Hi everyone,
I hope you had a good weekend! I shared a few of the leadership characteristics that you highlighted in my discussion post on Thursday, and it is great to you probing these further in your team discussions. Many of you have noted that that context and culture often impact our current perceptions of what we value in a leader – how will this translate to your own approach to leading? One thing I like to emphasize for the course is that everyone has a capacity to lead in any role that they have in our workplaces and communities. Personally, I am just back in a more formal leadership position in my organization after taking a break. I really appreciated the opportunities to take on different kinds of leadership – moving into mentorship and support for my colleagues, as they pursue their own goals and growth. In a self-study that I was a part of with other women leaders in distance education we talked about the differences between what we called “big L” and “small l” leadership – and how both are so essential. We all know that person in an organization who knows how everything works, is supportive and a good mentor and who through their networking provide a kind of “glue”– and they are often not in a formal leadership role but are definitely leaders. Through their mentorship they are often helping their team members unlock their potential. For me I wonder how we support these leaders and provide recognition for all their work. My hope for this course is that we can all identify different ways to be leaders within our organizations to help influence change that we can support – in whatever role we are in.
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 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 likely work for everyone let’s try for Tuesday January 28th at 5:00 PST for 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)
- your first blog post (Activity 3)
I am sure you also have questions to bring and ideas to share!
We will use the Zoom pace 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