I
can’t believe that we are at the last week of the last course of our
Master’s Program. This course has empowered my leadership skills and
improved my confidence in making decisions and team building. I was a
person who had never thought of seeing myself as a leader, but now, I
believe I can say “YES” to the new challenges.
Leaders Say Yes!
In
my opinion, saying “YES” opens new opportunities in everyone’s’ life
and helps them go beyond their boundaries. As Michael Hogan stated,
“Saying ‘yes’ begins things. Saying ‘yes’ is how things grow… An
attitude of ‘yes’ is how you will be able to go forward in these
uncertain times” (as cited in Kouzes & Posner, 2010). According to
this article, there are ten truths about leadership:
I
agree with the authors that taking responsibility of your own life is
an important part of leadership. “… [Leadership] is about seeing a
problem and accepting personal responsibility for doing something about
it” (Kouzes & Posner, 2010). This article narrated the leadership’s
journey of Ivana Sendecka which could be found in this TEDx video.
Leading for Succession: Building Leadership Capacity
The
role of leadership in the area of early childhood education is
critical, they can inspire educators, children, families, communities,
and policy makers to improve the quality of the education. According to
Rodd (2013), there is lack of encouragement for early childhood
educators to take leadership roles mainly because the amount of
responsibilities and complexities associated with this role. It is very
important to invest in “leadership recruitment”, “capacity-building” and
“succession planning” in order to create a pool of diverse leaders who
can take the lead in “different facets and various contexts of
leadership”. Holistic leadership contains the following characteristics:
It
is also vital for the leaders to have expertise and information about
child development, pedagogy, legal issues, family and community
relationship to provide a high quality services (Rodd, 2013). Providing
leadership training for educators could empower them to be a leader,
develop their skills, and increase the quality of staffing and services.
“Tailored training opportunities help individuals to transition from
naive to better-evolved conceptions of leadership” (Rodd, 2013).
Today’s
leaders should prepare the next generation of leaders to replace them
in future. This could make the leadership training even more critical
for the new generation of educators. For example, in my workplace, we
have an organizational structure to train the staff for the leadership
opportunity. An Executive Director is the first person who leads two
supervisors. Supervisors are the main contact between educators,
families, and Executive director. Each age group also has a facilitator
who works 3 hours per week in the office to collaborate with the
supervisors for planning and programming which could help them develop
leadership skill. I think this structure not only helps develop some
leaders for future, but also creates more opportunities for people to
experience leadership. “Distributed leadership can encourage early
childhood educators to gain broader experience and perspectives that
shift them from a management and positional perspective to a distributed
and more holistic conception about leadership”(Rodd, 2013, p.262).
References:
Kouzes,
J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2010). The truth about leadership: The
no-fads, heart-of-thematter facts you need to know. San Francisco, CA:
Jossey-Bass.
Rodd, Jillian (2013). Leadership in early childhood : the pathway to professionalism (4th ed). Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, N.S.W
