Week 2 Blog

This week we were asked to think differently about ourselves, leadership, and the roles we play in shaping organizations.

Being practical, I started to think, okay, how much of me needs to change? 10%? 90% Certainly a few skills and thoughts would carry forward, but which ones? Would I use a business model and get rid of recent thoughts (last in, first out)? Would I use a holistic approach and rebuild from the ground up?

A few thoughts seemed logical starting points. First, I must separate the leader from leadership. This ties into my first posting about supervision and management being different. A manager may be a leader but she is not necessarily a performing leadership activities. Second, there seems to be an internal as well as external component to self (leadership) improvement. This was first evident during the PDD exercise when Dr Faverty asked the groups to "look inside" before tackling our projects. I suppose I'll look inside first for improvement and changes in thinking. Third, at the risk of being called Kyle Junior or "KJ" for short, I found an article that argues for redefining leadership: Lambert, Linda (2003). Leadership redefined: an evocative context for teacher leadership. School Leadership & Management, 23(4), pp. 421-430. What follows is adapted from the Lambert article.

For hundreds of years we have been facinated with leadership, yet we still have few shared
understandings about what it is (p. 422) and we have been looking in the wrong places and using the wrong lenses (p. 423). Research on leadership focused on the "right" qualities and characteristics of a good leader then sought to teach these attributes to new leaders (p. 223). While seductive, these paths have failed.

While I don't have any answers at this point in my journey, I will use constructivist leadership theory to guide my journey.

Kirk