As mentioned in the readings, leaders come in many forms. However, there was a common them throughout the reading. All of the readings talked about the leaders starting with a vision. This leads to the conceptualization of a leader as a person who can inspire people to follow them toward a common goal/vision. Leaders often seem to be measured by the success of their “company.” But that leads me another question, how do you measure success. Is is simply profit and test scores, or does it include tenure of the leader, employee turnover, job satisfaction, etc.
I believe that there are many vairiables that effect if a leader is successful or not. What is the age of the constituents? What is the existing morale? What is their educational background? How is their cohesiveness? Is the leader a team player? Are the constituents team players? Do they allow followers a part in the decisions? How is the motivational level? How strong are the other competing companies? Is the vision in line with the values and morals of the community?
Change is a daunting task that can take 5-7 years to complete. In order to fully implement change, I believe the main obstacle is to get the followers on the same boat headed for the same shore. Chapter 5, “The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership,” provided great insight into what it takes to “…mobilize other people” (Kouzes & Posner, p. 63). They state that leadership is not about personality, it is about practice. Their research has found that these 5 practices and be proven over time to work. The 5 practices are model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act, and encourage the heart. The last of the 5 practices caught my attention the most, challenge the heart. There are so many people who are employed in jobs that are simply that, a job, to them. I believe in order to get the most from people, they have to have a passion for what they are doing. If they have the passion, change will be that much easier to obtain.
My research agenda is about what needs to occur to provide disadvantaged students the opportunity to be successful. Leadership is one of the pieces of the pie. Schools that are educating these disadvantaged students need strong leaders who can implement change. Change is necessary since the majority of these students continue to be unsuccessful. What is that change? That is what I would like to find out.
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Cheryl. I love this post. You have hit on perhaps THE issue that I am most passionate about - the education of disadvantaged students. I was the chair of a dissertation at the University of Kentucky where my student wrote about 2 high schools in rural appalachian counties in Eastern Kentucky. It was fascinating and I loved being a part of the study.
ReplyDeleteYou ask many great questions in your post. Most importantly, how does one define success? How can leadership behavior contribute to success. Indeed, chapter 5 gave 5 behaviors of the leader that lead to change. How would you use that chapter to create a research question/study to measure organizational change?
This is the beginning of a great question.
testing a post
ReplyDeleteCheryl-
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post and the comments as well! You're right, how do we measure what success is and how is it definited in different contexts. I also like your point about vision and passion as well ... having people on board and rowing toward the same destination is key.