In a previous post, Christopher Rowe, Jonathan Carpenter, Mike MacKay, Cheryl-Haley Nix, and I were asked to rank twenty attributes in order of most to least important as part of being an effective leader (Rowe et al., 2021). In this same team, we also created a toolkit for managing educational technology change projects. In this post, I am revisiting those same leadership attributes we identified at the beginning of the course to see if our initial ranking of leadership attributes would change as a result of the research and readings we have done throughout this course.
Upon revisiting our ranking, I do not believe I would need to drastically change the order of any of the leadership attributes. I do, however, see some of the reasoning for some of the attributes we picked, is backed by the research we have done during our LRNT 525 course and the creation of our toolkit.
Our toolkit has a large emphasis on empathizing with your stakeholders to help create and implement a shared vision. This is one of the key basis for steps 1, 2, and 5 of the toolkit. As a leader that needs to be interacting with these stakeholders, those leadership attributes that closely relate to empathy are: honesty, communication, co-operative, inspiring, and supportive. Those were attributes that we ranked highly (in the top 10).
For honesty, Freeman et al. (2018) stresses the importance of honesty for interacting with stakeholders because “stakeholder management is based on a moral foundation that includes respect for humans and their basic rights, integrity, fairness, honesty, loyalty, freedom to choose” (p. 3).
For communication and co-operative, Bryson (2004) says that to advance the “common good”, the “design will be enhanced as a result of more clearly understanding stakeholder interests, and effective one- and two-way communication strategies” (p. 36).
Kouzes & Posner (2019) describes the process of envisioning the future as “a process with an inspiration, a feeling, or a sense that something is worth doing” (p. 5). I follows that the leaders of this change would need to be able to relay this inspiration to the team and stakeholders to have them share in this common vision.
Bryson (2004) shows the importance of a leader being supportive in order to “develop proposals that are likely to address stakeholder interests, effectively build a supportive coalition and ensure effective implementation” (p. 42).
Because our toolkit had a strong emphasis on empathizing with stakeholders to understand their interest, involvement, and possible resistance to change, it makes sense for the leader of that change to be someone who can communicate well, be co-operative, and be honest. Perhaps one attribute we should have added to the list of attributes was empathetic. Empathy was a central theme for our toolkit and it encompasses many other attributes discussed in this post.
References
Bryson, J. M. (2004). What to do when stakeholders matter: stakeholder identification and analysis techniques. Public management review, 6(1), 21-53.
Freeman, R. E., Harrison, J. S., & Zyglidopoulos, S. (2018). Stakeholder theory: Concepts and strategies. Cambridge University Press.
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2019). Inspire a shared vision. In Leadership in Higher Education: Practices that Make a Difference (pp. 1–10). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. https://royalroads.skillport.com/skillportfe/assetSummaryPage.action?assetid=RW$11113:_ss_book:146919#summary/BOOKS/RW$11113:_ss_book:146919
Rowe, C., Carpenter, J., Nix, C.-H., Guichon, P., & MacKay, M. (February 6, 2021). Admired leadership attributes. Christopher’s Blog. https://malat-webspace.royalroads.ca/rru0162/admired-leadership-attributes/
Featured Image: “Leader” by Gregor Cresnar from the Noun Project
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