What qualities and skills do educational leaders need? How can these skills best be developed online? This interactive presentation looks at the development of an online course in leadership and teamwork for project managers and other leaders. It analyses the decisions we took in identifying the key competences, in devising a teaching/learning approach, and in combining the two.

1. Sue Leather & Andy Hockley
IATEFL, Liverpool 2013

3.  What is leadership? Which leadership skills
are most crucial for project managers?
 What decisions did we make about teaching
leadership online?
 What are the results in terms of the course?

4. Think of someone who you consider to be an
excellent leader.
 What qualities do they have that makes them
such a good leader?
 Share with one or two others, and make a list
of qualities of a leader.

5. listener honest
trustworthy trusting
charismatic visionary
decisive communicates well
“walks the talk”
inspiring a mentor
strong
involves people integrity
open loyalty
commitment wisdom compassion

6. Leadership is required […] to learn from
unpredictable outcomes […], and to try to keep
both the detail and big picture in view all the
time.
Underhill 2005

7. "Leadership is more about change, inspiration,
setting the purpose and direction, and building the
enthusiasm, unity and 'staying-power' for the
journey ahead.
Management is less about change, and more about
stability and making the best use of resources to get
things done.
But here is the key point: leadership and
management are not separate. And they are not
necessarily done by different people. It's not a case
of, 'You are either a manager or a leader'. Leadership
and management overlap..."
(From The Three Levels of Leadership, J Scouller, 2011)


8.  achieving the task
 managing the team or group
 managing individuals

9. “Leadership is a series of choices and actions
around defining and achieving a goal”
(Scouller, 2011)
Focus on what leaders do (functional) rather
than how they should be (trait-based)

10. "Leadership is
a process that involves:
Task, Progress,
Motivating Purpose • setting a purpose and
Results
direction which
inspires people to
combine and work
towards willingly;
• paying attention to the
means, pace and
quality of progress
towards the aim
Upholding Group Attention to • upholding group unity
Unity Individuals • attending to individual
effectiveness
throughout."

11. Public: In group setting,
or in wider organisation
Private: One-to-one
interactions
Personal: Self
(development, growth,
understanding,
reflection, self-mastery)

12.  Focus on key leadership behaviours, but also
goes further – looking at skills and
knowledge underlying the behaviour, and
how to learn them
 Also looks at psychology of leaders and has
strong focus on self-mastery

14.  Start from real, shared experience
 Reflect on experience
 Variety of task
 Theoretical input
 Focussed, quality discussion
 Participants need to break the ice early on

15. 1. An experience (Concrete
Experience)
2. You reflect upon it and
make observations (Reflective
Observation)
3. You draw theories and
generalisations from that
(Abstract Conceptualisation)
4. You think about how you
will apply that in the future
(Active Experimentation)

16.  Simulation and subsequent reflection
 Creating collaborative documents (e.g.
wikis)
 Read and discuss
 Watch a presentation and discuss
 Action planning

17. Have you ever worked in any team that seemed
to lack leadership? What can you say about
that? How did this problem manifest
itself? Was the problem addressed? How?
Share your thoughts with a partner.

18.  Pre-course: Online getting to know you tasks
 Week 1 : You participate in a team task - What happened? What was your
role?
 Week 2 : We look further at the team task, extrapolating ideas about
team formation, team roles and teamwork in general, & looking at some
theories and principles regarding this. How might you apply this to your
work as a team leader and team member?
 Week 3 : We return to the reflections on the task and think about what it
can tell us about leadership. We discuss leadership and management
(and how they differ), and the skills involved in both.
 Week 4 : How this can be applied? What skills and competences you want
to develop further? How you might go about that? Action Planning.

20.  An understanding of the qualities that make a
good leader
 A deeper understanding of which specific
leadership skills you need to develop
 A deeper understanding of how to lead a
team effectively
 The ability to apply theories of leadership to
leadership practice
 The ability to apply your learning from the
course in your work life

21.  What is leadership? Which leadership skills
are most crucial for project managers?
 What decisions did we make about teaching
leadership online?
 What are the results in terms of the course?

23. Email
sue@sueleatherassociates.com
andy@sueleatherassociates.com
Website
www.sueleatherassociates.com