Leadership Development

Frank and I did a lot of searches for leadership development seminars, programs, and organizations for our project. Based on all the searches and the readings, there are a wide variety of development programs, all with very specific aims. There are the general development programs such as Academy Leadership which deal with developing leaders in a general sense, and there are organizations like the ones in the reading that develop specific types of people who are under-represented or who lack the opportunities.

For this post I decided to look at the Wallace Foundation . They have a researched method dedicated to k-12 school principles that they believe can speed up development of leaders and make more permenant the advances made in leadership development. It seems that the Wallace Foundation is dedicated to not only provide the training for these school administrators, it also directs it efforts to getting these leaders the support necessary to do their jobs well and not just manage their tasks.

The Wallace Foundation states that there are three main focus areas: clear standards for what is a qualified leader, proper training to foster skills and understanding, and conditions or incentives that keep leaders doing their job well. The issues that plague the qualified leaders in many schools, they say, is the burocracy and it's forced expectations which take up too much of these administrator's time and energy, leaving little behind for them to focus on leading well. Their development program focuses its attention on strengthening these conditions to foster better leadership.

In focusing on leadership training, their program utilizes college programs and other training opportunites in the area to increase state and district standards. I think that this is a good direction to take as it utilizes already in place opportunities, however it assumes that these administrators can attend these univerites. Utilizing universities also allows for various leadership styles to be analyzed.

The issue that I have with the foundation is that it does little to engage or focus on the individual. Many of its initiatives are on a broader range, and although they provide support information for leaders, they assume that those involved are proactive enough to find this information. In a sense it seems that although they are claiming an attempt to remove the "sink or swim" mentality, they do very little to help the individuals.

They did mention a mentoring program that was interesting to help individual administrators accomplish their tasks and learn the necessary skills. I think that more of this passing the torch should be done in many leadership positions.



Learning walks