EDL 706-Problems in

Leadership
March 7, 2009
 Agenda
Saturday, March 7, 2009
9:00-6:00

 Introduction of the course and overview

– Objectives, assignments, readings, class project, final exam
 Leadership Defined –Power Point
– Leadership/ Management/Status
 Problems and Dilemmas
– Activity: The Case of the Disappointed High School Department Head
 9 C’s of Leadership (Lee Iacocca)
– Activity: Placing Students at Christa McAuliffe School
 Planning
 Community; understanding yourself and your role with others
 Work on class project: chose at least 5 problems to work from
 Required readings: “In Search of Intelligence,” Dickman and Blair;
“Roots of School Leadership,” Sergiovanni
 This journey requires you to exercise the
intelligence that is the focus of leadership.
You will be required to engage the complex
reflective reasoning capacities of the
prefrontal lobes of your cerebral cortex and
think your way to understanding.
 “Whether or not you think you can, you are
usually right.”-Henry Ford
 What do you want to know about leadership
(post its)
 Leadership
 Define Leadership: in your own words,
please think about and then create your
definition of leadership.
 Leadership Defined
 One who guides, conducts, steers, escorts,
precedes (Collins English Dictionary, 2006)
 Leadership is the process of persuasion or
example by which an individual or
leadership team induces a group to pursue
objectives held by the leader or shared by
the leader and his or her followers.
 168 million links on google to leadership!!
– WHY?????
 The million dollar question: are leaders born
or are leaders made?
 Born or Made
 If leaders are born, why spend time reading
and developing skills? Your leadership
success has already been determined.
 If made, then everyone can become a
leader and there is hope for us all.
 Identify Five Individuals as Good Leaders
 Identify Five Individuals as Poor Leaders
 Leadership vs. Status: what do you think the
difference is between leadership and
“status.”
 Status
 The top ranking person does not
necessarily lead. Bureaucracy often plays a
large part in status. We expect positions of
high status to have people who will lead;
governors and corporate presidents for
example. However, the selection process
does not often equate with the qualities of
good leadership.
 Power
 Leaders always have some measure of
power, rooted in their capacity to persuade,
but many people with power are without
leadership gifts. Other their power comes
from money, or the capacity to inflict harm,
or from control of something.
 Managers
 The word manager usually indicates an
individual labeled to hold a directive post in
an organization, presiding over the
processes by which the organization
functions, allocating resources prudently
and making the best possible use of people.
(Gardner, p. 5 Jossey Bass)
 “Leaders create and change cultures, while
managers and administrators live within
them.” (Schein, p. 5)
 Managers administrate, leaders innovate
(Hersey p.9 )
 Leader/Managers

 They think long term: beyond the days

crisis, beyond the quarter, beyond the
horizon
 They see the forest through the trees; how
their organization is part of a whole
 They reach people beyond borders
 Managers are more closely linked to
organizations than leaders. Some leaders
had/have no organizations at all. Consider
Florence Nightingale who, after leaving
Crimea, showed great leadership in
establishing health care for decades with no
organization.
 Gandhi was a leader before he had an
organization
 Managers ask how and when, focuses on
systems and structures,
 Leaders ask what and why, eyes the
horizon.
 Kinds of Leaders
 Leaders come in many forms: quiet, loud,
eloquent, courageous, and in judgment.
– Churchill-eloquent
– Gandhi-visionary
– Lenin-revolutionary
– Karl Marx-judgment
 What is a Problem
 Please define in your own words what a
problem is.
 Problems
 Problems: situations in which a gap is found
between what is and what ought to be. To
close the gap, obstacles must be overcome
(Cuban, 2001)
 A teacher has 32 students in a class and the teacher has only 24
textbooks. Why is the teacher 8 books short? Two other teachers have
taken the copies for their classes. The teachers goal is for each
student to have their own textbook.
 Problems
 Defining a problem depends on the
perceptions of the person or group that
interprets facts showing a discrepancy
between what is and what ought to be.
– What shapes our perceptions?
– Framing a problem often involves conflict and
power. People will always differ as to whether
there is a problem and who owns the problem.
 Problems: Covey
 The way we see the problem IS the
problem. We create and frame our problems
based on our perceptions and experiences.
 Problems
 Avoid blame; pointing the finger of blame at
people, organizations or institutions is not
the easy or appropriate way to frame a
problem. Consider:
– The high school history teacher who tells the principal he has two students
who are disruptive in his class. He wants them transferred immediately.
The principal agrees with the teachers perception that the two are the
problem and he transfers them. A month later the teacher has two new
boys who are not behaving.
 Problems
 “The easy way out, usually leads back
in.”-Anonymous
 Dilemmas
 Dilemmas: messy, complicated and conflict-
filled situations that require undesirable
choices between highly prized values.
 Dilemmas
 A teacher is deciding which grade to give a
graduating senior who comes to class on
time, completes homework, asks to do extra
credit, is constructive in class, polite, but
fails more than half of the exams and
quizzes during the year. Does the teacher
pass or fail the student?
– Why is this a dilemma? What are the competing
values facing the teacher?
 Dilemmas
 From the outside, dilemmas often look like
problems because of the gap.
 Dilemmas occur when organizational
constraints make it impossible for any
prized value to triumph.
 Therefore, dilemmas end up with “good-
enough” compromises rather than solutions.
 Problems
 Identify three problems you are currently
facing either personally or professionally.
– Identify it
– Frame it
– Generate solutions
– Generate alternative solutions
– What could go wrong?
 Problems vs. Dilemmas
 Activity “The case of the disappointed high
school department head”
 Problems/Failure
 Failure does not strike from out of the blue,
it develops gradually according to its own
logic. As we watch individuals try to solve
problems, we will see that complicated
situations seem to elicit habits of thought
that set failure in motion from the beginning.
 Planning
 “You don’t plan to fail, you fail to plan
– To deal with a complex problem, you first define
your goals.
– Planning is to consider what you might do in a
given situation.
– The essence of planning is to think through
consequences of certain actions and see
whether those actions bring you closer to your
goal.
 In planning, we develop a chain of imagined
actions and test these actions, “If I do A
what will happen when I add step B?”
 The game of Chess is a great example
where planning takes place.
9 C’s of Leadership

Lee Iacocca
 9 C’s
 Curiosity: listen, read, step outside your
comfort zone
 Creative: think outside the box, go out on a
limb
 Communicate: tell the truth, hear/listen
 Character: know the difference between
right and wrong and have the guts to do
something about it
 9 C’s
 Courage: take a position and defend it
 Conviction: get something done, have
passion
 Charisma: create inspiration and trust, not
flashiness
 Competent: know what you are doing
 Common Sense: learn from experiences
 Christa McAuliffe
 Activity: “Placing Students at Christa
McAuliffe School.”
 Community
 “In schools, the ultimate purpose of
leadership is to transform the school into a
moral community,” (Sergiovanni, p.45)
 Communities are organized around
relationships and ideas. They create social
structures that bond people together and
bind them to a shared set of values and
ideas.
 Community
 Activity: Recall occasions in your life when
you experienced community. Select one of
those occasions and write a story that
focuses on you as a character, your
relationship with others, the events that
unfolded, your motivation and the motivation
of others. How did you feel as part of this
experience
 Community
 Themes that emerged from 100 public
school principals in Philadelphia and Illinois,
(Chicago):
– Purpose
– Focus
– Commitment
– Passion, spirit
– Trust
– Free to take risks
 Safe
 Everyone involved
 Respect
 Shared responsibility
 Everyone responsible for success
 Open communication
 Problem solving
 Community
 You have to know your community, you
have to relate to your community and most
important you have to believe in your
community.
 “No one of us is greater than the rest of us.”
Ray Kroc (McDonald’s)
 Negative Leadership Traits (Hersey)
 Insensitive to others: abrasive, intimidating bullying style.
 Cold, aloof, arrogant
 Untrustworthy
 Overly ambitious; always thinking of next job
 Having specific performance problems with the business
 Unable to delegate or build a team
 Unable to staff effectively
 Unable to think strategically
 Over dependent on others