Women and Educational

Leadership
A New Way
Diverse Collective Leadership
Cristina A. Velzquez
Video of women leaders
Text NOW!
As an educational leader, what quote was more important to
you:
A. Have people who share your vision and have a
passion for your vision. Oprah
B. You are only as good as the people that work for
you. Meg Whitman
C. A network of friends and supporters. Sheryl
Sandberg

https://www.polleverywhere.com/multiple_choice_poll
s/2hDbILWTSRFd9NN

Traditional leadership
literature
often focuses on the
executive aspect
of leadership,
drawn from the
world of business,
that rely of formal
organizational
authority and
power.
Individuality
The heroic male
leadership stance
was lauded for
individuality,
decisiveness, and
vision--- Women
are seen to
involve others in
decision-making.
The news today
Labels.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOjNcZvwjxI

The book shows
how the
qualities that
characterize
women's
approaches to
leadership differ
from traditional
approaches.
Women form
webs, rather
than pyramids.
Involve others to
enhance others
self-worth.

Collaborative: creating a
context that promotes
shared meaning-making
Shared Leadership
Collective Leadership
Distributed influence and control exercised by
teachers and principals on student learning.
Opportunity to focus on the relationships, events,
and activities
An open system that offers intriguing
possibilities for engaging ideas from the
community that address issues of equity and
diversity, leading to productive change.
Collective Leadership
To be effective, the new connective
leaders will need to negotiate,
persuade, and integrate conflicting
groups.
Inspiring both the supporters and
opponents to work together will be
an important strategy for bolstering
the common good.

Collaborative Culture
In a collaborative culture, members of
the school community work together
effectively and are guided by a common
purpose.
All members of the community
teachers, administrators, students and
their familiesshare a common vision
of what the school should be like.
One vision
Create a culture of discourse in which the most important
educational matters facing the school are openly and
honestly discussed.
Members respect each other, value their differences, and
are open to each others ideas.
Even when there is disagreement, people listen to each
other because they believe deeply that differences are
vital in moving their school forward.
The many different voices, experiences, and styles of the
school community add to its strength and vitality.
Activity for setting norms
In this activity, members of a team write
statements individually about how they want
their team to operate on post-its and then
categorize the statements into procedural
norms and interpersonal norms. The group
discusses the statements and reaches
consensus on norms for their group.
Post it!
Procedure
1. The facilitator passes out four post-it notes to each
team member.
2. Each person writes a norma statement about how
they want the group to work togetheron each of the
post-its. One norm for each post-it.
3. Each member reads his or her individual post-its aloud
to the group and then places the post-it on a chart paper
labeled with one of two categoriesprocedural norms
and interpersonal norms.
Procedure
4. Within each category, the facilitator groups the suggestions
that are similar. (For example, take turns speaking and make
sure everyone speaks should be grouped together.)
5. Give a name to the norm for each group. (From the
example in item 4, the norm could be Make sure everyone is
heard.
6. The team members discuss the norms that have been
suggested and check to see whether or not they are in
agreement about the norms. The group should reach consensus
on all norms, keeping in mind that too many norms may be
difficult to follow.
Hints
The team will work with greater
commitment if they generate their own
norms.
Post the norms during each meeting.
Add new norms as the team develops
and new situations arise.
Cognitive Shifts
To create transformational change, it is
necessary to step outside the situation, make
sense of it, and reframe the problem.
Foldy and colleagues (2008) found cognitive
shifts occurred in three processes: reframing
problems, framing possible solutions, and
framing the constituency.
Why Cognitive Shifts?
A piece of leadership research indicates that
focusing on cognitive shift, or changes in
perception or thinking, rather than leadership
behaviors and characteristics is critical to the
work of organizational leadership. (Foldy,
2008)
shaping howpeople understand themselves,
theirwork, and others engaged in that work
is critical to the work of organizational
leadership.
Framing the problem,
framing the solution
Organizations try to spur these shifts in two categories: about
their issue and about their primary constituency, the population
it is designed to serve or mobilize.
This approach makes two contributions: It re-directs attention
from individual leaders' behaviors and characteristics to the
work of leadership, as opposed to the agents through which it
is carried out.
Second, it operationalizes the intangible process of meaning-
making by breaking it down into discrete units that are
relatively equivalent and, therefore, comparable, providing a
systematic way to analyze and map cognitive leadership
processes.
Different angles!
To make a cognitive shift in the way we
understand organizations, leadership, or
change, it is necessary to approach the
organization, and decision-making from a
different angle.
The New York Immigration Coalition brings together
immigrant organizations based in a wide range of ethnic
communities. In its work it has tried to increase the range
of issues that these groups focus on. According to the
organization's director:
One of the things that's unique about our workis the
focus on immigrant policy along with immigration
policySo many of the groups in the immigrant rights
movement are much more focused on just immigration
policy and visas and legalization and amnesty The
Coalition is trying to deal with more of the issues of what
happens once people get here: education, housing, social
services access, that sort of stuff.
Discussion Questions
1. How do informal networks operate in your school
environment?
2. What networks do you and your family members participate
in outside of school?
3. How have the new social communication channels like
Facebook and Twitter changed your life and the lives of your
students and children?
4. What makes groups like PLCs work well? What prevents
them from working?
5. Are there ways in which you lead that suggest a shift away
from the conventional, or departure from expectations?
6. Have you or anyone else been able to reframe an issue
because of a worldview that is different from the dominant
cultures worldview?
What did you learn?
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