1. How to Promote Effective Leadership
Alona B. Baraquio
Effective leadership allows organizations to achieve their goals. Promoting effective
leadership strategies typically involves providing training programs at all levels of the
organization so employees can develop their ability to coach and mentor others. To create a
culture that helps emerging leaders flourish, establish an environment where people can
brainstorm solutions to problems and get feedback. With a spirit of compassion and trust, you
can ensure that people have the opportunities they need to grow. By promoting effective
leadership, you can make decisions that reinforce your strategy, processes and values to
generate operational results.
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Gather diverse people to help you form your leadership development strategy. Include people of
different gender, race and ethnicity to get a broad perspective on how to respond to problems.
Include people with varying levels of experience and expertise. Use their collective wisdom to
identify activities for the whole organization.
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Analyze your environment to determine what leadership skills require promotion. For example,
ask people in your organization to assess their leadership motivation. Take a critical look at the
way leaders function today and determine which skills may need improvement, such as
influencing, motivating, listening and presentation skills.
Conduct training sessions that include role-playing exercises. To transform employees into
leaders, provide opportunities to recognize patterns and inter-relationships. For example, divide
a group of participants into pairs. Assign one person the role of interviewer and one person the
role of job applicant. Allow 15 minutes to act out an interview. Instruct participants to switch
roles and allow another 15 minutes to repeat the exercise. Discuss as a group the way that
perceived power affects our ability to communicate confidently.For example, participants may
report feeling nervous when playing the role of the job applicant. Developing emotional
intelligence typically helps an employee become an effective leader.
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Promote ethical leadership. Establish a document that describes standards for business conduct
that describes your organization's core values. Set up meetings to explain the rules to employees.
Encourage participants to ask questions and make a commitment to enforcing the policies and
procedures.
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Foster a culture of sharing good ideas. Employees should become adept at making autocratic
decisions, without consulting subordinates, whenquick action needs to be taken. They should
also know when to function as democratic leaders, allowing subordinates to provide input.
Additionally, leaders should recognize situations when teams canfunction without management
interference or supervision and monitoring.
The ability to command a team with strong leadership skills can foster loyalty, inspire
action and increase productivity in the workplace. People look to leaders for encouragement and
support, and it is critical to develop the skills needed to lead with purpose while in a position of
authority. Leadership goes beyond mere management capabilities and offers tools that can be
used in other areas of life.
2. How to Become a Role Model and Leader
Alona B. Baraquio
For some following along is just fine, while for others taking the lead is the ultimate
goal. By acting as a leader and a role model you have the distinctive opportunity to influence
the decisions of others and guide their actions. However, becoming a role model and leader
doesn't just mean obtaining a leadership position. To find success in this role you must also
embody the characteristics of high-quality leaders, making yourself someone that people
will want to follow as well as someone who others revere.
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Embody healthy practices. If you want to be a role model you must lead by example. If you
fail to practice what you preach you will come off as hypocritical and your attempts at
leading others to make good choices will prove fruitless. This means that you must dedicate
some time to yourself and make sure that the things you do daily are healthy, physically and
emotionally. For example, if you are a smoker, quitting is a great first step to not only
improving your personal health but also becoming the role model you long to be.
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Educate yourself. Being an educated individual makes you a logical and sound role model. It
also prepares you to lead. As a leader, you should possess more knowledge than those
following you, or at least a comparable amount. If you appear uneducated about the
industry in which you are trying to act as a leader, those following you will likely lose
confidence in your abilities and, by connection, you as a leader.
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Maintain a confident persona. Everyone feels unsure from time to time, but if you want to
be a successful leader you must also appear to be a confident person. When you do feel
unsure about decisions, don't allow others to see this hesitancy but instead make your
decision in private, weighing the pros and cons of each choice. You can move forward with
your choice confidently, resting assured that you consider all of the options.
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Form relationships with people. While some leaders try to stay separate from those they are
leading, doing so is often not the best choice. By forming relationships with people you can
make them more naturally inclined to follow you. You can also show them that you are
someone on whom they can depend, making you someone they are eager to follow.
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Take a stand when need be. One of the worst things you can do when you are a leader is to
relinquish control entirely. Though you don't want to appear a dictator who is simply
making demands and expecting that those demands are complied with, there will be times
in which you must take a firm and unwavering stand. If you have made a decision and
others are not complying with it, it's important to exert your power as a leader.
A role model is someone that a person admires, respects and wishes to emulate. Many
people think that in order to become a role model, you must be famous or exceptional at
multiple things, such as an astronaut or an Olympic medalist. While these people may indeed be
role models, being famous or exceptional is not a requirement.
3. How to Develop LeadershipSkills for Teachers
Alona B. Baraquio
As the lone adults in classrooms teeming with students, teachers must be leaders.
Students follow the leadership of the teacher, completing homework and assignments,
talking and not talking when appropriate, and listening to the teacher's instructions and
descriptions. But there are ways to enhance the leadership skills of teachers, improving
their ability as educators.
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Demand that teachers conduct practical research on school practices. This will force
them to look into the effectiveness and background of school policies, and to form their
own opinions on the policies.
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Train teachers in how to complete curriculum development. This will make teachers
more aware and more critical of the curriculum. It will ignite in teachers’ ideas about
how to improve the curriculum.
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Give teachers an active role in decision-making in their schools. This will empower them
and make them care more about their school and its policies.
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Ask teachers to survey their students toget feedback on teaching practices and activities
that students enjoy best. This will give teachers a more well-rounded perspective on
what's most effective.
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Encourage learning and improvement. The best leaders are constantly striving to
become better.
A teacher is naturally the leader of a classroom, and the better a teacher leads, the
better the class will follow. Developing different leadership skills will improve your
performance as a teacher, and will help the students to develop more as individuals.
Creating a more team-based environment will empower students, and help to foster an
environment of creative development.
4. Positive Facts for How Teachers Improve the Lives of Their
Students
Alona B. Baraquio
Many people go into the field of education because of their desire to help others.
Teaching provides the opportunity to do that and much more. The impact of a teacher's
influence on a student is far-reaching and essential to the development of the child. That
influence can be sensed, felt or heard by students on a daily basis. This is particularly
beneficial if the student does not have a positive and nurturing environment at home.
o Teachers have a tremendous opportunity to improve the self-esteem of their students by
conveying respect, focusing on the good qualities and talents of individual students and
serving as a constant source of encouragement. Some students may not have other people in
their lives who show them respect and encourage them in their day-to-day activities or in
their hopes and dreams. Teachers also have the opportunity to identify and focus on the
strengths of each student to help build self-confidence and self-esteem.
o Many teachers serve as sounding boards to their students on a daily basis. Take for instance
a fourth-grade student whose mom is suffering with terminal cancer or whose parents are
going through a difficult divorce. It is not uncommon for students to develop a close
relationship with teachers, and since they are close confide in the teacher or seek advice
about how to deal with a particularly difficult situation. A teacher is an adult who can offer
words of encouragement or initiate a referral for more in-depth counseling if necessary.
o It is a tremendously rewarding experience to open the eyes of a child to something new in
their world. Teachers have that opportunity, or honor, to be able to expose students to new
experiences, ideas and ways of thinking. A far greater and further reaching opportunity is
the opportunity to awaken within the child a desire to continue intellectual and personal
growth so that success in school and in life can become a reality.
o Sadly, many students do not have adequate positive adult role models in their lives.
Teachers spend a great deal of time with students on a daily basis and have the opportunity
to model good character traits in a variety of situations. In many school systems, teachers
provide character education instruction. However, modeling those traits via teacher actions,
interactions and reactions to day-to-day life can be an even greater instructional tool.
In addition to making class time more pleasant, positive student-teacher relationships
can lead to improved academic success. Students and teachers alike bring different
personalities, backgrounds and learning styles to the classroom, so it becomes even more vital
that you develop a special relationship with them..