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No matter how convincing your ideas for developing your academic institution, the key to crystalizing those ideas lies in your ability to cultivate a team motivated to align their individual goals with the institution’s mission. And mind you, it’s no small feat!
This is the role played by the heads, including the chancellor, vice-chancellor, principal, dean, and chair, among others, in the building of an educational institution. Surprisingly enough, heads often become the biggest impediment in the development of their institutions. Wonder how?
Heads as Facilitator, Not Coach
Often the past experiences of heads as teachers, researchers, and educators restricts them from taking on the roles as a leader. Most education managers and administrators begin their careers with the passion for their disciplines and in their journey are little trained exclusively for leadership. This lackluster leadership in education management leads to a narrow vision and hinders an educational organization to reap its optimum value. A school principal from Tyee High School in Sea-Tac, Washington, puts the problem well.
A principal’s role is not to be the instructional coach and content-expertise developer for all people. The principal’s role is to ensure that all people are getting content-expertise development and support.
How deeply principals should have the knowledge of their subjects is a debate for another time, but, what’s evident is how often we ignore the need for imparting right leadership tools, techniques, and values to the heads of institutions. Becoming ahead is not the same as becoming a leader. To lead an educational organization requires one to be trained in the craft.
Bridge the Gap: Keep your institutions from becoming obsolete
The biggest threat facing institutional education today is the burgeoning of online learning technology, primarily Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The solution is not to view them as competition, but reinventing education aligned with these new technologies.
Forward-looking educational leaders are asking the right questions –
- How to achieve outcome-driven education management in restricted resources?
- What are the values, skills, and beliefs required of them to flourish as leaders in education management?
- What are the best practices of leadership and management in education today?
And many others.
Education sector has been slow at reflecting on such topics of leadership in education management. These reflections are of more critical nature now as the skills and knowledge demanded of students are changing with the fourth industrial revolution. Few companies, for instance, have begun to offer their own skills training and certifications, as they can’t wait for educational institutions to come around, informs Charles Eaton, the Executive Vice President for social innovation at Computing Technology Industry Association, or CompTIA.
“The intervention is a direct response to the fact that the shortage of data and computer scientists isn’t being handled by universities and colleges,” he says.
Having not spent significant time reflecting on the leadership problem in education, it won’t be an exaggeration to say that educational heads have a lot to talk & think about. One suggestion, for example, offered by Harold Jarche, a consultant, for creating an enabling environment at institution is to lay “coffee opportunities” for people. “It’s not coffee that’s important, but the act of gathering, combined with an environment that encourages capturing and sharing knowledge artifacts, which serves to build institutional memory,” he says.
Making Great Leaders: The solution
Fostering leaders who are consciously involved in the process of institution-building is the key to bringing education out of the crisis of leadership in education management. Heads of universities, colleges, and K-12 education, must play an important role in influencing how their institutions perform in the world. They are the critical cogs in two ways – through everyday decisions they determine, when, and how the information will be shared, and how it will be realized in the institution; then along with performance, they are also linked to external relations and finances of the institution which shape the institution-wide priorities.
Futuristic educational institutions require great leaders who can in-turn foster collective leadership, participative culture, and a facilitative environment in institutions. Heads around the world are imbibing such leadership attributes through executive education programs offered by the leading institutions, such as Harvard Business School, the Wharton School, among others. An executive leadership and management program in education gives the heads of educational institutions – from universities, colleges and K-12 organizations, the opportunity to engage with experts from leading institutions, and also travel to discipline-specific universities, workshops and training. They are short duration leadership development programs and can be completed at one’s convivence. Some executive programs in education management and leadership include:
- Harvard Business School – Executive Education in Leadership
- The Wharton School and Graduate School of Education (University of Pennsylvania) with Education Research Management Centre – Global Fellow of Higher Education Management
- The Wharton School and Graduate School of Education (University of Pennsylvania) with Education Research Management Centre – GLOBAL FELLOW OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
- University of Texas, Austin – HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERSHIP
Learning to detach from the institution you have built, to be able to lead it better, is an art a true leader knows. Learn the ropes of managing and administering your institution with executive education programs and get the experts from global institutions to brainstorm on your management predicaments.
