LIT2T Leadership Guide

55 TO: TABLE OF CONTENTS 10.4.1 Facilitative Leadership “Effective leaders are not synonymous with effective managers. Managers cope with day-to-day tasks, not change. Simple planning is a management process. Leaders use more data and look for patterns and themes and relationships and then create a vision and strategies.” (Wang, 2012, p.6) One can argue that e-leadership is about creating a culture of leadership where individuals are empowered to innovate, and active channels provide communication and support. But while day to day administration of a language training program is about coping with complexity, e-leadership is about supporting and encouraging change. The ‘stakeholders’ in innovation (you, your colleagues, the learners and the funders) represent a whole range of attitudes, learning styles and philosophies, yet to some degree, all must be partners in innovation. A philosophy of facilitative leadership has diverged over the past 50 years from older, more leader-centred, authoritarian approaches. Facilitative leadership: • Allows for continuity of operation; • Recognizes that all people possess different values and beliefs; • Encourages objectivity in program evaluation; • Leads to shared leadership. (WANG, 2012, P.6) Facilitative leadership recognizes “the benefits of humanism; where individuals have unlimited potential for learning and a propensity to become self-directed” (WANG, P.3) : “Although this type of leadership is not the same as other-centered leadership, there are similarities between the two types of leadership. According to facilitative leadership, leaders recognize that people are capable of taking control of their own learning and are responsible for their own actions and decisions. However, a leader is not viewed as synonymous with a dictator but rather that of a helper, a facilitator who makes things easier for their followers. It is this type of leadership that can be easily translated into E-leadership in the new century. Facilitative leadership is firmly based on adult learning theory and its connection can be seen by the presence of courses focusing on adult learning theory in many educational leadership program (WANG, P3) . Matching Your Leadership Style to Local Conditions Change Agents “Change agents, who have specialized technical and communication skills, can optimize the conditions for change through helping relationships (HOULE, 1972) . Change agents can help people’s sense of efficacy by providing clear instructions, modeling the behavior, providing opportunities for practice, and reinforcing changed behavior. Educational leaders may serve in that role as they enact core change strategies that frame and support conditions for change: sharing curriculum and instruction, facilitating reflective teaching, developing policy, and developing shared vision. (WANG, 2012, P.13) Everett M. Rogers has been a powerful long term influence on thinking about innovations and how they come about. From his pioneering work in the 1950s to his passing in 2004, Rogers published extensively on the diffusion of innovations. Rogers asserts that individuals adopt innovation but it diffuses through groups, and group decisions are more complex than individual ones (SURRY, P. 3) . From the perspective of the group or system challenged by the innovation, individuals can be seen to play a range of roles on a continuum from the eager (First Adopter) to the very reticent (Laggard). The notion of role-players in innovations