Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Leading Through Boundaries

I attended one of Auckland Universities Centre for Educational Leadership Professional Learning Days. It was titled Thinking Differently about Educational Leadership. I must say it was one of the best presentations I have experienced around leadership. The day provoked much thought and deep reflection about ones leadership work and practice.
The opening task was to describe in 10 sentences what our leadership work is right now. Brigid Carroll then skillfully used metaphor and narrative to highlight the command, manager and leader paradigms of leadership. She suggested that we need to operate in the leadership or what Grint terms the WICKED zone, that is to;
Listen, Facilitate, Coach, Question, Be open minded, Delight in new ideas, Be Curious, Risk take, Gather perspectives and be Collaborative/collective.
She suggested most people function only 10% of their time in this space, because it's complex, hard work, chaotic and about thinking in the unknown.
We were encouraged throughout the day to identify and find the boundaries in ourselves and our work. Pushing through the boundaries and thinking and talking at the boundaries is where the WICKED work can happen to solve complex problems.
Go get into the wicked space the Command and Management work needs to be achieved efficiently to create time to do the more messy, unpredictable WICKED thinking.
We left today being challenged how we prioritised time and space to allow this boundary pushing thinking to occur.
I feel refreshed and revitalised after hearing the complexity of leadership so eloquently articulated.
Long blog entries are not so fun to be continued ....

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