Response to Stella’s Post

Response to Post 3.1 “Strategic Leadership Teams” by Change Makers || ET2

Thank you for your clear post that gives a great representation of how leaders in an education setting can try and implement strategic leadership principles. It sounds like your SLT is diverse but open to discussion and adept at communication and planning. When you discussed the constructive interactions with other groups in the organization, I reflected of times in my past where I have not communicated well with staff outside of my area. One strategy I implemented during professional development activities was to insist teachers broke off into groups with people from other areas. I often tried to work with kindergarten teachers, or music teachers, as I felt like I had the least communication with them throughout the rest of the year. Through this intentionally diverse interaction, I gained a better understanding of the priorities of each area so that I could help them to understand and achieve the school vision (Hughes et al. 2014, p. 204). Through mixing it up, I could preemptively diminish feelings of threat and understand their perspective on the vision. At each staff meeting, I was intentional about sitting next to people I had not worked with regularly and developed relationship with them ignorer to help solicit their ideas and build employee involvement (Lepsinger, 2010, p. 14).

I found the following statement both profound and excellent advice for all meetings:

However, the flip side is that we can reframe the possibilities as an awesome opportunity to see where God can lead us. We step out in faith and trust that He will direct us. This is our opening prayer for each meeting.

I agree that we should be open to God leading us in all of our meetings and plans. When we plan in our own will we do so with limited human wisdom, but when we focus on Christ first and are open to His will we plan with greater wisdom and understanding. I was dealing with a situation at my son’s school recently and had I not insisted on starting each meeting with prayer, the situation might have gone a lot worse. Especially when negotiating tough situations, we must go to God first, by doing so it give the group unity and purpose. Matthew 18:20 says “For where two are more are gathered in my name, there I am among them.” I used to think of that verse as meaning: God would hear us better when we were in a group. I now realize that verse is showing us that we hear God better when we as a group come together in his name.

Galbraith, J. R. (2014). Designing organizations. Jossey-Bass & Pfeiffer Imprints, Wiley,.

Hughes R., Colarelli-Beatty K. & Dinwoodie  D. (2014) Becoming a strategic leader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Second Edition.

Lepsinger, R. (2010). Closing the execution gap: How great leaders and their companies get results. John Wiley & Sons.

Ungerer, M., Ungerer, G., & Herholdt, J. (2016). Navigating Strategic Possibilities : Strategy Formulation and Execution Practices to Flourish. Randburg: KR Publishing.