Leading Change
Some thoughts about leadership that developed through
discussion on leadership in another community setting:
- A leader has the ability to look outside the situation; they look at it objectively and lead people through it. They work on the business rather than just in the business.
- Self-leadership is one of the hardest but most important types of leadership, if you cannot lead yourself then how can you lead others.
- Leaders can understand the unsaid, the emotions, feeling and unspoken complaints to know the people they lead.
John Kotter’s 8 step process for change management is something I have also had the privilege of teaching. Kotter's Change Management Lesson Link: includes written information, video, and quiz.
Don Tapscott outlined 4
principles of an open world: collaboration, transparency, sharing, and empowerment.
How can these principles be applied to school libraries or teacher
librarians?
Collaboration- External collaboration
across libraries in the region or globally to provide a bigger
knowledge/resources bank. Internal collaboration with staff and students in
developing library collection and a digital presence.
Transparency- The school
community has access to information about the library program, collection
management procedures. The community is able to find information on how
decisions are made and what reasons they are based on. It also has the ability
to question and submit objections about those decisions in a clearly defined
way. Responses made to objections or requests are also made transparent to the
community.
Sharing- Teaching creative
commons sharing prinicples and modelling the use of it.
Empowerment- Some of the
distribution of selection power can be given to the students at the school as
suggested by Breitbach & Lamber’s Patron-Driven
Ebook Acquisition (2011). Rather than the library making all the
recommendations, user recommendations could be posted in a library blog/
Pinterest page/ Scoop.it or other curation tool.
Consider how this understanding of the 4 principles can support you in
leading change at your school or in your school library?
To be relevant to the school
community as it develops in a digital age we need to be open with the way we
conduct our library. Change that happens within the library should be
approached with openness, explaining the need for changes and the ways in which
it will occur, collaborating with others to determine the best ways to change
and empowering other team members to help support the change.
"Innovation is open to every
man, woman, and child. It requires an inquisitive mind intent on solving an
existing problem."
- What innovation has occurred in your school or work environment in recent times?
- How has the implementation of this innovation been managed?
- What current aspect of your own work could have "an inquisitive mind" lens applied to solve an existing problem?
Our school recently implemented
an iPad programme at a year seven level, the idea is that students will move
the programme up into the school with each new year. While the idea of each
student having a device was not necessarily a bad one, I have seen it work well
with laptops in other schools, the programme was poorly implemented.
The computer technician was not capable and
not willing to fix that many iPads as he was primarily familiar with PCs and so
was flooded with problems he had trouble solving plus still maintaining the old
PCs for the rest of the school. Subsequently he left the position leaving the
school with no internal computer technician for more than two years now.
Another issue with implementation was that only year seven teachers were given
an iPad as part of the trial so if another teacher had to cover a class who
didn’t have an iPad or the skills to use one it often meant the teacher was ill
equipped to teach the work left for them to cover. The programme is mainly
managed by one teacher who does not communicate issues and problem solving
procedures well with other staff members. Students are sent directly to him for
help adding to his workload and the appearance that all other teachers are
incapable of using the technology. While the initial phase of implementation
was confusing and frustrating to some, it has been around now long enough now
that teachers have been able to adapt their teaching through their own
experimentation.
I think if the school was to do
this again and choose iPads they need to ensure firstly that they have a
computer technician employed who is willing to use this format. They need to educate
the entire staff on how to use the programs rather than a select few. They
could also provide a FAQ manual of common problems and solutions to staff
members so the burden is not on one staff member and issues that may arise in
the classroom can be easily fixed rather than sending students out for long
periods of time to get help.
Tapscott, D. (2012, June). Four Principles for the open world.
Presentation given in Edinburgh, Scotland TEDGlobal
Innovation Takes Practice More
Than Talent. (2013, January 30). —. Retrieved February 5, 2013, from http://www.redthreadthinking.com/innovation-takes-practice-more-than-talent/
Breitbach, W., & Lamber, J.
(2011). Patron-Driven Ebook Acquisition.
Computers in Libraries. 31(6) 16-20
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