Tag: leadership

A Leader I Admire

Charlie MacFadyenLeave a comment

This post is a reply to a prompt about a leader I admire. I thought long and hard about this, and I’m trying not to cheat by mixing together the properties I admire in various leaders I’ve worked with. Maybe the big takeaway from this is that no leader is perfect. I haven’t thought of one single person about whom I can say only glowing, positive things. Which maybe is a lesson for all of us– that we ourselves can’t expect to be the perfect leader and can always strive to improve in our own leadership roles.

Okay, so I’ve come up with my person. What are her qualities?

1. Passion. This person has a clear passion for her work and for guiding others in their work.

2. Energy. This person is always be working hard. Period.

3. Integrity. In some leaders, I wonder about an unspoken agenda.  This can create a stressful and often unproductive environment. This leader is not one of those people. What she says is what she believes. She does what she says she will.

4. Knowledge. This person has a wealth of knowledge about her field and sets an example for others bye continually building on that knowledge. You know when working with her that you are getting well-researched, thoughtful guidance and resources to work with.

5. Selflessness. This person is clearly not in her position of leadership in order to make herself feel more important or respected. Her leadership is all about bringing others up. This is an infectious quality. It is something that you want to pay forward.

Who I Am As A Leader

Charlie MacFadyen3 Comments

My job title (Digital Learning Leader) has the word leader in it, so I suppose it’s a good idea to reflect on who I am as a leader. That’s why I’m taking the course this semester. I’m interested to go back and re-read this post at the end of the term to see how I’ve evolved.

I believe in leading by example. I want to be able to say, “do as I do, not as I say.” When I started my new role, I didn’t have a specific classroom teaching assignment. After a year, I requested getting my own class to teach. Why? I didn’t want to lose touch with the life of the classroom teacher– the routines, the systems, and the challenges… but also the joys. When I recommend that a teacher try out a tech tool, I like it when I can say, “Here’s how I used it in my class.”

Specific to leadership in the area of digital learning, I’ve found that it’s essential to “meet people where they are.” No one enjoys feeling intimidated. You can always find a place to start and bring people up from there. I actually wrote a chapter about that in a collaborative book we wrote at the Vermont Fest conference this past fall.

I believe in building consensus. I try to be a good listener. I bring groups together to make decisions. I respect different viewpoints. Something I’d like to work on is recognizing that not everyone will love every decision. Sometimes the role of a leader is to be the one who’s “driving the bus.”

I work closely with other digital learning leaders in the schools in our district. I’m also grateful for the support of the ed tech community here in Vermont and beyond. One area that can be challenging to me is figuring out what things are school-specific, which apply to the whole district, the state, and beyond. I think we often re-invent the wheel; it’s often a question of how customized a wheel we need for a given situation.

Looking over the prompts for this post, I was struck by the question of long-term vs. short-term priorities. I would love to build strategies for ensuring that long-term goals do not get lost when short-term issues arise. This is an area where I think tech tools can be helpful. I’d like to continue to find planner and organizational apps to help me.

I will take George Couros’ advice and not try to make this post perfect at the risk of not ever finishing. I feel that I have more to say, but– as I said earlier– this is a start!