Unit 1 reflections on leadership

My key takeaways from unit 1:

Leadership is a social construct.  It’s the ability to unify people towards a common goal.  

There are many theories about how to best do that (Workman & Cleveland-Innes, 2012), and the methods and metrics have changed over time (Unity Environmental University, 2015).

Although it’s a generalization, women tend to lead differently from men (Fitzgerald, 2003) with a greater focus on people as opposed to outcomes; however Fitzgerald, along with Huggins (2017) about HS principals’ (in)ability to distribute leadership, also fails to address the next point.

Leadership is action, not a job title.  Just because someone has leadership in title does not make them a leader, they are often glorified managers or simply the person in charge.  Senge (2015) also did a good job of differentiating the two.  I also found his definition of leadership as “the capacity of a human community to shape its future” a nice hybrid between the classical dichotomies illustrated by Fitzgerald.  But in the same video Senge also screwed up the origin of the word leadership claiming it was “leith”. That doesn’t abrogate his views, but it did lead me down another rabbit hole, ultimately leading me to this article on Napoleon.  Graziano (2023) highlights: vision, communication, decisiveness, adaptability, trust, empowerment, and recognition of the team as the qualities which made Napoleon a renowned historical leader.

How all of this ties into digital learning environments still isn’t clear but it’s a solid foundation on leadership to begin that exploration.  

References:

College, U. (2015, August 2). Leadership: “To Go” rather than not to go… Is The Literal Definition. Unity Environmental University. https://unity.edu/leadership-in-abundance/leadership-to-go-rather-than-not-to-go-is-the-literal-definition/

Fitzgerald, T. (2003). Changing the deafening silence of indigenous women’s voices in educational leadership. Journal of Educational Administration, 41(1), 9–23. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230310457402

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). https://doi.org/10.22230/ijepl.2017v12n1a670

Senge, P. (2015). What makes a great leader? by Peter Senge, Author of The Fifth Discipline [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aYaj2-GZqk

Workman, T., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2012). Leadership, personal transformation, and management. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(4), 313–323. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v13i4.1383