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Further to my last post, and after reading all of your comments (thank you!), I have decided that my HWM question will be: How might we better understand informal leadership at Havergal College? As @ckirsh mentioned in her comment to me, there is a broadness to this HMW that I think will serve me well as I embark on my action plan. I think there is something really nice too about this HMW because it allows for many constituents’ input about how they feel about informal leadership – not me saying “this is informal leadership, how do you like it?”.
I am excited about our F2F meeting on Feb 18 because I would like to hear from many of you about what your schools have done in this domain but for now my action plan goals are to create a session at our upcoming full-day Leadership Accelerator around informal leadership and to ask students, staff/faculty what their interpretation of informal leadership is via a survey.
Thanks again for all of your feedback!
The stance of seeking to understand rather than change something as a beginning step is really quite interesting and I can imagine would be really enlightening!
Loving where you’re at @vwade! Iterating on your HMW question, starting by asking your users. I undertook a similar task last year and it will inform my planning for years to come. I can’t wait to see where this journey continues to lead and learn more about informal leadership, as well. Look forward to chatting on the 18th!
Hi Vanessa,
I think you’ve arrived a great starting point and I’m interested in learning more about how you develop the definition of informal leadership based on feedback from your colleagues and students! I like the idea of articulating a collective understanding of informal leadership, I am hoping that this will help each individual drive leadership opportunities that they are passionate about. Looking forward to learning how this develops!
This is a great HMW question! I think this is actually something that perhaps is often skipped over- the understanding of informal leadership- what does it look like? Sound like? How can its impact be measured? The possibilities are endless. Informal leadership can often be overlooked or not used to its full potential. I think by creating a stronger awareness and understanding around it, you will be opening up possibilities for this leadership to take on a new life. I am so excited to talk to you about this in the next F2F!
@vwade check in with @khansler on Friday. Lakefield and @timrollwagen are doing some really great work in this area.
Excellent. I will!!
Thanks @jmedved would love to talk more about this @vwade
Often informal leaders or people who lead from the “middle” bring the classroom teacher perspective to strategy meetings and policy discussions that can end up keeping ideas realistic, timelines doable and priorities manageable. @vwade looking forward to hearing about your survey results and current thinking!
You might want to talk to @ljensen @amacrae about your HMW inquiry on Friday.