Reading another blog today, I found this article:
The Top 10 Leadership Qualities
By David Hakala on March 19, 2008
In the middle of the list of ten were the following two. What struck me was, after the conversation about making change might get someone fired, I came to realize another reason why now is as good a time as ever to change our thinking. In order to have a boss or supervisor be able to "OPEN" to new ideas they have to have the trait of openness. And, it is openness to creativity that , for now, is our final frontier in education. Our problem is that we don't have enough leaders with these two leadership qualities. That is what we are doing right now.... building those leaders!
Creativity is the ability to think differently, to get outside of the box that constrains solutions. Creativity gives leaders the ability to see things that others have not seen and thus lead followers in new directions. The most important question that a leader can ask is, “What if … ?”
From:
http://www.hrworld.com/features/top-10-leadership-qualities-031908/
I guess you could call it openness to creativity? What Shannon had to say last night was very powerful. It is especially powerful coming from someone in an educational arena that is under fire. K-12 has to be a tough place to take chances. It had me thinking that, sometimes, the role we have keeps us from being toooooo vocal. Why would the decision-making-leadership take a chance when people are losing their jobs. What "credentials" do we have? It was at this moment that I looked across the classroom table and mouthed the words "People will take you more seriously when they are calling you Doctor Coletti." Sad, but powerful at the same time. I reminds me of a powerful lesson in leadership that I was taught by one of my first supervisors (Andre Coleman). His purpose behind the conversation was to influence my motivation to keep having tough conversation with students. But I think it translates very simply to conversations we have with people in positions of power and the people we supervise. His lesson, as told in the form of, Dr. Deal, get ready, was in the form of a story. It goes a little something like this:
ReplyDeleteYou are driving up a 2-lane mountain road as it is approaching dusk. You have chosen to turn on your lights as any normal/reasonable person would do. As you are driving up the mountain you see a car coming towards you and immediately you think to yourself... "I have a choice. 1) I can do nothing, or 2) I can flash my bright lights at them." Well, you decision is to do something, because you would regret the feeling of doing nothing. SO you flash your lights as they pass. The driver of the other car sees this and thinks, "What the hell!? Why did that other car just flash their lights?" So the driver of the other car keeps driving, only to come across another vehicle that does the same thing, flashes their lights. Again, the driver of the head-lightless car thinks "OK, what is going on. Why did they just flash their night lights at me?" Still, he continues to drive without headlights on. Yet another car approaches the no-light-on vehicle and just as the 2 prior, flashes its lights.....
Finally, the driver without his lights on, flicks the switch and turns on his headlights.
The point of the story is, sometimes we simply need to flash our brights. It might not be us that actually makes the driver "see" that they need to turn on their lights, but we were a part of the drivers realization process that something was wrong. at first, the driver was angry, then curious, and then actually made the connection that he needed to change something.
Of course, I, being the first car, will never know if i had an impact. I will never get credit for helping the other driver learn that he needed to turn on his lights. But, as a leader, sometimes we flash our brights and hope for the best. It is not like I rolled down my window, reached out as the other car was passing and risked my life. i simply flashed my brights... a simple effort that helped in the long run.