Photo by Brennan Burling on Unsplash
“Leadership is about action, not position.” (Sheninger, 2019, para. 3)
As an instructional designer, instructor, leader, and team member at a local college, I have had the privilege to work with many inspiring leaders, lead my classes, and contribute to my team. Thus, I came to value leadership qualities such as dependability, adaptability, resiliency, and the ability to care for and support one another. Drawing on this course’s leadership literature, I have gained valuable insights, shifted perspectives, deepened appreciation for the leaders around me, and attained personal revelation of my leadership tendencies.
I cannot agree more with Sheninger’s statement of:
“With society becoming more and more reliant on technology, it is incumbent upon leaders to harness the power of digital technologies in order to create school cultures that are transparent, relevant, meaningful, engaging, and inspiring.” (2019, para. 1)
Sheninger then further pressed on the importance of effective leadership in any system. However, it is most needed in Higher Education (HE) if we are to provide world-class education and develop future leaders. This can be further amplified by the distributed leadership model (Huggins, 2017), which builds the foundation for future leaders’ development, fosters collaboration, and increases effectiveness within the organization.
As I look back to my initial ranking of the Leadership Challenge, and what I value most in a leader is someone dependable and credible. It is someone whose direction I am willingly and easily follow and someone who makes a positive difference in people’s lives (Kouzes & Posner, 2011). It was a challenging process to rank the 20 leadership qualities as I thought they were all critical. Without protest, I accepted that my interpretation of leadership is not in alignment with other leading researchers’ findings for two reasons:
Reason 1: The findings are dated back to 2010, and the scenery of education has changed drastically in education and digital learning environments over the years, as echoed by Weller (2020).
Reason 2: My ratings are stemmed from my unique brand of personality, work experience, and cultural exposure.
Accordingly, adaptability and resiliency have been timelessly desired as effective leadership qualities. However, they are now unequivocally needed during the pandemic as we all need to adapt to the new way of teaching and learning. Moreover, Khan (2017) defined the difference between adaptive and transaction leadership in HE as catalysts to embrace change as someone who “takes a holistic view of leadership by focusing on both leader-follower relationships and any potential external issues.” (2017, p. 179)
Also, I respect and enjoy working with reflective leaders as they continuously strive to understand better the cultures and values of the people they serve (Castelli, 2016). In HE, it is then essential to continuously reflect on the learner, educator, and support staff’s experience and needs. In addition to the aforementioned, Castelli’s definition of reflective leadership stood out for me as “the consistent practice of reflection, which involves conscious awareness of behaviours, situations and consequences with the goal of improving organizational performance.” (p. 217)
To my end, I conclude that when leading change in education and a digital learning environment, adaptive, resilience, and reflective leadership can provide many benefits maneuver through change. Additionally, a distributed leadership model can establish a sense of community, trust within an institution, motivate, foster, and nurture leadership capacities in others.
References:
Castelli, P. A. (2016). Reflective leadership review: A framework for improving organisational performance. The Journal of Management Development, 35(2), 217–236. http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/10.1108/JMD-08-2015-0112
Huggins, K. S. (2017). Developing Leadership Capacity in Others: An Examination of High School Principals’ Personal Capacities for Fostering Leadership. International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership, 12(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.22230/ijepl.2017v12n1a670
Khan, N. (2017). Adaptive or Transactional Leadership in Current Higher Education: A Brief Comparison. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(3). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i3.3294
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2011). Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It, 2nd Edition. https://royalroads.skillport.com/skillportfe/assetSummaryPage.action?assetid=RW$564:_ss_book:43184#summary/BOOKS/RW$564:_ss_book:43184
Sheninger, E. (2019). Pillars of Digital Leadership. International Center for Leadership in Education. https://leadered.com/pillars-of-digital-leadership/
Weller, M. (2020). 25 Years of Ed Tech. Athabasca University Press. https://doi.org/10.15215/aupress/9781771993050.01
Hi Vanessa,
Thanks for your post and reflection. I was particularly struck by your statement “Accordingly, adaptability and resiliency have been timelessly desired as effective leadership qualities. However, they are now unequivocally needed during the pandemic as we all need to adapt to the new way of teaching and learning.” In your own organization what did this look like as the entire organization needed to shift? I personally appreciated the supports our learning technologies team provided, through innovative programming including specialized workshops, redeploying staff to provide F2F office hours on a daily basis, and providing options for alternate final assessments. The kind of supports they are continuing to provide are not sustainable though, so from a leadership perspective I wonder how we build more resilience into the planning as we look to the next year. Thanks!
Hello Michelle,
Thank you for your comment and question. I cannot agree more with the appreciation of the Learning and Teaching department in helping us with remote course design and alternate assessments at the beginning of the lockdown last year. However, as you said, this support was not sustainable. So, they have since asked each department to offer a full-time faculty to represent each department. These representative faculty relay their collective challenges, workshop requests, and are the champion “go-to” person within their department. This seems to work thus far as the faculty’s voices are heard, and their needs are addressed. In essence, it is distributed leadership?
How about your institution, Michelle? How are they sustainably navigating through these challenging times at the moment?
Hi Vanessa,
I like your point that a leader, “serves” their community. I am coming into this course from a different program and feel a little like a fish out of water with all this digital professionals in the cohort! I can’t believe how good your blog looks Vanessa!
Well, back to the idea that a leaders serve. I have always considered a leader someone who serves future mankind, not mankind of today. I think society and people in general are slow and resistant to change. Real leaders, whether that be in the virtual reality or not, have a clear vision of where we need to go to evolve and adapt into the best humanity we can be. They are able to take their clear vision and inspire others to change in order to make it a reality! Perhaps, leaders serve the people of tomorrow, not today.
Hello Emma,
Many thanks for your comment and kind words. I cannot even imagine how challenging it is to be taking a course from another program. From what I have seen so far, you are fitting in beautifully. Give yourself some time and you will ‘sea’ that we are all fish in the same water. 🙂
I am very interested in learning about your point of view of “future mankind, not mankind of today”. Can you tell me more about it?
Vanessa
The initial ranking measured against your value within the aspect of leadership, is wise and expressive. Work experience carries loads of weight in my opinion when it comes to leading a group. I look forward to reading other work from you and to see you progress within the leadership roles offered within the MALAT program.