digital Resilience in Higher Education.\u00a0European Journal of Open Distance and E-Learning<\/em>,\u00a016<\/em>(1), 53-66.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reflecting over the past nine weeks in Leading Change in Digital Learning this course continuously challenged the status quo of what I came to expect or knew from past and present experiences.\u00a0 It has served me with greater content, resources and learnings only to provide me a with more meaningful and greater depth and breadth … <\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0060\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/102\/2019\/03\/the-people-playground_quote.png\")
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