EDvent Calendar: Day 24 (Leadership)

I've saved the best gift until last. Here's a chance to change someone's life. In April 16-17 2012, we're holding the second annual NZ Emerging Leaders' Unconference. It's a chance to get together everyone who wants to make a difference in education.

What is an unconference?
It's a participant-driven event. Rather than inviting people to attend a conference where everything has been decided by others in advance (the speakers, the content, the timetable, the spaces etc.) an unconference emerges out of the strengths and interests of the people who attend. If you want to lead a session, you write it up and people attend. It sounds a bit chaotic, but works brilliantly.

We recognise that letting the Principals do all the talking is only one approach to leadership. Another approach is to harness the wisdom of everyone, build on their ideas and collectively take them to the world.

Leading, not following.

Being part of something important

[Cue Aretha Franklin singing R.E.S.P.E.C.T.]

From: Bersin & Associates

A new book "RESPECT: Delivering Results by Giving Employees What They Really Want", which Brenda Kowske co-authored with Jack Wiley outlines the following as motivators for employees.
"[Respect] stands for:

• Recognition
• Excitement
• Security
• Pay (only 25% of answers were in this category!)
• Education
• Conditions at work - social and physical
• Truth

Makes sense, right? But here’s the kicker: companies that executed on the principals of RESPECT had higher customer satisfaction ratings, higher financial metrics, and tracked a percentage point above the S&P 500. Simply put, and the third reason I’m proud of this book, it’s the ultimate win-win at work."

So let's translate that to education: happy teachers result in happier students (customers). It links pretty closely to what Dan Pink outlines in his TED talk on the surprising science of motivation:

"It's an approach built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, because they're interesting, because they are part of something important."

A great question to ask is 'does what I am teaching help students to feel like they are part of something important?'

Advice from The Steve

Okay, so I'll be the first to say that I'm not Steve Job's biggest fan. He's been spectacularly successful at developing a closed computing ecosystem and determining what users have access to and what they don't. It's quite different from my view of the way digital tools should work: seamless interoperability, regardless of hardware or software choices, with the user (and not the corporation) at the centre of everything. However, The Steve's advice to Larry Page of Google on how to be a good CEO is exceptional:

"We talked a lot about focus. And choosing people. How to know who to trust, and how to build a team of lieutenants he can count on. I described the blocking and tackling he would have to do to keep the company from getting flabby and being larded with B players. The main thing I stressed was focus. Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up. It's now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they're dragging you down. They're turning you into Microsoft. They're causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great."

If you want to take over the world, this would be a pretty good starting point.

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2011/10/how-steve-jobs-influenced-googles.html