Fullan

Reading through the fullan exercises and answering the questions requires a great deal of honesty and soul searching. I chose to do the chapter on building relationships and found it extremely interesting. the section on emotional intelligence is particularly confronting as so many times in our interactions we do not necessarily think abou managing our own reactions and stresses.

I was horrified to see that it has been over a month since I posted a blog. I have been busy - alot of my thoughts are on paper s I read through the readings I tend to jot down what I think or bits that are important.
Assignment 1 is now finished and sent. I found it very useful to work with others for the first part of it as this is my first 'go' at study in over 12 years.
What did I learn?
I learnt that groups go through different stages before they become a team - forming - focusing performing. Our group went through these and with hindsight it was an interesting experience.
I learnt that a leader is not a manager, and that leading form the top down is not necessarily an effective strategy. I learnt that leader must have emotional intelligence in order to succeed. I define emotional intelligence as the ability to understand oneself as well as the ability to be empathetic (is that a word?) to others.
I believe that leading from within is reallly important. A leader does not have to know everything but they must have the ability to inspire and focus others t solve problems and effect change.
I realise that as a teacher librarian I am in a position to lead others and effect change. The difficulties are that in schools change is often effected' from the top' and there is little opportunity to plan and work with groups to plan things properly.

Have been reading John Adair's Effective Teambuilding book. Chapter 10 is particularly relevant as it talks about leadership and what it involves. 'One of the chief fruits of good leadership is a good team'. a very powerful statement i think. He goes on to discuss different styles of leadership and the outcomes of same. A good leader needs to know himself, his strengths and weaknesses. If you know yourself then your team can be complementary ie you will all have different strengths and weaknesses. this is of course a little different in schools as we often have no say as to who is on our team. I suppose the idea is to work within and with the differences and strengths that people have.

First contact with group

Had my first contact with my group today. Downloaded Skype yesterday and bought a microphone. Unfortunately my microphone did not work properly - I could hear them but they couldn't hear me!I had to type my comments which was rather difficult.
Still it was great to actually connect with the people I will be working with. We had some difficulty unpacking what we actually had to do. had a long discussion about the role of the Tl as a leader in technological change and thought we might go with that for our assignment.
I see the TL role as vital in the school as we have an overview of all areas and generally work with most staff members. We also are in the position of knowing what resources are available to facilitate planning.

Collaborative Decision Making
Schools and the people within them often get bogged down in the day to day demands that the job places on them.
The idea that teams go through definite stages doesn't sit well with me. In my experienceteams meet get to know each other and identify a common purpose in order to work effectively. My team for assignment 1 is still in the process of getting to know one another. The TL's role is often that of a facilitator, innovator, coordiantor and specialist in what is available.

Leading effective teams.(Law, s& Glover, D)
Sounds fairly simple but in actuality it is exptremely diffuicult. In the first place what makes a team? In the school situation it is usually a random group of people with varying experience and ideas who are placed together for ( usually) reasons that have nothing to do with their ability to work together. As a leader it is important to help facilitate a cohesiveness within the group and foster positive interactions. Effective communication, I think is the primary goal before anything else is attempted as far as leadership goes.
I don't agree with Tuckman's team development model where he says that 'storming' is a step in the process of team development. In my own experience with a team that I am leading I found that regular and honest communication went a long way to fostering the sort of homogeneous group that is able to work together and solve problems collaboratively.

It seems that I have lost the first thing I have posted so will try again.
My first thoughts about this subject were when I was looking at the course outline. I thought that this subject is very relevant to the job that we do. I am a teacher librarian in a primary school and find myself approached very often by both students and teachers about many things.
I see leadership as being able to see what needs to be done and having the skills and capacity to do it. It is also about prioritising, organising and disseminating information. As someone who is older my experience with leadership has mainly been 'top down', in other words people in leadership positions have had power 'over' the group.
I believe this is gradually changing.
As I started to read the study guide I realised that this topic is huge and there are many more considerations that just TL as leader.