Reflection to ENC 606: Leadership Competencies

Chris Vergatos

Leadership competencies are something that should be expected of all educators in the

industry. As educators, we are leaders in the classroom, school and community and we should be

able to conduct ourselves in this manner at all times. Being understanding of the leadership

competencies that come with being an educator are therefore extremely important and help

establish validity in individual leadership styles and approaches. The four leadership

competencies that we focused on in our course Interpersonal Behavior and Organizational

Leadership were self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship

management. Understanding these leadership competencies and discussing my personal journey

to attaining these competencies provides insight into how I plan on handling situations that arise

throughout my career as a life-long learner and educator.

Looking back on my own self-awareness in various situations throughout my life, I feel

confident in saying there has been a clear transformation from when I started high school to

where I am now, in my last year of graduate school. I feel that high school is a time where many

individuals begin to create a clear self-identity for what they believe in and how they want to

conduct themselves. Being self-aware plays into this sense of identity and can shape your

outlooks on life and your own goals and aspirations. Being self-aware requires one to look at

their strengths and their flaws and assess how these two impact one another and what course of

action needs to be taken in order to maximize the impact one wants to have in society or in

making themselves a better person. Being self-aware as an educator allows you to look at your
own teaching methods and strategies and challenge the way you are doing things in order to

increase the impact you can make on students. Being self-aware also has to do with how you

interact with your environment and how you understand the environment which you thrive in and

also the one that brings about the most challenges. I know that I perform better when there are

expectations set high and quality work is expected. Throughout my experiences in schools, while

completing my undergraduate degree, I found that the classroom exposed me to an environment

that demanded my best effort each day and that it was something that I genuinely enjoyed.

Self-management is perhaps the most difficult of the leadership competencies to attain

because it requires you to not just be self-aware, but to make yourself act on this self-awareness

to achieve an outcome. I feel that my self-management, especially regarding education as a

career path, has improved over the years due to my continued commitment to pursue education.

Though I havent been teaching in a traditional classroom setting since my student-teaching, I

understand how my graduate assistantship can impact my views and perspectives on education

through my many experiences dealing with high school students and their families. By taking on

extra responsibilities and duties such as attending college fairs at over 30 high schools has given

me a broad understanding of how well various schools and communities can prepare students for

post-secondary life. By continually engaging with high school students over the past year and a

half, I have managed to gain valuable experience and points of view that is different than many

educators have been exposed to throughout their careers.

Social awareness is a competency that is extremely vital in the classroom due to the

various personalities of students that a teacher interacts with on a daily basis. Social awareness is

not just about knowing what is appropriate to do or say in a social setting but it also has to do

with relating to people and making people feel comfortable. For students, safety and comfort is a
necessity for there to be significant gains in their own learning and general education. If someone

doesn't feel comfortable or safe in the classroom environment than it can be detrimental to the

learning process and have a ripple effect amongst other students. Being socially aware as a

teacher allows me to facilitate a learning environment that is dynamic and adaptive to best fit the

students as individuals and as a collective whole within each class. Being a socially aware

teacher allows mediation between discussion of topics, concepts and ideas amongst students,

which is critical to the social studies classroom that I feel best engages students. Social

awareness increases with more exposure and experience with different types of people and

different social and professional settings and I feel that my own social awareness has reached a

level that allows me to interact and engage with various types of people, in various types of

settings.

Relationship management is another key competency that a good teacher should possess.

Professional relationships with faculty and staff within the school are extremely valuable not

only to professional growth, but also in terms of creating a conducive and enjoyable work

environment. The teacher- student relationship is also extremely important to understand and

without a grasp on this competency, teachers can find themselves involved in ethical, moral or

challenging dilemmas. In regards to teacher-student relationships, favoritism, bias or unfairness

towards students should be removed from the learning process or serious problems are likely to

occur. Understanding how to manage relationships is a competency that should be expected by

every school of their teachers. Teachers should be setting the standard within their classroom of

how to relate to various types of people and should be held accountable for how they interact

with students. Overall, these four leadership competencies make up crucial components of how

teachers should conduct themselves throughout their career.