Moving on to Week 2

Hi everyone,

Thanks everyone for your introductory posts – I have enjoyed getting to know about the places and spaces that you enjoy, and I think I have now responded to everyone who posted (but may have missed a few last ones if they came in last night…will keep checking in). As we move into Week 2, I wanted to share a quick overview of some of the leadership characteristics that you highlighted in your initial posts. Some of the top attributes were clear and open communication, being supportive, empathetic, and visionary, all of which can lead to trust and mutual understanding. You think leaders should provide mentorship, act with honesty and integrity, be transparent and empower teams by building on strengths, giving space for growth and effective collaboration. You also highlight some challenges in leadership–a lack of fairness and communicating a clear vision that can help change the status quo. A few of you also noted that everyone has a capacity to lead in any role – and I agree and hope that you keep that in mind throughout the course – what does leadership look like at all levels of an organization? I also noted in the team discussions that that context and culture often impact our current perceptions of what we value in a leader – through your discussions it will be interesting to see how that influences your final rankings.

This week you will start to consider the readings that examine the theoretical frameworks for leadership. As you do, keep the values, attributes and perspectives from the initial rankings that have been contributed to the team discussions in the back of your mind. How do you start to align your own values with a systematic approach to your own leadership growth? How do some of the alternative perspectives and discussions about leadership shift your thinking? This will be a thread that goes throughout the course, and which we will revisit in the final Unit and in the final project.

Here are a few thoughts as you head into Part 3 of Activity 2.

• Many of you are well into the first team activity and have shared your list of attributes. You should be completing your readings and reflecting back on your initial rankings. Has anything shifted? Your next steps will be wrangling the challenge of coming to consensus on your valued leaders’ traits. Once you have completed your team ranking and have posted it let me know (either an email or a post in team forums if you are posting to your blogs). I have further information to share!

• Activity 3
  Your second activity this week is to complete the Activity 3 blog post. To keep up with your classmates posts you can set up Feedly to give you alerts when new posts are up. Many of you have likely done this for past courses, but if not, I will add a short description in the General Discussions area.

Housekeeping:

• Synchronous session: Though I know this won't work for everyone (we did come close!), Tuesday January 30^th at 5:00 PST will be our first synchronous session. I will record the session (someone please remind me at the beginning!) and I will try to wrap it up by 6:00.

A few things I would like to chat about:

• Admired leaders activity (a quick check in so far)
• Research perspectives (and alternatives),
• Engaging with the readings (and how to manage that),
• APA citations (which is not what is in the course)
• Citation managers (if you don't have one yet) and,
• your first blog post (Activity 3)

I am sure you also have questions to bring and ideas to share!

We will use the Zoom space in Moodle.

• Just a note on discussions – if you have not already, you may want to subscribe to your team and the general discussions. This will give you alerts via email when there are posts (I know it really helps me keep up on everything!). 

Have a great week and hope to see you on Tuesday! And if you do have questions for me that are for or would benefit the whole group, post them into the "Ask the Instructor" area.

Michelle