What is Leadership? – Seth Godin’s workshop

I have signed up for Seth Godin’s Leadership workshop.  A Mooc with Udemy.  It’s actually more of an online course for lots of people. It wasn’t free, it was £13 (special offer, 83% discount) so I thought I’d give it a go.

So each week I should be completing my leadership notebook, this week I have some question prompts to complete which I share on my blog.  All good fun, and hopefully I’ll learn something along the way.

An example of someone I respect leading

My son is now 21 and since he was 18 he has been encouraging and leading people to vote in local and national elections. He is a natural organiser and has been working tirelessly for the Green Party to encourage others to vote and to rally around and offer support. I was amazed that he was confident and willing to speak to the general public and he has inspired others his own age to stand for election and take an interest in local politics.

How I choose to lead

I am always looking at new and hopefully innovative and useful ways for engaging with technology enhanced learning. One of the ways that I have shown leadership is leading by example.  I am inspired by exploring and trying new ideas that I have read about or have experienced through talking to people or working with some amazing individuals, both students and staff.  In terms of the difference between managing and leading, for me its more exciting to be leading a new initiative, although I do find encouraging and working with my iChamps great fun too.  the difference is level of involvement and how much I can inspire while at the same time taking people forward.

Is leadership a choice? 

Is leadership a choice? er, yes.  Why would you not want to lead something as opposed to managing someone elses ideas initiatives?  Believing in the your work is a requirement to get anything to happen and why should anyone follow you if they don’t think that you can do it yourself? I hope I practice what I preach.

What change do I hope to make? 

In terms of what changes I am trying to make,  in terms of technology enhanced education, I am all about change for the better.  Taking forward ideas that doing the same things the same way as we have always done isn’t necessarily the right thing to do.  The world has moved on and HE seems to be the last bastion of resistance to changing practice. Opening up ideas and minds to the potential that we can teach and learn differently using technology and developing digital literacies skills to be more effective and efficient is what I am trying to do at Southampton.

Image: Photo by pedrosimoes7 – Creative Commons Attribution License  https://www.flickr.com/photos/46944516@N00