Thursday, July 24, 2014

Balanced Leadership, being intentional with leadership

 “Summer is three months off between the end of school and the start of the next school year.”  How often do educators hear that quote?  Recently at KASB a group of 18 educational leaders took some of that “time off,” to gain a better understanding of the research surrounding effective educational leadership.  As participants in the Balanced Leadership program, this group of educational leaders will spend a total of seven days working with the Leadership Services staff refining and developing their skills as educational leaders.  The participants spent the first two days unpacking the research associated with the McREL Balanced Leadership framework, and reflecting on their own leadership behaviors.  They discussed and reflected on how they manage change they face within their schools.  One of the key pieces of knowledge educational leaders discussed is how the magnitude of change is directly connected to the perceptions of the individual experiencing the change.  
The educational leaders were also asked to reflect on their school’s focus. Are we spending our time and resources on people and programs that impact achievement? The administrative teams reviewed research and discussed ideas that will yield the desired results? McREL’s Balanced Leadership program is designed to enhance the skills of building level leaders.  A major outcome of the McREL Balanced Leadership framework, is equipping leaders to shift the focus to those practices that have research based, results driven programs.  
Is our school community purposeful?  Have all stakeholders agreed on outcomes that align to our students’ needs. Class members discussed topics ranging from developing collective efficacy to improve and enhance building culture to managing first and second order change. Those are the core questions the educational leaders considered as they assessed their school community.  Our school community often has not answered these critical questions, and consequently do not make the desired gains, as their processes and resources are spread too thin.
The educational leaders here at KASB early this week spent time working and sharing knowledge and insights, learning from past experience as they worked to improve their leadership skills.  It is always impressive to work with committed, hardworking school leaders.

The educational leaders’ Balanced Leadership training is a partnership between KASB and McREL.  It is based on the proven research and resources of McREL and focuses participants on the knowledge and skills needed to bring about the changes required to improve student achievement.  For more information, please contact KASB.  

3 comments:

  1. Leadership programs are quite essential and we need the support of leadership in order to develop our personal skills and strategies. Mostly in education sector we need the support of leadership program to deliver good and effective learning process to the students. Therefore we should develop our balanced leadership skills and attitude to deliver good effective skilled programs to students.

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  2. Traditional distribution leadership approaches focus on confining and defining leadership roles to a few anointed individuals within an organization thus, creating a systemic leadership vacuum. There is a distribution of tasks to individuals much like the traditional non-flipped classroom. This lack of clarity and empowerment throughout the organization acts as an impediment in traditional distribution leadership systems which tend to focus solely on task assignment and completion. Distributive Leadership is the way to systematic and repeatable continuous improvement processes. Learn more about distributive leadership at http://scottspringston.com/

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  3. Leadership is an essential tool for us; through which, we are able to develop our skills and strategies. It helps to build a unique personality. So, we need strong leadership skills and attitude; here this article also describes some good facts about leadership and I hope while following these tips; we are able to improve our leadership style.
    Leadership Coach

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