In Rosalinde Torres’ TedTalk, she discusses the qualities she has found to be consistent among effective leaders in various settings. In order to discover whether or not we are effective leaders, she suggests we ask ourselves the following questions:
Where are you looking to anticipate change?
What is the diversity measure of your professional and personal stakeholder network?
Are you courageous enough to abandon the past?
As I assess my current leadership skills using these three questions, I have discovered both positive traits that I will work to further expand on my journey towards becoming a change leader as well as areas in which I need more development in order to become a truly effective leader. On the positive side, I have developed a strong ability to anticipate change. This is primarily because I have created a strong, diverse network of knowledgeable individuals from all over the US who work both inside and outside of the field of education. Therefore, through communication with these individuals, I am able to gain knowledge of current events in various locations and industries and make connections to how these events may affect the education field in my current location. As I aim to expand on my ability to anticipate change, I will look to expand my network globally. With previous experience teaching overseas, I already have some of my former coworkers in this network but I would like to include more from other nations as well as industries. I will look to make this happen by joining more social media groups targeted towards international teaching and global business affairs.
On the other side, in the area of abandoning the past, I still need quite a bit of development. Although I strongly believe in the power of change and the need for it to occur on my campus, I still am not fully comfortable with presenting my ideas to others. Because most of the teachers on my campus are very change-resistant and have negative feelings towards technology, it makes me more apprehensive and, honestly, somewhat unmotivated to present my ideas to them for fear of being tuned out or having my ideas rejected. However, I know that I am a catalyst for change and this is something that I need to overcome if I want to reach the bigger goal of improving technology implementation on my campus. Therefore, as I move forward with my implementation plan, I have decided to focus on one group at a time and use the power of influence to persuade the other teachers on campus to join. There are a few of the more progressive, influential teachers on campus to whom I have already presented my growth mindset ideas. I plan to present my innovation plan to these teachers first and have them participate in the pilot implementation. Once other teachers are able to hear and see the positive effects of what we are doing, my hope is that it will build intrigue and desire in other teachers to join as well.
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