Before I started my Masters of Education in Leadership I would have told someone that a leader was a person with assigned authority or a title. I have come to understand that leadership is much more complicated than this. There could be elements of authority and potentially titles, but some of the greatest leaders in history were those that had a vision and were able to communicate the purpose to achieve their goals ... ie. Martin Luther King Jr. and 'I Have a Dream' According to many great books there are a variety of styles of leadership that are successful, but success will look different with each form of leadership. In some of these cases the leadership is from the top down and the people doing the work follow the leader sometimes as a result of an informal leader. Informal leaders are able to motivate or inspire action sometimes in spite of the leaders and when people work collaboratively or as a team they often establish a hierarchy. There might be times when those in informal leadership roles wield more power that the formal leader of the group. It is now my belief that leaders are people that inspire people to listen, make change, and/or influences others to share the vision and to work towards the shared goals. I've now read a number of fantastic books on leadership and to date, my favourite one is The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner (2012). This book very clearly explains what they see as the various styles of leadership. From reading this book, I have determined that as a leader I use the strategy of 'Model the Way' most often. I have assumed that if people see me doing something they see a positive this would inspire them to make changes in their own practice. Of course this does not always work effectively. What I had not realised is that one can build their skills in the other areas in order to develop into a more effective leader.
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Shelly TreleavenLearning starts with a question and I am full of them :) Archives
June 2019
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