{"id":438,"date":"2021-02-07T09:20:32","date_gmt":"2021-02-07T17:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/?p=438"},"modified":"2021-02-07T09:20:32","modified_gmt":"2021-02-07T17:20:32","slug":"leadership-a-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/leadership-a-reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Leadership: A Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo by Brennan Burling<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n

“Leadership is about action, not position.”<\/em> (Sheninger, 2019, para. 3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I cannot agree more with Sheninger’s statement of:<\/p>\n

“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.” <\/em>(2019, para. 1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

Reason 1:<\/em> 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).<\/p>\n

Reason 2:<\/em> My ratings are stemmed from my unique brand of personality, work experience, and cultural exposure.<\/p>\n

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)<\/p>\n

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.” \u00a0(p. 217)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Castelli, P. A. (2016). Reflective leadership review: A framework for improving organisational performance. The Journal of Management Development<\/em>, 35<\/em>(2), 217\u2013236. http:\/\/dx.doi.org.ezproxy.royalroads.ca\/10.1108\/JMD-08-2015-0112<\/p>\n

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<\/em>, 12<\/em>(1), Article 1. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.22230\/ijepl.2017v12n1a670<\/p>\n

Khan, N. (2017). Adaptive or Transactional Leadership in Current Higher Education: A Brief Comparison. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning<\/em>, 18<\/em>(3). https:\/\/doi.org\/10.19173\/irrodl.v18i3.3294<\/p>\n

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2011). Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It, 2nd Edition<\/em>. https:\/\/royalroads.skillport.com\/skillportfe\/assetSummaryPage.action?assetid=RW$564:_ss_book:43184#summary\/BOOKS\/RW$564:_ss_book:43184<\/p>\n

Sheninger, E. (2019). Pillars of Digital Leadership. International Center for Leadership in Education<\/em>. https:\/\/leadered.com\/pillars-of-digital-leadership\/<\/p>\n

Weller, M. (2020). 25 Years of Ed Tech<\/em>. Athabasca University Press. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.15215\/aupress\/9781771993050.01<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lrnt525"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":445,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/445"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}