A Focus on Leadership

While written from a business perspective, Jim Belosic offers 5 intriguing ideas about flat management. True, he has a small company (14) and yet his comments about management-level people having the opportunity to keep putting their skills to use made me think. So, too, did his comments about flat management as an employee screening tool and what implications those ideas might have in a school or district.

This thought-provoking blog by George Couros shares and connects to ideas from George Siemens. These connections include: mass collaboration and social networks; individual connection (which made me think of 1) Joe Girard’s Law of 250 – scroll down to #2, and 2) synchronicity); and how to create the spaces for these to occur.

I have been on Twitter for years and yet have few tweets. Learning curve and time are probably a big part of that equation. When I led a session one time on Web 2.0 tools, one of the topics that came up was how principals might use Twitter to engage their stakeholders and community. This blog by Alyssa Morones shares great examples of school and district leadership reaching out to their communities via Twitter.

Kyle Pace, in his blog Why do we follow? 5 Important Leadership Traits, talks about 4 traits I believe translate well to online learning and professional networking. Consider trusting, valuing, encouraging risk-taking and growth. How can we translate these to our PLNs (personal learning networks)?

The Partnership for Los Angeles Schools is making progress. This commentary is about both the leadership and humility necessary for turnaround work to succeed. They highlight 4 strategies they have focused on for turning around their schools: leadership, effective teaching, target student supports and family and community engagement. What are they doing that is working well?