{"id":365,"date":"2022-02-07T10:46:38","date_gmt":"2022-02-07T18:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/?p=365"},"modified":"2022-02-12T14:37:13","modified_gmt":"2022-02-12T22:37:13","slug":"2022-02-06","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/2022-02-06\/","title":{"rendered":"525.1.4 – Leadership Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back, readers! Our cohort has started our 5th<\/sup> course, Leading Change in Digital Learning. We\u2019ve started with a two-week 10,000-foot view of leadership practices across all domains. This is a topic I am excited to explore in greater detail. In fact, one of the readings discussed Lance Secretan<\/a>, an author and supporter of transformational leadership I\u2019ve been reading since 2005. His CASTLE<\/a> principles: courage, authenticity, service, truthfulness, love, and effectiveness helped me formulate an ethos in my twenties that propelled the development of leadership traits I employed as a community leader across multiple sports teams and university groups. This post explores how recent readings have bolstered my understanding of leadership traits that support and propel a community towards its potential. Most interestingly, when crafting these traits into actions, I discovered an overlap with the National Coach Certification Program\u2019s (NCCP) making ethical decisions framework. Leaders with awareness, understanding, and the courage to act, when necessary, align with my view and is supported by the literature.<\/p>\n

Our cohort started this course with a word scramble exercise that tasked groups of four to define, and rank leadership traits by importance. This activity followed the 1-2-4-All liberating structure I use as a National Coaches Certification Program (NCCP) coach developer, welcoming participants to reflect individually, then in pairs and small groups, before sharing with the entire cohort (Lipmanowicz & McCandless, 2014). And if role-modelling is a key aspect of effective leadership (Schwartz & Castelli, 2014), this activity reminds us to bring groups together by defining language. As a result of this exercise, our group established communication standards in both the way we use words and how we listen and contribute. By contributing to the exercise to the best of our ability, each participant earned the status of the in-group member, a concept introduced by Tafjel\u2019s (1970) Social Identity Theory and refined by Self-Categorization Theory later in the decade (Tajfel & Turner, 1979). Therefore, I\u2019m reminded that awareness of the factors in play, not necessarily mastery of said factors, remains the foundational element of effective leadership because awareness can inform the use of activities that guide group development.<\/p>\n

Acknowledging conflict as natural and healthy (Kudonoo et al., 2012), and fostering an appreciation for the potential of an individual\u2019s ability to grow and transform, builds upon a leader\u2019s sense of awareness. Acknowledging our strengths and vulnerabilities as leaders remain paramount. Without this \u201chomework,\u201d little can be said about our abilities to judge others and posit corrective or guiding measures. Values-based leadership consolidates this concept and reminds us that effective leaders embody the ability to reflect, balance introspection and the courage to act, self-confidence in previous experience, and humility in error (Castelli, 2016).<\/p>\n

The most interesting component of our group 1-2-4-All activity occurred during our group discussion. Our group dramatically increased their ranking of the word \u201cbroad-minded.\u201d The ability to place oneself in another\u2019s shoes and see the world from their point of view is challenging. It is arguably impossible when these other people are associated with an in-group that the leader is not a member. In our case, due to the nature of our group\u2019s dynamic, broad and sweeping changes in perception occurred quickly. \u00a0Why did this take place? Perhaps because the member proposing the new idea did so with an appreciation for the audience and conducted the conversation by role-modelling the thought process of truth-finding, rather than stating their perspective as an outright and definitive claim. Therefore, leaders can aim to clarify language, listen, and contribute only the minimal necessary feedback.<\/p>\n

Broad-mindedness also requires a certain degree of trait openness to experience, under the Five Factor Model of personality, and trait agreeableness, especially the sub-trait compassion. With appreciation for the academic discussion taking place between psychologists like Freud and Dweck as to whether personality traits can be altered, or if perhaps behaviours can instead be patterned to optimize one\u2019s personality disposition, I wish to acknowledgement the challenge of exhibiting an effective mix of leadership traits (Cherry, 2021).<\/p>\n

Finally, leadership requires the ability to act and manage the consequences. Under the ten leadership styles explored by O\u2019Toole (2008), this matches Contingency leadership, whereby leaders can do what is necessary for moments of action. I would argue that patterns of this behaviour also manifest trust between leaders and followers, and a history that fosters a culture where the knowns are clear, and the actions in the face of unknowns, are agreed upon.<\/p>\n

To avoid this post turning into a paper, I wish to briefly relate the above tenets: awareness, self-reflection, broad-mindedness, and courage to act, with the NCCP\u2019s making ethical decisions framework. Coaches often face challenging situations. This required module helps coaches understand how to gather the facts and decide if a scenario is indeed ethical or legal. From here, coaches are challenged to brainstorm as many possible courses of action as possible, including non-action, and the benefits and costs of each option. And finally, coaches learn to make the best decision with the information available to them at the time and manage the consequences to the best of their ability.<\/p>\n

As a sports leader in a position of influence, I aim to role model actions stakeholders can use to effectively lead groups. Defining language, listening for the purposes of understanding and crafting recommendations with an appreciation for and if possible, contributions from all stakeholders, provides leaders with the confidence to act in the moment and help achieve the goals of the community.<\/p>\n

As we shift our focus to leadership in digital learning environments over the coming month, an example may include a strong appreciation for the place our learners are joining us from. What are their challenges? How can we help maximize the learning experience? This exploration undoubtedly requires us to put on new shoes! And humbly enter conversations we didn\u2019t even know existed to effectively expand our domain of knowledge. Onwards into the unknown!<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

Castelli, P. (2016). Reflective leadership review: a framework for improving organizational performance<\/a>. Journal of Management Development<\/em>, 35<\/em>(2), 217-236.<\/p>\n

Cherry, K. (2021, February 20). Attitudes and Behavior in Psychology<\/a>. Verywellmind.com<\/p>\n

Kudonoo, E., Schroeder, K. and Boysen-Rotelli, S. (2012), An Olympic transformation: creating\u00a0<\/a>an organizational culture that promotes healthy conflict<\/a>. Organization Development,\u00a0<\/em>Journal, 30<\/em>(2), p. 51-66.<\/p>\n

Lipmanowicz, H., & McCandless, K. (2014).\u00a0The surprising power of liberating structures: Simple rules to unleash a culture of innovation<\/a><\/em>. Liberating Structures Press.<\/p>\n

O’Toole, James (2008).\u00a0Notes Toward a Definition of Values-Based Leadership<\/a>.\u00a0The Journal of Values-Based Leadership<\/em>,\u00a01<\/em>(1).<\/p>\n

Secretan, L. (n.d.) The Secretan Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tajfel, H. (1970).\u00a0Experiments in intergroup discrimination<\/a>.\u00a0Scientific American, 223(5), p. 96\u2013102.<\/p>\n

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. (1979). An integrative theory of inter-group conflict<\/a>. The Social Psychology of Inter-group Relations. <\/em>Brooks\/Cole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome back, readers! Our cohort has started our 5th course, Leading Change in Digital Learning. We\u2019ve started with a two-week 10,000-foot view of leadership practices across all domains. This is a topic I am excited to explore in greater detail. In fact, one of the readings discussed Lance Secretan, an author and supporter of transformational … Continue reading “525.1.4 – Leadership Reflection”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[22],"class_list":["post-365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt525","tag-activity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":370,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365\/revisions\/370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0206\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}