Leadership for Change



Leadership for Change

Carlos Aedo

The main purpose of the following paragraphs is to reflect on my experience as a leader and as one who has been lead by someone else. My main focus will be on schools, since that is my most important and recent experience of being involved in leadership. I will present briefly four main characteristics of leadership for change that, as I see them, are key for effective leadership. However, I think that it is necessary to clarify some issues before. When we discuss leadership, what are we talking about?

Leadership is no trait theory; leadership and leader are not the same. Leadership can mean the reciprocal learning processes that enable participants to construct and negotiate meanings leading to a shared purpose of schooling. Leadership, besides, is about learning that leads to constructive change. Learning is among participants and therefore occurs collectively. Learning has direction toward a shared purpose. Everyone, on the other hand, has the potential to work as leader. Leading is skilled and complicated work that every member of the school community can learn. In this sense, leadership requires the distribution of power and authority. Shared learning, purpose, action, and responsibility demand the realignment of power and authority.

Having said this, what are the main four characteristics of leadership for change?

1. Vision and Strategy

Vision and strategy are strongly tied. Vision without strategy is totally ineffective, and strategy without vision is no sense. Leaders need to have certain vision of the future, certain dream about they organization they lead. However, vision is not something unattainable. Vision includes future hopes and possibilities. The leader is not someone who is “out of this world”, but someone with a strong conscience of the present reality and the future which is to come. Effective educational leaders, for instance, are aware of the reality of their school and know their faculty. They are also familiar with parents and kids, but they have the ability to go beyond the present and intuit the future.

A vision possessed only by the leader is worthless, though. Real leaders are those who are able to transmit effectively their vision to the rest of the community. This ability makes the difference between an effective and an ineffective leader. Principals, for instance, can have a wonderful vision of the future of the school, but if they are not able to communicate that vision to the community, they will not succeed.

Not only do leaders need to communicate their vision to the community, but they also have to have the ability to elaborate a strategy to implement it. Most of the so-called innovation plans fail because they do not include a realistic strategy to accomplish the objectives of the plan.

2. Self-Knowledge

Leadership for change requires leaders who are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses. It is crucial for leaders to know their abilities and capacities. In doing so, they become more available to be part of the common tasks of the groups they lead. This also means the ability to recognize others’ abilities and strengths. The more a leader knows who he or she is, the more he or she recognizes leadership skills in others.

On the other hand, knowing one’s own limitations leads to interdependence. Leaders neither know everything nor are skilled for every task. Good leaders, after the recognition of their own weaknesses and limits, are able to go beyond themselves and involve others in the position of leadership.

3. Collaboration and Empowerment

Leaders have the ability to mobilize people to tackle tough problems. They know that without collaboration of others, they and the organization will not succeed. Principals, for example, need to be aware of the importance of engaging the entire school community in order to implement school reforms. Faculty, parents and students cannot be left aside by principals.

It is important to remark that, as the saying points out, “a good leader is one whose followers have confidence in the leader; a great leader is one whose followers have confidence in themselves.” Empowerment, then, comes from teaching others things they can do to become less dependents on leaders. People already have power through their knowledge and motivation. Empowerment is letting this power out.

4. Constant Learning

Good leaders traditionally were responsible for planning, directing, controlling, and evaluating an organization’s activities. They were expected to have more knowledge and expertise than their subordinates. They were expected, besides, to solve every problem. However, we now recognize that those leaders have become dysfunctional in today’s permanent changing society[1].

The new leaders who are required in these days are the ones who are in a constant learning process; the ones who see in every situation an opportunity to learn and to lead their teams or communities towards successful tasks. Learning, then, is vital part of this new leadership style, and uncertainty is accepted as part of the process.

The key notion, consequently, in a definition of leadership for change is about learning and constructing meaning and knowledge collectively and collaboratively. It involves opportunities to surface and mediate perceptions, values, beliefs, information, and assumptions through continuing conversations; to inquire about and generate ideas with others; to seek to reflect upon and make sense of work in the light of shared beliefs or visions and new information; and to create actions that grow out of these new understanding. Such is the core of leadership.

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[1] Thomas R. Hawkings calls these leaders “heroic leaders”. In The Learning Congregation: A New Vision of Leadership (Westminster John Knox Press: Louisville, Kentucky, 1997. P.59) he explains the failure of this traditional leadership.

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