ASSIGNMENT 1 Title: Educational Leadership and the Keys Criteria for Success

Name Student Id Class Lecturer

: Nurul Qistina Abu Bakar : Pgd 130009 : Pxgm 6103 Educational Leadership : Dr. Simin Ghavifekr

Date Submission : 28 OCTOBER 2013, Monday

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Educational Leadership and the Key Criteria for Success

Educational Leadership or known as leadership can be define as the behavior of an individual by directing activities of a group towards a shared goal. Leadership is also about the process of influencing the activities of an organized group toward goal achievement. There are many definitions to describe the leadership. In order to be a good leader, the person should have the leadership criteria in their self. It is not as easy as we think to be a leader to lead any department, school or any organization that involved group of people from different behavior and background. In order to be a good leader, the person need to have good leadership styles in their self and it is important for someone to be a model and inspires to their employees. In other words that can be define leaderships as a process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective effort to accomplish shared objectives. In educational leadership, the principal hold a big position to build up the school and to make the school grow and increase the reputation. In order to do that, the principal needs to have support from his or her teachers and staffs. Without the support from the teachers and staff, the vision and aim of the principal for the school will not archive. In order to be a good leader to lead the school or educational organization, the principal need to have the good criteria itself. Here I would like to share the keys criteria to be a good leader. There are varieties of criteria that can be describes and be implements to be a good leader. In this presentation and report, I would like to discuss eight (8) criteria that can be implements in order to be a good leadership. To be a good leader, the person need to be an inspiration towards their employees, give courage, show empathy to their employees must be a problem solver, must be honest in communication and well communicator especially toward their employees, customers or clients. The leader also needs to have ability to be a risk taker in order accepts any challenges coming. Furthermore, the leader also must be organized person and practical planners in order to make the department, school or organization run smoothly. The last keys criteria I would like to discuss is in order to be a leader, the person must know how to motivate others in order to make their employees feel positive in doing their daily task.

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More elaboration on the eight (8) keys criteria to be discuss as follow: 1) Inspiration

Leader needs to inspire the follower in order to gain the trust from the employees and to make the employees to join the leader in order to do some action. The leader or the principal should motivate and put the interest in followers into action. However, in order to inspire followers, a leader must have a vision, belief, or cause that they champion. This vision can either be their own, such as in the school, the principals provide ideas for future school transformation towards blue print. As the leader, the principal have to have strong idea of believe and the principal needs to be able to motivate all teachers in school to support the implementation of blue print. In order to bring others to action, the principal must gain all the teachers trust. Once the teachers have gain the trust and inspire the principal, then the teachers start to adopt the new implementation of blue print.

2)

Courage

In order to get the employer to adopting the vision or be able to influence the follower to do the action that the leader wants to achieve, the leader must have courage in self. They must be able and willing to defend and protect their visions against both outside and internal attacks. Employees will immediately begin to lose faith in their leader if they see the leader without the courage to support an idea under trying times. Leaders must also have the courage to change and adapt their vision to respond to supportive ideas from others that benefit the vision, mostly from politic, economic and environment perspective.

Having the courage to accept and adopt change can be difficult if the leader has become attached to his or her own vision. This is where people call resistance to change. Thats why, leader or principal in the school have always be positive in adopting change. This is because, a good leader should know that modifying or changing the vision that they have implement, can be beneficial to the leader itself, for his or her organization and also for the employees. For example, in the organization that I am working now, the department that I a currently working is Centre for Research Development. In this year, there is new Pro Vice Chancellor who took over our department and all of us will be directly working under the PVC. As the PVC has high vision NQAB

to transform CRD to be better departments that can serve the academic better especially in research area. But some of the employees refuse to accept change and decided to leave the organization. The PVC found out about the employees and he took action immediately by motivate others, support and give courage to other employees to stay and adopt the change he brings. As the result, now CRD become more grow and stable department and we be able to gain trust from academics and the vision bring by the PVC is come to the top. In the changes that PVC bring, show that if employees willing to accept the changes and the leader be able to put courage in the vision he bring, soon or later, the employees will open their eyes and stat to think in positive way to accept the change. Leader courage is really important in organization or department in order to gain trust from the employees to help to archive the vision bring by the leader.

3)

Empathy

The third criteria, I believe that leaders must have in themself is empathetic. As a leader, they must feel compassionate towards those who they are leading and they must be able to understand the personal background of their employees. Only by truly understanding their employees backgrounds can make the leader be more effective. This is because; empathetic leaders can understand the root cause or the main reasons behind what is driving their employees actions. By being the empathetic leaders, this will make the employees feel confident, capable and inspiring them to do more than what they would do on their own.

Nowadays most of leaders implement empathy in their leadership process. This is because, most of leader realize that by implement empathy in their leadership, will make them to be more close to their employees and straight know what are the needs of their employees. For example, one of my superior, she always tries to get close to all staff in order to know the need, hidden skills and talent that the staff have inside. This is because, she wants all the staff in her department feel motivated to work and reveal all their hidden talent and skill and implement it to the organization. For her, by siting together in a group, share and express all the problems inside will help to release the stress that the staff facing and let go all the problems that the staff have in mind. By let it goes, all the others staff can listen to the problems and will together try to solve the problem occur. By being empathetic and really NQAB

understand the problems facing by the employee, leaders can build a higher level of trust in their department, school or organizations, be more commitment in their employees and be more positive and productive in the workplace.

4)

Problem Solver

Leaders must tackle problems and find solutions quickly and efficiently. The leader must have the problem-solving abilities before making a decision. This is because, in order to be a leader, the person needs to be able to make a decision and dare to do the best decision for his or her employees, department, or organization. Besides, the leader must also know how to dig up the problems that might occur or the potential problems, where by, as leaders they need to take responsibilities to explain the issues occur to others. Furthermore, besides solving the problem occur by them, the leaders must also bring the ideas to the table and facilitate an environment where others can contribute their suggestions towards solving the problems. A good leader will take responsibility when things go wrong and share the glory when things go right.

5)

Honest Communication

To be a leader, the person should be good communicators. Leaders are an important link in the communication chain. Top management depends on the leaders to carry their ideas to employees while employees rely on the leaders to carry their feedback to the top management. Leader should have good communication in self, as this is important to build good relationship with the internal and external people. communication is crucial. The inter-departmental

In addition, as this will help the employees and leader to

communicate not only about work but also in term of personal matters. If the leader is good in communicate with others, the leader can influence easily influence the people he or her want to get the desire vision.

The leaders have to be able to speak out bravely, even at the risk of being blunt. What they are committed to achieve in their goal, is shows from the way they stimulates their listeners to action. The two-way communication is encourage in department or in organization NQAB

as by having two way communication, will help the department to archive the things that they desire to do or archive. When the giving orders, the leader must communicate clearly and the things that the leader tries to express must be clear and straightforward so that the employees will easy understand the requirement from the leader.

6)

Risk Taker

The leader must be brave to accept any risk of failure whenever the decision that he or she make for the department, employees or the organization. This is because as a leader, it is important for the leader to show the ability to rules, control the situation, and accept failure. Without failure, the leader will never grow and learn. If the leader is not brave enough to take the risk of failure, the employees will not be able to trust the leader in order to do things right.

7)

Organize Task & Practical Planners

To be a leader, the person needs to have administrative skills. This is important for the leader to have administrative skills, as is will help the leader to be organize and be a good planner for their department, school or organization. As a leader, they need to organize the school budget, the subject to taught by which teachers and how to plan the strategic planning for the school holidays and programs throughout the years. Criteria for leaders should include good administration skills or the ability to work with qualified administrators. As the chief task organizer, leaders need to plan for even the smallest details for the school, department or organization to insure the success of a project, program or the reaching of the school, department or organization goal. Good organize and planner leader will help to build smooth organization.

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8)

Motivate Others

In order to be a good leadership, the leader should have high motivation in their selves. The leader must always think positive and try to build themselves by learn and add more knowledge in self. This is because as a leader, they need to motivate their employees. Most of the employees depend on the motivation given by the leader to grow and make them feel appreciate on the responsibility that they carry. To motivate the employees, the leader can show their appreciation and recognition to other employees regularly. A high level of

enthusiasm, the ability to think positively, and vision-casting are also key criteria for a leader to be more motivate to themselves and help to motivate others employees.

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References

Roger. F., Cheek, Freddie., (2008), The Power of a Positive Attitude: Discovering the Key to Success, pp.128.

Bush, Tony. (1999), The National Professionl Qualification for Headship: The key to effective school leadership, Vol 18, No. 3, pp. 321-333.

http://www.thevoicemagazine.com/leadership-/leadership/10-important-keys-to-leadershipsuccess.html.

http://my.safaribooksonline.com/book/personal-development/9780814410134/positive-attitude-hekey-to-success/ch10lev1sec1

http://leadershipoutofthebox.wordpress.com/2013/02/28/criteria-for-leadership-inspiration-courageand-empathy/

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/criteria-picking-leader-30708.html

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