#Change11 #CCK12 Moving beyond Management and Leadership Part 2

What is the difference between management and leadership?

Management versus Leadership is well explained here.

In times of change, transformational leadership seems to provide a superior solution in leading the group or team.  Transformational leaders seek to transform.  Transformational leadership could also be used in peer mentoring.

Another form of leadership is distributed leadership.  It involves forming small teams with distributed leadership.

In the case of networks, what would leadership look like?

In this Applying Design Thinking and Complexity Theory in Agile Organization by Jean Tabaka, the focus of leadership in networks would be based on emergence and resilience.  To this end, I reckon distributed cognition, with distributed and emergent leadership would be a way to go.  This leadership characteristics may be based on the Cynefin Model as developed by Dave Snowden.

Picture: Google image

The sort of leadership style that likely makes sense in networking would then be based on an emergent practice.  This requires an emergent and resilient leadership style to steer the networks.  Action by leaders in such networks include probe, sense and respond in complex networks.

How to move beyond management and leadership in networks?

The most effective sort of leadership in networks may emerge out of a blend of peer leadership and servant leadership.

#Change11 #CCK12 Moving beyond management and leadership Part 1

Here I ponder how one could move beyond the management and leadership concept of learning in a non-hierarchical organisational setting such as networks or MOOC.  John Spencer says in this post I don’t want to manage my class:

Leadership is messy. It takes longer. It is often more confusing, more painful and more counterintuitive than management.

I shared John’s belief, and that leadership relates principally to relationship, and how one could influence the others through a combination of powers, affection, touch of feelings and understanding of emotions, through empathy and resonance.

I have posted the following quotes with comments in the post:

1. Leaders must exemplify the expected standards of behavior – wow, that is the tribal approach, sure! The tribal leader would determine what standards of behavior would be praised, rewarded, amplified, or show as an exemplary to all followers, or would declare such behaviors as the heroic action in the tribal manifestation.  Magnificent motto!

2. We must engage emotionally with students in their world – wow! Are leaders emotional counselors or “manipulators” of their students?  Of course students are emotional humans, just like their teachers.  So what is the role of the teacher in their students’ emotional journey?

3. Teachers and principals themselves are sometimes actors.  What sort of actors?  Why? How to act?

To me, the whole of education leadership lies with the building and sustaining of relationship in between agents, actors, entities, networks and communities.  This would take connections and connectivity to new dimensions – which would relate to people psychologically, mentally, and may be spiritually.  This stems from ideas shared among the agents (leader – followers, or everyone being a leader and follower), where information and knowledge are remixed and shaped by each individual to make sense of the interaction and ideas shared.

Leadership in essence is coming into understanding or co-forming of certain beliefs that would reinforce one’s existing experience (both leaders and followers), or leading each others to new and novel experiences in life.

This sort of leadership is emergent in nature, in that it evolves out of the interaction, based on deep reflection of one’s rooted beliefs, and challenges one to re-think about the philosophy often adopted towards certain fundamental concepts.  Jenny’s post discussing about the philosophy of MOOC is a great example illustrating the importance of emergent leadership, when open educational practice is practiced by the “leaders” in a course of network.

I will continue to explore this in Part 2 of a series on management and leadership.

Stephen provides a wonderfully crafted post where I would like to re-post it below:

	Management	Leadership	That something else better that isn’t management or leadership
Attitude	Compliance	Humility	Service
Authority	Based upon title	Based upon earned trust	None; offers an example which may be followed or not
Questions	Questions are viewed as a threat to authority	Encourages questions to develop an ethical understanding	Asked frequently
The Framework	Procedural	Relational	Engaged and connected
Rules / Boundaries	Based upon conformity	Based upon an ethical, philosophical concept	Based on respect for others
Procedures	Standardized	Personalized	Adapted as needed
Innovation	Discouraged if it challenges the status quo	Provides a vision that inspires others	Secondary to creativity, freedom and exploration
Submission	Forced: based upon a fear	Voluntarily: submitting to another’s strengths to protect one’s weaknesses	There is no submission; exchanges are mutual and of mutual value
Motivation	Extrinsic	Intrinsic	Not necessary
The Results	Behave externally but rebel internally (or when no one is looking)	Empathetic, ethical thinkers who want to do what is right	Cooperative environment populated by creative and expressive individuals who see respect for and service to others as the highest good